Uchimura Kanzo (1861–1930) is one of the most prominent Japanese Christian thinkers, the world has ever known. He was born in a Samurai family during the ending years of the Tokugawa period in 1861. Later, during the Meiji Period, Japan’s modernization era, he studies at the Sapporo Agricultural School, the current Hokkaido University. During his years at agricultural school from 1878–81, he gave his life to Jesus Christ.

After his conversion experience and his intense studies of the Holy Scriptures, Uchimura Kanzo gradually was con- fronted with a very difficult reality: the Western missionaries did not only brought Christianity to Japan, but also their own cultures in the name of Christianity. He saw that Christianity brought by Westerners carried Western cultural agenda with it. This itself was not the major problem to Uchimura Kanzo, what bothered him the most was in fact the arrogance and pride in some Western missionaries. Uchimura often men- tioned that not one single nation has even been saved entirely by foreign missionaries. He mentioned that on contrary, missionaries destroyed countries instead of building them. From Mexico’s Montezuma and Peruvian Incan empires, Christianity’s course has been absorption, destruction, and, in some cases even annihilation. Western Christendom, he mentioned kills non-Christian countries by introducing rum and whisky, and tobacco; by its many foul diseases. 

Uchimura Kanzo said that a Roman Catholicism is only good for the Roman culture, and Anglican Christianity emerged from English culture, and a Lutheran emerged from Germany and German culture. Why then not have to have a Japanese Christianity that is fully compatible to both Japan and Jesus. And I would say we have European Christianity in all its variations, why not African Christianity with all its col- orful variations? Or Asian or Indian? Therefore Uchimura Kanzo became a promoter of independent church, free from control and financial bondage to the headquarters that are run by those outside Japan.

Later Uchimura Kanzo’s ideas were crystallized into a movement called “Non-Church” movement, or Mukyukai. Uchimura Kanzo did not believe in the organized Church. Uchimura Kanzo was often hated by the Japanese, because of his love for Jesus. He was misunderstood the Christians, because of his passion for Japan. Uchimura said: “I love two Js and no third; one is Jesus, and the other is Japan. I do not know which I love more, Jesus or Japan. I am hated by my country- men for Jesus’ sake as foreign belief, and I am disliked by foreign missionaries for Japan’s sake as national and narrow. Even if I lose all my friends, I cannot lose Jesus and Japan... Jesus and Japan; my faith is not a circle with one center; it is an ellipse with two centers. My heart and mind revolve around the two dear names. And I know that one strengthens the other; Jesus strengthens and purifies my love for Japan; and Japan clar- ifies and objectives my love for Jesus. Were it not for the two, I would become a mere dreamer, a fanatic, an amorphous uni- versal man.” After more than a century, the ideas of Uchimura Kanzo are living again. It is interesting to know that the idea of the Non-Church movement fits in our current times of history.

Further, Uchimura Kanzo was a promoter of nature. He saw the beauty of nature as part of Gods creation, and he urged the need of caring for the nature. Often nature played an important role in Uchimura’s expression of faith both in his theological writings and in his poetry. The love for nature was of course not the case with his contemporary Western Christianity, which was promoting capitalism and free market economy that lead eventually to the catastrophic climate change and erosion of the earth.

Uchimura Kanzo influenced many Japanese political figures as well as well known writers, among them the writers Masamune Hakucho, Mushanokoji Saneatsu, and Arimisha Takeo, who in 1910 founded the influential Shirakaba “White Birch”, a journal that served as a vehicle for their humanitarian ideals.

Uchimura Kanzo is only one example of many other Japanese theologians and Christians of his time. Toyohiko Kagawa (1888–1960), for example. If the Western Christians would have offered their listening ears to these great men, the face of Christianity was very different than what it is today, especially in Japan.

 

In Solidarity with Uchimura Kanzo,

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Samuel Lee