|
This appears to be completely wrong in terms of stated 2023 demographics at least, according to what I can find online - Wikipedia lists the population in 2022 as ~770k and 0.5% Jewish.
|
#
?
Apr 22, 2024 05:28
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 6, 2024 01:32 |
|
|
Private Speech posted:This appears to be completely wrong in terms of stated 2023 demographics at least, according to what I can find online - Wikipedia lists the population in 2022 as ~770k and 0.5% Jewish. yes, it's a reddit map extrapolating from the alternative history in the yiddish policeman's union where the slattery report was implemented
|
|
#
?
Apr 22, 2024 05:39
|
|
|
This skips over an important part of history. First, the artificial island was settled by Portuguese, because they were simply the first to arrive. However, many of the Portuguese carried a horrific disease, which infected some of the locals, and caused them to be less loyal to their emperor. It was called "evangelism". So, out of an abudance of caution, the Japanese were forced to euthanize the entire Portuguese flock, and the Dutch arrived after that.
|
|
#
?
Apr 22, 2024 07:58
|
|
|
Eiba posted:Yeah, the spelling is hosed. I'd be down for updating English spellings to be more phonetic. Phonetic spelling would be a disaster. What everyone needs is phonemic spelling.
|
|
#
?
Apr 22, 2024 08:12
|
|
|
Carbon dioxide posted:This skips over an important part of history. And that's how we got tempura.
|
|
#
?
Apr 22, 2024 09:55
|
|
|
Carbon dioxide posted:This skips over an important part of history. I've always wondered what the very early stages of missionary evangelism looked like. There were some weird dudes arriving with the foreign traders that talked about some other weird god (no you can't see him he lived a long time ago in I suppose a related question would be if aliens landed tomorrow and started talking about their religion would many people convert?
|
|
#
?
Apr 22, 2024 10:58
|
|
|
J. Posadas did that before they landed.
|
|
#
?
Apr 22, 2024 11:03
|
|
|
Orientalism was very popular because the east is distant and mysterious. Not enormously surprising that it would work both ways. Gotta be a few actual Rawhide Kobayashis out there.
|
|
#
?
Apr 22, 2024 11:17
|
|
|
distortion park posted:I've always wondered what the very early stages of missionary evangelism looked like. There were some weird dudes arriving with the foreign traders that talked about some other weird god (no you can't see him he lived a long time ago in If they brought super guns and let you use them and told you they would keep your landlord from collecting rent if you converted? Absolutely
|
|
#
?
Apr 22, 2024 11:20
|
|
|
distortion park posted:I've always wondered what the very early stages of missionary evangelism looked like. There were some weird dudes arriving with the foreign traders that talked about some other weird god (no you can't see him he lived a long time ago in So, don't take my word on this because I'm far from an expert, but my understanding of the situation in Japan is this. For many centuries, both the Shinto religion and Buddhism have been common in Japan. Even to this day, Japanese people are very 'practical' about this. The same person will go pray at a Shinto shrine if they think a local Shinto spirit can help them, and then go to a Buddhist temple the next day if they're dealing with an issue that is better suited for a Buddhist deity. There is a saying, Japanese people are born Shinto, marry as Christians and die as Buddhists. This refers to the fact that Shinto is the original native religion of Japan. Christianism doesn't tend to play a huge role but many Japanese like the pomp of a Christian-ish hollywood wedding so even if they aren't Christian at all they'll dress up for that. And they "die as a Buddhist" because the Shinto belief regarding the afterlife is some not-so-great shadow realm, kinda like Hades in ancient Greek mythology. At least Buddhists get to reincarnate, so they'll ask for a Buddhist funeral. Now, if you take that base point: people just mixing and matching religions to whichever best fits the moment, and you bring in Christianity with its promise of heaven, I can understand why these people listened to that and went "why not, let's add it to the list". In which case they weren't monotheistically Christian but probably the missionaries considered this a good start.
|
|
#
?
Apr 22, 2024 11:27
|
|
|
People will convert if the religion has something to offer them. The benefits can be anything from “hope” to the throne of England.
|
|
#
?
Apr 22, 2024 11:42
|
|
|
Carbon dioxide posted:This skips over an important part of history. There's a remake of the 1975 book Shogun that finishes airing ... tonight? It's on Hulu and it's very well done, and more faithful to the book than the 1980 miniseries adaptation, which was exclusively from the Englishman's PoV. Also the production values of a made-for-TV miniseries in 2024 are about one million times higher than the production values of a made-for-TV miniseries in 1980. Anyway the setting / plot of the book is pretty much exactly the above, the tail end of the Portuguese infection, and it's reasonably-approximately-vaguely based on the true story of William Adams.
|
|
#
?
