We all know the statistic: Japan's population is less than 1% Christian. But Christian schools educate a far larger proportion of Japan's youth than this number indicates. Perhaps even more strikingly, Christian symbols and ideas like crosses, churches, angels, and clergy are ubiquitous in popular culture. The Japanese language has adopted phrases like "scales falling from the eyes" and "throwing pearls to swine"—phrases that have entered the language from the Bible. In order to begin thinking about why Christianity has such an outsized presence in Japan, we need to go back to the Meiji period (1868 - 1912) and the influence that Christianity had on Japanese culture. Already in Meiji, poets, novelists, playwrights, and other intellectuals were encountering the Bible in translation or through references in Western texts. Over the course of 5 weeks, we'll talk about how the Bible bled into Japanese culture through Japan's encounter with the West, looking at specific examples of poetry and literature in which biblical language and imagery takes on its own life. 

Sundays, July 26 - August 23 @ 9:45-10:30am

Room 2F

Contact: yudai@tokyounion.org