Response to Comments on Japan's Modern Prophet

Thanks to the editors of Church History for what amounts to a panel discussion of my book. What a humbling idea for an author.

With the rapid development of the Christian faith outside what used to be called “Christendom,” its readers should be introduced to the trenchant criticism of American Protestantism that developed in Japan a century ago. Church History assembled a most capable group of individuals for this task.

Darrell Allen is a young historian interested in the development of Christianity in Japan. He has read widely in secondary sources about Uchimura in preparation for his own research. Gary Ebersole specializes on the history of traditional Japan with his own particular interest in the literature of Japan's Buddhist tradition. Shibuya Hiroshi comes out of the Japanese Christian tradition. Uchimura's great ego and frequent contradictions make him a stern taskmaster for those who would assess his contribution to history. Each of the reviewers of Japan's Modern Prophet follows its arguments with care and poses penetrating questions.

Allen follows an analysis of other works on Uchimura's life with the question of why the publication of this work took so long. The answer is that, in its original form, no one found it interesting enough to warrant publication. Ebersole alludes to some of the problems. Was the subject sufficiently “Japanese” to merit recognition by those interested in Japanese history? Who would consider Christianity in Japan a worthy topic?

The manuscript had lain unpublished for over two decades when a graduate student who read some of my short articles about Uchimura that mentioned a long unpublished manuscript telephoned to ask if he could look at it. I sent him a copy and after reading it myself revised it. A year's work reduced the length of the manuscript by about 20 percent. The desire to get it out overcame the opposite desire to see what had been done meanwhile. Study of new works could be done by someone else. In fact, few new studies had appeared, but they included Ohara's second volume, which Allen mentions.

During the intervening years, the number of Christians has increased exponentially in many of the lands to which missionaries took it over the last two centuries. Direction no longer comes from missionaries but from leaders in the local Christian communities. They demand to be heard at the headquarters of the European and American churches that sent out the original missionaries. In these circumstances, the story of a young Japanese convert who a century ago severely criticized the assumptions of the missionary movement in the lands from which it originated merits attention. In the young, developing churches, Christianity is no longer an alien import associated with imperialism. Rather, it is a living movement at home in various cultures. Local Christian histories differ to the extent that earlier traditions have been integrated into them. This is exactly Uchimura's point. His Christianity in Japan, he felt, had to reflect traditional Japanese attitudes toward religious questions. Denominational differences in Western Christianity seemed to him in the same way to reflect elements in the varying traditions of the countries of Europe and America. In like manner, Christianity in Japan should reflect that which is distinctly Christian yet does not at the same time try to impose on Japanese Christians elements of Western tradition that reflect secular rather than religious values. For Uchimura, Japanese Christianity, and the basis of Christianity elsewhere, consisted simply of the individual's sense of personal salvation nourished by careful study of the Bible. The intervening years from the original manuscript have thus brought about a shift in opinion about the relation between Christianity and secular culture that makes Uchimura's words seem very apt.

In retrospect, it seems that the numerous widely available secondary sources on Uchimura in the 1950s did not address questions that occurred to me. The many books consisted for the most part of reminiscences and of elements in Uchimura's lectures that dealt with problems faced by students in Uchimura's audiences. Uchimura dealt with the interpretation and importance of various texts. Many of his analyses must have gone over the heads of the members of his audiences who heard of the Bible for the first time through him. Their adult recollections provided few answers.

One scholar whose research used a historical method that promised to help solve my problems was Ozawa Saburō. He had founded the Protestant History Society (Purotestanto shi gakkai), the monthly meetings of which helped introduce the wealth of Christian history in Japan to numerous young scholars. Ozawa died relatively young, and his main study analyzed the first act that makes Uchimura live on in history, his refusal to bow before the signature of the emperor. For his research, Ozawa used more than two thousand books and articles, patiently harvested from many archives. His tenacity and the number of primary sources he consulted became my model.

Allen also notes that Ohara Shin in his Uchimura Kanzô no shôgai (The Life of Uchimura Kanzô) mentions that Uchimura may have married a fourth time in addition to the three wives usually mentioned. If there was a fourth wife, she would have come between Kazuko, who died shortly after Uchimura's refusal to bow, and Shizuko, who outlived him by fifteen years. These allegations have been around for many years. None of them seems credible. Even if they were proved, one could only with great difficulty find, on the basis of Uchimura's writings, that his involvement with this third wife noticeably affected him. Under these circumstances, it seems needless to introduce such speculation into an introductory general English-language biography. Further evidence that supports belief in the existence of such a wife will of course be of great interest.

