Easter is the most important holiday for Christians. It is the day that Jesus was Resurrected. There is much I could say about Easter but considering that I'm writing in English most of the people reading this will already know something about this day.
Since I write a lot about Japanese culture on this blog I'll mention Easter in Japan. If you were in Japan you likely wouldn't even know this is a celebratory day. The only sign of this holiday (outside of churches) your likely to see is stores selling chocolate bunnies and easter eggs. Which really don't have much to do with Easter at all. Bunnies and eggs are fertility symbols of spring that predate Christianity.
The reason why Easter is not such a big holiday in Japan as most of the world is because very few Japanese people are Christian, less then 2 million out of a population of around 127 million. Christians were persecuted and suffered truly terrible hardships in Japan when Japan closed it's borders with the rest of the world in the 17th century.
My uncle recently wrote about the survival of Christianity in Japan on his blog which can be read here: http://catholicdemocratfromohio.blogspot.com/2008/03/survival-of-catholic-japan.html
A good source on the history of Christianity in Japan can be found here:http://web.archive.org/web/20070213062822/http://www.baobab.or.jp/~stranger/mypage/chrinjap.htm
It is a transcribing from from Kodansha's Encyclopedia of Japan. It's to an archive of it since the site was down when I wrote this.
The reason why Easter is not such a big holiday in Japan as most of the world is because very few Japanese people are Christian, less then 2 million out of a population of around 127 million. Christians were persecuted and suffered truly terrible hardships in Japan when Japan closed it's borders with the rest of the world in the 17th century.
My uncle recently wrote about the survival of Christianity in Japan on his blog which can be read here: http://catholicdemocratfromohio.blogspot.com/2008/03/survival-of-catholic-japan.html
A good source on the history of Christianity in Japan can be found here:http://web.archive.org/web/20070213062822/http://www.baobab.or.jp/~stranger/mypage/chrinjap.htm
It is a transcribing from from Kodansha's Encyclopedia of Japan. It's to an archive of it since the site was down when I wrote this.
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