In 1945 General Douglas MacArthur issued an appeal to Americans to come to Japan as missionaries to Christianize that people, and much to the shame of American Christians, those missionaries never arose or were sent.
I deal a great part in history, as history repeats itself, and history is a teacher that if the early missionary work had succeeded in Japan, there never would have been an Imperial Japan for Franklin Roosevelt to lure into war against America in that global scheme.
Japan was opened up to the west by Portugal, early in the era of the Portuguese and Spanish competition and division of the world. Their missionaries, being of the Jesuit Catholic storm trooper class arrived and accomplished great advances where the hand of peaceful Buddah carried a two edged sword.
Japan was a people then the farmer merchant class and the hereditary baron class. The two classes were not permitted to marry or associate, and the merchants for violations were put to death the ruling princes who in turn for breaches were mandated to gut themselves in harikari, or ritual suicide.
It was in the early 1600 period where problems started enveloping the Christians in Japan. In a feudal war of the period, Taicosama achieved victory, while the Jesuit cohorts were defeated.
Further insult arose when the buddhist Taicosama desired a Christian girl as his concubine and the Christian Japanese refused the order.
The ruler that followed was Iyeyasu, was a devout peaceful buddhist who carried a two edged sword, in his ruling power, and when a competitor in young prince, Hideyori, who was on friendly terms with Christians arose. In this, the Dutch and English began fanning the flames of competition against the Spanish and Portugeuse. Christian missionaries soon were the target of a system of terrorism which captured them for extreme forms of torture and novel was of execution.
The net result was the grandson of Iyeyasu, when an insurrection broke out due to repression of the local feudal lords or the diamos.
This was on the island of Amakusa, and the Christians joined in the revolt. The close of this was on February 24th, 1638, that at the castle of Shimara being captured, 37,000 Christians were murdered.
Of that 37,000, twenty five thousand were defenseless women and children.
One never thinks of Christian martyrs in Japan, and yet there literally are more Christian martyrs in Japan in one episode, than in the entire American historical landscape.
The religious cleansing of Christians in Japan was brought about by thee most hostile of mindsets of the ruling classes. Portugal was forbidden from ever setting foot in Japan again. The English had removed themselves as the Dutch traders were too much competition, and in that the Dutch were confined to an artificial island off the port of Nagasaki which had been the residence of Chinese traders.
It would not be until 1852 when the Americans led by the brilliant diplomacy of Commodore Perry, at Loochoo reopened the doors of Japan to the west, and this time with only capitalism and education by American prowess, voided of Christian teachings, would in less than a century bring about a most horrific war in which the two religions would clash again in World War II.
The Japanese buoyed
themselves up with the belief that their innate superiority could enable
them easily to overcome the better equipped forces of foreign countries,
when once they had acquired the modern arts of warfare and provided
themselves with a sufficient proportion of the ships and weapons of the
nineteenth century. From that time onwards this was the central idea of
Japan's foreign policy for many years, as the sequel will show.
From a diplomat in Japan: Ernest Satow
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