RE: Is it rational for, say, Muslims to not celebrate Christmas?
December 23, 2020 at 8:30 pm
(This post was last modified: December 23, 2020 at 9:25 pm by Belacqua.)
(December 23, 2020 at 9:30 am)Lawz Wrote: Our usual (non-covid) xmas involves enormous turkey roast, preceded by bacon and eggs for breakfast and smoked salmon + cream cheese blinis for 11 O'Clock ish snack with Carva. Crackers with lunch (large family gathering of multiple generations) then gift exchanges after lunch. Roast beef on boxing day....yup, a big deal, basically, and not so much as a whiff of religion.
Yeah, if any holiday is an excuse for eating well with family, there's no point in resisting.
Quote:I gather from the film "Silence" that Christianity was not, erm, "well received" in Japan, back in the day, so probs never took root and never underwent the "post religion transformation" into Santa's walletfest current prevalent incarnation.
Well, things have moved on a bit since the 17th century. Christianity is a minority religion here. Its numbers were significantly reduced because the bomb on Nagasaki hit the largest Christian community in the country.
Since the people who join tend to be really committed (rather than just born into customs) they tend to be very impressive people. There's a hospital downtown in my city founded by a Japanese Christian doctor, which has done great work. And another Christian doctor, from Nagasaki, who married a Christian lady I know from Hiroshima, helped set up a Nobel-award winning group to oppose nukes.
I don't know how much of the history appears in Endo's book Silence, or in the movie. Endo was a Christian and used a partly-fictionalized episode in history to make a theological point. It may be that Scorsese was making a point of his own. The repression of the Christians at that time was mixed up with various political and colonial issues. As always, Christian missionaries were useful to traders looking for leverage in the country. The Dutch and Portuguese businessmen who were fighting for trade deals used the issue to fight each other for economic supremacy. It's hard to say how far the religion would have been allowed if it had just been religion, and not tied up with internecine battles for power.
In general, Japanese culture adds layers rather than replacing something old. So when Buddhism came in there was little or no resistance, and it was mixed comfortably with the more native Shinto.
This is from wikipedia:
Quote:the daimyō of the Shimabara Domain, enforced unpopular policies set by his father Matsukura Shigemasa that drastically raised taxes to construct the new Shimabara Castle and violently prohibited Christianity. In December 1637, an alliance of local rōnin and mostly Catholic peasants led by Amakusa Shirō rebelled against the Tokugawa shogunate due to discontent over Katsuie's policies. The Tokugawa Shogunate sent a force of over 125,000 troops supported by the Dutch to suppress the rebels and defeated them after a lengthy siege against their stronghold at Hara Castle in Minamishimabara.
Following the successful suppression of the rebellion, Shirō and an estimated 37,000 rebels and sympathizers were executed by beheading, and the Portuguese traders suspected of helping them were expelled from Japan. Katsuie was investigated for misruling, and eventually beheaded in Edo, becoming the only daimyō to be executed during the Edo period. The Shimabara Domain was given to Kōriki Tadafusa. Japan's policies of national seclusion and persecution of Christianity were tightened until the Bakumatsu in the 1850s.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shimabara_Rebellion
