Catholic Church in Japan

The Catholic Church in Japan is part of the worldwide Catholic Church, under the spiritual leadership of the pope in Rome. As of 2021, there were approximately 431,100 Catholics in Japan, 6,200 of whom are clerics, religious and seminarians. Japan has 15 dioceses, including three metropolitan archdioceses, with 34 bishops, 1,235 priests, and 40 deacons spread out across 957 churches.
The bishops of the dioceses form the Catholic Bishops' Conference of Japan, the episcopal conference of the nation. The main liturgical rites employed in Japan are those of the Latin Church.
The current apostolic nuncio, who serves as the Holy See's diplomatic ambassador and delegate to the local church in Japan, is Archbishop Francisco Escalante Molina.
Christianity was introduced to Japan by the Jesuits, such as the Spaniard St. Francis Xavier and the Italian Alessandro Valignano. Portuguese Catholics founded the port of Nagasaki, considered at its founding to be an important Christian center in the Far East, though this distinction is now obsolete. There is a modern Japanese translation of the whole Bible by Federico Barbaro, an Italian missionary. Nowadays, many Japanese Catholics are ethnic Japanese from Brazil and Peru and naturalized Filipino Japanese.
The Personal Ordinariate of Our Lady of the Southern Cross, a personal ordinariate within the Catholic Church originally created as a means for Anglicans to enter communion with Rome while maintaining their patrimony, has also begun to form in Japan. As of 2015, it has two congregations.

History

Christian missionaries arrived with Francis Xavier and the Jesuits in the 1540s and briefly flourished, with over 100,000 converts, including many daimyōs in Kyushu. It soon met resistance from the highest office holders of Japan. Emperor Ōgimachi issued edicts to ban Catholicism in 1565 and 1568, but to little effect. Beginning in 1587, with imperial regent Toyotomi Hideyoshi's ban on Jesuit missionaries, Christianity was repressed as a threat to national unity. After the Tokugawa shogunate banned Christianity in 1620 it ceased to exist publicly. Many Catholics went underground, becoming Kakure Kirishitan, while others died. Only after the Meiji Restoration was Christianity re-established in Japan.

Organisation

Governance

The Catholic Bishops' Conference of Japan is the Japanese episcopal conference, which serves as the main decision-making body of the Church in Japan. The current President of the CBCJ is Isao Kikuchi.
The Catholic Church in Japan is divided into three ecclesiastical provinces with a total of 15 dioceses, three of which are metropolitan archdioceses. Japan has no military ordinariate compared with its neighbour South Korea. However, it does share a personal ordinariate with two other countries, Australia and the Philippines.

Ecclesiastical territories

The Catholic Church in Japan is organised into 15 dioceses, 3 of which are classified as metropolitan dioceses that head each of the 3 ecclesiastical provinces in the country.

Dioceses by region

Ecclesiastical Province of Nagasaki

Ecclesiastical Province of Osaka

Ecclesiastical Province of Tokyo

Personal Ordinariate

Personal Ordinariate of Our Lady of the Southern Cross

Catholic education in Japan

The Catholic Church is involved in religious education in Japan, providing learning opportunities to both Catholic and non-Catholic students. According to the Catholic Bishops' Conference of Japan, Japan has a total of 828 Catholic educational institutions. The Church operates different types of schools, which can be seen below:

School type	Number of schools
Kindergartens	515
Primary schools	53
Middle and high schools	217
Colleges and universities	32
Colleges of technology	1
Vocational colleges	4
Schools for special needs education	1
Miscellaneous schools	5

The Jesuit Sophia University in Chiyoda, Tokyo is listed in the Times Higher Education and QS Global University rankings, and is considered one of the top private universities in Japan. It is one of 37 universities selected by the Japanese Government to participate in the Top Global University Project and receive financial assistance to boost globalisation in Japan and foster research.
Other Catholic universities in Japan include Nanzan University and the Elisabeth University of Music.

Notable Japanese Roman Catholic sisters and priests

Okamura Fuku, nun and co-founder of the Missionary Sisters of St. John the Evangelist.
Magdalene of Nagasaki, tertiary of the Order of Augustinian Recollects.
Domingos Chohachi Nakamura, missionary and priest.
Shigeto Oshida, Dominican priest.
Takako Takahashi, author and nun.
Kazuko Watanabe, nun, educator, and writer.

Martyrs and canonised saints

Founded in 1986, the Committee for Promoting Canonisation, which is directly affiliated with the Standing Committee of the Catholic Bishops' Conference of Japan, is responsible for promoting Japan's canonisation efforts and recognition of its martyrs. Its main objectives are to support local dioceses in promoting cases for canonisation, support canonisation promoted by the Conference, and promotion devotions to Japanese Catholic martyrs.
All Catholic martyrs in Japan, both native Japanese and foreign missionaries, were persecuted and killed during the Sakoku period of Japanese isolationism. Some of the groups of martyrs and individual martyrs were later canonised and venerated as saints in the Church's liturgical calendar.

Canonised saints

Papal visits

Pope John Paul II became the first pontiff to visit Japan and visited the [Atomic bombings of Hiroshima Prefecture|Hiroshima and Nagasaki|atomic bomb] memorial sites in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Pope Francis was the first pontiff to visit Japan in decades. He visited the then-Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Emperor Naruhito at the Tokyo Imperial Palace, Sophia University, and the Nagasaki Atomic Bomb Hypocenter Park.