Scholarship has for a long time neglected the various entanglements of Japanese Christianity with the empire. With the exception of Matsuo Takayoshi's articles on Japanese Protestants in Korea from 1979, studies on the topic largely concentrated on single Christian authors, their theological writings and religious beliefs.Footnote ¹ The notion that Christianity was and is an inherently foreign religion, a mere curiosity within the process of Japanese modernization, has long held sway over this particular field of research. However, in recent years the number of works that tackle the role of religion and religious actors within the history of the Japanese Empire has been steadily growing.Footnote ²

Drawing on these recent developments, Emily Anderson provides us with an illuminating history of how Japanese Protestantism and its ultimate goal of transforming Japan into “God's kingdom on earth” led Christians to engage actively with Japanese imperialism whether they were persistently opposing colonial policy or aligning themselves with the state. In order to unveil the multiple intersections of Japanese imperial politics and Protestantism, she delves into the contentious diversity of opinions and approaches towards Japan's expansion in Asia. Kashiwagi Gien and Ebina Danjō, both ministers of the Kumiai Kyōkai (Japan Congregational Church), represented the opposite extremes of the ideological gamut. Accordingly, Anderson builds her work around the dichotomy between the metropolitan center (Ebina) and rural Japan (Kashiwagi) and at the same time strives to resolve it, arguing that they were in fact neither as “ideologically, geographically or temporarily separated as usually presented”, nor “did influence travel only from the metropolitan center to the countryside” (p. 15). Considering Japanese Christians within a broad, transnational context serves to adequately portray their engagement with the problem of empire which was inextricably linked to debates at home.

Anderson addresses these issues in seven main chapters which revolve around different points in space and time. To set the historical context for her later analysis, Anderson starts her study with sketching the situation of Christianity in Japan during the last decades of the nineteenth and the first decade of the twentieth century. The first chapter concentrates on the debates surrounding the Imperial Rescript on Education and the ensuing question of loyalty to the Emperor. This defining moment in the history of Japanese Christianity was crucial for the further development of Protestantism in Japan as it already laid bare the emerging ideological and theological fissures within the nascent Protestant movement. Building upon these findings, Anderson continues to analyze the discourse among Japanese Protestants during the Russo-Japanese War by delving into the diverging and at times irreconcilable interpretations of the role of Christianity in the Japanese Empire. Influential ministers like Ebina sought to justify the conflict as a just and holy war and to create the image of a united church in the face of earlier allegations of disloyalty toward the nation and the previously failed attempt to form a unified, interdenominational church in Japan. Others rejected war and the collusion of state and church. Again, the fault lines within the Kumiai Kyōkai become palpable in the debates between Ebina and Kashiwagi who, influenced by Tolstoy and emerging socialist ideology, criticized the expansionist state. In the end, Anderson maintains, Christians did not succeed in demonstrating their ability to serve as the moral guide of the emerging empire, as became strikingly apparent when churches were burnt down as symbols of the West during the infamous Hibiya riots.

The book then shifts stages from the Japanese mainland to the colonial empire, following Ebina's extended travels to settler communities in Japan's acquired territory as well as his visits to Japanese immigrant communities beyond the empire's conventional borders in California. Anderson carves out the significance of overseas Japanese for an evolving vision of an expanding and Christian Japanese Empire (p. 98) by demonstrating how they participated in moral education campaigns. These were designed to further reform and progress among the settlers in order for them to represent a modern and civilized empire abroad as well as at home. Without regard to constrictions by poverty, racism, and limited economic opportunities the minister envisioned the Japanese settler as a “new man” who was forged in the crucible of a harsh and unrelenting environment (p. 121). Dealing with the Korea Mission of the Kumiai Kyōkai, Anderson goes on to trace the double effort of the church to evangelize and to educate Korean converts into obedient compatriots. While the majority of congregants of the church did endorse the alliance with colonial authorities, critics like Kashiwagi saw the Korea mission's financial dependency on the Government-General as an inadvertent politicization of mission work. The Kumiai Kyōkai's expansion into Shanghai and Manchuria in the aftermath of the March First Uprising marked another attempt to distinguish themselves as successful agents of empire by evangelizing and educating the Korean population in the cities. However, once the uprising had been suppressed and order had been restored, the so-called “Korean Problem” waned, indicating the failure of the Kumiai Kyōkai's effort to convert Koreans beyond the empire's borders to Japanese Christianity.

The narrative comes full circle in Chapter 6 when Anderson turns back to Japan proper. Examining the rural Christian community of Annaka in Gunma prefecture, the chapter analyzes the controversial views of long-term minister Kashiwagi Gien. Proposing an alternative vision for a non-expansionist, “small” Japan by forging a new frontier in the countryside, during the 1910s and 20s Kashiwagi evolved into one of the “most strenuous critics of Japanese imperialism” that in turn “were the product of global imperialism and the circulation of ideas made possible by empire” (p. 187). To shed light on how the alternative, but unsettling ideas presented by Christians were less and less tolerated by authorities from the 1930s onwards, in the final part of the book Anderson focuses on Manchukuo as the last utopia of Christian Japanese Empire. The attempt to establish Christian agrarian settlements in the puppet state ultimately failed as religion and religious belief collided with the increasingly narrow definition of loyalty to the nation.

Empire for God is not only an important contribution to our understanding of Christianity in modern Japan (and beyond). It also adds another layer to modern Japanese history by addressing the transnational entanglements of Christianity with the Japanese Empire. Anderson succeeds in proving that Christians, despite being insignificant in number, were not peripheral in the formation of the new nation and empire, but rather were at its discursive center and provided a competing ideological interpretation of the nation state. As Protestantism in East Asia is transnational by its very nature, this study impressively shows how Japanese Protestants thought and acted on a transnational stage not only within the confines of the Japanese colonial empire but also beyond its borders, no matter whether they aligned themselves with the expansionist policy of the state or opposed it. Moreover, the book vividly demonstrates how empire and globalization pervaded the countryside.

By way of conclusion it seems suitable to make some remarks about the composition of the book. Although compensated for in part by an epilogue, a concluding chapter that brings together the geographically and temporarily diverse threads of the narrative certainly would have facilitated the reader's understanding of the complex and reciprocal repercussions the discourse on empire had on the metropolitan center and the Japanese Protestant minority. Furthermore, while the emphasis on the Kumiai Kyōkai certainly makes sense, it would have been interesting to learn more about the interactions of Japanese and colonial congregants with the Church as well as the interactions among the diverse denominations as they were vying for influence. Admittedly, the question of how the debates and discourses surrounding Protestantism and empire shaped and informed the thinking of other well-known Christian intellectuals, ministers and laymen, like for example Uchimura Kanzō, Yohino Sakuzō or Yanaihara Tadao, goes beyond the scope of this book. Here, Anderson's work creates an important impetus for a plethora of further research on the interaction with colonial converts or among denominations. Notwithstanding these minor limitations, this long overdue study is a valuable contribution to the field of research and a highly recommended reading which is likely to appeal to historians and students from various fields such as transnational history, the history of imperialism or the history of religion.