Christianity in Japan

New Zealand Tablet, 6 July 1911, Page 1265

Christianity in Japan

_ Miss Margaret La Targe, writing to the 'Daily Nev% of Newport, R. 1., gives interesting information on Christianity in Japan. Her letter is as follows: Would you kindly allow me through your columns to correct an impression given in your report of a speech at the Jubilee Foreign Mission meeting that Japan has only known Christianity for fifty years. .The speaker referred to a ‘ recent jubilee celebration in Japan to commemorate the introduction of Christianity ’ into that country. It is a well-known and historical fact that Christianity was first introduced into Japan by St. Francis Xavier, of the Order of Jesus, in the sixteenth century. After extraordinary and successful labors in India he with two other Jesuits ,arrived at Cangoxinia, a kingdom of Saxonia, on the loth of August, 1549. Meeting with a favorable reception from the King of Saxonia, he began to preach the Gospel throughout the greater part of Japan, having acquired the language in two months. He returned to India in November, 1551, leaving behind him manv Christian communities in the care of the Jesuits who had joined +i The divine seed sown by St. Francis increased so much that when the first persecution was raised there were in that empire 400j000 Christians, counting among their num-i-on?Tera kln & s ’_Princes, and many of the nobilitv. In 10,.0. .there were 250 churches, three seminaries, a novitiate lor the Jesuits, and several Franciscans. After several smaller persecutions, which thinned their numbers, the on e enn storm of , 1596 1 bu , rst npon them and no fewer than 20,000 were put to death for the faith. ally, in 1638, Christianity apparently ceased to exist in Japan, but not entirely. ‘We have reason to believe,’ wrote Ohphant in his book, Lord Elgin's Mission, ‘that the last spark has never been extinguished and that smouldering secretly the fire of Francis Xavier, still burns in the hia°t™ichin”™ e ° f ose wbo kave received the traditions of A r + ?i his V™ pposition ; vas true. When my great-uncle Matthew Perry, opened Japan again to all creeds, a Catholic missionary saying Mass alone, not far from • Nagasaki, was approached by two Japanese who asked him if he believed in a God-made man. born of a virgin in a Pope, head of a church on earth, and if he was unmarried. On his replvKSvVlf affi ,T tlve to these fictions, they told him that they belonged to a small colony of some thousand souls the descendants of those early Christians, and who for of) years, without priests, without church or sacraments had, secretly and in fear, kept alive that divine fire ignited thaftlm o T< ? n T C,S - U ;y as f , rora Christian families that the hist Japanese Catholic priests were recruited for tho new era of Christianity in Japan. r