Living for Jesus and Japan: The Social and Theological Thought of Uchimura Kanzo

Contents

Editors’ Preface

Acknowledgments

Introduction: A Biographical Sketch of Uchimura Kanzō

Shibuya Hiroshi

Part I. Historical Context and Social Thought

Japan for the World

Andrew E. Barshay

Uchimura Kanzō and American Christian Values

Ohyama Tsunao

Uchimura Kanzō and His Pacifism

Takahashi Yasuhiro

Prophetic Nationalism: Uchimura between God and Japan

Yagyu Kunichika

The Legacy of Uchimura Kanzō’s Patriotism: Tsukamoto Toraji and Yanaihara Tadao

Shogimen Takashi

Part II. Biblical Studies and Theological Thought

The Biblical Research Method of Uchimura Kanzō

Miura Hiroshi

Uchimura and His Mukyōkai-Shugi

Shibuya Hiroshi

Uchimura’s View of the Atonement in Kyūanroku (The Search for Peace)

Lee Kyoungae

Uchimura Kanzō on Justification by Faith in His Study of Romans: A Semantic Analysis of Romans 3:19-31

Chiba Kei

Uchimura Kanzō and His Atonement Eschatology: On Crucifixianity

Chiba Shin

Contributors

Editors’ Preface

Uchimura Kanzō (1861-1930) was a representative Christian leader and thinker in the Meiji and Taishō periods of Japan. He is well known in Japan as a prolific biblical commentator, a pacifist Christian thinker, an advocate of the nonchurch (mukyōkai) type of Christianity, as well as an astute social critic, especially early in his career. Our general purpose in publishing this anthology in English is to make Uchimura Kanzō’s Christian thought better known to the world at large. The authors believe that it has strong relevance to the needs and aspirations of the present world, as we suffer from the loss of meaning of life, ecological crisis, conflicts and wars in many parts of the world, and so forth. Uchimura is worthy of continued study and remains inspiring and refreshing not merely as a Christian thinker but also as a social thinker.

Uchimura Kanzō was one of the representative men of modern Japan. He wrote an English book, Representative Men of Japan, published in 1894. If someone were to expand this book today, it is highly likely that a critical biography of Uchimura would be included. What makes him one of the representative men of modern Japan?

Uchimura tried earnestly to link Japanese cultural traits with an influential universal religion, that is, Christianity. In so doing he wanted to make the Japanese spiritual heritage and cultural legacy comprehensible and intelligible in international society. We hope that our volume can introduce Uchimura Kanzō to the reading public in the English-speaking world in a manner similar to the way he himself introduced a few representative Japanese people whose lives and thoughts he described in Representative Men of Japan more than a century ago.

The study of a thinker such as Uchimura must be made from various angles. Therefore, the contributors to this volume represent different specialties and nationalities. And their disciplines spread across such diverse fields as theology, philosophy, American studies, intellectual history, and history of social and political thought. In publishing this kind of collection of essays, one might correctly say that we are in a sense following Uchimura’s footsteps. For two years he was an owner-editor-writer of an English monthly magazine, the Japan Christian Intelligencer (JCI; 1926-28); he wished to let the world, especially the United States, know about his and his comrades’ beliefs, which they considered to be among Japan’s best spiritual heritage. Unfortunately, he was too old at that time to be the owner-editor-writer of two magazines (since 1900 he had edited Seisho no Kenkyū [The Biblical Study]). JCI started almost immediately after 1924, one of the most critical years in the prehistory of the Pacific war between Japan and the United States, when the so-called Anti-Japanese Immigration Act was put into effect and the Japanese were not allowed to immigrate to the United States. Uchimura understood that this was the United States’ one-sided repeal of the Japan-America Treaty of Amity and Commerce, which had been concluded in 1854. Uchimura and his comrades were so disappointed with this move by the U.S. government that they organized the Christian Council of the Problem toward the United States. They wanted to form and mobilize public opinion in Japan against the American government by means of mass communication to change the U.S. policy. Soon after, however, Uchimura began to think over their protest movement, and found fault also with Japan herself. The country was always silent and hid her true intentions as well as her own treasures behind an enigmatic smile. And by so doing, Japan hid her views of God, of humanity, of life and the world, like the servant described in Matthew 25 who kept in the ground the one talent entrusted to him by his master.

