ABSTRACT
What is the object of the ‘anti’ in Japanese anti-Christian discourse? Generally, it is naturally assumed to be ‘Christianity’, in particular the Christian thought that arose and was popularized in Japan in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, directly before the ban on Catholicism and the advent of mass antiChristian activity in the mid-seventeenth century. But is that true? Was there actually any concrete relationship between the Christian and anti-Christian discourses of seventeenth-century Japan, and if so what was the nature of that relationship?