Apr 22, 2024 11:47
|
|
|
Worth noting that clavell massively overstated the influence of Catholicism amongst the major japanese nobility, and also the prevelance of seppuku. The catholic church of the period (and the jesuits in particular) was pretty open to syncretism among recent converts which is one of the reasons for the profusion of local saints and religious festivals throughout the former Spanish and Portuguese empires.
|
|
#
?
Apr 22, 2024 12:13
|
|
|
X-postin'
|
|
#
?
Apr 22, 2024 12:24
|
|
|
The most popular form of Buddhism in Japan, Jodo Shin Shu, has been carefully tweeked over the last 350 years to remain competitive with Christianity by essentially offering the same services (weddings, funerals, weekly services etc) that were missing when Christianity first reached Japan. Registration with the local Shin temple was also mandatory under the shogun and doubled as the census for commoners and was the state religion. Its a remarkable transformation for a religion that at one point not much earlier had been outlawed for its frequent peasant revolts.
|
|
#
?
Apr 22, 2024 12:31
|
|
|
OwlFancier posted:Orientalism was very popular because the east is distant and mysterious. Not enormously surprising that it would work both ways. That Rawhide meme has always made me laugh, partly for unintended reasons. If we actually used the same standards to determine whether or not someone is a 'Westernaboo', it would apply to at least 95% of the non-Western population at this point, and virtually the entire population of Japan. How dare you dress in our traditional costumes of t-shirt and jeans/suit and tie, all the while copying our forms of government. However, we don't use the same standards, ironically for Eurocentric reasons. These Western customs, institutions, and inventions are now so dominant and widespread that, in many cases, they've lost their specific association with the West or Europe. That's how these things go. Few people associate firearms with the Chinese nowadays. But yes, even in that more superficial exoticizing sense, I think there has often been a fascination with the West in places like Japan. I recently came across this video on YouTube, about anime's obsession with Europe: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jXjfzMCbaBc I'm not a big anime guy, but I thought it was very interesting. And it is true, it returns as a setting, or an inspiration for a setting, time and time again. One of the explanations given is that it allows the creators to tackle issues that are sensitive within Japanese society in a more indirect and less confrontational way.
|
|
#
?
Apr 22, 2024 15:23
|
|
|
 They dropped the ball when they made Tennessine Ts instead of Tn. Also Flerovium should be Floridium.
|
|
#
?
Apr 22, 2024 15:57
|
|
|
distortion park posted:I've always wondered what the very early stages of missionary evangelism looked like. There were some weird dudes arriving with the foreign traders that talked about some other weird god (no you can't see him he lived a long time ago in From what I've read about early missionary work in the North West Coast of North America, the big thing that moved opinions was that missionaries brought medical care that was staggeringly better than the status quo (shaman prays for you). So it didn't take more than a few instances of a missionary curing some highly regarded chief of some ailment before chiefs were recognizing shamans were full of poo poo, and chiefs changed their tune about missionaries and were swearing allegiance to Christianity all around the region in order to get access to their own missionary, and accordingly their own superior healthcare access for their people (and a leg up on their rivals without a missionary). Whether or not these chiefs were actually true believers is hard to say, but it's abundantly clear that there was an obvious improvement in material conditions from having a missionary around, and so various chiefs lobbied to the Anglican church for their own missionary if they didn't have one. I wonder what the state of medical care was in Japan versus Europe at that time. If there was a gap and the Portuguese were able to show up and fix a bunch of regular people's intractable medical problems that could be the sort of thing that shakes foundations.
|
|
#
?
Apr 22, 2024 16:50
|
|
|
Apparently the Franks and several other Germanic peoples also had pretty transactional approaches to converting. I think it was Clovis who said he'd convert if god helped him win a battle.
|
|
#
?
Apr 22, 2024 17:37
|
|
|
I mean the Rus converted pretty blatantly for political reasons as well, specifically so that Vladimir could marry into the imperial family You could make the same argument about a bunch of other lesser polities / dynasties as well - Magyars, Moravians...
|
|
#
?
Apr 22, 2024 17:41
|
|
|
I think that's usually a key element in syncretism too. Oh you got a new god who is powerful, great I'll add him to the list of dudes I'm asking to sort my life out.
|
|
#
?
Apr 22, 2024 17:55
|
|
|
Femtosecond posted:I wonder what the state of medical care was in Japan versus Europe at that time. If there was a gap and the Portuguese were able to show up and fix a bunch of regular people's intractable medical problems that could be the sort of thing that shakes foundations. Can’t speak to the very early Portuguese specifically, but during the Tokugawa closed period, Dutch medical books were some of the few western books permitted in Japan, and the whole field of western science was, in shorthand, “Dutch knowledge,” so I’d say the comparison was very much in Europe’s favour.
|
|
#
?
