Took a quick look and some of those are pretty off; St. Martin in the Fields is named after Martin of Tours, for example, not the field of Mars, though I like the idea.
WI: Emperor of Japan Converts to Christianity?
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Took a quick look and some of those are pretty off; St. Martin in the Fields is named after Martin of Tours, for example, not the field of Mars, though I like the idea.
Then why didn't Imperial Japan fall when Meiji took on Western advisers, adopted Western clothing, set up a Western-style parliament and constitutional monarchy, abolished the rule of the Daimyo, etc.? These seem like far more radical changes than switching religions, given that the Meiji Constitution guaranteed conditional freedom of worship, and this is before the cultivation of State Shinto. I don't think it's really fair to call Christianity the barbarian religion at this point either, given that it had been in Japan for hundreds of years at this point, and there were local Japanese Christian movements, both Catholic and Protestant. Even if the emperor converted to Christianity, that still does not mean that he would necessarily discourage devotions to him, either. A certain degree of syncretism is to be expected- in OTL South Korea, for example, even Christians visit shamans, and non-religious Japanese still visit temples. I don't see why Shinto rituals couldn't be secularized, which to many Japanese they practically are.
What if it's a few years after the war, perhaps even decades?
There's a major difference between adopting western stuff and adopting their religion.Let's be honest here,there were indeed a lot of revolts by the old samurai elite when Meiji Japan tried to emulate the west.The difference between how the Meiji oligarchy and the Tokugawas was that the former has the backing of the emperor while the latter did not.The emperor commands respect after a thousand years of being cut off from power because he is regarded as a living god.If he suddenly declares that he is not a god,people will stop obeying him.
...Like how people stopped listening to Constantine when he converted? I don't believe the Emperor's divine status has all that much to do with how much people respected him, given that plenty of these "divine" emperors were deposed or killed. It has everything to do with the modern state apparatus and its ability to indoctrinate the populace. The Kim regime in North Korea do not claim divine status, yet they are treated as semi-divine and rule without question. As I said, being divine does not mean you can't be worshiped, and anyway, Japan was moving away from rule by power or personality towards the rule of law, before the 1930s. Why would the non-dogmatic Shinto populace rise up against him, when he most likely would just co-opt their beliefs into secular devotions to the emperor?
No one believed Constantine was a god.Unlike the Japanese emperor,Constantine was an absolute ruler with real power.Even during the Meiji period,the emperor was not in full control of the state.The Meiji Oligarchs had much of the power.If the emperor converts,he will likely be forced to abdicate.The thing is that there's plenty of other princes happy to fill the emperor's role if he isn't willing to fulfill his.Like you've mentioned,the ruling class doesn't believe the emperor's a god,but the people do.They needed an emperor for legitimacy's sake,but that emperor does not necessarily have to be Meiji.
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Also,
1) Constantine actually only converted on his death bed.
2) Constantine picked Christianity because it was the up and coming religion, with massively growing influence in the Empire.
If Christianity were in a similar position in Japan (large and fast growing minority), THEN the Emperor could convert. Other than that, no.
Note that e.g. Heliogabalus didn't manage convert the Empire to his own wacky pseudo-Abrahamic religion.
This is untrue. Constantine was baptized on his death bed, yes, but this was common practice during his lifetime because at the time it was believed that baptism was a one-time reprieve from all sins. As such, it made sense to wait until you were about to die to get baptized.
Christianity was seen as a threat to Japanese social order, though, which is why it was so heavily persecuted. There's no reason to think without persecution, but instead state sponsorship, Christianity would flourish. After all, in China the Heavenly Kingdom, which verges on apocalyptic cult, almost toppled the Qing Dynasty. Local forms of Christianity were amenable to the population, they just didn't catch on due to government suppression. You can't not say that Christianity didn't have a disproportionate influence compared to the population, either, as many intellectuals and founders of universities were Christian. In Japan State Shinto was inspired by Western religious practices, as well- so why is this so different from introducing a state church, which could be a way to subsume potential dissidents inspired by Christian doctrine? As for the proportion of Christians in the Roman Empire when Constantine became emperor, it is usually cited as around 10%, which is hardly a large minority, though definitely noticeable.
It could have been. A Pope more inclined to the Jesuits, a Christian daimyo more successful in his campaigns against his rivals, and who knows? Though Meiji era certainly is far too late for a rising Christian minority, let alone a Japanese emperor (who's honestly more a Shinto Pope than anything else) converting due to pressure from it.
How about a successful Taiping Rebellion? Wouldn't that go a way towards convincing the Imperial faction that there could be merit to converting? Assuming it doesn't butterfly the Meiji Restoration, of course.
Taiping rebellion had no way of succeeding the way it was with the same leadership and pure madness.If for some crazy reason the Taiping rebellion succeeded,and for some additional batshit crazy reason the anti-Shogunate forces became Christian,it would likely convince the anti-Shogunate leadership that they need to get rid of the Shogun AND the emperor,the latter of whom is the symbol of paganism.
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Hell no. The Taiping rebellion represents everything wrong with actually converting to Christianity.
Hm, this is actually an interesting point.
What if the French Revolution created a Confucian-esque church-ish institution which caught on instead of the Cult of Reason?
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Voltaire was a big fan of Confucius, so it's not without precedent. Perhaps the round eye barbarians of the water margins can use his ideas to found a land of peace and concorde?
By the Meiji Restoration, conquest of Japan was clearly out of the question. And we don't discuss Confucianism in the Enlightenment because Enlightenment scholars had already independently developed the idea of the social contract by that time, plus do you really expect Western barbarians to learn Classical Chinese and study the Analects? And why is Japan uniquely resistant to top-down conversion, anyway? Plenty of Southeast Asian states voluntarily converted to Islam, by the impetus of their rulers, and Christians among Japanese leadership is not unheard of. As well, it was Japanese that were studying in European or American universities, not the other way around- the Christian religion wouldn't be branded as "foreign" but as "modern"- just like they labeled Western clothes, hairstyles, inventions, and institutions as "modern." Not to mention that Shinto was "modernized" to conform more with Western standards of religion. It does not strike me as odd to ask why replacing traditional culture with a Western one did not create an impetus toward conversion to Western religion, since in a way it seems far simpler than re-inventing the native religion in a Western context.
Pardon me, but I'm curious about Shinto being "modernized". I know religions develop over time, but I didn't know that Shinto changed much after Japan opened up.
And yeah, Japan was eating up ANYTHING modern. They had to be the most modernest.
I fail to see why converting to Christianity precludes being culturally Japanese. The Japanese Christians OTL were not mere puppets of Westerners, so why would they be if the religion got official government sanction?
whether we want it to or not religions have a nationalistic tone about them, if the 19th century can be described as anything is that it is where true national consciousness begun, most nations today that have a hard time finding national consciousness today were because they didn't exist in the era. Trying to change the national religion of the time especially when it is a minority seems like a doomed premise
Maybe they institutionalize the religion much like the Catholic Church.