Japan’s Christian Century (1549–1650) was not only marked by ascending and waning political fortunes, but also by polemical ones. Both the polemical apogee and nadir came from the hand of one man, Fukansai Habian, a former Zen monk who, as an enthusiastic Christian convert, authored Myōtei mondō (The Myōtei dialogue), and post apostasy wrote Hadaiusu (Deus destroyed). Within his refutation of Buddhism in Myōtei mondō, Habian individually takes up the Zen school, asserting that it is not a valid path to salvation since it takes emptiness/nothingness as its central doctrine and does not advance the possibility of an afterlife. Habian calls on an assortment of Zen texts and teachings in his refutation, making full use of the tradition’s accommodating nature. While tracing Habian’s arguments, this article will demonstrate that even as a Christian zealot he was working within the Zen tradition, having not divested himself of his Buddhist pedagogy and polemic.
