A Japanese Christian and Emperor
The military of the Empire of Japan started to go out of control of the Imperial Government by occupying whole Manchuria through a plot.
The Mukden Incident, also known as the Manchurian Incident, was a staged event engineered by Japanese military personnel as a pretext for invading the northern part of China, known as Manchuria, in 1931.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mukden_Incident
This incident alarmed the US which was aiming at launching remunerative business in Manchuria and China.
So, the Japanese emperor worried about aggravation of the Japan-US relationship. So, he invited a notable Christian professor to the palace, asking him to go to the US and explain the position of Japan. Accordingly, Inazo Nitobe traveled to the US, delivering a lecture about 100 times all over the US, though he was not welcomed in most of cases.
This episode tells that Showa Emperor of Japan was free from a prejudice against Christianity even before WWII. So, it is no wander that after WWII the Japanese Imperial House accepted very positively the US occupation of Japan, since the US introduced various democratic systems based on the spirit of American Christianity into the Japanese society.
Accordingly, incumbent Emperor of Japan, a son of Showa Emperor, has empress who graduated from a Christian women's university in Tokyo.
*** ***
In addition, Inazo Nitobe wrote a book titled Bushido in 1900 to explain Japanese spiritualism and emphasize that Japan was not a rude and backward non-Christian country. Then US President Theodore Roosevelt was highly moved so as to buy 60 copies of Bushido and distribute them to his children and friends; the president specifically encouraged students of the West Point Military Academy and the Annapolis Naval Academy to read the book.
Joh 4:11 The woman saith unto him, Sir, thou hast nothing to draw with, and the well is deep: from whence then hast thou that living water?
Joh 4:12 Art thou greater than our father Jacob, which gave us the well, and drank thereof himself, and his children, and his cattle?
Joh 4:13 Jesus answered and said unto her, Whosoever drinketh of this water shall thirst again:
So, the Japanese emperor worried about aggravation of the Japan-US relationship. So, he invited a notable Christian professor to the palace, asking him to go to the US and explain the position of Japan. Accordingly, Inazo Nitobe traveled to the US, delivering a lecture about 100 times all over the US, though he was not welcomed in most of cases.
Nitobe Inazo (1 September 1862 – 15 October 1933) was a Japanese agricultural economist, author, educator, diplomat, politician, and Christian during the pre-WW2 period...
When the League of Nations was established in 1920, Nitobe became one of the Under-Secretaries General of the League, and moved to Geneva, Switzerland. He became a founding director of the International Committee on Intellectual Cooperation (which later became UNESCO under the United Nations' mandate)...
After his retirement from the League of Nations, Nitobe briefly served in the House of Peers in the Japanese Imperial Parliament; and he delivered a speech against militaristic prime minister Giichi Tanaka in the aftermath of the Huanggutun Incident (1928). He held critical views on increasing militarism in Japan in the early 1930s, and was devastated by Japan's withdrawal from the League of Nations in 1933 over the Manchurian Crisis and the Lytton Report.
In October 1933, Nitobe attended a conference in Banff, Alberta of the Institute of Pacific Relations, where the background and research papers from the Japanese delegation largely defended Japanese expansionist policies.[4] On his way home from the conference, Nitobe's pneumonia took a turn for the worse and was rushed to the Royal Jubilee Hospital in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada. Following an operation he died on 15 October 1933.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nitobe_Inaz%C5%8D
Even before this occasion, Showa Emperor often invited Nitobe to the imperial palace in Tokyo and got information about the US. The Emperor fully trusted Christian Nitobe who even had an American wife. It is said that the Emperor had said to Nitobe, "As the military got so much influence nowadays, I am afraid that a war might start with the US. Would you please go to the US and find a chance to prevent such a war through dialogues? But please make this mission secret."
Accordingly, incumbent Emperor of Japan, a son of Showa Emperor, has empress who graduated from a Christian women's university in Tokyo.
*** ***
In addition, Inazo Nitobe wrote a book titled Bushido in 1900 to explain Japanese spiritualism and emphasize that Japan was not a rude and backward non-Christian country. Then US President Theodore Roosevelt was highly moved so as to buy 60 copies of Bushido and distribute them to his children and friends; the president specifically encouraged students of the West Point Military Academy and the Annapolis Naval Academy to read the book.
Nitobe was a prolific writer. He published many scholarly books as well as books for general readers (see below). He also contributed hundreds of articles to popular magazines and newspapers. Nitobe, however, is perhaps most famous in the west for his work Bushido: The Soul of Japan (1900), which was one of the first major works on samurai ethics andJapanese culture written originally in English for Western readers (The book was subsequently translated into Japanese and many other languages). Although sometimes criticized[who?] as portraying the samurai in terms so Western as to take away some of their actual meaning, this book nonetheless was a pioneering work of its kind.*** *** *** ***
Joh 4:11 The woman saith unto him, Sir, thou hast nothing to draw with, and the well is deep: from whence then hast thou that living water?
Joh 4:12 Art thou greater than our father Jacob, which gave us the well, and drank thereof himself, and his children, and his cattle?
Joh 4:13 Jesus answered and said unto her, Whosoever drinketh of this water shall thirst again: