Christianity and Japan (2025)

By Kim Ji-myung

Pope Francis' recent visit to South Korea has drawn more attention to his role and influence of religion on the state, both past and present. Looking back, the history of Christianity in Korea, China and Japan sharply contrast from one another, much like their national histories from the modern era.

Catholicism reached Asia much earlier than the Protestant church. In the mid-16th Century, Jesuit missionaries began serious campaigns to spread the religion in China. It wasn't until the late 18th Century that Korea was exposed to Catholic ideals. The religion sparked interest in a growing number of people in the Joseon Kingdom, even if it conflicted with the state's dominating Confucian principles.

Catholicism's path to fruition in Korea is seen as a miracle to many. It was essentially a homegrown belief voluntarily adopted by the educated upper class, as opposed to a religious practice taught by foreign missionaries — which was usually the case in other countries. Koreans began teaching themselves Western ideology through books written by the Jesuit missionary Matteo Ricci.

The first Korean was baptized in Beijing in 1784. Since then, almost 10,000 Korean Catholics have died for their religion, which went against the social values of the Joseon Kingdom until its fall in 1910.

The late Pope John Paul II visited Korea twice in 1984 and 1989, during which he beautified 103 Korean martyrs. Pope Francis followed suit at his recent historic papal ceremony in Seoul, beautifying 124 more Korean martyrs who lost their lives between 1791 and 1888.

Catholics have increased from just one percent of the South Korean population to more than 10 percent in a span of a few decades. Korea has also seen a remarkable 70 percent growth in the Catholic population over the past ten years. However, the Catholic and Protestant churches in Korea are not only noted for their large membership, but also for the role their religious leaders had in Korean history.

On the contrary, Japan missed its chance at ideological liberation for its people after failing to convert into a Catholic country — according to prominent Korean novelist Park Kyung-ri. In her epic novel "Toji" (The Earth), Park narrates the stories of 300 characters in a southern Korean village during Japan's colonial reign.

An open anti-Japanese intellectual, Park was born in 1926 when Korea was under the Japanese rule. She was a high school girl when the country was liberated in 1945, and knows the Japanese people and nation through firsthand experiences.

Her acute and elaborate criticisms of Japan are presented in her booklet, ''Essays on Japan," in which she claims, ''Japan has no future as long as she denies history." (Marronnier Books, 2003).

In this booklet, Park points out two missed opportunities from Japan's history that might have helped the nation mature into a fully liberated country. One was adopting Catholicism. She claims that it could have helped free the Japanese people from the ''tethers of falsity that tightly bind people's consciousness" and from the "power of state absolutely dominating thoughts of the individuals".

The firm establishment of Christianity in Japan could have taught its people respect for life, especially the lives of others. True Christian belief might have awakened Japan from its delusions of emerging as Asia's imperial leader under its living God Emperor. It also could have saved many Asian neighbors from the unwarranted and disastrous whirlwind of war waged by the island nation in East Asia and the Pacific.

Although I am not religious myself, I understand that each religion has had a major role in shaping history. If Pope John Paul II contributed to successfully ending the Cold War, then Pope Francis should be able to focus his mind and body on fixing the disparity between the rich and poor, the timely challenge of today's society.

Japan currently has only 450,000 Catholic believers, even though Jesuit Father Xavier of Portugal visited the nation as early as 1549. Under the patronage of political leaders, Japanese Catholics numbered more than 700,000 at that time. However, the following generations of believers were ruthlessly oppressed by unjust rulers, leaving only a handful to practice the Catholic faith in secret for the next two centuries.

One outstanding Japanese Catholic to note is Hitoshi Motoshima, a 4-term mayor of Nagasaki city between 1979 and 1995.At the end of 1988, the Japanese Emperor fell gravely ill, and Mayor Motoshima was asked by a Communist Party member to give his opinion on the Emperor's responsibility for World War II.

He answered, "Forty-three years have passed since the end of the war, and I think we have had enough chance to reflect on the nature of the war… From reading various accounts from abroad and having been a soldier myself, involved in military education, I do believe that the emperor bore responsibility for the war."

The ruling party immediately demanded that he retract the statement, but Motoshima refused to cooperate, unable to betray his conscience.

On January 18, 1990, a right-wing organization member shot Motoshima in the back, but, fortunately, he survived. He surprised the world once more by forgiving the assassin in a public statement.

During an interview in 1998, Motoshima again attracted controversy by stating that, ''It was a matter of course for atomic bombs to have been dropped on Japan, who launched a war of aggression. Japan does not have the right to criticize the atomic bomb."

The writer is the chairwoman of the Korea Heritage Education Institute (K*Heritage). She can be reached at heritagekorea21@gmail.com.