Reddit mentions of Bushido: The Soul of Japan

I'd like to offer an extra perspective.

When you say you're surprised that Hong Kongers are irreligious because they used to be a British colony, it makes several presumptions:

1. That Western nations in general are "religious"
   
2. Christian is a Western religion
   
   At face value, this seems true but it's only because the vast majority of perspectives we see are from the West. I'm assuming you're a fellow Asian American, so that means virtually all the history we've learned is from the perspective of Western professors or Western scholars interpreting world history.
   
   So of course, the perspective and view we have of Christianity is colored by what Christianity was like in Europe and how it spread from European missionaries. Well, what if I told you that Christianity has existed in India for over two thousand years? Christianity had reached India hundreds of years before any European nation declared it as a state religion. The Copts trace their lineage back to Mark the Evangelist, and they've also been Christians for nearly two thousand years, far longer than most European populations.
   
   We only conceive of Christianity as "Western" because that's the only kind of Christianity we see and the only kind we're exposed to. This is also due to the fact that the religion has been misappropriated as a "white man's" faith, but that's a different can of worms.
   
   Okay, so where does that leave Christianity in Korea? Well, my mom's family is Christian and my dad's is Buddhist.
   
   What you said about the rise of Christianity in Korea is not untrue but you forgot to consider that missionaries actually did a lot of great things. They offered free education, hospitals, and healthcare. Moreover, they had a great reverence for the culture, following the example of Hudson Taylor.
   
   Hudson Taylor was inspired by the example of Christ becoming human to reach humans. If you read carefully in the Bible, you notice that Jesus always speaks to his audience by becoming his audience. When he speaks to common Jews, he uses parables about grains and mustard seeds. When he speaks to priests and Pharisees, he talks about Mosaic Law and Levitical Law. When he speaks to Romans, he talks about civics and military duties.
   
   Contrary to the stereotype, many European missionaries working in these areas had a genuine conviction to help and love the people. Their agenda wasn't to push European cultural ideas onto them.
   
   I'll try to bring in my own thoughts to some of your other questions.
   
   > Perhaps both Korea and Taiwan had cultural aspects that made their immigrants more susceptible to monotheism?
   
   No, it's because of the long history of missional work in those countries. I immigrated to the United States with my parents when I was three. My grandmother refused to support us because she was adamantly against my dad's decision to leave Korea.
   
   For the first three months, we lived in a Korean church who housed and fed us free of charge. They asked for nothing in return and they didn't try to push their faith on us. My parents were never very religious and they're still nominal Christians to this day but part of the big success of Korean-American churches is because they really take care of immigrants.
   
   There's a bunch of problems with them as well of course but that's another story.
   
   > are British and Soviet influenced cultures better at resisting Christianity than Japanese and American influenced ones?
   
   Your language here is pretty offensive, as if Christianity is something that needs to be "resisted" to preserve some weird view of cultural purity.
   
   > or perhaps Christianity offered an advantage among the more social elite because it offered better funded western style schools and international opportunities?
   
   Christian schools were radical at the time because they accepted anyone regardless of social status or wealth. Elite families would send their kids in droves to these schools because they offered a Western education but these same schools also took in orphans, street kids, women, and children from poor families — all groups that would have never received an education at the time.
   
   > If so why are the Japanese themselves so irreligious?
   
   There's a great book on it written by Dr. Inazo Nitobe who was actually asked this very question by a colleague of his. It was a huge hit at the time. Teddy Roosevelt loved it and gifted a copy to each of his children.