During Uchimura’s lifetime, the Japanese did not keep good company with people of the neighboring countries of East Asia nor with those of the West, including the Americans. The Americans were generally open and frank and naturally expected foreigners to be frank with them in return. Uchimura thought the Japanese should have satisfied, at least to a certain extent, their reasonable expectation. That is to say, the Japanese should have shared their traditional thoughts and cultural traits more openly with the foreigners. This would have been a kind of good return that the Japanese could make to their international neighbors. For Japan continued to receive so much rather one-sidedly, Uchimura thought, since the two countries had established the diplomatic relations. Most conspicuously, Japan received a universal religion, that is, Christianity, and a number of worldly, scientific, and technical inventions. The reverse seldom happened. This kind of basic unevenness provoked American antipathy against Japan. Therefore, the task of the JCI, as Uchimura understood it, consisted in reducing that unevenness to some extent.

As Uchimura suggested in the first issue of JCI, one of the purposes for publishing this English journal was to make known to the world what could be considered the best in Japan, and by so doing to make a little contribution to world-thought and world-progress. What nation is there which is without some good in it? . . . there is no best, that is, all-perfect nation in the world, and Japan certainly is no such nation. But there is good that is specially hers; and it is her duty to recognize it, and to give it to the world, and receive back in return the best in other nations. . . . We believe in the perfectibility of the world by the contribution of the best in every people (29:422E; see p. xii for explanation of citation method).

Here Uchimura embodies, on the one hand, what political sociologist A. D. Smith called polycentric nationalism. Smith wrote as follows: "‘Polycentric’ nationalism, by contrast [to ‘ethnocentric’ nationalism], resembles the dialogue of many actors on a common stage. As the term implies, this kind of nationalism starts from the premise that there are many centres of real power; other groups do have valuable and genuinely noble ideas and institutions which we would do well to borrow, adapt. . . . [‘Polycentric’ nationalism] seeks to join the ‘family of nations,’ the international drama of status equals, to find its appropriate identity and part."¹

Smith also wrote about the unevenness we described above. And we suppose that Uchimura was at least one of the most original and stimulating Japanese thinkers at the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth century. Therefore, by publishing this anthology, we are trying to introduce one of Japan’s best during that era in the hope of contributing to the perfectibility of the world. So the title of this book can be explained at least in part in terms of our effort to do justice to Uchimura’s lifelong commitment to contribute to the world what can be regarded as each people’s best.

* * *

The title, Living for Jesus and Japan, is also related to Uchimura’s famous essay Two J’s (1926). In this essay, he proclaimed as follows:

I love two J’s and no third; one is Jesus, and the other is Japan.

I do not know which I love more, Jesus or Japan.

I am hated by my countrymen for Jesus’ sake as yaso [Christian], and I am disliked by foreign missionaries for Japan’s sake as national and narrow.

Even if I lose all my friends, I cannot lose Jesus and Japan. . . .

Jesus and Japan; my faith is not a circle with one center; it is an ellipse with two centers. My heart and mind revolve around the two dear names. And I know that one strengthens the other; Jesus strengthens and purifies my love for Japan; and Japan clarifies and objectifies my love for Jesus. Were it not for the two, I would become a mere dreamer, a fanatic, an amorphous universal man.

