Jesuits In Japan

The Society of Jesus, founded in a context which Europe was going through deep changes, developed in its pastoral work a capacity to adapt itself to specific time and places, what made important historians like John O’Malley characterize it as the great distinctive trace of the Jesuits. What this article aims is to check this hypothesis in a specific mission space: Japan. Through the reports of the Jesuits that worked in Japanese lands, it is possible to notice different missionary strategies designed by the Society priests during the brief period they were able to work in the Japanese archipelago (less than a century). Japan was going through important political, social and economic changes at that time, and the strategies developed are directly related to these different contexts, what makes Japanese mission a privileged mission field for such analysis.

In 1555, just six years after arriving in Japan, missionaries from the Society of Jesus founded a small medical clinic in the city of Funai (modern-day Ōita). This was the first European hospital in all of East Asia, and historians have often regarded it as the beginning of a scientific revolution, a revolution which would eventually see the official adoption of Western medicine in Japan along with the marginalization of Eastern techniques. This article seeks an alternative perspective. It argues that there is some misunderstanding as to the nature
of the Jesuit hospital. The historical sources in fact indicate that it was largely designed by, directed by, and staffed by the local Japanese Christians. Because of this, it functioned much like a Buddhist temple sanatorium. It had buildings of a similar architectural style, and its patients were treated in a similar way, receiving both Chinese medicine and Western surgery. The primary goal of the Jesuit hospital was not to introduce exotic medical techniques, but rather to offer appropriate social and spiritual support to the community.

This talk (made in Lisbon in  08/09/2003) was later published in Lucio de Sousa, “Dom Luís de Cerqueira e a Escravatura no Japão (1598)” (Don Luis Cerqueira and Slavery in China and Japan (1598)) in Broteria Review, n.165, October, 2007,  pp. 245-263.
It has some inconsistencies.

¿De qué manera percibió Javier la creencia de los japoneses y cómo retrató a sus máximos exponentes, los bonzos? ¿Qué influencia tuvo el trasfondo histórico y religioso sobre su visión? Este trabajo analiza la relación entre el contexto de la Contrarreforma con las primeras misiones cristianas en Japón para comprender la originalidad del
pensamiento de Francisco de Javier sobre estas cuestiones.

How did Javier perceive the Japanese beliefs and how did he portray their truthful exponent: the bonzos? How much influence did the historical and religious context had on his vision? This paper analyze the relationship between the Counter-Reformation context and the early Christian missions in Japan in order to comprehend the originality of Francisco de Javier’s thought about this matters.

This is my doctoral thesis from the St Andrews Research Repository. URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10023/15875

This thesis explores the history of Christianity and conversion to it in 16th and 17th Century Japan. It argues that conversion is a complex phenomenon which happened for a variety of reasons. Furthermore, it argues that due to the political context and limitations acting upon the mission, the majority of conversions in 16th and 17th Century Japan lacked an element of epistemological change (classically understood). The first chapter explores theories of conversion suggesting that conversion in 16th and 17th Century Japan included sorts of religious change not usually encapsulated in the term conversion including adhesion, communal and forced conversion. Moreover, it argues that contextual factors are the most important factors in religious change. The second chapter explores political context contending that it was the political environment of Japan that ultimately decided whether conversion was possible. This chapter charts the evolution of the Japanese context as it became more hostile toward Christianity. In the third chapter, the context of the mission is explored. It is argued that limitations acting upon the mission shaped post-conversion faith, so that changes to practice and ritual rather than belief became the mark of a successful conversion. The fourth chapter explores methods of conversion, the factors influencing it, and post-conversion faith more directly. It argues that Christianity spread primarily through social networks, but that conversion was also influenced by economic incentive, other real-world benefits, and Christianity’s perceived efficacy. Building on Chapter Three, the final chapter also seeks to illustrate that the missionaries were not successful in their attempts to spur epistemological change or instil a detailed knowledge of theology or doctrine amongst their converts.

This article will retrace the last foreign mission of Edmund Aloysius Walsh by analyzing the documentation preserved in the Historical Archives of
the Company of Jesus, Rome, in the personal archive of Walsh, housed in the Lauinger Library, Georgetown University, and integrated by the documents  present at the Sophia University of Tokyo (Jochi Daigaku). Walsh’s personal papers, in particular, offer insights that extend beyond the official task assigned him by the Jesuit General as Visitor to the Jesuit’s Japanese Mission and once again reveal his role, under the auspices of Georgetown University, in the vital cultural and historical collaboration between the Catholic Church and the United States of America.
The intent is to demonstrate and to document once more that Edmund
Walsh played a key role in twentieth century American history and that his
creation, the School of Foreign Service of Georgetown, provided an indispensable crossroads for American diplomacy: a point of international contact, exchange and advancement for interests held in common or in parallel by the Vatican and the United States and of which Walsh was the mutually trusted protagonist.

