With the advent of the Reiwa era and 2020 Tokyo Olympics, the world’s attention is riveted on Japan’s grand tradition. Yet these same traditions are the ones that are hindering our efforts for evangelization. A college student knows he will be disowned by his family if baptized, and a Christian wife cannot receive baptism because of her Buddhist husband’s strong opposition. How can we combat against these? There are two approaches: 1. We can condemn Japanese practices as total darkness and preach against them, or; 2. We can follow Paul’s teaching and deem the Japanese people as worshiping “an unknown god” (Acts 17:22–31), and try to emphasize common grace at each turn. This book follows the second approach, but provides judiciously placed “caution” signs. It will tell you how to engage in conversation with non-Christians while providing an insider’s view of Japan’s rich cultural heritage. Its main purpose is to obtain conversion among the die-hard Buddhists, Shintoists, and traditionalists. When that is done, God’s kingdom will be enriched in a manner similar to the time when Saul of Tarsus became Paul the apostle.

With the advent of the Reiwa era and 2020 Tokyo Olympics, the world’s attention is riveted on Japan’s grand tradition. Yet these same traditions are the ones that are hindering our efforts for evangelization. A college student knows he will be disowned by his family if baptized, and a Christian wife cannot receive baptism because of her Buddhist husband’s strong opposition. How can we combat against these? There are two approaches: 1. We can condemn Japanese practices as total darkness and preach against them, or; 2. We can follow Paul’s teaching and deem the Japanese people as worshiping “an unknown god” (Acts 17:22–31), and try to emphasize common grace at each turn. This book follows the second approach, but provides judiciously placed “caution” signs. It will tell you how to engage in conversation with non-Christians while providing an insider’s view of Japan’s rich cultural heritage. Its main purpose is to obtain conversion among the die-hard Buddhists, Shintoists, and traditionalists. When that is done, God’s kingdom will be enriched in a manner similar to the time when Saul of Tarsus became Paul the apostle.

The influx of Protestant missionaries from Britain to Japan, Korea and Taiwan was an integral part of the British presence in East Asia from 1865 to 1945. Ion draws on both British and Japanese sources to examine the life, work and attitudes of the British missionaries, women and men, who ventured far from their homeland to preach the gospel. He explores the role played by British Protestants as both Christian missionaries and informal ambassadors of their own country and civilization. Through their educational, social and medical work the missionaries helped introduce Western ideas and social pursuits which in turn affected different facets of society and culture in Japan, Korea and Taiwan. The study illustrates how the British missionaries’ intent to introduce Christianity was affected by the response of the East Asians to Western ideas. In describing the high drama of the British missionary movement’s pioneering days in the late nineteenth century to its persecution during the late 1930s, Ion casts light on a particular, yet important, aspect of the changing tides of Anglo-Japanese relations. This book will ably complement his previous study of Canadian missionaries in East Asia during the same period. Chosen as one of the 15 outstanding books of 1993 for mission studies by the International Bulletin of Missionary Research.

The influx of Protestant missionaries from Britain to Japan, Korea and Taiwan was an integral part of the British presence in East Asia from 1865 to 1945. Ion draws on both British and Japanese sources to examine the life, work and attitudes of the British missionaries, women and men, who ventured far from their homeland to preach the gospel. He explores the role played by British Protestants as both Christian missionaries and informal ambassadors of their own country and civilization. Through their educational, social and medical work the missionaries helped introduce Western ideas and social pursuits which in turn affected different facets of society and culture in Japan, Korea and Taiwan. The study illustrates how the British missionaries’ intent to introduce Christianity was affected by the response of the East Asians to Western ideas. In describing the high drama of the British missionary movement’s pioneering days in the late nineteenth century to its persecution during the late 1930s, Ion casts light on a particular, yet important, aspect of the changing tides of Anglo-Japanese relations. This book will ably complement his previous study of Canadian missionaries in East Asia during the same period. Chosen as one of the 15 outstanding books of 1993 for mission studies by the International Bulletin of Missionary Research Chosen as one of the 15 outstanding books of 1993 for mission studies by the International Bulletin of Missionary Research.

In the aftermath of the religious crisis triggered by the Protestant Reformation, the Catholic Church set out to conquer faithful in new territories. The first missionaries to arrive in Japan were the Jesuits who were forced to adopt a different type of evangelization, with a bottom-up rather than a top-down approach. This volume shows that Japan turned out to be a land of experimentation and development of a global Catholicism, as well as an unprecedented laboratory of encounter between political, scientific and religious cultures in the age of the first globalization. It analyzes the different conversion strategies developed by the Jesuit fathers toward various groups, including samurai, Buddhist bonzes and Japanese peasants. A key step was the appropriation of sacred space by the missionaries: first in a violent way with the construction of large crosses and the destruction of temples, pagodas and pagan idols, then through strategies more flexible and accommodating of replacing pre-existing cultural practices. To be attractive, the Jesuit fathers had to compromise with local culture and spirituality, but they were also forced, in some way, to simplify and modify their very way of understanding and living Christianity. This book also reflects on the reasons for the failure of this ambitious Catholic conversion project: the hostility of the Japanese ruling class, the irreducibility of a different culture and spirituality, but also, if not above all, the rise of internal rivalries in Catholicism between Jesuits, Franciscans and Dominicans. This book marks a significant contribution to the literature on the history of the Jesuits, Catholic missions and Christianity in Japan.