Jesus makes me a world-man, a friend of humanity; Japan makes me a lover of my country, and through it binds me firmly to the terrestrial globe. (30:53-54E)

This Two J’s essay can be misunderstood easily, especially when Uchimura’s commitment to Japan is too narrowly interpreted as an expression of egocentric nationalism, which often characterized his age. His devotion to Japan should be regarded rather as an expression of the Christian idea of neighborly love. Thus, despite Uchimura’s rhetorical and paradoxical embellishment of the Two J’s language, its real meaning should be understood as either christocentric or theocentric but not nationalistic in intention. This short piece should be read together with his youngish aspiration that he wrote down on the reverse side of the cover of his cherished Bible while he was living as a sojourner in America and studying at Amherst College (1885-87):

To Be Inscribed upon my Tomb.

I for Japan; Japan for the World; the World for Christ; and All for God.

* * *

As is clear from the title, the subtitle, and the table of contents, the book is divided into two parts. Especially important is the subtitle: The Social and Theological Thought of Uchimura Kanzō. The first part of the volume deals with Uchimura’s social thought: his ideas on Japan for the world, his youthful encounter with America, his pacifism, and his nationalism and the legacies of his patriotism. The second part is related to his biblical studies and theological thought: his biblical research method, his nonchurchism (mukyōkai-shugi), his views on atonement and justification by faith, and his atonement eschatology.

For Uchimura Kanzō, the rich social meanings that his religious and theological thought embodies are very significant. Unlike many religious thinkers of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Uchimura did not remain within the individualistic and private, inner and existential forms of belief. On the contrary, his theological thought is inseparably connected with his dedication to the public world (neighbors, society, the country, the region, and the world). And his commitment to the public world is based on the principle of love. It takes a reformist approach of concentric and centrifugal extension from the soul (the inmost depth) of each and every individual to the outer world: the self, family, neighbors, society, country, region, and entire world.²

To be sure, the series of religious experiences and encounters that Uchimura had undergone and assimilated took place in the vertical level of his inner soul alone with God. But they were nonetheless open and acted out to the public world in the horizontal level. Thus, this book is the expression of a collective effort to elucidate the interaction between the social and theological thought that characterizes this highly original and interesting pioneer Christian leader and thinker of modern Japan. We will seek to shed light on the inner logic, meanings, and modes of this stimulating interaction between the social and theological thought observable in Uchimura Kanzō.

Thus, Uchimura’s theological commitment to inner values of Christian faith goes hand in hand with his social commitment to the public world. His religious commitment is grounded in his experiences and understandings of the gospel of Christ based on his redemptive theology of the cross, the resurrection, and the second coming. These theological values are organically linked with his admonition for living and practicing such evangelical and social values as prophetic existence, neighborly love, reconciliation and peace, social justice, patriotism, and internationalism. We are hoping that the book will elucidate as much as possible this meaningful interaction between the social and theological thought in Uchimura.

* * *

Finally, a few editorial notes.

1. In this volume, Japanese names are printed with surnames first, given names last, according to the Japanese custom. So Uchimura is the surname; Kanzō is the given name. This practice is applied not only to historical figures like Uchimura Kanzō but also to contemporary Japanese authors and thinkers.

2. The readers will often find citations in the text. The first number in the citation corresponds to the volume number of Zenshū or Works: the Complete Works of Uchimura Kanzō, 40 vols. (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1980-84); the number following the colon is the page number; E means that the quoted or referred sentence is written in English by Uchimura. So, 8:455-56, for instance, means volume 8 of the Complete Works, pages 455-56. The absence of E means that the quoted or referred sentence is written in Japanese.

3. Quotations from Uchimura are, as a general rule, used in the original expression. But they are sometimes slightly changed to suit the present-day English writing style.

4. Unless otherwise indicated, Scripture is quoted from the Authorized Version (King James Version), which Uchimura himself generally used and relied on.

1. Anthony D. Smith, Theories of Nationalism (London: Duckworth, 1983²), 158-59.

2. E.g., 8:455-56; 10:276-77. Cf. Shibuya Hiroshi, Kindai shisōshi niokeru Uchimura Kanzō (Uchimura Kanzō in the History of Modern Thought) (Tokyo: Shinchi Shobō Publishers, 1988), 119-38.

