Uchimura and the Non-Church movement in Japan

Can one love Jesus and profess love for his or her own country at the same time? In the late 1800s and early 1900s, a fervent Christian leader, Kanzo Uchimura, founder of Mukyōkai—the Non-Church Movement—seemed to be denied such an option.

Kanzo Uchimura (1861–1930) was regarded as one of the most foremost thinkers and practitioners of indigenized Christianity since Protestantism entered Japan in 1859. In trying to make Christianity more indigenized, Uchimura expressed being hated by his countrymen and disliked by foreign missionaries for Jesus’ sake, and that he was considered a “heretic and dangerous man among missionaries and their converts in this country.”¹

Spiritual influences on Uchimura

Born into a lower-class samurai family on March 26, 1861, during the Meiji Restoration, as a young man Uchimura was fascinated with Western Civilization. He attended the Tokyo School of Foreign Languages, which prepared students to enter the prestigious Tokyo Imperial University. However, with the end of the feudal system and his father receiving only a small severance pay, Uchimura could not complete his studies there. He was transferred to the Sapporo Agricultural College (now Hokkaido University) which offered free education.

Dr. William S. Clark, a devoted Christian, helped establish this college. Although there for only eight months, Clark had a tremendous influence on the students, which included Inazo Nitobe and Uchimura. Senior students who signed a “Covenant of Believers in Jesus” with Dr. Clark, were zealous in reaching out to the juniors, and 16-year-old Uchimura, a young Christian, was also made to sign the covenant. Despite his immaturity at this point, in hindsight, he felt that this had great spiritual significance. This was the beginning of Uchimura’s interaction with Christians and Christianity.

Uchimura was baptized in 1878 by American Methodist missionary Rev. Merriman C. Harris. He and the other baptized students organized meetings in the dormitory, and when the missionaries were absent the students took turns to play the role of a pastor, teacher, and being a servant for the day. They focused on the ethical aspects in their Bible studies due to their Confucian and samurai backgrounds.

After graduating at the top of his class in 1881, Uchimura, together with his five classmates known as the “Six Brethren” or the Sapporo Band, stayed in Sapporo, attending the Methodist and the Episcopalian churches. However, after witnessing the disunity shown by these two churches, they finally started their own independent church, removing the foreignness, creeds, and rituals associated with the two churches and making it as Japanese as possible. They retained the Apostles’ Creed and Dr. Clark’s “Covenant of Believers in Jesus” as their sources for teaching alongside the Bible. Making it as simple as possible, their conditions for those wanting to join were simply a confession of faith without the need for baptism and a commitment to serve in simple tasks or to preach or teach. Uchimura’s church (which was later named “Independent Native Church”) grew rapidly.² This was Uchimura’s first foray into making the church Japanese without foreign help, which led later to the establishment of Mukyōkai, the Non-Church Movement.

Spiritual awakening and disillusionment with Western Christianity

Uchimura spent four years in the States from 1884 to 1888 for studies and for work. Going to the States a broken man after his divorce from his wife in Japan, these four years were undoubtedly eye-opening for him. During Uchimura’s time in the States, his idealism of Western Christianity was shred to pieces. He supposed every Christian to be honest and upright, but the deacons of a church cheated his friend and him of their money. From among the Christians, he heard swear words and witnessed racial discrimination and the love of mammon, which drove him further from his impression of Christendom as heaven on earth!

However, the Quakers showed him loving care. He was impressed with their simple way of life and freedom from institutional church trappings. His interactions with Dr. Julius Seelye, the principal of Amherst, and Dr. Clark (who was living in the US) also left deep and positive impressions on him. But his disappointment with the callous attitudes of seminary professors and students in Western theological education, along with Western imperialism, motivated Uchimura to contextualize Christianity for his beloved nation of Japan.

