The Auron MacIntyre Show - How Christianity Became Elite in Japan ｜ Guest： Crémieux ｜ 11⧸12⧸25

00:00:00.080 Hey everybody, how's it going? Thanks for joining me this afternoon. I've got a great stream with a great guest that I think you're really going to enjoy.

00:00:06.720 Before we get started today, I just wanted to let you know that The Blaze has a new show coming out.

00:00:11.320 It's got Chris Rufo and Jonathan Kieberman, or Lomez. Both of these are great guys that have been on the show before.

00:00:17.880 Very interesting duo with a lot of deep insight, so make sure to check out Rufo and Lomez on The Blaze today.

00:00:24.380 All right guys, so I stumbled upon a great piece talking about Christianity and the role that it plays in the Japanese elite.

00:00:33.040 And since on this channel we are of course big fans of elite theory, the idea that ultimately elites drive culture and drive the way that our politics is dictated,

00:00:42.480 I wanted to take a look at what a religious minority does in a foreign country, something that's displaced away from the United States,

00:00:49.640 free of the dynamics that we see here, and look into that story and see what we can take from that, glean from that, and apply to our own situation.

00:00:57.900 Joining me today to talk about that is the author of the piece with a name that I am absolutely positively sure to mispronounce.

00:01:05.280 Grim, thank you so much for coming on, man.

00:01:08.020 Thank you for having me. I'm glad to be here.

00:01:10.620 Absolutely. So in your piece you start out skipping over a little bit of the early Japanese history,

00:01:15.640 because your piece is really more about kind of the post-World War II impact, or maybe the post-1800s impact of Christianity.

00:01:24.640 But it was present. It was a force in Japan previously.

00:01:28.840 So for those who might not be familiar with the Christian history in Japan,

00:01:33.300 can you just give a brief primer on how Christianity came to that country?

00:01:37.520 Yeah. So in 1549, the Jesuits arrived in Japan. Francis Xavier led a voyage to Kagoshima.

00:01:47.020 He had some Japanese intermediaries he recruited. He got a bunch of early converts.

00:01:51.000 There were language problems, like translating God as a Buddhist term is a weird thing.

00:01:55.720 Then they had daimyos, which were the leaders of little regions in Japan, start converting. 0.79

00:02:00.360 Omura Sumitada converted. They opened up ports, like Nagasaki, if I think it's a big one that they opened up.

00:02:08.680 And they started allowing in trade. They started having a lot of conversions.

00:02:13.400 And those conversions intertwined with Portuguese trade for all sorts of things, and specifically firearms.

00:02:20.880 The people who embraced Christianity gained access to firearms, and that was something they really, really liked. 0.97

00:02:26.940 In 1568 to 92, you had Oda Nobunaga being tolerant of Christians, mostly because he didn't like his militant Buddhist rivals,

00:02:39.180 and he figured the Christians wouldn't actually be much of an imposition on him.

00:02:43.720 He never converted, but he allowed institutions like the Azucuzhi Seminary, or I'm probably mispronouncing that, Azucuzhi or something like that.

00:02:51.780 But then in 1587, Hideyoshi, Toyotomi Hideyoshi, issues this order saying that the missionaries have to go.

00:03:00.500 He gets concerned because there are, at their peak in this period, there end up being like 300,000 Christians in Japan.

00:03:09.660 I'm talking about Japanese Christians out of a population of 15 to 20 million.

00:03:13.220 So potentially 2% of all Japanese were Christian at this point.

00:03:17.360 Skip forward a few decades.

00:03:21.360 The Shimabara-Amakusa Rebellion happens in like the 1630s.

00:03:25.180 The tax cruelty revolt with some Christian elements.

00:03:27.880 37,000 people get killed, and the shogunate excludes basically all Europeans, except for the Dutch at a certain port, from coming back to Japan.

00:03:37.800 And they force all the Christians underground, and they become the Kakure Kurishitans. 1.00

00:03:41.900 I'm probably mispronouncing it.

00:03:42.800 But they have to hide their religion. 0.93

00:03:45.220 So there are very few Christians left in Japan after this, and the ones who remain hide everything. 1.00

00:03:51.720 So we have this early period where there's Christians coming in.

00:03:55.400 They're bringing new technology.

00:03:56.560 They're bringing new culture.

00:03:57.740 They're good trade partners.

00:04:00.140 Obviously, the fact that you can adopt this religion and suddenly gain access to a massive military advantage is a huge incentive for people to start converting. 0.92

00:04:08.600 And this is scaring a lot of Japan, right? 1.00

00:04:11.760 One of the things that people look at Western culture and they say, oh, well, once something new comes by, once you get this evolution in technology, you kind of fall under the metaphysics of the washing machine, to borrow a phrase.

00:04:24.080 You're going to end up in this progressive scenario that inevitably draws you towards kind of this technological and cultural revolution.

00:04:31.560 But actually, there are many instances in history, and this is one of them, where a people decides to actually kind of smash that, to cut off ties to the outside, cut off the trade, to cut off the revolutionary possible cultural forces inside their society and kind of try to go back to their way of life.

00:04:49.280 Now, it's interesting because we're going to see different versions of this later on in the Japanese story, but I just want people to recognize that while we assume there is an inevitability, and perhaps there is as we get deeper into the story, but there are periods where people can and do suppress these type of cultural evolutions.

00:05:05.960 As a Christian, I prefer it not be of Christianity, but as an objective observation of the way that elites can limit this type of access, it's a very interesting scenario, because this is far from the only situation around the globe where leaders at first find a religious minority useful in displacing and opposing other rivals inside their country, inside their power system, 0.68

00:05:28.800 but then suddenly find that ultimately they don't actually like the continued presence of that interest and that force being cultivated inside their society.

00:05:38.700 Yeah, I mean, it's true. Under Iemitsu, in the 1620s to 30s, he started systematically oppressing the Christians. He surveilled them. He set up neighborhood watches against them.

00:05:49.600 They did the fumi'i, the stepping on Christian holy images to expose believers. They wanted to crush the numbers, and they succeeded very, very readily. 1.00

00:05:59.580 It can be done.

00:06:00.960 So then let's look at then the reemergence of Christianity. If it's so thoroughly suppressed, we have all of these attempts to drive it underground. Why does it return the way that it does? 0.84

00:06:12.780 Yeah, so the return happens a few hundred years later. It happens more than 200 years later. I mean, it kind of starts in the 1850s to 60s.

00:06:21.000 The thing that really gets it going again is the arrival of Commodore Perry. And for those unfamiliar, Commodore Perry was a U.S. Commodore who went to Japan and told him,

00:06:30.100 you have to open up. He said, no more isolation. You are going to start trading with us. You are going to start letting, like, Americans, Westerners, all of us in.

00:06:37.380 We want to interact with your country, which is a bizarre set of demands, very well worth reading about. It's an interesting thing to go and force open a country.

