>>17918848
Japan isn’t Christian because Christianity’s core demand (confessing your exclusive faith and trust in Jesus Christ) does not fly with Japan’s religious culture, they put a lot of emphasis orthopraxy (correct practice) over orthodoxy (correct belief).
Shinto and Buddhism in Japan are less about believing and more about performing the right rituals at the right times, so that's seasonal festivals, ancestor veneration, purification rites, the whole nine yards. You can visit a shrine join a Buddhist funeral, and keep household rituals without “believing” in a doctrinal system. Christianity, on the other hand, is about loyalty to a defined theological truth and rejection of other religious frameworks. In Japan that absolutist, belief-centric approach feels alien, disruptive, and unnecessary in a japs eyes to fulfill the social function of religion (social cohesion)