|
Japan Christianity
Christianity was introduced in the sixteenth century by
Portuguese and Spanish Roman Catholic missionaries, but,
because it
was associated with Western imperialism and considered a
threat to
Japanese political control, it was banned from the
mid-seventeenth
century to the mid-nineteenth century
(see Seclusion and Social Control
, ch. 1). With the reopening of Japan in the
mid-1850s,
missionaries again arrived. While fewer than 1 million
people (less
than 1 percent of the population) consider themselves
Christian in
the early 1990s, Christianity is respected for its
contributions to
society, particularly in education and social action.
There are
more than 7,600 places of Christian worship in Japan. In
the late
1980s, about 64 percent of all Christians belonged to
Protestant
churches, about 32 percent to the Roman Catholic Church,
and about
4 percent to other Christian denominations.
Data as of January 1994
|
