Women Religious Leaders in Japan's Christian Century, 1549-1650
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A01=Haruko Nawata Ward
active
Active Apostolate
Akechi Mitsuhide
apostolate
arima
Arima Harunobu
Author_Haruko Nawata Ward
Blood Lake
catechist
Category=JBSF1
Category=QRAX
Category=QRM
Category=QRVS1
Christianity in Asia
communities
early modern Japanese history
East Indies
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female apostolates
harunobu
hosokawa
Hosokawa Tadaoki
Japan's Christian
Jesuit Padres
Julia's Society
Julia’s Society
kirishitan
Kirishitan Communities
Kirishitan Religion
Kirishitan Women
Kumano Bikuni
Marian Congregations
Matsuda Kiichi
missionary encounters Japan
Padres
Portuguese Padroado
Priestess
religious syncretism studies
Shinto-Buddhist syncretism
Society Of Jesus
tadaoki
Usa Hachiman
Valignano's Mission Principles
Valignano’s Mission Principles
Vows
woman
Women Apostles
Women Catechists
women religious leadership Japan
Young Man
Product details
- ISBN 9780754664789
- Weight: 748g
- Dimensions: 156 x 234mm
- Publication Date: 23 Mar 2009
- Publisher: Taylor & Francis Ltd
- Publication City/Country: GB
- Product Form: Hardback
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Meticulously researched and drawing on original source materials written in eight different languages, this study fills a lacuna in the historiography of Christianity in Japan, which up to now has paid little or no attention to the experience of women. Focusing on the century between the introduction of Christianity in Japan by Portuguese Jesuit missionaries in 1549 and the Japanese government's commitment to the eradication of Christianity in the mid-seventeenth century, this book outlines how women provided crucial leadership in the spread, nurture, and maintenance of the faith through various apostolic ministries. The author's research on the religious backgrounds of women from different schools of late medieval Japanese Shinto-Buddhism sheds light on individual women's choices to embrace or reject the Reformed Catholicism of the Jesuits, and explores the continuity and discontinuity of their religious expressions. The book is divided into four sections devoted to an in-depth study of different types of apostolates: nuns (women who took up monastic vocations), witches (the women leaders of the Shinto-Buddhist tradition who resisted Jesuit teachings), catechists (women who engaged in ministries of persuasion and conversion), and sisters (women devoted to missions of mercy). Analyzing primary sources including Jesuit histories, letters and reports, especially LuÃs Fróis' História de Japão, hagiography and family chronicles, each section provides a broad understanding of how these women, in the context of misogynistic society and theology, utilized resources from their traditional religions to new Christian adaptations and specific religio-social issues, creating unique hybrids of Catholicism and Buddhism. The inclusion of Portuguese, Spanish, Italian, and Japanese texts, many available for the first time in English, and the dramatic conclusion that women were largely responsible for the trajectory of Christianity in early modern Japan, makes this book an essential reading for scholars of women's history, religious history, history of Christianity, and Asian history.
Haruko Ward is Associate Professor of Church History at Columbia Theological Seminary, USA.
