Creating a Japanese Christian Utopia in Manchukuo: The Final Failure of a Christian Imperialist Vision for Japan

Talk Dr. Emily Anderson (Editor of Belief and Practice in Imperial Japan and Colonial Korea).

In February 1941, a small group of Japanese Christians traveled to a village near Harbin, in Manchukuo, to establish a Christian agrarian settlement. This moment marked the culmination of decades of Christian support of imperialism that intersected with a more modest movement to transform the Japanese countryside through Christian evangelism and agrarian reforms. This presentation will examine the establishment of this agrarian settlement, and its eventual demise, and in the process, discuss competing visions for a Christian nation that Japanese Christians proposed over the preceding decades.