1 von 10 japanischen Universitäten sind christliche Missionsschulen, dennoch beträgt der christliche Bevölkerungsanteil immer noch <1 %. Warum hat sich das Christentum nie durchgesetzt? „Obwohl Japans Eliten von westlichen Werten angezogen wurden und als modisch angesehen wurden, wurden sie von der breiten Öffentlichkeit mit größerem Misstrauen betrachtet.“
https://news.yahoo.co.jp/articles/34e33e4f0143d5f63b0e3a9d54844878c1ebaf0d?page=1
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If truly interested, better to read a scientific studies: [https://www.researchgate.net/publication/393628189_Roman_Catholicism_and_the_History_of_Christianity_in_Modern_Japan](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/393628189_Roman_Catholicism_and_the_History_of_Christianity_in_Modern_Japan)
Edit, adding a bit of the paper conclusion:
>After the French mission’s early clandestine proselytisation among Hidden Christian communities a roughly six year-long period of persecutions lasted until 1873. The significant growth of Catholicism in the 1870s onward is largely associated with the Catholic revival among residents of numerous low-socio-economic villages in Nagasaki, or on islands located nearby in the Kyushu region. As time went on, the Roman Catholic Church developed, indigenised and decentralised across the archipelago, **although the number of Japanese background priests was relatively low even up to the 1920s or 1930s.** By the early 20th Century, influences of the Catholic educational institutions increased and non-French Catholic missionaries arrived from Germany, and other loca-tions, leading to new growth of Catholic communities in more urbanised, or elite communities. Then, **during World War II, the church indigenised further as foreign priests were forced out due to suspicions about their loyalties.** The devastation of the Urakami Catholic community in 1945 by an atomic bombing shocked the Japanese church, but was followed by revival in the 1950s and 60s. Throughout the modern period, women have been proportionally major contributors to Catholic social activities and to proselytisation since open Catholicism has been practised from 1873 to the modern day. These include both Japanese and non-Japanese women religious. More recently, in the late 20th and early 21st centuries, while there is certainly a gradual reduction in numbers of Catholic adherents, a large proportion of their numbers in urban regions are made up of short and longer-term migrants from other largely Catholic nations including the Philippines, Brazil and Paraguay.
Its cause religious conversions usually involve desperate people looking for salvation. The majority of people in Japan, while they may not be rich, arent exactly desperately poor to a point they feel like they need salvation either so joining christianity doesnt have any merits to them. theres also the fact that religious groups in Japan have historically been more predatory then beneficial which makes the average people wary of joining any religious organization as a whole.
One parent told me he sent his daughter to a Christian school, because they had more discipline and taught better manners.
Uh, read Japanese history or watch Shogun on streaming if you want the cliff notes 🤣
Buddhism has a trump card over Christianity. Christianity says your non-Christian relatives are in Hell forever. Buddhism says even if your ancestor ends up in a lower realm, you can transfer merit to them to help them even out of Hell. While most Japanese are no longer religious, Christianity sounds significantly harsher than Buddhism especially when it comes to the afterlife.
Not sure a foundation built on gaslighting your followers makes a good case for „values“.
My armchair theory is it’s a combination of the historical legacy of the purges of Christians in the 17th century making chosing Christianity a risk, and the mass suicides in ww2 of those most inclined to extremism, leaving a remaining population of people more inclined to raise their kids to tend to treat religion in general with a healthy dose of skepticism and as less central than other facets of life.
It never catch on for many reasons. One of them being this religion is super middle east centric and has little value in Asia overall. Europe used Christianity to unite countries under the old Roman empire after its collapse to retain power. That’s the whole reason Christianity became prevalent in Europe and them colonialism spread it everywhere in the world. Japan was never colonized and the shogungate closed Japan for 400y, which was enough for it to escape the ideology. Fast forward to modern days, Christianity is dying because it’s out of touch with pretty much everything.
Education is inoculation against religion. Japanese literacy rates are considerably higher than the US. That includes reading comprehension and science knowledge.
I’m fed up with how pushy Christian proselytizing is. This year, a man who looked like a missionary suddenly showed up at my place and asked me to come to a meeting.🤢
The track record wasn’t really that great when one of the first contacts were Portuguese people and then after Americans.
But it’s quite more nuanced of course. One of them being that industrialization already took place before the religion gripped the elites. Or that, the Dutch came along to trade without the need for conversion of the elites. Could also be that the religious movement coming from the meji restoration was so rigid and robust that it left no room for growth of other religious movements.