• Dirt_Owl [comrade/them, they/them]
    ·
    4 years ago

    I mean, the west does the same with things like Kung Fu and other Eastern Stuff. Avatar the Last Airbender is super eastern religion-inspired but I'm pretty sure the writers probably weren't all Buddhists or whatever. lol.

  • Judge_Juche [she/her]
    ·
    4 years ago

    Western culture references or plays on Eastern religious concept and symbols all the time, often with absolutely no understanding of the actual religious system, they just think they're neat. Like a lot of 70s and 80s sci-fi including Star Wars borrows from Eastern religious mysticism, often mixing concepts from vastly different cultures. Its the same in Japan, foreign religions are exotic and mysterious, its just weird to see them reference Christianity like that because its so ordinary over here.

    Although if they replaced all the statues of saints and angels with Evangilion Angels and the crucifix with Eva Unit 01, I might start attending church again.

  • Zodiark
    ·
    3 months ago

    deleted by creator

    • ConstipationNation [he/him]
      ·
      4 years ago

      Yea basically shortly after the Tokugawa shogunate was founded, there was the Shimabara Christian rebellion where 37,000 Japanese Catholic rebels were executed. After that Japanese Christians were forced to go underground and most Europeans were banned from entering Japan because the Shogun suspected that European missionaries were involved with the rebellion.

      • Tankiedesantski [he/him]
        ·
        4 years ago

        the Shogun suspected that European missionaries were involved with the rebellion.

        Considering the complicity of Christian missionaries in other European colonial projects, that's a pretty safe inference to draw in retrospect.

    • QatariGuattari [any]
      ·
      4 years ago

      I think there was a Liam Neeson movie aboot it too?

      You are talking about Scorsese's Silence. Fun fact, the book it was based on was more popular among the Japanese New Left than Japanese Christians when it came out in the 60s, because supposedly it translated very closely to what happened to Japanese Marxists in the 30s.

    • joshuaism [he/him]
      ·
      4 years ago

      According to that time I watched Ninja Resurrection, early Japanese Christians were persecuted by the Shogunate. I think there was a reincarnated Jesus and steam punk rocket launchers too?

      • Zodiark
        ·
        3 months ago

        deleted by creator

  • CanYouFeelItMrKrabs [any, he/him]
    ·
    4 years ago

    Eiji Tsuburaya, the creator of Ultraman, was Catholic. Ultraman was super popular in the 70s and had a ton of Christian imagery. So the people who grew up in that era, like Hideaki Anno, incorporated that imagery into their work like Evangelion