The special relationship between Japan and the Holy See can be discerned in elegant and exceptional moments. One is constantly struck by the respect that characterizes relations between Rome and Tokyo — even in the midst of World War II.

For example, the Vatican owns only one painting by Caravaggio, the Baroque maestro of chiaroscuro, light and shadow in dramatic tension — a painter whose works are so fresh that many look like they were painted last year.

This masterpiece, The Entombment of Christ (1600-1604), is traveling to Osaka, Japan, to be displayed at the international Expo 2025, where the Vatican’s theme is “Beauty Brings Hope” — just when millions of Jubilee 2025 visitors will descend on Rome, some invariably looking for the lone Caravaggio normally hanging in the Vatican Museums.

Considering the Jubilee, “it was a critical decision made by the Holy Father himself that it be sent to Japan, as he is quite affectionate toward Japan, so we are all very happy,” explained Ambassador Akira Chiba, Tokyo’s representative to the Holy See, who is a personal fan of the painter. “I travel all over Italy to see Caravaggios!”

One of Japan’s leading multimedia and publishing companies, Kadokawa, supported “Vatican & Japan: The 100 Year Project” through its cultural foundation and is helping Caravaggio appear at the expo. The foundation’s founder, Tsuguhiko Kadokawa, considers the Japanese-Vatican relationship to be a priceless connection.

More recently, speaking fluent Japanese, Cardinal Jean-Claude Hollerich endorsed the “100 Year Project,” including the Caravaggio exhibit, explaining, “By deeply examining both history and the present and promoting cultural exchange, we lay the foundation for true globalization.”

Long History

Ambassador Chiba represents the high caliber of talent Japan deploys to Rome. Born in Tehran, where his father was a career diplomat, Chiba studied in the U.S. and has had major assignments in both Washington, D.C., and Beijing.

As we chat via Zoom, the ambassador sits in front of a striking yellow-and-black screen depicting the arrival of Catholic missionaries to the island-nation on a Portuguese ship in the mid-16th century.

Chiba explained, “In Japan, we don’t just talk about diplomatic ties that started, officially, in 1942. We talk about Japanese-Catholic relations, which take us back to 1549, when St. Francis Xavier came to Japan and Catholicism spread quite quickly. Pope Francis wanted to be a missionary to Japan based on this history.”

The long historical relationship — plus Catholic missionaries who educated the Japanese elite — helps explain fascinating moments such as Crown Prince Hirohito’s meeting with Pope Benedict XV in July 1921.

The crown prince was coming of age in a new era that saw the disintegration of several empires. The Japanese royal family decided he should visit some of Japan’s World War I allies, including Britain and France, since he had never traveled and his father was sickly.

One of Hirohito’s advisers was Admiral Shinjiro Yamamoto (1877-1942), a devout Catholic and former naval attaché in Italy during World War I. Educated by French missionaries and baptized at age 16, he was undecided between a vocation and naval service until a priestly adviser recommended the military. Yamamoto (not to be confused with Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, who commanded the Japanese fleet during World War II) maintained career-long contact with the Roman Curia, including meetings with four popes: Leo XIII, Pius X, Benedict XV and Pius XI.

Rome was Hirohito’s last stop on his European tour. According to The New York Times, Hirohito visited St. Peter’s Basilica and extended to Benedict XV wishes for a long reign from his father, Emperor Yoshihito, who had approved an apostolic delegate taking residence in Tokyo in 1919 despite objections from Buddhist and Shinto religious leaders. (The Vatican had sent special envoys to the emperor in 1885 and 1905.)

After Hirohito’s meeting with the Pope, the government allocated funds for a Vatican diplomatic mission but energetic protests by Shinto and Buddhist organizations sank the project. Today, Buddhist organizations such as Soka Gakkai and Japan’s Association of Shinto Shrines partner with the Holy See on nuclear disarmament.

Shared Values

Ambassador Yoshio Nakamura was posted to the Holy See during the government of Shinzo Abe, Japan’s longest-serving prime minister. (Japan has had three Catholic PMs: Hara Takashi, 1918-1921; Shigeru Yoshida, 1946-1947 and 1948-1954; and Taro Aso, 2008-2009).

Nakamura observed in an email to the Register, “I think that although the number of Catholics is small, Catholic thinking has permeated Japan to a considerable extent. Japan and the Vatican share values.”

He continued, “When the late Prime Minister Abe appointed me, he emphasized the strength of the Vatican’s information power spread throughout the world. In fact, during my term, I was surprised at the incredible power” of that network.

Formal Diplomatic Relations

That network was what Emperor Hirohito was keen to leverage in 1942, when Japan and the Holy See agreed to full diplomatic relations; Japan was the first Asian country to do so, which shocked the Allies.

American and British officials were furious. The agreement came just two months after the cataclysmic Japanese air attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. The Allies assumed the public would see the Vatican’s decision as a victory for the Japanese. But their response proved they did not understand the Church’s diplomatic mission. As Pope Pius XI said in 1929, “When there is question of saving souls, or preventing greater harm to souls, we feel the courage to treat with the devil in person.”

An excellent analysis of this period is Mariko Ikehara’s “Kanayama Masahide: Catholicism and Mid-Century Japanese Diplomacy,” in Georgetown University professor Kevin Doak’s Xavier’s Legacies: Catholicism in Modern Japanese Culture (University of British Columbia Press, 2011).

The essay looks at Vatican-Japan relations from the Japanese perspective in the figure of Augustine Masahide Kanayama, a Catholic diplomat who was Tokyo’s No. 2 man at the Holy See from 1942 to 1945, before leading the office from 1945 to 1952. At age 21, while studying law in Tokyo, Kanayama was baptized in the chapel of a leprosy hospital because he was moved by the faith of the patients and the clinic’s president, a Catholic priest he had known for several years.

Ikehara looks at why Emperor Hirohito initiated relations with the Vatican in 1942. She explains, first, that Hirohito was mimicking U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt’s bid to cultivate the Vatican.

Second, even before Pearl Harbor, the emperor saw potential for the Holy See to help his country negotiate peace with the Allies. On Oct. 13, 1941, Hirohito wrote, “It looks like we will not be able to avoid this war, but once we enter this war, think now how to engage in peace negotiations. … For this purpose, it is necessary to establish diplomatic relations with the Vatican.”

Ikehara told the Register by telephone that the chapter began as research for a Japanese TV program on Martin Quigley, author of Peace Without Hiroshima: Secret Action at the Vatican in the Spring of 1945 and a U.S. intelligence agent working for the Office of Strategic Services, predecessor of the CIA. He claims he approached Japan’s diplomats at the Vatican to try to open negotiations on behalf of the U.S. government.

“I don’t know if it was approved by his superiors,” the author mused. In the end, the initiative did not gain ground.

“The government of Japan was looking for possible peace settlements via Sweden and the Soviet Union (with whom Japan had a neutrality treaty), which was quite wrongheaded,” Ikehara explained.

‘Mutual Respect’

Cardinal Peter Turkson reflected on the values shared between Japan and the Vatican at a symposium in Tokyo marking the 70th anniversary of mutual recognition.

He said, “Over these decades, the Holy See’s diplomatic relations with Japan have been marked by mutual respect and a common desire to foster peace and reconciliation in global affairs.

“Based on its own experience of suffering, as well as its cultural emphasis on social harmony, Japan has promoted multilateralism and peaceful cooperation among nations. This commitment echoes that of the Holy See, which has long dedicated itself to the cause of world peace.”