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After the Tokugawa shogunate banned Christianity in 1620 it ceased to exist publicly. Many Catholics went underground, becoming hidden Christians (隠れキリシタン, kakure kirishitan), while others died. Only after the Meiji Restoration was Christianity re-established in Japan.
The Japanese word for Christianity (キリスト教, Kirisuto-kyō) is a compound of kirisuto (キリスト) the Japanese adaptation of the Portuguese word for Christ, Cristo, and the Sino-Japanese word for doctrine (敎, kyō, a teaching or precept, from Middle Chinese kæ̀w 敎), as in Bukkyō (仏教, Japanese for Buddhism).
Kakure Kirishitan are the Catholic communities in Japan which hid themselves during the ban and persecution of Christianity by Japan in the 1600s. [3] [5] Depictions of Mary modeled on the Buddhist deity Kannon (Avalokiteśvara), goddess of mercy, became common among Kakure Kirishitan, and were known as "Maria Kannon". [6]
The Martyrs of Japan (Japanese: 日本の殉教者, Hepburn: Nihon no junkyōsha) were Christian missionaries and followers who were persecuted and executed, mostly during the Tokugawa shogunate period in the 17th century. The Japanese saw the rituals of the Christians causing people to pray, close their eyes with the sign of the cross and lock ...
An existing ban on the Christian religion was then enforced stringently, and Christianity in Japan survived only by going underground. [24] Another part of the shogunate's actions after the rebellion was to excuse the clans which had aided its efforts militarily from the building contributions which it routinely required from various domains. [25]
In 1543, during the wars of the Sengoku period, the Portuguese landed in Japan for the first time, and soon spread Christianity throughout Japan from Kyushu.Regional daimyō, or feudal lords, were eager to trade with the Portuguese for their European arquebus, while the Portuguese saw the Japanese as potential converts to the Christian religion, preferring to trade with those who converted.
A promising beginning to Catholic missions in Japan – with perhaps as many as 300,000 Catholics by the end of the 16th century – met complications from competition between the missionary groups, political difficulty between Portugal and Spain and factions within the government of Japan. Christianity was suppressed and it was during this ...
The conservative faction within the government, which had once been active in the Emperor Exclusionist movement, did not hide their opposition to Christianity and strongly opposed the repeal of the ban, saying that since Shinto was the national religion-it was natural to exclude foreign religions, and that it was unlikely that the West would ...