HELP! Did missionaries to Japan force people to convert?

[mythbuster1]

Japan has a choice: either embrace Catholicism en masse or perish by their own hand. Their fertility rate is lower than China in the One Child Policy days, as the Lost Decade has become the Lost Generation. It is not wealth but necessity which makes Japan the world leader in robotics, because they need robots to do labor that there aren’t enough workers to do. The abysmal fertility rate is further compounded by the world’s highest suicide rate. Yes, the militaristic madness of the Empire of Japan is dead and buried, but it has been replaced with nihilism.

 

[AlNg]

Our textbook, which has an account of a Japanese convert (Fabian Fucan) who converted back to Buddhism and slanders the church.

I think that the best thing to do would be to read the books of Fabian Fucan. His first well known book Myōtei Dialogues was written when he was a Jesuit and was a serious defense of Christianity against all other religions. However, he became disillusioned with the Jesuits and other Catholics citing their arrogant behavior toward the Japanese and treating Japanese as inferior to westemers. He then wrote Ha Daiusu , a treatise against Christianity. He attacks the exclusiveness of Christianity asking why Christians claim that it is only they who know about how the universe was created. He rejects the Ten commandments, or at least the first commandment, as it forbids the worship of other gods revered in Japan and thereby prepares the way for a takeover by foreign powers who want to eliminate Japanese customs. And anyway the precepts of Buddhism came much earlier (not to kill, not to steal, not
to commit adultery, not to lie and not to consume intoxicating liquids) and the Christian morality does not exceed that of the Buddhist. Further, he says that if God is omniscient, he should have known that he would be grieved after creating man. But the Bible tells us that God regretted that he had made man on earth. Why did God create Adam and Eve in the first place if He knew that He would regret it later on? And he questions why God waited for 5000 years after creating Adam and Eve to appear on earth and save people? Why did it take him such a long time? Etc.
So, I don’t think that Fabian Fucan was forced to convert. He was an extremely conscientious Catholic Jesuit for many years, but changed his mind and became anti-Christian and wrote a book attempting to refute all of his previous pro-Christian ideas.

 

[sevenswords]

We are all called to be evangelists today, If you can not find anything wrong in his doings then neither can anyone else.
I had a lecturer try to fail me because I stood up to him and proved him wrong when he was ditching our faith, they have huge ego;s you know!!!
Say a prayer for calmness and if you find a wrong doing then write about it, if not take a different take on it and start with, although…has being accused of…the truth was…blah blah blah and find scholarly back up…

 

[Gabika50]

I would turn the tables and play the discrimination card; and get a hold of the ACLU.

 

[semper_catholicus]

It’s terrible when schools put people in positions like this.

 

[Fauken]

Considering what schools are teaching these days, it’s an effective way of stamping out undesirable ideologies.

 

[adamhovey1988]

I had a text book that said that Catholic beliefs in the Sacraments are “technically magic”. Funny, I didn’t see them say the same thing about any other religious groups. (It’s also not true). I had a psychology professor who said there was a papal bull that said to kill schizophrenic people (the only “evidence” I found of it was from a website that supported legalising marijuana). Textbooks (and professors) are not always right. I had a biology book that said a fetus becomes a baby, guess someone failed Latin. If someone makes a claim like this, they need to provide really good evidence.

 

[abucs]

How was the Church of Japan when you visited; it seems to be alive but struggling (with small and the pictures I see the vast, vast majority are quite elderly)?

Don’t you think it’d be wonderful if the Japanese peoples and the others of Asia all converted to Catholicism?

I was busy doing the tourist things when visiting Japan. I did see churches in Nagasaki and the western Honshu area of Japan such as Sasebo which survived the Shogunate persecutions. There are also far flung western islands that were relatively safe which still have old churches. In a weird sense of irony the shoganate that was responsible for starting the anti-Christian persecutions died after eating too much Tempura. Tempura was a dish created by the Jesuit missionaries in order to eat during the Friday ban on eating meat.

There were other churches here and there in Japan such as in Kobe that I saw but I am not sure how healthy the congregations are. When I entered the churches there were mainly elderly Japanese there but that would be pretty normal in many places

 

[RCIAGraduate]

Do you have hope for the Church in general, were there be genuine, sincere though perhaps struggling believers of all colors and cultures? Demographically as you mentioned, things seem quite discouraging but perhaps some things reset (for example, I understand a now non-insignificant portion of the Church may be composed of migrants like Filipinos as well as Latin Americans of Japanese descent)?

 

[abucs]

There are very few migrants in Japan and personally I think this is a good thing for the country.

I think cultural movements such as religion are hard to predict but can be transformative and surprisingly strong. At the moment in many secular countries such as Japan I do not see a strong movement to Christianity. As with the west I hope a new period of Catholic inspired cultural change will appear.