Acceptance and Rejection of Christianity in Premodern Japan

The question “What do other religions want Christianity to learn from them?” poses a stimulating problem. Yet it is not easy to address, as the relevant areas often overlap. On the one hand, doctrinal themes have long dominated debates and treatises on both sides, as if interactions between religions—or, more broadly, between spiritual traditions—were confined to matters of belief and theology. As we shall see below, however, extra-doctrinal factors are of considerable, and in several cases decisive, importance. By “extra-doctrinal issues” I refer to the political, economic, cultural, and social dynamics that enable or obstruct acceptance and that, in any case, condition interreligious relations.