In distinction to Allen's concern with other biographies of Uchimura and the lack of reference to two of them, Ebersole expresses general dissatisfaction with the work, though he found it provided “many insights” into Uchimura's significance. He suggests that the reason lies in the book's general approach to Uchimura that results in an “old-fashioned biography in many respects” and then introduces a paradigm that describes how biographers plan their work and marshal evidence to substantiate their theses. He regrets that Japan's Modern Prophet constrains its interpretation of Uchimura to his writings and neglects the contributions to history of those who are not professional writers, and, in particular, women. And he finds the lack of information about the Japan in which Uchimura worked leaves him “claustrophobic.”

In the first place, it seems common sense to base a study of a famous writer and lecturer on his legacy in print. The many articles and books describe what he did, and they along with the reminiscences of those who heard his lectures form the basis of any interpretation of his life.

Next, in the terms of a life of Uchimura, there are numerous examples of his interaction with young followers in the countryside. They include his trip standing on an overnight train to a 4 a.m. arrival in a provincial town where a female underage follower had repeatedly run away from home to join him in his work in Tokyo. He tried to dissuade her and reassured her family members that he wanted her to remain home, at least until she obtained her majority. Uchimura's diary for the last twelve years of his life also records a number of trips into the countryside to visit with followers, and an analysis of letters to the editor of his Bible-study magazine from readers throughout Japan reflects the opinions of numerous readers in rural areas. For a short time Uchimura even published a magazine the aim of which was to allow his followers to communicate with one another.

One of the alternatives for an author to writing a biography of Uchimura would have been dealing with his life and times, which would have included more about the Japanese intellectual world Uchimura inhabited. It would have helped the reader understand why the Meiji Era (1868–1912) was “simultaneously so confused and so dynamic.”Footnote ¹ In fact, when the original form of this work was finished in the early 1980s, it was to be followed by a general study of Christianity in modern Japan. Events made that impossible. When I did return to Uchimura two decades later, the more important need was for an introduction of the man and his thought to readers of English. They would best be served by a work that introduced Uchimura in terms of their interests, which, in terms of the later Uchimura, approximated his own: dedication to a life of faith based on one's understanding of the Bible.

Rather than continue this discussion of how Ebersole assumes the topic was chosen, here is my understanding of how it came about. I grew up in a family that had helped introduce Christianity to India and China for eighty years, and so work in the Allied Occupation of Japan from 1946 to 1948 provided the opportunity to observe what had resulted from the similar effort of Protestant missionaries to Japan. My interest at the time centered on how Japanese Christians had distinguished their faith from the more general influence of Western culture. After return home and entrance into graduate school, a fellow graduate student from Japan suggested Uchimura, and I wrote a master's essay about him and applied for a grant for further study in Japan. My research proposal specified a comparison between him and two of the other great Meiji Japanese Christian intellectuals, Uemura Masahisa and Ebina Danjō, with the hope that this analysis of three leaders would find similarities that typified Japanese attitudes in general toward Christianity, as opposed to what was then often called “Christian”—which in fact was “Western”—society.

Events quickly demonstrated the impossibility of this task. Japanese intellectual leaders were interested in meeting me as one of the first Fulbright grantees. That my research had started with Uchimura drew fervent replies, pro and con. I had unexpectedly stumbled into what Ebersole calls the “constructed” and “contested” history of attitudes toward Uchimura. Some, upon hearing of the work on Uchimura, replied that Western students found the most interesting topics and that Uchimura was one of the most important figures in Japanese intellectual history. Others responded that Uchimura was dull and overrated. My complacent assumption that I had done with him and could move on seemed to have missed the point. Only a more detailed study of Uchimura could help explain why firmly held opinions on him differed so.

Uchimura's disciples were at the peak of their careers, and interviews with them offered promise of help. No one refused my request, but the interviews produced little that answered my many questions. I learned that the writings and lectures of this compelling figure had deeply influenced many who became later leaders in Japanese society, but I learned little about how his words compared with those of other students of the Bible. So I set about to read Uchimura's complete works, a task the young Yuzo Ota helped me finish. Ota later became a distinguished specialist on Uchimura in his own right and has taught for many years at McGill University.

An example of the disciples who helped me was Yanaihara Tadao. He studied political economy under Nitobe Inazō, a close friend and colleague of Uchimura, and later succeeded Nitobe in the chair of colonial administration that Nitobe had founded at Tokyo University. This was the only professorship in the world devoted to the management of colonies. At the same time as he studied under Nitobe, Yanaihara attended Uchimura's Sunday lectures on the Bible and himself became a scholar of the Bible. When Nitobe resigned from Tokyo University in order to become one of the directors of the League of Nations, Yanaihara took his place at the university. He remained in this position as Japan took over Manchuria, now known as “Northeast China,” and a few years later most of China's heavily populated areas.