00:06:48.320 But that's what he did. And shortly after that went into effect, the Tokugawa, the long-standing regime fell and the Meiji State began.

00:07:00.180 And the Meiji State allowed foreign Christians to come into the country, and they encouraged them, in fact.

00:07:08.000 They saw these missionaries as a way of helping to learn English and helping to translate texts, helping to make it so Japan was better known,

00:07:16.920 helping to move people towards the mindset of what they perceived to be much more powerful nations.

00:07:21.580 They thought that a lot of these values that were kind of brought up within Christianity were a means of making the West powerful initially.

00:07:33.340 They thought that, like, the way they were powerful because, oh, they're so individualistic and universalistic,

00:07:37.760 and they accept all these different things, and they're open to technologies, and they're open to things that we should be open to.

00:07:43.120 And so in this period, also, the hidden Christians, the Kakarayi Krishitan that I just mentioned, a lot of them reemerge.

00:07:48.160 So there's several thousand of them. They come out of the woodwork, and they go, they flock to urban areas, and they're like,

00:07:53.980 oh, we are Christians, in however they're pronouncing it. They have, like, a distorted faith. 0.69

00:08:00.780 A lot of them have mixed it with Buddhist stuff, and they've got, like, household gods sort of things going on in there,

00:08:06.540 and it's very bizarre, but some of them actually did come around and become normal Christians.

00:08:10.840 As soon as they came in contact with the missionaries, they, like, realized, oh, we're going to,

00:08:15.040 there's a possibility of, like, continuing our faith here and doing it right,

00:08:17.660 and so they actually did that. But this is just when it starts opening up, 1850s, 1860s.

00:08:22.440 So this is a period that a lot of people refer to as gunboat diplomacy,

00:08:25.860 and one of the really interesting things about this development is the philosopher Nick Land

00:08:30.740 kind of talks about the way that capital revolutionizes different nations,

00:08:36.160 and that tradition is really acts as a barrier to proto-capital,

00:08:41.380 to keep it from becoming liquid, moving across borders, dissolving identities,

00:08:44.880 introducing modernity. And what he kind of taught, when he references the gunboat diplomacy,

00:08:50.440 he talks about it kind of ripping the rods out of a nuclear reactor, right? It just, once those

00:08:56.280 traditions are gone, once those cultural barriers are gone, then all of a sudden,

00:09:02.860 the entire thing just accelerates extremely quickly, right? So once that traditional regime

00:09:07.880 falls and those traditional ideas about how society should be organized fall, all of a sudden,

00:09:13.400 Japan has opened up to the idea that these other countries have become far too powerful, 0.71

00:09:17.840 right? If someone can pull up and just put a superior naval vessel off your shore and totally

00:09:22.880 revolutionize your entire country, then you've lost sovereignty by closing yourself out of the

00:09:29.320 world's development. And this is a real problem for people who ultimately look at technical

00:09:34.020 revolution and say, I'd like to stop this, right? Like, I want to put up these barriers

00:09:38.000 and protect my country. This is often called the tank problem. Guys like Elul eventually recognize

00:09:45.380 that as technology develops, if you have just sectioned yourself off from this, you're going

00:09:50.780 to fall behind your rivals. And so everywhere and always, power and technology are an arms race.

00:09:55.900 And you have the scenario where the Japanese are really just had that put to them at the finest 1.00

00:10:00.780 point you can with a cannon. And so you have the scenario where they either adapt and they update

00:10:05.720 or they get completely mauled. And of course, you know, this is happening in tandem with China

00:10:10.240 basically falling behind in this, losing its sovereignty in this scenario. And then Japan says,

00:10:15.680 well, we don't want to end up like China. We don't want to end up this backwater that gets ruled by all 0.99

00:10:19.140 these Western powers. So we need to catch up. And so what you have is a revolution inside and outside

00:10:26.260 the form where you have all of the government needs to change. All of the technology needs to change

00:10:31.000 and an openness to Western information, Western learning, Western languages. And all of this is

00:10:37.360 tied, of course, to Christianity, because that is what runs through all of this. So all of a sudden,

00:10:41.840 you have a scenario where Japan needs to modernize as quickly as possible. And the only people who can 0.91

00:10:47.180 ultimately teach them the things they need to do that are the Christians. 0.75

00:10:51.080 Yeah. Now, can I remark something on the difference between China and Japan here?

00:10:55.820 Absolutely. Please do.

00:10:56.640 There's some very important differences that are institutional. So China is massive. They're huge.

00:11:02.560 They are unified in large part because of the persistent threat of invasion from the steppes.

00:11:08.140 It's been a historical thing, and they've been locked into big dynasties that actually don't govern

00:11:13.260 very much. So the dynasty, for example, might try to enforce huku and then it fails. Or they might try to

00:11:19.340 enforce blah, blah, blah, whatever restrictive law. But generally, the restrictions you see in China

00:11:24.360 are limited, very, very limited. They collect their tax revenues were a small pittance of the total tax

00:11:30.620 revenues collected in England, the Netherlands, France, because the regime was just so weak.

00:11:35.260 Their government had so little to it because they're a huge realm. And to govern a huge realm

00:11:41.400 with pre-modern state technology requires you to make a lot of concessions to leave people

00:11:44.840 relatively free. So when they start introducing railroads and such, when they start introducing

00:11:50.180 Western technology and incentives for people to interact with these people, they also introduce

00:11:58.140 incentives to revolt, to question, to try to break away from the regime that has been.

00:12:05.180 And the Chinese state actually started to suppress the production of railroads because railroads

00:12:11.180 were aiding tax revolts. They were aiding people who wanted to blow up the central regime and they

00:12:17.080 couldn't do anything about this. The choice they made was, okay, we have a weak state. We are going

00:12:22.060 to, instead of adopting this thing and facing all of the problems and potentially getting knocked out

00:12:27.600 of power, we're going to just limit it. We're going to stop. We're going to weaken ourselves and not

00:12:32.240 develop. And then it leads to more problems down the line. Japan, on the other hand, I think

00:12:38.560 they're really comparable to Germany. They have tons of little domains that are effectively like

00:12:44.020 the Kleinstadt in Germany, the little states. And in the pre-modern world, your state capacity

00:12:51.660 scales with distance. So if you have a small state you can manage, you can be totalitarian in that state,

00:12:57.760 but if you have a large state you have to manage, in order to manage it, you have to federate a bunch,

00:13:02.420 have lots of little lords doing things, and then that leads to its own problems. Or you have to be

00:13:07.760 very, very lax, like the Chinese were. They just didn't govern very much because they couldn't, 1.00

00:13:14.320 or else they would lose their power. The Japanese had small domains, governed incredibly rigorously

00:13:19.180 and incredibly strongly. For hundreds of years, people were registered to a certain domain and

00:13:26.540 not allowed to leave. Their families weren't allowed to leave said domain. It was incredibly

