4 - Opportunities lost: The failure of Christianity, 1550–1750

Summary

The Society of Jesus comes to Asia

Although separated by two and a half centuries, the early years of the Ming dynasty (1368–1644) and Tokugawa shogunate (1600–1868) present certain obvious similarities. Both regimes emerged from periods of chaos and warfare, and each one went to great lengths to transform society and thus establish a more durable political order. Bitter experience had taught the ambitious founders of each of these new governments that religion could be both a threat and an ally. Each enshrined new policies toward religion, supporting some, banning or ignoring others. Of course, the two were working within fairly different religious landscapes: the Ming emperor built up Confucianism but also faced the destabilizing influence of apocalyptic belief, while the early Tokugawa rulers had first to tame and then to harness Buddhist piety. To appreciate fully the comparison between these two, we need to see how each one reacted to the arrival of a new religion: Christianity.

The first Christian missionaries, Iberian Catholics of the Jesuit order, reached Japan in the mid-1500s, and China a few decades later. In each place, they found allies among the political elite and faced opposition from a variety of conservative figures, particularly Buddhist monks. Similarly, Christian missionaries in both Japan and China experienced an initial period of success, which was abruptly terminated by a sudden reversal of political fortune. By the early seventeen hundreds, Western missionaries had been expelled from both countries, and their religion banned by law.