Mit dem Film Chinmoku von Masahiro Shinoda 1 und Martin Scorseses Silence haben wir den interpretatorisch reizvollen Fall vorliegen, dass ein japanischer Roman in zwei Verfilmungen vorliegt, einmal von einem japa-
nischen und unlängst einem international renommierten amerikanischen
Regisseur verfilmt.
Der  zugrundeliegende  japanische  Roman  stammt  von  Shūsaku  Endō
(1923-1996). Sein Roman Chinmoku erhielt 1966 den Tanizaki-Preis und
gilt als reifstes Werk des Autors. (dt. Übersetzung als Stille von Ruth Lin-
hart 2017). Der Autor selbst hat eine Bühnenversion erstellt und an dem
Drehbuch der japanischen Verfilmung von 1971 mitgearbeitet. Der Kom-
ponist und Schriftsteller Teizo Matsumura schrieb das Libretto und die
Musik  für  eine  gleichnamige  Oper  (UA  1993,  Tokyo,  Chiyoda,  Nissay
Theatre). Die japanische Verfilmung stammt von Masahiro Shinoda, die
Musik von Toru Takemitsu; David Lampson spielte darin den Jesuiten Se-
bastião Rodrigues. Japanische Mitwirkende waren Tetsuro Tamba, 1922-
2006, Mako, 1933-2006; Shima Iwashita, geboren 1941 und Eiji Okada,
1920-1995.
遠藤 周作; 沈黙,

INSIDE/OUTSIDE AND THE DIFFERENCE: ATTITUDES TOWARDS THE CHURCH IN SOME NOVELS BY GRAHAM GREENE AND SHUSAKU ENDO
[Nei/wai yu yanyi—geleian gelin yu  yuanteng zhouzuo bufen xiaoshuo dui jiaohui de taidu], in A. Brankamp, ed., _Diyijie guoji wenxue yu zongjiao huiyi lunwenji_ [Proceedings of the First International Conference on Literature and Religion], Taipei: China Times, Ltd., 1987), pp. 105-120.


Magliola re-visits a long-standing topic in studies of Graham Greene and Shusaku Endo, namely, their respective (and changing) relationships to their Catholic Faith, but he does so in a very new way that draws upon several Derridean “philosophemes” developed at length in his second book, Derrida on the Mend (1984) and in his long paper, “Postmodernism on the Brim: A Differentialist Manifesto,” Proceedings of the Symposium on Postmodernism, Le Centre culturel international de Cerisy-la-Salle (CCIC), Cerisy-la-Salle, France, Sept. 7, 1983; available in _Krisis_,  I. Marcoulesco, ed. (Houston, Texas: International Circle for Research in Philosophy, Menil Foundation), Nos. 3/4 (1985), pp. 91-111. Magliola employs a deconstructive déroulement whereby the “crack” in the surface of a “cosmeticized” structure is detected, and its “trail”--leading deep below the surface of the pertaining “structure”—carefully tracked. The structure’s more likely “cause,” called the “alternate solution,” is unearthed, and is regarded as a better approximation of how “life goes on” than that proclaimed by the classical solution. However, the “alternate solution,” too, necessarily comes “under erasure,” and thus continues on only as a fragile clue, an “alternate solution X’d over” but still viable. Magliola applies this déroulement in diverse ways to  Graham Greene’s The Power and the Glory and The Honorary Consul, and to Shusaku Endo’s Silence. Magliola also brings into play two other Derridean descriptors, namely “logocentrism” and “ellipticity.”  He finds discourse of The Power and the Glory “logocentric” or “centered” (though deconstructible, as all logocentrisms/centers are), and he finds The Honorary Consul manifestly “elliptical.” An ellipsis, having a moving center, remains spheroid: it is not a perfect circle but neither has it passed over into something else—a rectangle or a triangle, for example. Nor is it a “synthesis” of two genres of structure—it is not a half circle combined with half a square, for example. (Indeed, “synthesis,” for Derrida, is a form of “logocentrism.) In the second half of this paper, Magliola likewise passes Endo’s Silence through stages of déroulement. Magliola then concludes by examining—in great detail—the personal end-philosophies of the novel’s two Jesuits, Fathers Ferreira and Rodrigues. He concludes that Fr. Ferreira chooses an “alternate solution” which is neither Catholic nor even Christian in a broader sense, and Fr. Rodrigues chooses an “alternate solution” which deconstructs Catholicism while remaining elliptically “Christian.”