00:13:30.780 restrictive. And they were set up to actually adopt all that new tech because they could go and

00:13:35.580 suppress tax revolts. They could go and put down, and they did, I mean, they put down the samurai. 0.65

00:13:40.460 So like that gives you a great illustration of the difference in institutional regimes here,

00:13:45.500 why this kind of mattered for the early adoption of this tech, the interactions with Westerners and

00:13:49.080 all that. So when you talk about them entering the new missionaries returning back in, you emphasize

00:13:56.060 that they are restricted to the cities. And this is something, if you look across different domains,

00:14:00.920 you make the comparison later on in the piece, but I'll make it now. Jewish people across Europe are

00:14:08.100 often pushed into different mercantile pursuits, banking, educational pursuits, because working the

00:14:17.520 land was considered something that belonged to the people, right? That land ownership is what was

00:14:22.540 honorable, that farmer's life, that's what made you a member of the community. And so because Jews were 1.00

00:14:28.560 often considered set apart, they weren't allowed to participate that own land, be a part of those

00:14:33.260 professions. And so they get forced into these more academic and urban pursuits. Similarly here, we see

00:14:38.560 Christians who- I would contest part of this, by the way. Okay, well, fair enough. That's often the way that 1.00

00:14:43.300 it's crafted, but go ahead. Boticini and Eckstein, in their book, The Chosen Few, they actually reviewed

00:14:48.840 this theory by looking through all the compacts for different areas in Europe where Jews were allowed, because

00:14:53.840 when Jews arrived, you would set up a Jewish compact, and that would define what Jews could do, what

00:14:58.480 their duties were, things they were limited from, and they couldn't find the evidence to support this

00:15:02.620 idea of Jews being locked out of farming. That actually seems to have been something that emerged

00:15:06.740 post-Martin Luther as a big belief, because Martin Luther famously wanted to put shovels in their hands

00:15:11.720 and force Jews out of the professions they were in into other ones. And somehow people over the ages 0.61

00:15:17.560 got that confused with Jews being not allowed to take part in those professions when Boticini and Eckstein

00:15:22.940 couldn't find the evidence that they were actually not allowed to do that.

00:15:25.160 So do you feel, I don't know if you're familiar with Thomas Sowell's theory of kind of the, you know,

00:15:31.720 the minor minorities or the, you know, the minorities that are allowed to operate. Do you

00:15:36.420 find that fallacious then? You don't, you don't feel like he was correct about that understanding?

00:15:41.360 I think he had lots of good things to say, but there are some historical facts that have been

00:15:44.460 clarified for more recent scholarship. And I think he could have, he could have easily been misled by

00:15:49.140 earlier stuff. So I don't take any fault with him. He still had great theories and stuff, but

00:15:53.280 a lot of the details are incorrect. Yeah. Okay. Interesting. Well, that's definitely good to

00:15:58.020 know. I guess either way, this is according to your piece, what happened with Christians,

00:16:03.140 not that they were banned from necessarily, but they were encouraged just to stay inside the cities

00:16:07.840 and them being inside the cities meant that they were going to be eventually the more influential

00:16:13.800 people because the urban centers were going to greatly grow in influence given basically the

00:16:19.880 industrial revolution that's going on inside of Japan. And this means that when they are there, 0.51

00:16:25.700 they're some of the few people who are able to speak English, to teach different Western traditions

00:16:31.480 and understandings. And so this becomes a place where a lot of the new, more educated expert class

00:16:37.280 is going to have to filter through. And that means they, of course, are by osmosis going to be

00:16:41.820 contacting with Christianity far more than they would have been if they were, you know, 0.97

00:16:46.000 if Christianity had been spread out anywhere. Most definitely. And I can actually draw the

00:16:50.460 analogy between Jews and the early Christians a little closer. So Jews became a literate religion

00:16:57.160 after AD 63. Some people can test this and say, oh, it happened earlier. Oh, it happened a little

00:17:00.740 later. Doesn't really matter. It's all, everybody agrees that it happened before Islam was a thing. So 0.96

00:17:06.240 we all agree on that part. And that's the part that actually matters. So in AD 63, that's generally

00:17:11.700 the day I accept because that's when Joshua Ben Gamla's decree that all Jews must educate 0.70

00:17:19.040 their sons went out. And after that, if you did not educate your son, you were Ami Haaretz,

00:17:23.220 you were people of the earth. You were a disgraceful person who was basically not a real Jew. And a lot 1.00

00:17:29.100 of these people who could like educating your son at the time could account for a very large portion

00:17:32.920 of your income. And most people lived, kind of hand them out. They were like, you know, on the verge

00:17:39.040 of death all the time. Because in the Malthusian era, this pre-capitalism, pre-industrialization,

00:17:44.480 it was most living standards were incredibly poor. Like people's populations went up and down with

00:17:50.700 the harvest. It was a remarkable thing. But Jews started to become literate and the Jews that could 1.00

00:17:57.340 not remain, could not educate their sons left the religion because Christianity appeared and became a 0.99

00:18:02.620 thing that they could convert into. And the Romans then passed a law saying, oh, you can't actually

00:18:06.520 convert back. After you convert to a Christian, you can't become a Jew again. Parents can't withhold 0.91

00:18:11.300 like bequests. They can't, you know, say, oh, my kid doesn't inherit anything because they converted 0.99

00:18:16.320 to Christianity. The Romans also banned the establishment of more synagogues and shuls.

00:18:21.760 So they made it like even more expensive and harder to remove the cost pressure from those Jews. So 1.00

00:18:28.440 they gave them a huge incentive to convert outwards if they weren't able to make the cut. So these elite

00:18:33.260 Jews stay in the relatively elite Jews, stay in the religion, and the ones who are less elite go and 0.98

00:18:38.280 become Christians. Then when Islam appears, the bottom of the funnel here is now Islam because 1.00

00:18:44.280 Islam starts charging everyone the jithya, this head tax on every male in the family. So you are paying 1.00

00:18:51.560 this tax to your Muslim overlord if you don't convert. If you convert to Islam, you're fine. And some domains 0.97

00:18:59.540 in the Muslim world like allowed you to substitute like military service for some number of years.

