e Japanese Church in the Second World War

Simon Cozens
February 3, 2010

is presentation will focus on the pressures imposed upon Japanese churches by the government in the run-up to the
Second World War, with particular emphasis on the United Christian Church of Japan, (UCCJ, Japanese: Nihon Kirisuto
Kyōdan, oen simply Kyōdan) its foundation, its theological activity during the War and its partial disintegration post-war.
Unfortunately we do not have space here to consider the events which were set in motion by the church’s wartime collab-
oration with the government: the controversy over issuing a Confession for responsibility for collaboration; the Expo 1970
‘Christian pavillion’ debacle; the attacks on Professor Kitamori at the UCCJ special assembly; the Tokyo University e-
ological Seminary riots and so on, all of which have considerably effect on the church today and the relationship between
Kyōdan and Evangelical churches. For a detailed exposition of this distrubing and sorry period in the church’s history, see
Reid (1979)1 and Phillips (1981). We will, however, consider some recent areas of tension between church and state which
find their background in these events.

1 Historical Background: The Japanese Drawbridge

e history of Japan can be envisaged as a drawbridge, being let down periodically to allow contact and intercourse with the
outside world, and then being raised to prevent non-Japanese influence from having too great an effect on Japanese life. In this
sense, Japanese cultural change is highly regulated by the government. (see van Wolferen, 1990)
We see this principle in operation in the earliest encounters with Christianity during the 16th and 17th centuries; Catholic
missionaries entered Japan in 1549 and enjoyed remarkable success until the government expelled them in 1587. e faith
was formally outlawed in 1637, and in the following year, the government required all households to register with their local
Buddhist temple, and in 1662, required every adult to obtain a certificate from the temple that they were innocent of associ-
ation with Christianity. (Reid, 1991, p10) Foreign contact was forbidden through the sakoku (isolationist) policity, and the
‘drawbridge’ went up until 1853, when Commodore Perry’s ‘black ships’ forced a new trade agreement between Japan and the
US.
Similarly, the introduction of Protestant mission in the 1880s saw steady growth until the 1891 when, under the influ-
ence of strong anti-Western feelings, the government promulgated the Imperial Rescript on Education, which presented the
Japanese nation in imperialist, statist terms; the government also required that educational establishments receive the Re-
script in a ceremony that included bowing in worship to the document. Uchimura Kanzō, a schoolteacher and leader of the
‘Nonchurch’ movement, refused to worship and was forced to resign his post. (Koyama, 1979, p105)
e drawbridge was about to rise again, and the wave of nationalism intensified until its peak in the 1930s. In each case,
Christianity suffered greatly by its perceived conflict with the Japanese national identity.
1
is paper is highly recommended for those who have a desire to further understand the state of the Japanese church today; it is also republished
as chapter 4 of Reid (1991).

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2 1930s Nationalism
e Second World War started early in Japan, with its invasion of Manchuria in 1931 and full-scale attack on China in 1937.2
In order to mobilize support and morale for war, the government increasingly imposed control on Japanese society, based
around a mythological construct of Japan which declared, in the words of the 1937 ‘Cardinal Principles of the National Entity
of Japan’ that ‘the Divine Emperor rules the Divine Land and People. His august glory shall reach the ends of the universe.’
(Koyama, 1979, p101)

2.1 Shinto as “civic duty”

One element of this nationalism programme was the designation of Shinto as ‘non-religious institution of the state’, (Mullins,
1998, p19) and the requirement for all religious groups to incorporate ‘citizen rituals’ (kokumin girei) into their religious prac-
tices. ese included ‘bowing in the direction of the imperial palace, singing the Kimigayo (hymn to the Emperor) and silently
praying for those who had died in service to the emperor.’ (Mullins, 1998, p21) e majority of Japanese religions complied,
with the exception of Ōmoto, Hitono-Michi, Shinkō-Bukkyō and Hon-Michi; the vast majority of Christian denominations,
with the notable exception of the Holiness group, also complied.3

By the late 1930s, most churches had also created some form of theological rhetoric to legitimize the Imperial
Way, including support for Japanese military expansionism. According to these indigenous theologies, the rule
and kingdom of the Emperor were none other than the kingdom of God, and the Japanese people were a chosen
race with a destiny to establish this kingdom of peace and prosperity throughout Asia. (Mullins, 1998, p20)

One example of this indigenous theologizing follows:

e policy of extending even to the continent our family principle which finds its center in an Imperial House so
that all may bathe in its holy benelevolence—this policy, can we not see?—is none other than the concrete realiza-
tion on earh of the spiritual family principle of Christianity, which looks up to God as the Father of mankind and
regards all men as brethren. is is the Christian conception of the kingdom of God. e basis of the Japanese
spirit also consists in this; and thus, wonderful to relate, it is one with Christianity. Nay, this must indeed be the
Great Way of Heaven and Earth. (Quoted in Downs, 1946)

