Non-Christian Religions in the work of Uchimura Kanzō

Abstract

Non-Christian Religions in the work of Uchimura Kanzō James Harry Morris (bio) Keywords Uchimura Kanzō, Non-Church Movement, Interreligious Dialogue, Interfaith Dialogue, Interreligious Relations, Christian-Buddhist Relations, Christian-Muslim Relations The first Protestant missionaries came to Japan in 1859 following the ratification of the five Ansei Treaties negotiated between Japan and several western powers (the United States, France, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the Netherlands) the previous year.1 The missionaries initially focused on language acquisition, translation and teaching, gaining only a handful of converts until the government began to adopt a more liberal stance toward Christianity in 1873.2 By 1891, there were approximately 30,000 Japanese converts to Protestantism and by 1930 there were over 190,000.3 Nevertheless, Christianity has, historically and contemporarily, failed to take seed amongst the Japanese people, with Mark Mullins noting, for instance, that "annual statistics have indicated for decades that no more than one percent of the Japanese are church members."4 Indeed, since Christianity "cuts across vital social aspects of belonging, [it] tends to be rather antithetical to Japanese feelings of identity."5 In addition to this, foreign Protestant missionaries have tended to import Christianity as part of a colonial and neo-colonial western package that provides little to no room for dialogue between Christianity and Japanese modes of thought, being, and practice, whether religious or secular. Historically missionaries "tended to emphasize a total discontinuity between the Christian faith and Japanese religious traditions and practices. Indigenous traditions needed to be 'displaced' or removed to make room for the Gospel and authentic Christian faith. The missionaries had the 'truth of the Gospel,' and the Japanese were totally lost in sin."6 [End Page 196] Simultaneously, during the second half of the nineteenth century many Japanese viewed Christianity as incompatible with Japanese values.7 As a result of these factors, some Japanese theologians have attempted to theologize from Japanese contexts in an ecclesial environment independent from western missionary organizations. Uchimura Kanzō's (1861–1930) founding of the Mukyōkai (Non-Church Movement) in 1901 marked the first—and one of the most famous—attempts to develop an indigenous Christian movement along these lines. Uchimura's attempts to find points of commonality between Christianity and the Japanese context led him to begin to grapple theologically with themes pertinent to interfaith dialogue.8 In this paper, I will explore some of these themes in Uchimura's work and seek to situate his theology within its wider historical context. I will argue that Uchimura uses references to non-Christian religions as literary devices and as examples for the betterment of Christianity, while also postulating that God was active in the religious histories of non-Christian peoples. a man of two worlds From his youth, Uchimura lived abridge two worlds: Asian and western, Japanese and North American, non-Christian and Christian. Scholars have been divided in their assessments as to whether it was Japanese or western contexts and their influences that played the most important role in Uchimura's life and work. Mullins, however, provides a suitable middle ground, illustrating that Uchimura was simultaneously indebted to western thought and convinced, in contradistinction to the missionaries, that "native traditions provided a positive foundation for Christianity in Japan."9 A brief overview of Uchimura's life may help to elucidate some of the multiple factors that shaped his thought. Uchimura's educational background was predominantly western. Born into a samurai family, he attended Takasakihan Eigakkō (Takasaki Domain English School) until 1873, Arima Shigakkō (Arima Private School), where he had his first interactions with Christianity, until 1874, and Tōkyō Gaikokugo Gakkō (Tokyo School of Foreign Language),10 before enrolling in Sapporo Nōgakkō (Sapporo Agricultural College) in 1877.11 It was here that Uchimura converted to Christianity, receiving a Methodist baptism from American missionary Merriam Colbert Harris (1846–1921) in 1878.12 Following several years of work after his graduation in 1881, Uchimura emigrated to the United States, where he matriculated at Amherst College in 1885 and completed his second bachelor's [End Page 197] degree in 1887.13 Following his graduation from Amherst, he initially enrolled in Hartford Theological Seminary, but returned to Japan in 1888 to...