On the Relationship between Buddhism, Christianity and Confucianism in Japan at the End of the Middle Ages and the Beginnings of Early Modern

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The Japanese were recognized, by the Jesuits in Japan after Xavier's coming to Japan, as a rational and chosen people who were able to appreciate the virtue of Christianity with their reason. This means the possibility that they could understand the concept of the creative God in Christianity, being out of the influence of Judaism and Islamism at that time. Arimichi EBISAWA explained that such understanding may have been possible because of the influential idea of 'TENDO' existed in Japan at that time. And we also pointed out the fact that Japanese Mahayana Buddhists and European Christians shared the ideas of heaven and hell and of the immortality of the soul.On the other hand, if we grant that the Japanese were indeed a rational people, that means that they enthusiastically accepted the existence of God by the analyzes of natural phenomena done by Scholastic philosophers. The opinion of KOKUDO SOUMOKU SHIKKAI JOUBUTSU, all of the land and vegetation becoming Buddha, under TENDAI HONGAKU thought, was maintained, and Pantheism, all things in nature holding Buddha's mind, existed in Japan at that time. On the grounds of these, the concept of a creative god had a great appeal to the Japanese. Remarkably, the theory of the relationship between the Neo-Platonism that the Jesuits held, was nearly equal to Pantheism and to the viewpoint of TENDAI HONGAKU thought on nature.