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

在泽维尔来到日本后，日本的耶稣会士认为日本人是理性的，是被选中的人，他们能够用理性来欣赏基督教的美德。这意味着他们有可能不受当时犹太教和伊斯兰教的影响，理解基督教中创造上帝的概念。Arimichi EBISAWA解释说，这种理解可能是因为当时日本存在有影响力的“TENDO”概念。我们还指出，日本的大乘佛教徒和欧洲的基督教徒都有天堂、地狱和灵魂不朽的观点。另一方面，如果我们承认日本人确实是一个理性的民族，那就意味着他们通过经院哲学家对自然现象的分析，热情地接受了上帝的存在。天代弘法思想下的“国道修道释经”“万物成佛”的思想得到了延续，自然万物都持佛心的泛神论在当时的日本存在。基于这些，创造神的概念对日本人有很大的吸引力。值得注意的是，耶稣会所持的新柏拉图主义与泛神论和天台洪aku自然观之间的关系理论几乎是等同的。

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.