{"id":2395,"date":"2008-04-07T08:09:00","date_gmt":"2008-04-07T08:09:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/deaconsbench\/2008\/04\/the-faithful-few-a-snapshot-of-catholics-in-japan.html"},"modified":"2008-04-07T08:09:00","modified_gmt":"2008-04-07T08:09:00","slug":"the-faithful-few-a-snapshot-of-catholics-in-japan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/2008\/04\/the-faithful-few-a-snapshot-of-catholics-in-japan.html","title":{"rendered":"The faithful few: a snapshot of Catholics in Japan"},"content":{"rendered":"

Here’s a corner of Catholicism we don’t often hear about: Japan. <\/p>\n

The New York Times<\/a> reports on how the faith there is surviving, even as churches are dwindling: <\/p>\n

Fringed with sheer cliffs and the narrowest strips of flat land, covered in mountains of dense forest, the islands of the Goto Archipelago of Japan are some of the country\u2019s most remote and forbidding. And yet atop hills overlooking fishing villages, reached by bridges and serpentine roads paved over just a generation ago, rise the steeples of Roman Catholic churches.<\/p>\n

<\/a>Japan\u2019s persecuted Christians fled here centuries ago, seeking to practice their faith in one of the country\u2019s southwesternmost reaches. They eventually forged Roman Catholic communities found nowhere else in Japan, villages where everyone was Catholic, life revolved around the parish and even the school calendar yielded to the church\u2019s.<\/p>\n

Today, one quarter of the roughly 25,000 inhabitants of the district, a collection of seven inhabited islands and 60 uninhabited ones, are Roman Catholic, an extraordinary percentage in a country where Christianity failed to take root. It is by far the highest level in Japan, where Catholics account for about one-third of 1 percent of the overall population and where the total number of Christians amounts to less than 1 percent.<\/p>\n

But like Japan\u2019s Roman Catholicism in general, this redoubt is also losing its vitality for reasons both familiar to Catholics in other wealthy nations and peculiar to Japan. Young Catholics here are loosening their ties to the church, their spiritual needs fulfilled elsewhere. Those who have left for the cities are marrying non-Catholics and are being absorbed into an overwhelmingly non-Christian culture.<\/p>\n

Several churches have closed here in recent years. The membership is graying and dwindling at many of the surviving 29 churches, especially at those on the islands\u2019 least accessible corners.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe situation here is severe \u2014 a question of which churches will be abandoned next,\u201d said the Rev. Shigeshi Oyama, 61, who, because of a shortage of priests, celebrated Mass at two churches on the Fifth Sunday of Lent recently.<\/p>\n

Parishioners arrived at Hiyamizu Church for the 7 a.m. Mass, ascending a steep concrete stairway to reach a small wooden white building with a red roof. They took off their shoes at the entrance, in keeping with the custom at many Japanese churches, and stepped onto the church\u2019s cold, though carpeted, floor. Mostly elderly, with the women hewing to tradition by covering their heads with white veils, they listened to the liturgy on the raising of Lazarus.<\/p>\n

After Mass, one of the few younger members, Toshiyuki Mori, 40, stood outside in the courtyard, smoking a cigarette and peering down at a small bay that a solitary boat was silently crossing. An irregular churchgoer, Mr. Mori had brought his son, Tomoyuki, 8, an altar boy, to church on this morning.<\/p>\n

Much of Mr. Mori\u2019s boyhood had centered on the parish, and he had married a woman of the same faith. But unlike their parents, the young couple had lost the habit of praying before meals or attending Mass.<\/p>\n

It was not that their lives now were so busy, Mr. Mori said. \u201cI guess my faith gradually faded,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

He said he would not compel his son to remain a Catholic, adding, \u201cOnce he becomes aware to a certain degree, he can quit if that\u2019s what he wants.\u201d<\/p>\n

For now, though, his son said, school was more fun than church.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut Father Oyama bought us sweets,\u201d the boy added. \u201cAnd the day before yesterday, he bought us ice cream, for everybody up to sixth grade.\u201d<\/p>\n

Japan\u2019s Catholic population \u2014 452,571 in 2006, or 0.35 percent of the country\u2019s total population of 127 million \u2014 is believed to have peaked, said the Rev. Ritsuo Hisashi, a spokesman at the Catholic Bishops\u2019 Conference of Japan in Tokyo.<\/p>\n

The church is grappling with problems like a shortage of young Japanese priests and nuns. In the diocese of Naha, in Okinawa, priests from Vietnam and the Philippines have come to fill the posts, Father Hisashi said.<\/p>\n

Most Japanese follow a combination of Buddhism and Shintoism, though Christmas and weddings in chapels, stripped of their religious meaning, have taken root in Japanese society.<\/p>\n

Christianity had a promising start in Japan with the arrival in 1549 of Francis Xavier, the Jesuit missionary. But the isolationist Tokugawa Shogunate eventually proscribed Christianity and expelled all missionaries; persecuted Christians went into hiding and fled to places like the Goto Archipelago. For more than two centuries, Japan\u2019s \u201chidden Christians\u201d practiced their faith in secret and without priests until after the United States forced Japan to open up in the mid-19th century \u2014 an example often held as proof of the resilience of Japanese Christian faith.<\/p>\n

\u201cGiven that history, it\u2019s all the more puzzling why there are so few believers now,\u201d Father Hisashi said.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

There’s much more at the link<\/a>, with some striking parallels between what is happening in Japan and in the West. <\/p>\n

Photo: by Ko Sasaki for The New York Times <\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Here’s a corner of Catholicism we don’t often hear about: Japan. The New York Times reports on how the faith there is surviving, even as churches are dwindling: Fringed with sheer cliffs and the narrowest strips of flat land, covered in mountains of dense forest, the islands of the Goto Archipelago of Japan are some…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":365,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2395","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ripped-from-the-headlines"],"yoast_head":"\nThe faithful few: a snapshot of Catholics in Japan - The Deacon's Bench<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/2008\/04\/the-faithful-few-a-snapshot-of-catholics-in-japan.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The faithful few: a snapshot of Catholics in Japan - The Deacon's Bench\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Here’s a corner of Catholicism we don’t often hear about: Japan. 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