“Chrysanthemum vs Christianity” (Gakujutsu Shuppankai. 2012)

Masafumi Okazaki (Assistant Research Officer, Center for Sustainable Development Studies, Toyo University )

It is my great honor to receive the 29th Masayoshi Ohira Memorial Special Prize. I still cannot fully comprehend my fortune.
I would like to express my profound appreciation for the Board of Directors, the Selection Committee members, and all the considerate staff of the Ohira Memorial Foundation.
When I received the letter I had won the award, I was so shocked that I did not understand what it was all about. My stunned reaction was at least understandable, because my book has been thoroughly “ignored” immediately after the publication.
Even though there are some criticisms such as combative style of my writing, provocative challenges to the established authority, and the roughness of my analysis, my big book has remained unread.
The news of the Special Prize was like a brilliant thunderbolt out of the clear blue sky. The Gakujutsu Shuppankai, the last but shinning stronghold of scholarly publishing in Japan which accepted my manuscript, must have been greatly surprised as I have and, immensely proud as I have. This prize is for my book and for its publisher, Gakujutsu Shuppankai.

My book details why General MacArthur failed at Christianization of Japan, even with a favorable environment for the growth of Christianity. Despite an unprecedented opportunity to proselytize Christianity throughout a devastated Japan, he failed. MacArthur even encouraged Emperor Hirohito to convert to Christianity, but he still failed.
Prime Minister Ohira was one of the premier Christians in postwar Japan. In 1928, an 18-year-old Ohira enrolled in the Takamatsu Commercial Higher School (now Kagawa University), and then met Professor Teikichi Sato, who was deeply involved in Christian missionary work.
Sato fervently advocated the “Christ’s Light to All of The Orient,” and preached that “Shintoism, Confucianism, and Bushido must be recognized as the Old Testament of the Orient, and as the New Testament of Japan could be written by the Christian gospel.”
Under the influence of Sato, Ohira had joined the “Society of Servants of Jesus,” and next year when he was 19 years old, Ohira was baptized.
Both MacArthur and Ohira believed in Christianity, but their ideals were vastly different.
MacArthur spread Christianity in Occupied Japan by using his supreme power. Ohira, based on the philosophies of Japanese Christianity, made a sharp and clear distinction between politics and religion; he advocated the “Pacific Basin Community Plan,” which became his life work.
This Plan aimed for not merely strong community like the European Union, but for nurturing a shared sense of “solidarity” that would work for the progress of “prosperity and welfare of the entire human society” in accordance with the stage of development of the Asian-Pacific nations. Even presently, Ohira’s noble ideal has deeply influenced Japan’s foreign policy as well as a guiding principle among Asian-Pacific countries.
Receiving the Special Prize of The Ohira Foundation, I feel a heavy responsibility on my shoulders. In order to repay the Masayoshi Ohira Memorial Foundation for its academic support, I shall continue to pursue scholarship and contribute to Japan’s civilization and enlightenment.
Finally, without vigorous encouragements and supports of my academic advisors and all of my family, I could not have completed this book. I would like to express my deep appreciation for their generosity.
And, for my patient parents, I thank so much. They have fed me without complaining how much I eat.
Thank you very much for this great, great prize.

Profile
Masafumi Okazaki, an Assistant Research Officer at the Center for Sustainable Development Studies of Toyo University, has written describing the change in regime from the perspective of the Allied Occupation of Japan. His representative article is “Chrysanthemum and Christianity: Education and Religion in Occupied Japan, 1945-1952,” Pacific Historical Review, Vol.79, No.3 (August 2010).
Okazaki studies on a scholarship at a special summer school session of the Hoover Institution of Stanford University in 2005. He also studied Political Science at San Diego State University from 2006 to 2007, and Conflict Studies at the United Nations University from 2007 to 2008. He received a fellowship from the Northeast Asia Economic Forum’s Young Leaders’ Training and Research Program in Regional Cooperation and Development in 2007 & 2011. From 2010-2013, he served as a Post-doctoral Fellow at the Advanced Research Institute for the Sciences and Humanities of Nihon University.
Okazaki holds a Ph.D. in Arts and Sciences and B.A. in Law from Nihon University in 2010 and 2005, respectively.