Acknowledgments

The editors of this volume are greatly indebted to many individuals and organizations for their support and encouragement. The volume is the outcome of a four-year collaboration among scholars who have been doing research on Uchimura Kanzō and his thought in one way or another. We fondly recollect our stimulating first seminar that we held in November 2008 for initiating the preparatory collaboration for our volume at Keiō University, Tokyo. The editors of the volume are deeply grateful to the authors of the chapters for their willing cooperation and commitment to our book project.

We would like to express our deep gratitude to Kyōyūkai (Christian Association of Friends) at Imai Hall for their funding support. Four years ago, the Committee of the One Hundred and Fiftieth Anniversary of Uchimura Kanzō’s Birth Memorial Events was established. And our book project was fortunately accepted as one of these memorial events. We are deeply grateful to Kyōyūkai’s chief director Dr. Arai Akira and its general secretary Mr. Fukushima Atsushi for their generosity, patience, and moral support.

In addition, we would like to express our sincere thanks to Professor Andrew E. Barshay of University of California–Berkeley for participating in our book project despite his extremely busy schedule. As a renowned expert in modern Japanese intellectual history, Professor Barshay contributed a stimulating and thoughtful essay to the volume. We also want to give our deeply felt thanks to Professor Trent E. Maxey of Amherst College, Massachusetts. Professor Maxey initially sought and began to prepare an essay for the publication of this volume. But, due to his multiple works and duties at the college, he could not contribute one to it. Yet Professor Maxey’s editorial and managing support and advice throughout the past four years were of immense help for completing the volume.

Moreover, we would like to extend our heartfelt thanks to Alice Davenport, Ernst Schwintzer, Derrick McClure, and Elizabeth Dorsch. They assisted improving and editing the language and expressions of the chapters written by nonnative English authors with their marvelous expertise in English. And finally, the editors would like to thank Eerdmans Publishing Company and President William B. Eerdmans Jr. for their willingness to publish this volume. We are greatly indebted to President Eerdmans and to his generosity that made this publication possible. Finally the editors would like to express sincere thanks to Tom Raabe, Eerdmans’ editor, for his superb, concientious, and laborious work. Without these precious helping hands and the good will of these individuals and organizations, this book would never have been published.

INTRODUCTION

A Biographical Sketch of Uchimura Kanzō

SHIBUYA HIROSHI

Uchimura’s Birth and Origin

Uchimura Kanzō was born on March 23, 1861, in Edo (the old name of Tokyo) as the eldest son of a bushi (colloquially, samurai). His father, Nobuyuki, was a lower-class bushi of Takasaki han.¹

The Meiji Restoration started in 1868. This sociopolitical disturbance brought much Western civilization to Japan. However, I remember listening on two occasions to speeches by Emil Brunner in Tokyo while I was a college student. In both speeches he stressed that Japan had imported almost all of Western civilization except Christianity, and that because Christianity is the basis of Western civilization, Japan has never had a realistic expectation of civilizing herself in the true sense of the word. Of course, Brunner used this hyperbole to warn the Japanese against overlooking the extent to which Western culture was influenced by its religious foundation. Nevertheless, the Restoration still gave no small shock to the course of young Uchimura’s life. Those who suffered most from the Meiji government’s destruction of the Tokugawa Bakuhan system were the lower-class bushi, especially those of the pro-Tokugawa han (fudai han). Almost all of them lost their employment and were given a small severance pay. Uchimura Kanzō, the eldest son in his family, was studying at Tokyo School of Foreign Languages, a preparatory college for the prestigious Tokyo Imperial University; but since Takasaki han was one of many small fudai han, Uchimura’s father could not afford to let him graduate. Owing to lack of funds, he was obliged to transfer to Sapporo Agricultural College (SAC), which was free from fees and organized the lives of students like a military academy.

