Christianity in Japan

NAGASAKI, JAPAN - OCTOBER 06: A statue of the Virgin Mary that was built in 1949 to commemorate the 400th anniversary of the first arrival of Spanish missionary Francis Xavier to Japan, is pictured on October 06, 2019 in Nagasaki, Japan. Pope Francis is due to make only the second ever Papal visit to Japan later this year where he will visit Tokyo as well as Hiroshima and Nagasaki to remember the victims of the atomic bombings of the two cities at the end of World War II. Japanese Christianity has roots going back to the arrival of Portuguese Catholics in 1549 and many early Christians were persecuted and forced into hiding by a campaign of repression by the rulers of the time who forced Christians to publicly renounce their faith. Many continued practicing Christianity in secret and in modern times became known as 'hidden Christians'. These secret believers would often conceal Christian iconography in closed shrines or inconspicuous parts of buildings. In the current era only around 2 percent of the Japanese population claim Christian belief with the majority of people now thought to be nonreligious, although the majority of those who are religious identify with Shintoism or Buddhism. (Photo by Carl Court/Getty Images)