Can Japan’s tiny Catholic minority survive country’s secularisation and low birth rate?
In the broad daylight of a turbulent history, Catholicism in Japan faces two new challenges, as I learned on a recent visit to the country: a dwindling population and an increasingly non-religious society. The situation leaves the Church’s leadership there mulling over Christianity’s survival. Japan’s fertility rate has fallen to its lowest since records began, The post Can Japan’s tiny Catholic minority survive country’s secularisation and low birth rate? appeared first on Catholic Herald.
Syndicated News 
In the broad daylight of a turbulent history, Catholicism in Japan faces two new challenges, as I learned on a recent visit to the country: a dwindling population and an increasingly non-religious society. The situation leaves the Church’s leadership there mulling over Christianity’s survival.
Japan’s fertility rate has fallen to its lowest since records began, meaning – as is happening across all areas of the country’s population – Catholic communities are growing smaller, church attendances are down and there’s a shortage of priests.
In a nation of 125 million souls there are already fewer than 450,000 Japanese Catholics – just a third of one per cent of the population.
Unlike Far East neighbours such as the Philippines, South Korea, Vietnam and Hong Kong, Christianity remains stubbornly consigned to the margins of a predominantly Shinto and Buddhist Japan.
During my most recent visit, I looked in at St Mary’s Cathedral in Osaka for a chat with Cardinal Thomas Maeda, before a sit down interview in Tokyo with Archbishop Tarcisius Kikuchi, to discover if the two men had a rescue plan.
“The ageing population and fewer children being born is certainly the biggest issue for us,” Cardinal Maeda tells me over bowls of tea.
“But, I believe the slowing birth rate is a problem for the government of Japan to solve, not the Church.”
Pope Francis said in a recent message to ecclesiastical leaders that there should be “no closed circles” and that
synodality meant journeying together as believers.
Cardinal Maeda, 75, also sees synodality as a way to keep the Faith alive in Japan:
“Synodality can be used to keep a significant presence. The communion, the service, the mission are ways to stay present in society.
“We can also make ourselves known using traditional and social media to get our message across.”
RELATED: Synodality isn’t democratic rather it involves ‘grace’ and ‘discernment’, Pope clarifies in newly released comments
Thomas Aquino Manyo Maeda is a true son of Japan. He was born in the Goto Islands, one of the original homes of Japanese Christian activity, and was elevated to cardinal in 2018.
His mother worked in a factory in Nagasaki when a US war plane dropped a plutonium bomb on the city in 1945. She survived, but died years later of leukaemia from radiation poisoning.
Unsurprisingly, the cardinal is an ardent anti-nuclear campaigner – he spent years convincing the Pope to visit Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 2019 – although he told me his mother’s death was not his only motivation.
He describes himself as a “fisherman-priest” after his early life fishing at sea in his own boat, initially to help feed his family. He tells me he identifies very much with Matthew 4:19: “Come follow me, Jesus said, and I will make you fishers of men.”
He’s also renowned for writing a form of Japanese poetry called haiku, which he weaves into homilies. Haiku has its roots in Buddhism and tells of a moment in time using words that awaken the senses – a Zen snapshot of the universe.
“It’s another way of me connecting with the Japanese people,” the cardinal says. Though he admits that keeping Catholicism relevant in freewheeling, consumer-driven Japan is tricky due to a yawning gap between Vatican teachings on issues like contraception and abortion and the reality on the ground.
“The difficulty is most Japanese people believe the Catholic Church is very strict and that’s a problem,” he says.
Cardinal Maeda, who can trace his heritage back to when the Gospel arrived on Japanese shores in the 16th century, remains optimistic though when I ask him if Catholicism will still be present in Japan a 100 years from now.
He reminds me of the three centuries of persecution during which hundreds of thousands of Christian converts were put to death by feudal rulers and shogun warriors.
“The first Japanese Christians refused to renounce their faith despite being tortured and murdered, and they will be strong again,” he says.
“Yes, I believe there will be Catholics in Japan in a 100 years, and perhaps their faith will be even stronger.”
RELATED: How generations of Japanese Catholics have kept the faith alive
During my ride on the Bullet Train (or Shinkansen) to Tokyo to meet Archbishop Kikuchi, I browse through news cuttings which reveal that although the Japanese Catholic community is shrinking rapidly, it remains vibrant and punches far above its weight.
For example: Maeda is the sixth Japanese to hold the post of Cardinal and there have been three Japanese Prime Ministers who were Catholic. There is even a sprinkling of Catholics within the Japanese Emperor’s family.
At the same time, Church officials are concerned that for the first time there are more foreign Catholics than Japanese Catholics in Japan; and integrating immigrant communities while preserving Japanese Catholic identity is proving a challenge.
Other difficulties include Japanese society being highly secularised, making evangelisation difficult in a nation with a general distrust towards religious organisations.
On top of that, the Catholic Church in Japan has also been grappling with allegations of sexual abuse, similar to those in other countries.
I put all this to Archbishop Kikuchi, a jolly, glass-half-full type of guy, when we met at the magnificent 1960s-built St Mary’s Cathedral in Tokyo.
He told me he was born in 1958, in Miyako in northern Japan, which was partly destroyed in 2011 by a tsunami caused by the Tohoku earthquake, which left buildings toppled and 420 confirmed dead.
He grew up with parents that were prominent Catholics, and he recalls how he asked his father for permission to become a missionary when he was eight years old.
Kikuchi was ordained a priest in 1986 and his early missionary work took him to Ghana, where he served from 1986 to 1992. He enjoyed his Ghanian years hugely and they made a strong impression on him. Associates say Kikuchi’s leadership has emphasised advocating social justice for the underprivileged.
The archbishop agrees that the decline in births and an ageing population is a problem for the Catholic Church in Japan, but he tells me one positive sign is that various on-trend, social media influencers are, as in the UK and elsewhere, portraying Christianity – and Catholicism in particular – as fashionable; as something hot.
“I think this is probably more about young people in big cities like Tokyo and Osaka wanting to belong to something rather than any deep religious movement,” he cautions.
Then, with a twinkle in his eye, he adds: “But something remarkable is happening in Japanese rural areas.”
The Archbishop explains that partly because of population decline and fear regarding a collapse of the economy, the Japanese Government is actively encouraging Asian workers to come to Japan to take up low-paid jobs, and these arrivals include Pilipino women.
Japanese farmers are now suddenly not interested in marrying local brides, he explains, but want to put rings on the fingers of the Pilipino women instead.
The archbishop adds: “The good thing is that while the men remain Buddhist, the wives want their babies baptised Catholics, which is what we’re doing – baptising thousands of them.
“In the villages you can now find bunches of Catholics, it’s amazing. So, I see the Japanese population decline not as a crisis, but as an opportunity!”
He concludes with a smile: “As a human being living in Japan I’m pessimistic about the standing of Catholicism, but as a bishop of the Catholic Church I’m optimistic.
“The spreading of the good news of Jesus Christ is not my work but the work of God.
“God has his own plan and maybe that includes the influx of migrants to save the Catholic Church here.”
Photo: Japanese novelist Mieko Kawakami in Tokyo, Japan, 22 February 2021. Kawakami shot to fame in her home country with her second novel ‘Breasts and Eggs’, which through its three main female characters explores the moral, practical and bureaucratic factors that influence Japanese women’s decisions about reproduction and motherhood. (Photo by CHARLY TRIBALLEAU/AFP via Getty Images.)
The post Can Japan’s tiny Catholic minority survive country’s secularisation and low birth rate? appeared first on Catholic Herald.