Apr 22, 2024 18:02
|
|
|
OwlFancier posted:I think that's usually a key element in syncretism too. Oh you got a new god who is powerful, great I'll add him to the list of dudes I'm asking to sort my life out. Yeah, that's how the Romans added Apollo and later Isis and Sol Invictus to their pantheon. Jesus would've likely been added too if Christianity hadn't exploded in popularity to the point it pushed everything else out.
|
|
#
?
Apr 22, 2024 18:08
|
|
|
Jean-Paul Shartre posted:Can’t speak to the very early Portuguese specifically, but during the Tokugawa closed period, Dutch medical books were some of the few western books permitted in Japan, and the whole field of western science was, in shorthand, “Dutch knowledge,” so I’d say the comparison was very much in Europe’s favour. Anyone in the know can correct me on this, but it seems the Portuguese had a tech advantage when it came to firearms and ships, but not much else. It's almost comical, you can read about any major battle in Asia or Africa during the 16th century, and there's a good chance there will be a random regiment of Portuguese arquebusiers helping out one side or the other.  The problem for them was that the Asian powers eventually reverse engineered their firearms technology, and were able to expel them with relative ease by the time the 17th century rolled around. By contrast, by the time the Dutch were firmly established in these places like Japan, the Scientific Revolution was well underway, and European technological superiority would have extended to things like astronomy, medicine, etc. This is why, unlike the Portuguese, the later European empires were able to durably dominate the non-European Old World powers.
|
|
#
?
Apr 22, 2024 18:29
|
|
|
Thought that Portuguese soldier had a cigarette in his mouth while handling black powder for a moment, but remembered that's completely anachronistic. It's just a lit slow match, nothing to worry about.
|
|
#
?
Apr 22, 2024 18:34
|
|
|
Byzantine posted:Yeah, that's how the Romans added Apollo and later Isis and Sol Invictus to their pantheon. Jesus would've likely been added too if Christianity hadn't exploded in popularity to the point it pushed everything else out. I think he was in some places during the time when christianity was starting out. Like people in egypt making magic spells invoking jesus alongside a bunch of other gods. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=APQn6M3gJcY
|
|
#
?
Apr 22, 2024 18:35
|
|
|
Femtosecond posted:From what I've read about early missionary work in the North West Coast of North America, the big thing that moved opinions was that missionaries brought medical care that was staggeringly better than the status quo (shaman prays for you). So it didn't take more than a few instances of a missionary curing some highly regarded chief of some ailment before chiefs were recognizing shamans were full of poo poo, and chiefs changed their tune about missionaries and were swearing allegiance to Christianity all around the region in order to get access to their own missionary, and accordingly their own superior healthcare access for their people (and a leg up on their rivals without a missionary). More typically, things just reach a critical mass when more and more of your trading partners and eventually political authorities are pushing a certain belief structure. You look at the decline of fortune of the people following the old ways, and the political power of the newcomers, and reach some pretty straightforward conclusions about the efficacy of their respective ceremonial practices. Edit: I should add this would vary greatly depending on what time period of missionary we're talking about. If they were like... early 20th century missionaries, then yeah, that'd be a big difference. A couple hundred years before that? Nah, just competing prayer rituals. Eiba fucked around with this message at 18:52 on Apr 22, 2024 |
|
#
?
Apr 22, 2024 18:43
|
|
|
steinrokkan posted:I mean the Rus converted pretty blatantly for political reasons as well, specifically so that Vladimir could marry into the imperial family It's probably why Volodymyr converted, though every scholar of Rus' I've ever heard from is convinced that there were plenty of Christian converts around already, and so Volodymyr's conversion was hardly out of step with the broader societal changes. We just have so little visibility into it all since so little survives 
|
|
#
?
Apr 22, 2024 18:50
|
|
Yes, it's like a lava lamp.
|
Guavanaut posted:Thought that Portuguese soldier had a cigarette in his mouth while handling black powder for a moment, but remembered that's completely anachronistic. It's just a lit slow match, nothing to worry about. I think it's a mouthpiece for some sort of bagpipe-like instrument E: genuinely cool google map of this from someone on Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/LinguisticMaps/comments/146uwgk/a_map_i_made_of_all_the_traditional_bagpipes/ distortion park fucked around with this message at 18:54 on Apr 22, 2024 |
|
#
?
Apr 22, 2024 18:51
|
|
|
Count Roland posted:Apparently the Franks and several other Germanic peoples also had pretty transactional approaches to converting. I think it was Clovis who said he'd convert if god helped him win a battle. Iceland conveniently adopted Christianity in 1000 ad by essentially a big compromise (and some violence and instability beforehand). I get the impression that it was mostly about foreign relations, and maybe some people didn't actually convert in the sense that they stopped believing in Thor and friends. Also England went Protestant because the king didn't like his wife. Religion on a societal level is mostly politics.
|
|
#
?
Apr 22, 2024 18:58
|
|
|
distortion park posted:I think it's a mouthpiece for some sort of bagpipe-like instrument
|
|
#
?
