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State religion of Japan since the Meiji Restoration of 1868 has been Shintoism ("The Great Way of the Gods"), a native Japanese system of nature and ancestor worship. Shrine Shinto is worship of the Imperial ancestors. Since the invasion of Manchuria Japanese nationalists have emphasized its religio-patriotic importance.
Eight years ago, the Japanese Government demanded that Christian schools and some individual Christians take part in shrine ceremonies. Officially the Government tried to pass this off as a form of politeness to departed heroes, like D. A. R.-ism in the U. S. But Japanese don't fool themselves: Shrine Shinto is a religious rite. The Government pressed Japanese Catholics and Protestants to join "patriotic" ceremonies at Shinto shrines, has been as insistent about it as Red-fearing U. S. school boards are about saluting the flag.
In Korea Presbyterians have closed their schools rather than permit pupils to take part in Shrine Shinto. But elsewhere in the Japanese Empire both Catholics and Protestants, with the sanction of their home mission boards, have paid obeisance at the shrines—thereby, according to many strict believers, taking the first step in apostasy. Early Christians chose martyrdom rather than do the same thing; make a token obeisance to the deified emperor of Rome.
Thus far Japanese Christianity has shown little inclination towards martyrdom in either the early Christian or hara-kiri tradition. Significantly silent has been Japan's most famed Christian, myopic Toyohiko Kagawa, a Presbyterian convert and founder of the Kingdom of God movement, who privately deprecates Japanese supernationalism but avoids public condemnation of it. When Christian Kagawa visited India last year, Mohandas Gandhi took him to task for this. Kagawa hinted that to speak might lose him his life.