An Encounter with Christianity at Sapporo Agricultural College

It was at this college, however, that Uchimura was unexpectedly introduced to Christianity. The first president of the college, Dr. W. S. Clark, was a devout layman evangelist who had led all the first year’s intake of students to Christianity. (This was a brand-new college in the new state system, and Uchimura entered in its second year.) Dr. Clark’s stay in Japan was only eight months long. When Uchimura arrived at the college, he had already left Japan for the USA to resume the presidency of Massachusetts Agricultural College. At Sapporo, Clark had drawn up the Covenant of Believers in Jesus, which all the students of the first year’s intake had signed. When they moved up to the second year, they put pressure on the freshmen to sign the covenant. Uchimura withstood their efforts for a while, but at last he yielded and signed it. I often ask myself, he said, whether I ought to have refrained from submitting myself to such a coercion. I was but a mere lad of sixteen then, and the boys who thus forced me ‘to come in’ were all much bigger than I (3:15E). He admitted that his first conversion was rather immature and somewhat lacking in depth. However, that did not mean that his signing the covenant was a mere formality with no spiritual significance. After signing, he embarked with his classmates on a keen study of Christian doctrine, reading, among other things, the commentaries of Albert Barnes; the publications of the American Tract Society, the London Tract Society, the Society for the Promoting of Christian Knowledge, and the Unitarian Association of Boston; and issues of the Illustrated Christian Weekly. His discussions with his fellow students sometimes even descended to quarrels. Uchimura and his classmates were baptized by an American Methodist missionary, but this missionary did not visit Sapporo frequently enough to provide his baptized students sufficient pastoral care. They therefore had to study by themselves; as a result their understanding of Christianity became focused excessively on its ethical aspects. The bushi class had been deeply permeated with Confucian ethics, and most of the students came from that class. Moreover, the Covenant of Believers in Jesus was almost puritanical in its strong ethical stance. All in all, it might not be an exaggeration to describe the college Christianity as a kind of ethical monotheism. As Uchimura had been a very sensitive boy whose religious feelings prompted him to recognize the moral contradictions in nonethical polytheism, this form of Christianity came to him as a joyous emancipation.

When we observe the young Uchimura’s spiritual growth, we cannot overlook the state of Japanese thought at the time. At the period in Japanese history in which he grew up, the early Meiji era, nationalism² was the zeitgeist. "When we escaped the old han government to return to that of the Emperor, our aspiration spread out from Takasaki Han of eighty-two-thousand-koku³ to the whole of Japan" (36:218), wrote Uchimura to his father. As he was writing, the Meiji Restoration was clearing away the feudal Bakuhan system and founding in its place a government with centralized power, combining modernization and absolutism. For the first time in their history, the Japanese had united under a strong central government. This was the founding of the Japanese nation. The last feudal revolt, and no insignificant one, occurred and was suppressed on Kyūshū Island in 1877, the year in which Uchimura entered SAC. His formative years thus coincided with the period when Japanese nationalism was developing. Uchimura was not a politically oriented youth. But no one possessing normal sensitivity, of whatever orientation, can fail to absorb the spiritual atmosphere that permeates his or her society. Of course, it is quite another question whether the atmosphere an individual absorbs in youth will remain the same when maturity is reached. Uchimura imbibed deeply the air of nationalism, in a highly characteristic Christianized form. We will be returning to this subject later.

Uchimura graduated from the college, receiving the degree of bachelor of agriculture. At the college he had made a special study of fishery science, and he went on to take up a post in the Sapporo Prefectural Office as a fishery engineer. His most remarkable work as a prefectural officeholder was perhaps in the field of ocean biology: the discovery of the egg cell of abalone. When he found this under his microscope, he went up a hill at the back of the laboratory and, shedding tears, offered a prayer of thanksgiving to God as the Creator of everything. As a biologist, he could not fail to confront a new biological theory: Darwinism. After all, he was committed to the doctrine of theistic evolutionism: that God alone decides and leads the course of evolution.

Because of ill health, he resigned from Sapporo Prefecture in June 1883; in August he went to Annaka, a town adjacent to Takasaki, to give a speech to the Annaka Congregational Church. It was there that he got acquainted with Asada Také. Though the same age as he was, she was one of thirty people who were baptized by Niijima Jō at Annaka, their hometown, on March 30, 1878, the day of the dedication of Annaka church. Niijima was a leading minister, indeed the best known in Japan at the time; and Annaka church soon became famous as the local headquarters of a campaign to abolish licensed prostitution.

Také had studied at two schools founded by missionaries, Doshisha School for Girls (Kyoto) and Union School for Girls (Yokohama); she had received the highest level of education available to women in Japan at that time.

In March 1884 Kanzō married Také.⁴ The couple at first lived with his parents, according to an age-old custom. Before long, however, there occurred a sharp confrontation between Také and her mother-in-law, who was a nervous, old-fashioned woman. In the increasingly bitter conflict, Uchimura at last felt obliged to side firmly with his mother, and Také left his house in October of the same year. Soon after that, he wrote to a close friend (an alumnus of college) at Sapporo:

I shall not write thee the minutiae of the affair, for they are too long; but this much I tell thee that after deliberate considerations, asking my conscience and the Bible for the true solution of the problem, I determined to give her up. She is now in Annaka.

Brother, sympathize with me under such a blow. My parents are exceedingly sorrowful, and I have no words to console them. I feel much ashamed for my thoughtlessness in the selection of my wife; but I wish thee to pity me in this respect, for I did it because I thought it to be God’s will. Trust me, friend, though others may laugh at me. Pray for me that I may not be cast down.

The storm is not wholly past, and its after-influences threaten my family with continued disturbances. The way to avoid the shock was consulted, and the unanimous advice of parents and friends was to leave the country for a moment, and to find relief either in America or England. (36:115E)

Uchimura’s Visit to America for Study: How He Became a Christian

He decided to follow their advice, and made his way to America. This interesting letter shows that the situation into which Uchimura had fallen was indeed deeply tragic; but he seemed to understand that it was a domestic fair and tried to deal with it as such. For example, a major part of the blow was his parents’ sorrow, which was too deep for his attempts at consolation. Another problem may have been his fear that other people would laugh at him, or at his thoughtlessness in the selection of [his] wife. The unanimous advice of parents and friends to travel abroad may have been specifically to avoid this mockery. Here we find that Uchimura was very sensitive about his honor, and extremely afraid of bringing shame on himself and his family. Uchimura in his early days in America lived in what the anthropologist Ruth Benedict has identified as a shame culture; his spiritual pilgrimage in those days, therefore, had to take him from this world to that of righteousness and sin (and not to Benedict’s guilt culture).

The world of shame culture as the starting point of his pilgrimage has been theorized by the Confucian ethical system, of which the cornerstone is filial duty. In this respect, the young Uchimura’s understanding of Confucianism was noticeable:

Looking back upon my past, I have received special education in spite of tight family finances, from eleven years of age on. However, at the precise point when I graduated from college and was just about to devote myself to the country, I committed a grave blunder; I committed a work of the devil instead of acting like a believer. When I think of it, I often lose my vigor and cannot recover it again. Nevertheless, when I considered the cause of the blunder, I found that it never sprang from ill will; I fell into that failure because I had been too seriously worried about how to serve my country and people. My basic failure, I believe, resulted from a misunderstanding of the Bible. If such words as a man shall leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife were taken literally, human nature itself would be gravely threatened and the world would likewise be confused. (36:151)

However, he went on to write of finding, to his wonder as well as delight, that a contemporary scholar of the first rank had interpreted those words in a totally different way. Unfortunately, Uchimura neither mentioned the scholar’s name nor described his new interpretation. Perhaps we have to satisfy ourselves that Uchimura was making an all-out effort to put his parents at ease.

Moreover, we can find under the surface