Apr 22, 2024 19:00
|
|
|
I would also assume that some of the general philosophy and spiritual message of Christianity just worked for some people, which I guess is hard to objectively quantify and is hard to consider from a purely rationalist perspective, but it's plenty possible. It would also be helped along by the fact that religion coming from the outside is unmired in local power structures, so its messages can often run counter to local authority and prejudices and be quite progressive. We can see a lot of that from the other way around with Buddhism, where it seems very progressive in America, where the messages of peace and love take priority, but back in Asia there are plenty of Buddhist groups that can be plenty sexist, racist, reactionary, or even fascist in the same ways that our deeply entrenched Christian groups can be in America and Europe. BonHair posted:Also England went Protestant because the king didn't like his wife. Religion on a societal level is mostly politics. Arguably he did it because he did like his wife enough to not kill her in order to take another shot with another woman at siring an heir, which is a bizarre situation. A lot of things that rulers do tend to be for implicitly political reasons, most frequently marriage, but on an individual level love still exists. And occasionally even rulers end up getting carried away by their own personal preferences instead of letting political strategy guide them. SlothfulCobra fucked around with this message at 19:29 on Apr 22, 2024 |
|
#
?
Apr 22, 2024 19:22
|
|
|
Eiba posted:I think it's pretty easy to overstate the importance of this. European missionaries would have been barely less full of poo poo on the medical front than the native people of North America, if at all. But belief in the practical effects of various systems of esoteric knowledge would have been important to swaying people. If traditional practices weren't working for any reason, it's worth trying whatever these newcomers are talking about (especially if they're very pushy about it too- as missionaries tended to be). If the newcomers had any advantage, I'd guess it would have less to do with how effective their medicine was, and more to do with the massive plagues destabilizing traditional social structures. Yes to your last point the NW Coast was one of the last settled and explored places in NA and missionaries only really got there in the late 19th century, so yea the quality of medical technology available would be much better at this point than some missionary in the 1700s. Good point to raise. I agree that those that aligned well with the new traders would be seeing improvements in their lifestyles substantially through technology transfer, and alignment in other areas would enable more trade and more technology transfer, so it does make sense that people would be even further encouraged to adopt the new religion and cultural ways of the new traders. The book I've read in question was In the Wake of the War Canoe, published 1915. Essentially a diary of a missionary. He pumps his own tires quite a bit as you'd expect, and at times mentions people coming to him for first aid and worse ailments. Purports to have saved people's lives. It was presumably written for fund raising purposes to try to drum up more support for more missionary work. https://open.library.ubc.ca/collections/bcbooks/items/1.0347571
|
|
#
?
Apr 22, 2024 20:33
|
|
|
I think Japan specifically was a mix of Jesuits being really good at syncretizing people's faiths to ease them into christianity and local warlords in Kyushu seeing western ties (and guns) as a way into independence from the Shogun.
Frionnel fucked around with this message at 21:50 on Apr 22, 2024 |
|
#
?
Apr 22, 2024 20:49
|
|
|
If you really truly and honestly believe in your religion, and you believe that not following it leads to bad consequences in the afterlife, being a missionary is the best thing you can do with your life. I mean there could be good honest people, nice people, incredibly wonderful people, who have to have a bad afterlife just because somebody hasn't told them the good news yet. That's a horrible thing to think about! If that ugly thought doesn't make you quit your whole life and go off to evangelize well you probably don't truly believe.
|
|
#
?
Apr 22, 2024 21:30
|
|
|
.
|
|
#
?
Apr 22, 2024 21:35
|
|
|
The new religion doesn’t even have to be better at medicine, it just has to be different. If whatever you’ve been treated with isn’t working, you’ll try this new stuff. And if you get better, you’re going to attribute it to the new stuff and stick with it. If you don’t get better, eh, your friends and family might not hold it against the new stuff; it’s not like the old stuff was working, either.
|
|
#
?
Apr 22, 2024 21:50
|
|
|
Platystemon posted:The new religion doesn’t even have to be better at medicine, it just has to be different. Or you could be like Clovis who I mentioned up thread. His wife was trying to convert him to Catholicism. She baptized their child against his wishes. Child died. They had another kid, she baptized this one too, didn't die but got really sick and almost died. Of course he did eventually convert but he had a few reasons not to do so.
|
|
#
?
Apr 22, 2024 22:11
|
|
|
It's like the pagan dukes of Lithuania, who would be chummy with christian missionaries and promise conversion because they had to play the Teutons, Polish and Russians against each other. And when they converted for real it came down to securing an alliance with Poland.
|
|
#
?
Apr 22, 2024 22:33
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 6, 2024 01:32 |
|
|
 voting power per vote in US elections
|
|
#
?
Apr 22, 2024 23:37
|
|
