Sacrifice in Japan

Samurai, Christians and the Kamikaze - Part I

Today is one of the biggest days in the Christian calendar: Good Friday, commemorating the death of Jesus of Nazareth almost two thousand years ago.

Depending on your perspective, it was an act of judicial murder, an ignominious end to a radical teaching career, an extraordinary gesture of love or a grand cosmic moment when a mysterious act of sacrifice placed God and mankind into a new and better relationship. For some, no doubt, it was a little of all these things.

It’s a bit beyond my pay-grade to propose an answer, but instead this seems like a good moment to take up the theme of sacrifice, as it has played out in Japan down the centuries. I’m going to explore the rise, fall and final perversion of sacrifice as an ideal - across two posts, this week and next.

Work seems to have been wall-to-wall samurai of late. I’ve started writing my next book, Barbarians, which explores the first century of contact between Europe and Japan in the turbul…