00:19:04.760 But it's big picture is you had to pay the head tax. Couldn't pay the head tax, convert to Islam or die. 0.98

00:19:10.680 So these Christians, some of them, the ones that couldn't cut pay that tax started moving down and 1.00

00:19:14.660 became Muslims. Some of the Jews who couldn't pay the tax were very few at this time because they had

00:19:19.100 already become a literate religion that could handle all these big expenses of education, moved down and

00:19:22.660 became Muslims too. They stopped becoming Christians because that's not the thing to become anymore. 1.00

00:19:26.400 Oh, Muslim is the thing that is remunerative. But the Jews that could stay suddenly had these 1.00

00:19:32.080 dual pressures put on them. And the Muslims wanted to develop their realms because they wanted to do,

00:19:37.540 you know, finance their wars and whatnot. So they did these massive urbanization drives. And as it turns

00:19:42.600 out, being literate is useful when you have cities. Being literate means you can, you know, document your

00:19:48.680 orders and take orders and, you know, become a craftsman and do all sorts of skilled tasks. So the Jews 1.00

00:19:54.620 were like ready. They were a pot ready to boil over because of this historical push to be educated

00:20:00.460 that was just put in place for relatively random reasons, no real good reason. That education wasn't

00:20:06.820 useful until the Muslims came along with their urbanization drives and suddenly Jews found a 1.00

00:20:11.260 niche. And then that niche made them relatively rich within the realm. The samurai are similar. They

00:20:16.160 were an existing scholarly order. They were the ones tasked by daimyos with recording the history of

00:20:22.380 their states, with collecting taxes, with managing public works, with managing the granary networks

00:20:28.740 that were throughout Japan that would help in like times of, you know, bad harvest and all that.

00:20:33.220 They were an existing literate class, kind of like the Jews. And then when it came time to urbanize and 0.99

00:20:40.120 interact with like a more modern civilization, suddenly, ba-bam, you have a good place in the market to fit in.

00:20:46.420 They became a model minority of a sort in the market because they were able to. They were already set up

00:20:51.040 for it. And the system had changed so that whatever skills they had were now very lucrative.

00:20:57.820 Yeah, it was really important when you pointed out that for most people, samurai, you think of the

00:21:02.880 movies, you think of a guy, you know, sword fighting, you know, executing himself because he wasn't

00:21:08.000 successful in battle, overwhelmed by his honor. But in fact, you know, they were an aristocracy.

00:21:13.780 They were not just warriors, though. That's usually the origin of aristocracy.

00:21:17.980 But that extra time and that extra affluence also builds yourself into being administrators,

00:21:23.820 learning, becoming literate, becoming familiar with philosophy or things that otherwise are going

00:21:28.900 to be useful once it's time to scale. Because all of these things you're really talking about are

00:21:33.040 the skills that become more useful with scale. This is Pareto's lions versus foxes that ultimately

00:21:38.840 you're going to start with the martial skills being the most useful. But when you need bureaucracy,

00:21:43.240 you're going to shift to a world where foxes and their ability to manipulate and build systems

00:21:47.320 are the most valuable. And so you have a samurai system here where they're already being displaced

00:21:54.060 by the fact that there's a social revolution. They, of course, you know, resent losing that status and

00:22:00.120 they need a new way to carve that out. And that means that they need to hone that education.

00:22:05.160 They need to become part of this apparatus. And the only people doing that are the missionaries,

00:22:10.120 the Christians at that time. Now, one dynamic that you pointed out that I thought was really

00:22:14.620 important and one that I think a lot of people miss, because in our minds, it's all about popular

00:22:19.700 sovereignty, right? It's all about the masses. And once you have control of the masses, you have the

00:22:24.500 support of popular opinion, you're going to win things over. But you specifically point out in the

00:22:29.480 piece that the way that the samurai were converted, the way that so many of them became incredibly

00:22:35.020 fanatical and really ardent Christians, very fire and brimstone, was off-putting to a lot of people,

00:22:40.820 would actually slowed the popular growth of the religion. But at the same time, it actually

00:22:45.320 gatekept it for the elites. And so instead of Christianity becoming this popular revivalist

00:22:51.180 religion spreading throughout, evangelically throughout the land, it really became a niche

00:22:56.120 and particular religion that only elite adherents would really come around to because the adherents

00:23:02.640 that are already there were kind of so off-putting to a wider base. And so in a lot of ways,

00:23:07.440 not becoming popular served Christianity to kind of become this elite function.

00:23:12.640 Yeah. Yeah. It's really fascinating. So like in 1871, when the Meiji say that there's religious

00:23:17.180 toleration, all the hidden Christians can come out, blah, blah, blah. They also confined the 1.00

00:23:21.740 missionaries to cities and they limited the proselytism. So really the only way they could have contacted

00:23:26.780 people was through these language admission schools. And those had fees and the samurais could,

00:23:31.580 you know, put up the fees. They could make their way in there. They could, they made an effort to

00:23:37.160 make their sons literate because they were already literate. The fathers are like, well,

00:23:41.960 I'm going to go and get my son educated because I need him to be successful in all that.

00:23:45.500 And they got themselves convert, like converted in the process. They, so the converts were urban

00:23:50.600 by necessity because they couldn't go in the rural areas. They were literate because they came from a

00:23:54.840 literate class and they wanted to be literate so they could go from unemployment. So there were about

00:24:00.580 200,000 samurai in the country that were disemployed by the government's efforts. The Meiji took away 0.94

00:24:05.580 all of their historical rights and powers and privileges and stuff, which included stipends

00:24:10.500 for living on. And with that gone, they had to find jobs. So they wanted to maintain their state as

00:24:15.760 much as they could. So they went through this because it was like a clear path to good jobs.

00:24:20.540 And yeah, so everything became urban, literate, tied to Western educational pathways. And because they

00:24:27.220 hated the state so much, they actually really liked all the sort of implied antipathy Christianity

00:24:34.180 has for the way Japan was governed before, because Christianity does emphasize universalism

00:24:39.180 and it emphasizes individuality and God not having a predestination in some branches, not at all,

00:24:48.240 but like in some, like you, you have to make the non-Calvinists out there. Yeah. Yeah. So like a lot

00:24:53.540 of these people, they really, really liked the ideas that were coming from these Christians. They

00:24:57.300 were impressed by, uh, oh my God, you can actually just like make your own way and be this individual

00:25:02.100 who does things and be power. Great. I love it. Um, and they also tried to convert some of their

00:25:09.120 friends. So like some of the samurai knew like, oh, well my buddy here, you are also a samurai and you're

00:25:14.820 also upset with how the government has treated us. Why don't you come and get your son educated here?

