Orthodoxy penetrated Japan in the 1860s. Saint Nikolai Kasatkin conducted missionary activities among the samurai, and today their descendants are the main parishioners of temples. Japanese Orthodoxy is very different from what we are used to: shoes are removed before entering the temple, everyone is singing at the service, the maintenance of the community is not due to the sale of candles, but through a voluntary church tax. Finally, the characters in the Bible are portrayed as Asian.
The Japanese authorities officially lifted the ban on the practice of Christian cults only after the Second World War (article 20 of the Japanese Constitution of 1947) - before that it was semi-banned. Unlike neighboring Korea (where Christians are already more than 50% of the population) and China (about 10-15% of Christians - with a tendency to a sharp increase in their number), the number of Christians in Japan only slightly exceeds 1% of the total population (up to 1.5 million people). Of these, the share of Orthodox believers accounts for a small amount - 0.03% of the total number of Japanese citizens (36 thousand people; currently, there are 3 dioceses and 150 Orthodox parishes in Japan). All Orthodox clergy are priests of Japanese origin, who received their education at an Orthodox theological seminary in Tokyo. Nevertheless,the Japanese managed to create a very distinctive branch of Orthodoxy.
From 1945 to 1970, the Japanese Orthodox Church was under the jurisdiction of the American Metropolitanate. Only in 1971 did the Moscow Patriarchate grant autocephaly to the Orthodox Church in America. The latter returned the Japanese Orthodox Church to the jurisdiction of Moscow, and Moscow, in turn, declared the Japanese Church to be autonomous.
36 thousand Orthodox Japanese today is about the same as during the time of St. Nicholas Kasatkin at the end of the 19th century. Why did not their number increase, while the number of Catholics and Protestants during this time grew by 3-4 times?
Saint Nicholas (center) with his parishioners.
Nikolai Kasatkin (the future Saint Nicholas, canonized in 1971), who arrived in Japan in 1861, actively pursued his pastoral activity almost exclusively among the Japanese samurai.
The first preachers of Christianity appeared in Japan in the 16th century, and they were Portuguese Catholics. At first, they made great strides in spreading Christian values among the Japanese, but they were actively involved in the internal politics of the shogunate. As a result, the authorities were simply forced to forcibly expel them from the country, and Japan closed itself off from the outside world for more than two centuries, and the word "Christian" in Japanese for a long time became synonymous with such concepts as "villain", "robber", "sorcerer" …
After the opening of Japan to the outside world, only the top of Japanese society could decide to convert to Christianity, who were able to disregard the opinion of the overwhelming majority. The first Japanese converted by Father Nicholas to the Orthodox faith was precisely the representative of the Japanese samurai Takuma Sawabe. He came to the house of Fr. Nicholas in order to kill him, but communication with the priest radically changed his plans. A native of the southern Tosa clan, later a priest of the Shinto shrine in Hakodate, Takuma Sawabe was a member of a secret society that set out to expel all foreign Christians from Japan.
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Several disputes with Kasatkin persuaded Savabe to convert to Orthodoxy. After that, Takuma's wife went insane and in a fit of insanity burned down her own house. Takuma himself was imprisoned and sentenced to death, but the Meiji reforms relaxed anti-Christian legislation. He was released from prison and soon became an Orthodox priest.
By that time, the Orthodox Japanese were already counting hundreds. And the overwhelming majority of them belonged precisely to the military samurai class (many were also inspired by the example of Sawabe). With the onset of the Meiji era after 1868, they were thrown to the sidelines of life and scattered across the country, spreading the new Orthodox faith.
Modern Orthodox Japanese, who are already the fifth or sixth generation of those samurai whom St. Nicholas converted to the Orthodox faith, are Orthodox "by inheritance." They make up the majority of the parishioners of Orthodox churches today. The Japanese are generally faithful to the traditions of the family. If a great-grandfather wholeheartedly accepted some kind of faith, the likelihood that his descendants will renounce his faith is close to zero. These people cannot always explain the essence of the dogmas of Orthodoxy, but they will always be zealous believers, observe all traditions and keep the faith without any doubts.
But among ordinary Japanese, Orthodoxy, as they say, "did not go", and it was with these lower classes that Catholic and Protestant missionaries began to work. Hence - and such a small number of Orthodox in Japan, and the lack of growth in their number.
Orthodox parishes in Japan maintain an unusual, in the opinion of a Russian Orthodox, church life. Churches in Japan were created taking into account Japanese traditions, like the very first Orthodox church in Hakodate. Mats are laid on the floor, all believers, entering the church, take off their shoes. Chairs are provided for the elderly and sick parishioners.
In Japanese Orthodox churches, parishioners are served by their "church grandmothers." They act as stewards of the internal order. However, they do not sell candles, as in Orthodox churches in Russia. Orthodox Japanese are simply indifferent to candles and notes. Candles are sold in Japanese Orthodox churches, but they are not particularly popular with Japanese believers, and no one writes notes at all. There are a number of reasons for this behavior of Japanese Orthodox believers. In Russian churches, a candle is not only a ritual, but also a donation. Japanese believers act differently - every month they allocate a certain amount from their salary for the maintenance of the parish (up to 3-5% of their income, in fact, a voluntary church tax), and therefore do not see any need to create a fire-hazardous environment in the temple by selling candles.