Clashes with missionaries and clergy

Uchimura continued to have clashes with missionaries back in Japan. Working in 1888 as the president of Hokuetsu Gakkan, a government high school in Niigata run by Christians, he introduced controversial teaching methods, inviting Buddhist monks and Shinto priests to present their teachings to the students. This riled up the American missionaries on the board of the school, and with the help of a Japanese clergyman, they collaborated and succeeded in getting rid of Uchimura as the president of the high school.

Indeed, one can see that Uchimura’s patriotic Christianity was shaped by his many experiences during his early years in Sapporo, in the US, in Niigata, and in Tokyo. He never questioned his love for Christ, but his experiences caused him to question the Western church as the de facto model of biblical Christianity. His love for his beautiful Japan and for Jesus, coupled with his disdain for the Western church, with all its sectarianism and institutionalism being brought into a highly cultured Japan, were reasons for his rejection of western-style church.

Contextualization and indigenization

He was way ahead of his time in contextualization—understanding how Christianity should be brought into a culture without importation of the alien cultural ways of Western denominations: dogmas and rituals, tithes, the clergy as ministers, the sacraments of baptism and communion, institutional organizations, and an imperialistic leadership style. Coupled with his strong samurai and Confucianist background, Uchimura had a vision to create a church based on Japanese-style moral and intellectual education, which he esteemed highly. The Japanese could accept it as transcultural Christianity, void of all outside interference. It was through his own experiences that he felt a new paradigm was needed to make Christianity palatable to his countrymen. And for that, the Mukyōkai was born in March 1901.

In Uchimura’s understanding, ecclesia was supposed to be a “people chosen and called by God” and in practice, merely “ordinary people meeting around Christ and seeking to do Christ’s way.”³ Simply put, the Mukyōkai sees church as a community of believers meeting and studying the Word of God regularly. This is contrary to the common belief that they do not meet at all. However, they do abstain from all organized forms of religious practices which were brought in from the West. The absence of these practices may count against them being considered a mainstream Christian group, but nevertheless, most evangelical churches do accept them as a Protestant group with solid and scholarly biblical teaching.

Impact and legacy

Mukyōkai’s services are conducted simply with praise and the study of the Word of God. The centrality and supreme authority of the Scriptures in all matters of faith is their foundation in their public lectures and the Bible study groups held in different cities in Japan. Most of the lecturers are highly intellectual, consisting of university professors and biblical scholars. Even today, some evangelical pastors use Mukyōkai’s publications as their study guides due to their high standard of biblical scholarship. Their apprenticeship of training leaders is culturally appreciated and recognized.

Their past stance against war, nationalistic militancy, and their emphasis on social justice have established Christianity in the eyes of the public as a religion that speaks up for social justice. According to the 2018 Japan Mission Research findings, their numbers have declined sharply to 38 congregations, counting 1,407 members with regular attendees of only 600 in Japan. This may be due to aging leaders and to members who flow into other Protestant churches.

Loathe them or love them, the Mukyōkai is an antithesis to churches influenced by the West. Moving strongly to the right indigenously has resulted in several weaknesses. In their pursuit of personal spiritual faith, independent Bible studies, and the emphasis on elite lecturers, they neglected the many biblical teachings of coming together in worship, encouragement of each other, and growing in sharing the gifts of Christian saints. They have also failed to be outward looking and evangelistic in nature. These may be the very reasons for their decline. Their original cry, however, continues to challenge missionaries to contextualize and indigenize Christianity in Japan.

1. “Uchimura’s Self-introduction,” Uchimura’s A Day A Life, https://ainogakuen.ed.jp/academy/bible/nonch/daylife/00/self-history.html (accessed April 30, 2023).
2. Kanzo Uchimura, How I Became a Christian: Out of My Diary, (Tokyo: Keiseisha, 1895), Chapter Fourth—A New Church and Lay-Preaching.
3. Chua, How Chuang, “‘I became Mukyōkai’: the Development of Uchimura Kanzō’s thought on Non-church Christianity” (unpublished manuscript, Hokkaido Bible Institute, 2014), PDF.