00:25:19.440 And why don't we go to the seminary? And why don't we go to the block? Not the seminary, but 0.79

00:25:22.140 the schools. And why don't we learn? And why don't we take part in this? And then they, they spread it

00:25:27.280 within their small elite and resentful circles. Um, and this made the religion just incredibly,

00:25:34.240 incredibly elite. Uh, cause it was picking from an already elite and they were elite, not because they

00:25:38.640 had things, they didn't have things, they had things taken from them. They were elite because they had

00:25:42.380 that mindset and that breeding and that way of being that had come into place over a thousand

00:25:47.720 plus years. Um, it's a really wonderful transformation to hear about and not all of them

00:25:53.540 converted plenty did. Uh, and those gave the religion, it's early character. And they added

00:25:58.060 some zeal to everything. Cause these people were zealous by nature. Like they, they were samurai,

00:26:02.380 they were warriors. Uh, they, they already, you know, were like everything they were going to do

00:26:07.360 was already going to have a lot of zeal behind it. So the fact that they brought that to Christianity

00:26:11.440 is just a nice little feature. I do enjoy that. You know, at every, the kind of the

00:26:17.020 modernization of every civilization, you have that period where the aristocrats suddenly have to get

00:26:21.480 jobs. Uh, and, and sadly it always seems to turn them into managers. Uh, but, uh, that, that has been

00:26:28.780 the pathway over and over again. So one of the other things you talk about here is the cognitive

00:26:33.320 stratification that what becomes very important is to go out and drive the best and the brightest

00:26:39.100 into the city. So it's not just that cities are organically becoming more powerful because of the

00:26:44.340 way the, uh, government works, but they, they're going out into the hinterlands or trying to find

00:26:48.580 the best talent. Uh, this room is, if you've ever read, you know, Charles Murray, or if you've ever

00:26:53.360 read, uh, you know, some of these other sociologists, this process is going to sound very common to you.

00:26:59.100 This is, this is the IQ shredder. Uh, this is the concentration of talent across, uh, you know,

00:27:04.920 the entire, uh, nation into these urban centers. And so that's also increasing the power of

00:27:10.860 Christianity because it's not just the specific particular class that, that had become urban that,

00:27:16.280 you know, suddenly Christianizes, but anyone who would have been promising would have had 1.00

00:27:20.320 leadership would have had high intelligence or agency is being pulled out of those rural provinces

00:27:25.920 into these specific areas where education is occurring. And so you're not just securing, uh,

00:27:31.920 Christianity as the elite faith. Now you're basically like just systematically ensuring 0.96

00:27:37.220 generationally that it will stay that way because there is no other, uh, elite talent being left in

00:27:42.820 other areas that might've not Christianized. Yeah. So they even took from like, this really 0.87

00:27:48.640 deprived a lot of the most militant Buddhist regions of their most brilliant kids because the government

00:27:54.420 was like, uh, we don't have enough bureaucrats. They don't have no tax collectors. We don't have enough

00:27:58.080 people to run the government, to modernize things, to bring industry over, to set up factories and all

00:28:01.860 that. We just don't have enough. So we can't match the Americans, the Dutch, anybody. Uh, and we need 1.00

00:28:07.200 people to do these things. So they put out an order and they told the rural areas, um, send us your

00:28:13.680 most tall, like your most, uh, like well-equipped and able kids and we'll put them in boarding schools.

00:28:20.080 And the boarding schools were run by Christians. The Japanese government had not yet established their

00:28:25.900 own boarding schools. So they, at a very high rate, even relative to the conversion to the samurai,

00:28:31.860 uh, they converted these elite kids from out in the country in these urban areas, away from their

00:28:36.660 families into Christianity. And they just made it a very elite religion. Uh, it's a really, really 0.94

00:28:42.400 amazing development. And it just kind of favored the establishment of a very elite faith that was

00:28:47.860 very exclusive and was very confined to a small area. Um, and they also alienated these people from

00:28:53.760 their like rural families because now you're a Christian and your father's a Buddhist. Well, 0.82

00:28:58.160 might as well stay away from that. Might as well marry a urban girl and help to, uh, continue the 0.98

00:29:03.160 faith that you have adopted here instead of, uh, back where you're from. All sorts of things just

00:29:09.060 kind of compounded this. Right. And in another way we can, uh, you know, another comparison we can make

00:29:14.960 this is probably currently, uh, modern Catholics in the United States. It's gone, uh, noticed by quite a

00:29:21.380 few people and discussed, uh, by several, including myself on this show, uh, that Catholicism has become

00:29:27.600 this like elite conversion, uh, moment inside a lot of, for a lot of people, uh, especially on the

00:29:33.800 right now, uh, if you want to kind of set yourself apart, if you want to succeed, uh, then you, you,

00:29:38.980 it's, you know, the, the dirty evangelical, uh, you know, uh, that, that's something you want to step

00:29:44.280 away from. You want to become an elite Catholic. That's going to open up, uh, different avenues to you 0.94

00:29:48.980 that will separate you in a way from the people that you grew up with. Hard not to notice JD Vance

00:29:54.100 in this scenario. Uh, you know, I'm now, I'm no longer hillbilly. I'm now someone who can run for

00:29:58.800 vice president and I can marry, you know, uh, a Brahmin from another, uh, you know, from, from another 1.00

00:30:04.220 area because like, ultimately I've kind of transcended my roots and I've become this elite. Uh, so we can see

00:30:09.920 this dynamic again, you don't have to get wrapped up over any one religion. I know people are going to be

00:30:14.240 like, uh, Jewish people are Catholics or whatever in the comments. The point is,

00:30:18.980 that no matter where you are, what the religion is, we can reliably see these kinds of dynamics

00:30:24.920 play out. And that's really what I'm most interested in here is the way that elites form

00:30:29.860 and separate themselves. And it does seem, uh, whether people like it or not, that a alien or

00:30:36.160 a separate religion is a key factor in creating dominant elites on a regular basis. It does seem to,

00:30:42.480 in some way, even if not intentional, maybe, you know, I doubt very many of these people

00:30:46.900 specifically adopted the religion only for the purpose of cleaving themselves, you know,

00:30:52.800 from the herd. Uh, but the incentive structures just kind of reemerge over and over again in

00:30:57.620 societies. And we should recognize that if we want to do accurate analysis of how our political order

00:31:02.280 is structured. Yeah. Uh, we see this all over the place. There are tons of elite groups that have

00:31:08.120 formed, uh, even recently, but also in ancient times, like, um, the Roman nobles, they came from

00:31:13.380 the families of men who successfully rushed over the ramparts when they were doing sieges.

00:31:18.680 So if you were willing to put your life on the line of being the first one up a siege ladder and

00:31:23.140 you lived, you would be handsomely rewarded. Your family would go down in history. And a lot of the

00:31:28.120 early Roman nobles were people whose families distinguished themselves in that way. And then

00:31:32.020 they roll that over into, you earn some status, you get a great wife, uh, you make some businesses,

00:31:36.940 you keep mating with the other upper class people and it makes this elite.

00:31:40.280 I suggest we immediately apply that selection criteria to our current political class. Like

00:31:45.340 right now, like off the jump, everybody, everybody gets on the line. First one over, uh, over the wall.