Also, the Japanese do not understand why write notes and ask someone to pray in their place. They believe that everyone should pray for himself.
However, the main difference between an Orthodox church in Russia and in Japan is that in Japanese churches, without exception, all parishioners sing. Each parishioner has a sheet of music and text in their hands, and even if they have no hearing at all, they simply hum the words of the prayer in a half-whisper under their breath. Liturgy in a Japanese temple is more like a choir rehearsal. The Japanese do not understand how one can pray quietly, barely uttering a word. Their collective intelligence is outraged. They do not accept prayer together if everyone is silent.
At the same time, Japanese Orthodox Christians confess in silence. A long line forms at confession, which quickly dissipates. Each Japanese falls on his knees, puts his head under the epitrachelion (belonging to the liturgical vestment of an Orthodox priest, which is a long ribbon that goes around the neck and down to the chest with both ends), listens to the prayer of permission, and he is ready for communion.
Even St. Nicholas, characterizing the national characteristics of the Orthodox Japanese in comparison with the Orthodox Russians, noted that the Japanese are very specific people, they cannot, like Russians, suffer their whole life from their problems, rush from side to side, reflect for a long time about the vicissitudes of fate models - who is to blame and what to do. They cannot search for a long time, what is the truth, without finally finding an answer to this question, because they do not want to find it. For the Japanese, truth is not an abstract concept, but an element of their own life experience.
The Japanese come up and ask the Orthodox priest "what should they do." In response, the Japanese Orthodox priest answers them: "Believe, pray, do good deeds." The Japanese immediately goes and does everything that he heard from the priest, he seeks to show the concrete result of his life as a result of his spiritual life. This is very Japanese.
The Japanese Orthodox Church has an interesting interior decoration. During the time of Saint Nicholas of Japan, conversion to Christianity was punished with severe punishment. Therefore, it is not surprising that such a fear is deeply rooted in the minds of Christian believers in Japan. Sometimes in Japanese icon painting you can find unusual images - some icons and sculptures are disguised as pagan idols, while in reality they depict the Mother of God or Christ. And of course, the Japanese masters traditionally endowed the iconographic faces of the saints with features familiar to the eyes of the Japanese in order to create the impression among the parishioners, for example, that Christ was born in Japan, and all the characters in the Bible were Asians.
Below is what Japanese Christian icons and sketches of biblical events look like:
In the Japanese town of Shingo, there is a tomb of Jesus Christ. Japanese Christians believe that Christ was not crucified on the cross in Jerusalem, but I moved to Japan, where I got married and lived safely until the age of 106. Up to 10,000 Japanese Christians flock to the grave every year at Christmas.
The guardians of Jesus' tomb are the ancient Takenuchi and Savaguchi clans. They have a family chronicle of 1,500 years old, where one of the records says that these clans are descendants of Jesus Christ. True, the chronicle was rewritten many times, and its last copy "only" is about 200 years old.
This relic says that the first time Christ visited Japan at the age of 30. But at the age of 33 he returned to his homeland in Jerusalem to preach his Word. He was not accepted by the local population, and a Roman official even sentenced him to death. But, according to the Japanese chronicle, it was not Christ himself who was crucified on the cross, but his brother named Isukiri. Jesus himself fled east. At first he wandered around Siberia, then he moved to Alaska, and from there - to the village of Shingo, where he lived earlier.
In Shingo, he married, had three children (who became the founders of the Takenuchi and Savaguchi clans), and Christ died at the age of 106. He was buried there, in Shingo.
The chronicle also tells about the creation of the Earth. Allegedly, it was inhabited by people from a distant planet, and their descendants lived in Atlantis. Jesus Christ was also an Atlantean, i.e. a descendant of aliens.
But for almost 2000 years, his grave almost did not stand out in the local cemetery. It was given out only by the inscription on the gravestone "Jesus Christ, the founder of the Takenuchi clan." Only in 1935, the grave was given the proper look: Kiomaro Takenuchi put a large cross on it, and also made a fence around it. Also next to the tomb there is a small museum, which houses the ear of Jesus' brother, Isukuri, crucified on the cross, as well as a lock of the Virgin Mary's hair.
The Takenuchi and Sawaguchi clans are difficult to suspect of a publicity stunt. They themselves are not Christians, but Shintoists. And Christ is simply honored as the founder of a kind. In Shingo itself (its population is 2.8 thousand people) there are only two Christian families. Not many souvenirs are sold on the spot (and even then - only for the last 10-15 years), there is no charge for access to the grave. True, in the town for at least 200 years there has been a tradition for all babies, when they are first taken out into the street, to draw a cross on their foreheads with vegetable oil. In addition, a cross was also drawn on the children's cradles.
Annually at Christmas, up to 10 thousand Japanese Christians come to the grave (there are about 1.5 million Christians in Japan), and in total, up to 40 thousand people visit it during the year. They leave up to $ 2 million in Shingo.
One of the descendants of Christ is Mr. Savaguchi.