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    Jesus and the Samurai: The Shining Religion and the Samurai
    Jesus and the Samurai: The Shining Religion and the Samurai
    Jesus and the Samurai: The Shining Religion and the Samurai
    Ebook48 pages42 minutes

    Jesus and the Samurai: The Shining Religion and the Samurai

    By Michael Zomber

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    About this ebook

    By 250 AD, Christianity had spread throughout India and China. Known as the Shining Religion or the Luminous Teaching, it drew
    adherents from Buddhism and Hinduism who were seeking a faith that taught the possibility of achieving a society founded on love and compassion for their fellow man. The new doctrine reached the island nation of Japan where it was so well received that Christianity
    threatened to supplant Buddhism as the dominant religion. By the close of the 16th century Japanese Christians numbered in the millions. Fifty years later Christianity was officially proscribed and Christians faced execution for openly practicing their faith. Jesus and the Samurai tells their fascinating story with facts drawn from ancient and modern sources.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisheriUniverse
    Release dateNov 5, 2009
    ISBN9781440176852
    Jesus and the Samurai: The Shining Religion and the Samurai
    Author

    Michael Zomber

    MICHAEL ZOMBER is an internationally renowned authority on Japanese arms and armor. He is the writer and producer of Renascent Films’ documentary Soul of the Samurai, which chronicles the history of samurai culture. He lives in Edgewater, Maryland, with his wife, Andrea, a documentary filmmaker, and their two children.

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      Book preview

      Jesus and the Samurai - Michael Zomber

      Contents

      Chapter One—The Ends of the Earth

      Chapter Two—The Keikyoto in Japan

      Chapter Three—The Covenant of the Keikyoto

      Chapter Four—The Way of Christ and the Way of the Samurai

      Chapter Five—Christians and Samurai Martyrs

      Chapter Six—Saint Francis Xavier

      Chapter Seven—The Shimabara Rebellion

      Chapter Eight—The Forty-Seven Ronin

      Chapter One—

      The Ends of the Earth

      The scope and purpose of the present slim volume is to examine the little-known history of Christianity in Japan prior to the arrival of the Jesuits in the sixteenth century up to the issuance of the Expulsion Edicts by the Tokugawa Shogunate, which effectively eradicated the religion throughout the nation. It seeks to probe the remarkable interrelationship of early Japanese Christians with the class of warriors known as the samurai. Our study is not intended to be exhaustive but to serve as an inspiration to modern day practicing Christians by relating little-known facts about the history of their religion in Japan. As a student of Japanese history and an acknowledged expert in the field of Japanese arms and armor, as well as other aspects of Edo Japan, I became fascinated by the profusion of Christian symbols appearing on suits of samurai armor, tanegashima (matchlock guns), and other accoutrements of the samurai, which persisted long after the Tokugawa edicts. The fact that the Christian apostle Thomas preached in India as early as 52 CE and was killed at Little Mount near Madras in 72 CE, less than fifty years after the death of Jesus, is a matter of official Catholic Church record, though not widely known. Thomas’s tomb lies in Mylapore near Madras and is still a place of veneration to the present day.

      In a book written by Wu Liuhua, Xuzhou Han Stone Carvings, Beijing, 2001, there is an illustration of a Phoenix and a Fish dated the seventh day of the third month in the year of Yuan-he or 86 CE. The phoenix is a symbol of resurrection in Egyptian religion; however, when juxtaposed with the Christian fish, it indicates the strong possibility of the deceased having hope for salvation and resurrection through faith in Christ. Keeping this in mind, let us now examine the almost unknown and utterly fascinating world of Jesus and the Samurai.

      Though the Christ is said to be the Word of God made into flesh and blood, he called himself a man and walked the dusty roads of Palestine and Judea as a human being. He lived as a Jew in Jerusalem more than seven hundred years prior to the emergence of the Japanese warriors known as the samurai. Yet remarkably, but perhaps inevitably, the true Christian and the true samurai had much in common—far more than one might imagine. By 1639 CE, Christianity, or Kirishitanity, only thirty years earlier the most widely practiced religion in Japan, was outlawed and had all but vanished. Three core values formed the foundation of both Bushido, the Way of the Samurai, and Christianity. These are service, humility, and discipline. An accurate translation of samurai is one who serves.

      Although Roman Catholic missionaries accompanied Portuguese mariners to Japan in 1543, it is both unfortunate and historically inaccurate to give Saint Francis Xavier of the Society of Jesus the glory

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