00:31:51.880 If you make it, uh, Lindsey Graham, then you can, you can be president. If not, then we're getting

00:31:56.280 some young guy who jumped over the wall and cleared it, uh, in your seat. Uh, I think the founders

00:32:02.260 will love that. Um, well, yeah, we even see stuff like this more recently. Like, um, so for example,

00:32:07.880 the, uh, leading lights in the communist party in China, they are primarily descended from

00:32:13.500 mandarins who were dispossessed just a few generations ago by the Maoists. Like they were 1.00

00:32:18.860 locked out of their old positions and they were in some cases like moved away from their families,

00:32:23.980 uh, moved away from their historical regions of residence. They had everything taken away from

00:32:28.320 them and they managed to regain it. They transformed their status. They looked into, uh, well, in this new

00:32:34.720 regime, it'll be good for me. If I move to a city to the extent I can, uh, cause it's very limited

00:32:39.080 in China. Um, if I get an education to the extent I can, if I do whatever they can, that all these 1.00

00:32:44.300 paths that opened up and they transformed their elite, uh, they went from being the old regime

00:32:49.520 mandarins to being the new regime communist party officials. They've just, uh, it's the same elite,

00:32:56.360 but it's in a different face and they've picked their new ways to get there. And I guess what you

00:33:01.260 really see with all these elites is that they have a general talent that can be transformed

00:33:04.780 to meet the needs of the day. So like a talented person can go and do a great samurai can go and be

00:33:10.520 a great Christian. Uh, very simply go and be a great merchant. He can transform his talents into

00:33:16.600 whatever the day's needs are. And you see this everywhere. And if you're, if your country is

00:33:22.700 healthy, if you're, if your nation is going to survive, it has to have the flexibility to allow

00:33:27.600 for a circulation of elites. You can't freeze your elites in one section or another. That's one of

00:33:32.960 the problems we're seeing right now. Very clearly, I think across the West, but particularly the United

00:33:37.800 States is that, uh, we, we have, we have attempted to freeze out, uh, the best and the brightest from

00:33:43.580 our elite system. Uh, we're forcing a lot of guys who should have entered into university or should

00:33:48.900 have been political leaders. Uh, you know, they're, they're, uh, well, hosting things online,

00:33:53.060 uh, because they can't enter into established, uh, uh, institutions and kind of, uh, you know,

00:33:59.900 reinvigorate them, uh, with new talents and, and, and, and new ways to do things. And that's

00:34:04.780 always a dangerous place to be. This is what ends up creating counter elites and stoking revolutions. 0.97

00:34:10.280 Now, one of the things that you talked about also, can I add something to that? Oh yeah. Yeah. By all

00:34:14.860 means. I wanted to add, uh, they've also filled a lot of the institutions with garbage. They have, uh, 0.94

00:34:20.540 the, the rule of like the mass here where you have just everybody going to college now and everybody

00:34:26.140 thinking, Oh, I've earned the degree. Now I have, you know, I should get whatever job that entails

00:34:31.100 is horribly corrosive. You have, for example, there's been a pretty steep decline in the, uh,

00:34:38.460 IQs of military officers in the U S and the reason is almost entirely explained by more people being now

00:34:44.000 qualified to become officers and become qualified by getting a university education. So if you have a

00:34:49.320 degree and increasingly many people have a degree, you've diluted the pool. Uh, because if 40% of

00:34:55.680 society is going to have a degree now, the maximum IQ of the people who have degrees, if you went from

00:35:00.860 the top to the bottom, which we don't do, we do even worse, uh, is about a little under 115. There's

00:35:06.680 just simply no way for all these things that require a degree to remain elite. So you're flooding

00:35:12.880 them with people who are not cognitive elites anymore. You're making the institutions less respectful.

00:35:17.960 Um, you're adding problems to them. Yeah. This is one of the classic problems when you start to turn

00:35:24.160 something into a metric, right? The metric becomes, uh, instead of giving you a proper indication of

00:35:28.940 what it's supposed to, it becomes the goal that people, uh, re reorient themselves towards. So

00:35:33.440 originally the degree is supposed to replace aristocratic blood as kind of your credentialing

00:35:38.960 mechanism. Uh, and then once you open that up, people can just look at that metric. Rather,

00:35:44.480 it's something you can acquire. You couldn't have acquired, uh, you know, your, your, your landed

00:35:48.160 title, but you could have acquired a college degree. And now that that can be sold at cost

00:35:52.900 to people, you just increase the number of people who will have access to it. It no longer becomes

00:35:57.000 an indicator of the thing that you wanted to measure. Uh, as somebody who is a high school

00:36:01.020 teacher, I was painfully aware of, uh, the continued, uh, fact that you could barely breathe and pass

00:36:06.060 through a class. It was required. Everybody gets a high school diploma. It means nothing. So,

00:36:09.880 uh, the, the next thing that I really wanted to hit on that you talked about in the piece

00:36:14.480 was kind of this transition of Christianity and kind of the modern Japanese setting, because it

00:36:20.140 stops being something that is focused on just for schools, uh, because it kind of loses its elite

00:36:25.960 status inside education, or basically it's monopoly on elite education, but it makes up with that in

00:36:32.120 other ways by finding cultural loopholes that don't really exist in Japan. And so using different

00:36:37.640 organizations like the YMCA, which a lot of people around here just think is a gym,

00:36:41.340 but actually it's supposed to be a cultural organization, things like that actually start

00:36:45.720 drawing, uh, people in, in a different way into Christianity. Right. Yeah. Yeah. So, um, as time

00:36:52.420 goes on, Japan develops more and more and more people have to come out of the countryside in order 0.98

00:36:56.040 to work the factories and work in the new white collar jobs that are emerging as a result of the

00:37:00.300 transition from feudalism towards whatever you would call the Japanese version of feudalism, uh, towards,

00:37:05.040 you know, industrial society like we have today. And this requires just a mass movement of people.

00:37:10.320 And Marx would say they're alienated. These people would say, I'm going because I want the job. Um,

00:37:16.960 and these people don't have the samurai's resentment of the government. They're a different

00:37:22.080 class of people who are now coming in large numbers into the cities. And some number of them

00:37:27.040 are seeking out educations because they know it's a way to move up. Uh, and they are just very,

00:37:31.600 very different. And right around this time, oh man, I'm sorry. I'm itching my nose. Uh,

00:37:36.400 the government also takes away a lot of the reason to go to these Christian schools because

00:37:39.920 they start establishing their own schools and they start alienating the Christian schools.

00:37:43.440 And they start saying, oh, well, you no longer have to know English to go to Tokyo university,

00:37:47.600 or you no longer have to do X, Y, Z different thing in order to make it to, uh, you know, a high

00:37:54.160 position of the government or a high position in industry or to earn the support of the government

00:37:57.920 and doing something or another. And this transforms the recruitment for, uh, about 15 years, nearly.

00:38:06.800 Um, the Christians don't really know how to respond to this. So the number of converts is 1.00

00:38:10.560 very small. Uh, the religion is actually like hemorrhaging people at points is not in a good

00:38:15.920 state. And then they rediscover that this new white collar group actually really enjoys a lot 0.64

00:38:21.680 of the stuff that happens outside of the schools, which now are dominated by the government.