All of this expanse now constituted part of what Japan considered its “colonies.” When Japanese troops “raped” Nanking in 1937, Yanaihara, in his professional role, traveled to China to observe what had happened. On returning, he published in a leading journal of opinion a scathing critique that blamed the whole event on the Japanese army. The subsequent furor cost him his job and caused the government great embarrassment. Bereft of dependable income, Yanaihara subsisted on the fees from his Sunday lectures on the Bible. The gist of these lectures was published and widely distributed in a monthly pamphlet. Under wartime conditions, paper was rationed. When authorities informed Yanaihara that he could no longer get a ration for his pamphlet, he printed the gist of the lectures on postcards and sent one to each subscriber monthly.

Reinstated at the University of Tokyo after World War II, he reformed the curriculum to broaden the intellectual horizons of the students and became one among many of Uchimura's followers who strengthened democratic institutions in the more liberal conditions after the war. As he so effectively spoke “truth to power,” to adopt Ebersole's beautiful phrase, Yanaihara had great influence.

This is how Japan's Modern Prophet began. Twenty-three years after Uchimura's death, strongly held opinions of his significance differed greatly. At the same time, individuals like Yanaihara personified the type of individual Uchimura had nurtured for future leadership in Japan.

Neither Yanaihara nor any of the others among Uchimura's students who opposed the war spent time in jail while, as Ebersole points out, many Marxists did. There was a good reason for this. Marxists advocated the overthrow of the government in the interests of a utopia where members of the same class would ally themselves with their colleagues in other countries. Yanaihara and his fellow followers of Uchimura did not advocate the overthrow of the government but tried to change it from within.

The third reviewer chosen by the editors of Church History is Shibuya Hiroshi, who begins with reference to Uchimura's divorce from his first wife, Take. While still in his early twenties, Uchimura married, subsequently returned his young pregnant bride to her family home, and then fled to study in North America. His move abroad resulted directly from the embarrassment of the divorce. Uchimura's headstrong union with a woman of his own choice contrasted with the normal calculation by elders as to whom among available candidates would most strengthen the family. The choice of the wife for an eldest son, as Uchimura was, required particular care, since her groom would share the home of his parents where she would become a junior partner in the management of the house. The groom's mother would also consider it her duty to train her new daughter-in-law in household management.

Take's new-style education in missionary schools would have informed her of the heady individual freedom that in America accompanied either proposals of marriage or their acceptance. Allen mentions Kenneth Pyle's description of the effect of such training. Swept along by this attitude, Uchimura entreated his parents to accept Take as his bride. They objected, but he won out. Shibuya describes what happened next.

Shibuya then introduces one of Uchimura's letters home from his refuge in the United States and suggests that these letters should have been used “as material.” The letters were used to develop my analysis of Uchimura's feelings of sin and their relation to his divorce, but they are not referred to specifically in the footnotes.

There was certainly no intention to “negate the significance of conversion” in Uchimura's life, as Shibuya suggests, and my description of the conversion notes his occasional doubts about it. There was no consideration of whether to insert words of sympathy for him in my text. Rather than include words of compassion, I would have assumed the mere mention of his occasional doubts would automatically evoke feelings of sympathy from readers. They could hardly avoid such feelings as they read how Uchimura's acceptance of American attitudes toward marriage had occasioned such pain in him.

Shibuya then discusses a very famous article by Uchimura titled “Two J's.”Footnote ² It was first published in September 1926 and written in English for the missionaries who read Uchimura's English-language magazine aimed at them. Here is what he wrote:

This passage, one of Uchimura's most frequently quoted, and, incidentally, a fine example of his superb control of the English language, extremely rare for a Japanese of his generation, comprises his best statement of the twin demands that his faith and nationality impose on him. Shibuya points out that Uchimura's first “J,” Jesus, is a statement of faith, and therefore soteriology, while his second “J,” Japan, refers to ecclesiology, or theory of the church. Shibuya also translates most of Uchimura's final manuscript. It deals with mukyōkai and was discovered only after he died.Footnote ³ It seems to disassociate his name from his own movement.

Shibuya fears that my words will be understood by readers to mean that Uchimura did distance himself from his theory of the church; he points out that in fact Uchimura renounced only that interpretation of mukyōkai associated with his most famous and voluble disciple, Tsukamoto Toraji. Shibuya is correct. Thanks to him for his concern that the issue be clarified.

Finally, a word about mukyōkai. The term literally translates as “without or lacking a church.” Uchimura himself translated it as “We-Need-no-Church principle.” It results from his concern over the sectarian nature of Protestantism. Mukyōkai describes his interpretation of the Bible and its faith. At the same time as Uchimura thus declared his independence from Western denominations, he felt that there should be a form of Christianity particularly suited to Japan's circumstances, as the Lutheran Church is said to represent a typically German attitude toward Christianity. He believed that mukyōkai as a Japanese interpretation of Christianity without reference to Western denominations best suits Japanese society. Uchimura's simple conclusion, with its recognition of the many secular matters that affected the development of denominations in their homelands, became a source of considerable recrimination and debate between followers of mukyōkai and various Protestant denominations.