Sustaining otherness: Self, nature and ancestralism among contemporary Japanese Christians

Abstract

Ideological minorities in Japan have received rather less sociological attention than ethnic ones. This paper explores some central facets of the position of one of these less studied minorities — Japanese Christians — in their relationship to the mainstream society. Japanese Christians are located within the tensions created by their unclear relationship to the major religious traditions of Shintō and Buddhism as cosmological systems and as elements in Japanese politics. The nature of scholarship on Japanese Christianity is briefly introduced and an alternative perspective based on an analysis of Japanese Christianity's relationships to three important cultural themes — selfhood, nature and ancestralism — is proposed. Japanese Christians are examined as a self‐selected minority, distinguished not by ethnicity or language, but by voluntary adherence to a system of religious beliefs and practices at substantial variation with those of the vast majority of the population. This gives rise to problems about the location of Christians within the networks of reciprocity vital to the functioning of everyday Japanese social and cultural life. Finally, Japanese Christians are located in relation to the pressures of internationalization and globalization on Japanese society and on the shifting boundaries of Otherness and deviance in their society.