00:38:25.840 They really liked the YMCA. They love the Christian student association. They love the

00:38:29.600 Christian summer schools, even like they love being able to send their kids off over summer 0.98

00:38:33.600 to go do stuff. Uh, and they find like modern reasons to do that because they are essentially

00:38:38.720 modern now. So like the parents need more time in the day to do work. Great. Uh, the school only has

00:38:44.880 them for a certain number of hours. Well, they can spend more hours going and doing those Christian

00:38:48.560 things. The government hasn't offered an alternative to this. They've offered nothing. So the

00:38:52.560 Christians fill in the little gaps there and this leads to more and more conversions and it leads to 0.86

00:38:57.440 more and more contact with Christians and it leads to just the modern rise of Christianity before,

00:39:03.200 you know, we get over to world war II era. So we have this scenario where a lot of the

00:39:09.840 little platoon type stuff, the, the, the, the kind of the, the small, uh, uh, voluntary associations,

00:39:17.840 uh, that de Tocqueville, uh, talked about kind of get transferred over into Japan, the, the situations

00:39:23.520 that, and they are really excel in the modern era, as you say, because you need to kind of, uh, you

00:39:29.520 know, find more time to work in these scenarios. You have all these spaces that ultimately would

00:39:34.160 have not been filled in the traditional Japanese culture and Christians come in and kind of fill 1.00

00:39:38.800 those spaces and there's no alternative in Japan. I think you even pointed at some point they have

00:39:43.280 to end up banning religious practice in schools because this is starting to like create so much 0.97

00:39:48.880 tension, right? Yeah. Yeah. So the government, um, doesn't allow even the Christian schools to, 0.97

00:39:55.520 uh, allow people to like participate in prayer during school hours. They become really alienating

00:40:00.560 towards all this. And that's more in the time when they, um, were like actively not able to convert

00:40:05.200 many people when they had a lot of trouble with it. They, and the government eases up on that after they

00:40:08.640 feel secure in themselves because a lot of what the government was doing when they came to, uh,

00:40:13.920 you know, they accepted and they reviled, then they became tolerant of Christianity again.

00:40:18.080 It was a short, like, you know, just a few decades period. And a lot of it had to do with the fact that

00:40:23.920 they felt insecure. They, a lot of the contemporary accounts emphasize that, um, the Japanese nation is

00:40:31.360 upset that they're not getting the recognition they want. They're not revising the unequal treaties that

00:40:36.400 have put them at a disadvantage relative to Western nations. They are upset that they're not considered

00:40:41.360 to be like a first class nation of the world. One that is, um, you know, just as capable in its own

00:40:48.320 right, just as able to assert its own cultural uniqueness and whatever else. Uh, so they ban all

00:40:55.360 this foreign influence again. And it seems like a common thing in Japanese history is they ban a lot

00:40:59.040 of foreign influence all the time, whenever it appears to be, uh, making headways in Japan.

00:41:03.600 Yeah. Now, an interesting thing, of course, you start off the piece with is that, uh, so many of

00:41:11.120 the post-World War II prime ministers are Christian. I think you said something like 20%, even though

00:41:17.440 they're only 1% of the population. So wildly, uh, disproportionately represented there. Now,

00:41:22.800 the first thing that popped into my mind, and you didn't quite touch it on the piece. So I'd like to

00:41:25.920 pick your brain about it here. Uh, what level of the American occupation is responsible ultimately for that

00:41:32.400 reality. I would say not very much. They didn't explicitly promote Christians into these positions.

00:41:38.000 Uh, they didn't make much of an effort. There was a lot of like Presbyterian stuff going into Japan

00:41:43.120 afterwards, but they didn't really have much of a say in who got elected where. Um, Christians often 1.00

00:41:48.080 were in good standing with the U S but like that didn't really stop, uh, people who have been bad

00:41:53.680 standing from getting in the government either. So, uh, I would say not too much. Um,

00:41:58.240 um, and a lot of these people are much later. Like they it's, it's interesting that like they've

00:42:04.160 continuously had this presence even up until the, uh, most recent prime minister before the current

00:42:08.800 one. Um, so what is it? Seven out of 35 of the prime ministers before the one that just came in a

00:42:14.880 few weeks ago were Christians, uh, the post-World War II ministers. And like, it was like nine out of

00:42:19.360 40 something before that or 50 something. Uh, if you count the like pre-World War II ones. Um, and I don't

00:42:25.440 think this had to do with promotion of anything because often these people will hide their face.

00:42:29.520 So there are actually a good number relative to their population size of Christians who are, uh,

00:42:36.160 elected officials in Japan, but they don't say it. They keep it hidden. It is something to admit 1.00

00:42:42.480 because there is still anti-Christian discrimination. There is that you still do get the second looks

00:42:46.960 and everything. And you still do get people like losing employment opportunities and whatnot in Japan

00:42:51.440 because of their Christian faith. So people hide it. And we would probably, if we had an honest count,

00:42:57.760 find more Christians than we expect, uh, in a lot of really elite positions in Japan. But for the ones 1.00

00:43:03.200 where we do have any level of indication of, uh, how we lead it or how we lead like an elite position,

00:43:10.720 how Christian it is, it does seem like Christians are overrepresented, but it's probably more than we 1.00

00:43:14.080 think that's seven out of 35. It's probably, it's the lower bound. They're probably more. 0.80

00:43:18.240 Yeah. It is interesting. A lot of people don't think of a place like Japan as one that would

00:43:23.360 have a high degree of Christian prosecute or persecution, obviously less now than there 0.87

00:43:28.320 was before, but of course they were killing Christians. They were driving them underground. 0.95

00:43:31.600 You know, a lot of people, just because Japan releases a lot of cute cartoons now, they forget

00:43:36.000 that like, no, they were like raping their way across China and, you know, you know, like murdering, 0.79

00:43:40.640 like lots of like very, very good at oppressing and dominating and, and, and genociding people. Uh, 0.83

00:43:45.920 you know, Japan has as a far more violent history, uh, than, than I think a lot of people will,

00:43:51.360 will kind of place on them, uh, today. Just look at all, a lot of the early artistry about

00:43:56.480 Christianity in Japan. A lot of it depicts the 26 martyrs of Nagasaki, uh, where they just like,

00:44:01.760 they crucified 26 people in Nagasaki. Ooh, eerie. So what, what is the modern state of Christianity 0.98

00:44:11.280 today in Japan? Does it still wield that level of influence? Is it more acceptable now? Does it

00:44:16.960 seem to be growing or shrinking? Is the elite influence more or less? How would we assess its,

00:44:22.320 its modern development? It is definitely more acceptable than it used to be. I think we can

00:44:26.480 all agree on that in a very broad sense because they're not getting, uh, pushed. Nobody's getting

00:44:30.400 crucified. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No more crucifixion. That's so definitely more acceptable. Um,

00:44:35.680 there are a lot more quasi Christian cults than there used to be. Uh, this is a mostly post-World 0.99