2.2 Formation of UCCJ

e second major element, for the purposes of our study, of the nationalism drive was the requirement in the 1939 Religious
Organisations Law for all religions to register with the Ministry of Education. e Ministry indicated that it was prepared
to register one Protestant denomination, and directed the Protestant churches to merge. irty-four denominations came
together in October 1941 as the United Christian Church of Japan. e Seventh-day Adventists, a minority of the Anglicans,
and the Holiness group of churches did not join UCCJ and became essentially illegal sects. Denominations in favour of
church unity responded to this as a propitious event, brought about ultimately by God, but “the Kyōdan rested on an uneasy
combination of ‘sacred’ and ‘secular’ motivation.” (Reid, 1991, p80) Japanese church leaders oen saw UCCJ as an ‘umbrella
organisation’ overlaid onto their ‘true’ denominational identity; Lutheran missions claimed that it was not a church, but a
group of churches, and pulled their support from it.
During the War, the UCCJ was essentially controlled by the demands of the state. Soon aer its foundation, represen-
tatives from the UCCJ went to the National Shrine at Ise to report to the national gods on the foundation of the church;
the church instituted kokumin girei before each service; hymn books were expurgated, and the church even raised money for a
warplane to show its patriotic solidarity. By 1944, the government was issuing lists of approved sermon topics to the churches,
2
One may consider these invasions to be the culmination of imperialist actions in Taiwan in 1894 and Korea in 1905.
3
Koyama (1979, p99) contains a report of the cross-examination of one Holiness pastor; many pastors who resisted the kokumin girei regulations
were imprisoned for life, and the memory of this is still vivid in Japanese churches today.

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and the General Secretary of the UCCJ instructed the churches to change the date of Christmas to avoid a clash with the late
Emperor Taishō’s birthday.
e final area for our studies is the disintegration of the UCCJ post-War. As mentioned above, original denominational
tensions persisted underneath the umbrella of the UCCJ; the Lutherans were the first to leave (Christian Century Edito-
rial, 1947)—taking with them their previously-owned property and leaving the UCCJ without a seminary—followed by the
remainder of the Anglicans, the Baptists and smaller Evangelical churches.
e UCCJ still exists as the largest Protestant denomination, but the tensions between UCCJ and its former constituent
denominations—and in particular the Evangelical churches—are very difficult to overcome.

3 Continuing Implications
e government has frequently exhibited strongly nationalistic tendencies in the years aer the war. In 1978, the government
attempted to formalise the Imperial Calendar system as a law of the land, (prompting Koyama to exclaim ‘Why is Japan
running backwards so fast? Do we want Hiroshima again?’) and the Kyōdan issued a strong statement of opposition. e
national anthem of Japan was barely used aer the war but was officially recognised in law in 1999, and in 2003 the Tokyo
Metropolitan Board of Education made moves to compel anthem singing and flag-raising at school ceremonies; in a pleasant
reversal of Uchimura’s case, these plans were found unconstitutional aer court cases brought by Christian school teachers.
Current issues for the church in Japan revolve around the government’s intention to amend the ‘peace clause’ of the consti-
tution that prohibits Japan from maintaining a standing armed forces; the nationalisation of and high-profile official political
visits to the Yasukuni shrine to the war dead; and the revisionist movement in history teaching.

So how are Christians in Japan reacting to this situation? Are they rising up to support people like Mr Okada
in his defence of their Constitutional rights? Is there a determination not to repeat the mistakes of the past? I
have to admit that on the whole the answer is ‘No’. I visited Japan in the spring and was amazed by the number
of my Christian friends who knew very little about these issues. e comment that I heard over and over again
was, ‘We don’t talk about things like that in our church.’(Anketell, 2006)

4 Questions for Discussion

1. Ion (1993) suggests that the reason that the Japanese churches failed to resist government accomodation was that

missionaries, even aer more than 70 years of Christian work in Japan, had failed to install courage into
Japanese Christians. In sharp contrast to the Japanese, the steadfastness of Korean and Taiwanese Christians
in the face of persecution reveals no lack of courage…Despite the long exposure to Christian ideals and
values, indigenous cultural values and national concerns remained paramount in determining the reactions
of Japanese Christians. (pp. 5-6)

Is this a fair assessment? Evaluate the missionary duty to instil the courage for resistance into pluralistic and syncretistic
cultures.

2. ‘It is easy to see syncretism with other religions; it is harder to see and prevent syncretism with civil religion.’ Is the
Japanese church’s wartime theology and practice markedly different from, say, certain manifestations of American
Protestantism post-9/11?

3. How should we judge nationalism, theologically? Does the command to ‘render unto Caesar’ take Christians out of
the fray of national politics? Otherwise, what would you teach from the Bible to establish correct understandings of
national political systems?

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References
Anketell, M. (2006). e Two Empires in Japan: A Presentation about the Conflict between the Church and the State.
Unpublished paper given at Japan Christian Link Conference, All Nations Christian College, Ware, Herts.

Christian Century Editorial (1947). Lutherans break Japanese unity, Christian Century 64(8): 230.

Downs, D. (1946). Effects of wartime pressures on churches and missions in Japan, Master’s thesis, New York, Union eological
Seminary.

Ion, A. H. (1993). e Cross and the Rising Sun: e British Protestant missionary movement in Japan, Korea and Taiwan,
1865-1945, Vol. 2, Waterloo, Ontario: Wilfid Laurier University Press.

Koyama, K. (1979). ree Mile an Hour God, London: SCM Press.

Koyama, K. (1995). “Father, Forgive…”, Ecumenical Review 47(3): 268.

Mullins, M. R. (1998). Christianity Made in Japan: A Study of Indigenous Movements, Honolulu: U of Hawaii Press.

Phillips, J. M. (1981). From the Rising of the Sun: Christians and Society in Contemporary Japan, Maryknoll, New York: Orbis
Books.

Reid, D. (1979). Secularization theory and Japanese Christianity: the case of Nihon Kirisuto Kyōdan, Japanese Journal of
Religious Studies 6(1-2): 347.

Reid, D. (1991). New Wine: e Cultural Shaping of Japanese Christianity, Berkeley, California: Asian Humanities Press.

van Wolferen, K. (1990). e enigma of Japanese power: people and politics in a stateless nation, New York: Vintage Books.