Clash and Fusion Between East and West: Catholicism’s Spread in Three East Asian Countries, from the Mid-Sixteenth to the Early Nineteenth Century

Beginning in the mid-sixteenth century, Europeans entered East Asia and introduced Catholicism as new maritime routes were opened and global interconnections deepened. Through practice, missionaries gradually developed a strategy of cultural accommodation, seeking converts by integrating into East Asian cultures. Although the cultural traditions of China, Japan, and Korea were broadly similar, there were differences among them, and the process of Catholic accommodation in each country reflected both shared commonalities and distinct particularities. The accommodation strategy initially led to considerable success; however, Catholic activities later posed a challenge to the traditional cultural and social orders of the three countries, and their rulers eventually adopted policies of religious prohibition to varying degrees. By the early nineteenth century, Catholicism had been banned across all three polities. Therefore, the cultural encounter between East and West on the eve of the modern era ended in intense conflict—yet Catholicism never disappeared from East Asia. Rather, it found a foothold in popular society by merging with the “little tradition.” In identifying this accommodation paradox, the article offers the wider study of religion a model of how a foreign faith interacts with an entrenched host tradition, demonstrating that the effectiveness of accommodation may itself generate the conditions of its subsequent prohibition.