ABSTRACT

Despite its relatively limited presence, Christianity has had a significant rhetorical role to play in Japan since the arrival of missionaries in the sixteenth century. This symbolic role continued through sakoku, the sonnō jōi movement in the nineteenth century, and the height of Shōwa statism. Yet the trope of Christianity as a menace to Japanese cultural purity has not been discarded. This chapter explores how the continued use of Christianity in contemporary Japanese popular culture reinforces, at the level of popular consumption, the basic logic of Japanese neo-nationalism. Rather than subverting dominant political narratives, the frequent appearance in manga of Christian characters and imagery alongside threats to national or global peace and security functions as a cue to evoke historically conditioned fears about national integrity.