[Buddha-l] religious pluralism in Asia

[Dan Lusthaus]

> However, there was the banning and crucifixion of Christians in Japan
under
> Ieyasu Tokugawa.
> Joanna
> ==============

Joanna,

No one would want to deny that Japanese history -- until VERY recently -- 
has been incredibly bloody and savage, and while folks tend to romanticize
samurais and ninjas these days, political turmoil, internal wars, and
incredible brutality have been the rule rather than the exception throughout
Japanese history (easily rivaling the darkest depravities of the Dark Ages
in Europe). But this is not necessarily the same as "religious" intolerance,
which is persecuting a person or group for their religious affiliations or
convictions. When the Japanese purged Catholics, their reasoning was
straightforward and political, not religious. The clerics, who were
foreigners and affiliated with foreign threatening powers, sided with the
wrong side during a Japanese civil war, supplying firearms, etc., as well as
"spiritual" support. It's important to keep in mind that the Dutch, who were
Protestant and not Catholic and had been having their own military
skirmishes with the forces of Catholicism in their home country, continued
to trade with Japan and maintain friendly relations during the years when
the history books like to say that Japan was "closed" to the West. They
initially closed to Catholic powers, and once purged, were not interested in
reopening to the dangerous West, since missionaries = military = problems.

How, in the early purging stages, could Japanese distinguish between someone
Dutch and someone Catholic? The person had to spit on an image of the Virgin
Mary -- Catholics refused, and the Dutch did it with relish!

So it was not Christianity or even Catholicism per se that was being
opposed,  but dangerous foreign political intervention easily identifiable
by its visible religious habits (no pun intended). The domestic followers of
the foreign missionaries took their moral directives and expressed loyalties
for the ideologies of the dangerous foreigners, and so were seen as a
dangerous political (rather than strictly religious) problem. Our tendency
to frame such matters as if separation of church and state were a
sociological and even ontological fact of history obscures our ability to
see such things for what they are.

As for the crucifixions, who do you think they learned about that from? A
little hair of the dog that bit...

Dan Lusthaus