00:44:42.240 War II development. So you have like the Moonies for example. And I know actually, um, I'm shocked

00:44:48.240 by the number of a cat, like prominent, uh, accounts on Twitter who post about like fertility

00:44:53.760 and such, who are actually, whose parents were, even if they're white people were members of the

00:44:59.120 Moonie cult. Like they, it's, it's wild. Uh, this is the unification church thing. Um, 0.98

00:45:03.760 and these, this is like a, I don't want to insult it by calling it like a perversion of Christianity,

00:45:08.880 but it's some sort of bizarre Christian ripoff. I don't know how you would describe it, but it's, 1.00

00:45:13.840 it's a weird. Honestly, I don't, I don't know enough about the Moonies if you want to share what you

00:45:18.400 know by all means. Like I know they exist, but that's about all I know about them. Yeah. Um,

00:45:23.520 so Korean guy surname Moon, which is common in Korea. Um, or maybe it's his person. I really

00:45:29.440 don't know. I don't know too much about it. Cause it's so bizarre to me, but they're practically a

00:45:33.600 fertility cult. And my understanding is that they would like to, and I I'm probably wrong on this.

00:45:39.040 I'm going to butcher it, but, uh, cause I've, I've been told so many times by different Moonies

00:45:43.040 about like how they grew up and stuff. And it's all just so baffling. Um, but the ones I've been

00:45:49.680 told this stuff by are like white people whose families moved to Japan to join this fertility 0.96

00:45:54.640 cult, Christian Christianity thing. And, uh, they seem to believe that eventually if you just all,

00:46:02.400 everybody breeds amongst each other, you will all be one big United family. And that'll be some sort of

00:46:07.520 Christian good thing. I really, okay. So, so sadly a classic Christian heresy. Yeah. Yeah. It's a, 0.99

00:46:14.640 it's bizarre. And there are a shockingly large number of Christian heresies in Japan now. 1.00

00:46:19.680 Um, they have small membership individually, but, uh, and small membership in total,

00:46:24.720 but they're, I think they're a growing portion of all of the Christians in Japan because Christianity

00:46:30.800 in Japan seems to be, uh, not as like, well, let me give you a contrast. So in Taiwan, uh,

00:46:37.360 their Christian population has a pretty high fertility rates above replacement, if I recall correctly.

00:46:42.320 And, um, at the TSMC, a lot of their guys who work there are Christians and I believe they have

00:46:47.760 had, and I don't know if they still have the requirement to at least believe in a God.

00:46:51.840 Uh, and like young guys, Christian, probably gonna have a lot of kids. That would be a faith that grows

00:46:58.080 at least in influence, if not in the exact, like total numbers or proportion of the population.

00:47:02.560 Um, I don't think you see as much of that in Japan. I think they're actually somewhat declining or

00:47:07.840 stagnant. Uh, the population just doesn't seem to be growing very much for Christians. And it what,

00:47:12.000 to what extent it does, it's, I think it has more to do with the weirdo Christians 1.00

00:47:17.120 than it does with the historical, like samurai based ones, uh, the church of Christ guys,

00:47:22.160 the Protestants, the, all of that. Um, so it's not a huge thing. It's less than 1% of the country.

00:47:30.080 Well, I would certainly not encourage anyone to be in a fertility cult, but given Japan's fertility rate,

00:47:35.200 uh, you know, you, you can kind of see why there might be some demand, uh, you know, that that could

00:47:40.800 be met there. Uh, but that said, this has been a fascinating walkthrough. I think this is a really

00:47:46.880 interesting way. Like I said, you can come at it from the outside. You don't have to impose

00:47:51.440 all of the American or Western, uh, dynamics and baggage. You can just see the way that religious 1.00

00:47:57.360 minorities, faith, elites, uh, literacy, scale, urbanization, modernity, all these things

00:48:03.680 interact to drive elite formation. Um, and then of course we can take, I think some of those lessons

00:48:09.360 and transplant them back to where we are. So I really appreciate you writing this piece. Cause

00:48:14.560 I thought this was a, it was a very interesting way, uh, to take a look at this topic. Uh, I think

00:48:19.520 we have a few super chats before we get to them. Can you tell people where to find your piece,

00:48:23.840 everything else that you do? Yeah. So if you would like to read more about this,

00:48:27.440 go to Cremieux.xyz. That is C-R-E-M-I-E-U-X dot X-Y and then Z-Z. Um, and that'll bring you to

00:48:37.200 there. And the, uh, second most recent story is about this. The first most recent one is actually

00:48:41.120 related to this. It's about general class sorting where societies that are free enough, they tend to

00:48:47.920 have people, uh, who are like, for example, if you are smarter than your dad, you tend to move up.

00:48:52.880 If you are less intelligent than your dad, you tend to move down. It's a very common thing. And

00:48:58.160 what makes the Japanese Christian thing like fit with this is that they became distinct. So when

00:49:04.240 you add that distinctive element, that natural class sorting that occurs in society because of

00:49:08.480 whatever pathways we've set up to achieve success, uh, it becomes this creation of elite. It becomes

00:49:14.560 this creation of an in-group that can actually, you know, augment this, uh, their eliteness because

00:49:20.720 they might breed amongst themselves or support each other. Like a Christian might help another 0.99

00:49:24.480 Christian and that can make them even more elite and give them more opportunities. And you can

00:49:27.440 translate that upwards. So like, for example, there's a really cool paper. It used data from

00:49:32.240 Norway and great Britain. They had these big biobank scale data sets and they found this is super

00:49:37.520 fascinating. Um, there's a birth order effect on success. So people tend to be more successful if they're

00:49:44.480 earlier in the birth order. So like firstborn sons tend to be more successful than later born sons.

00:49:48.240 And this isn't just due to inheritances. This occurs before inheritances even go out.

00:49:52.480 This is a thing that is related to like how they're reared and it's an environmental effect.

00:49:57.120 And this gets translated into genes because those firstborn sons, they managed to get somewhat

00:50:02.800 better wives. Uh, and those wives tend to be a little better off genetically. So like, 1.00

00:50:06.480 for example, they'll have a polygenic score, a predictor of, you know, skill capability, whatever,

00:50:11.040 that is a little higher than the ones you'll see for the spouses of the later born sons.

00:50:15.680 And just this class transformation, this, uh, structuring of eliteness is a universal thing

00:50:21.520 that is, uh, I don't know if it's typified anywhere, but it is just universally on display.

00:50:28.160 And it's, it's fascinating. Uh, and I think I'll be writing a lot more about this with different

00:50:31.600 groups in the future. Excellent. Well, like I said, this, this piece was particular is great,

00:50:36.000 but I'll definitely check that one out because it continues to be a topic I am definitely interested

00:50:40.400 in. And guys, if you are interested in it as well, you should definitely be checking out

00:50:43.920 his work. All right. Let's see here. Oh, well, no, it's not super chat. It's just a donation,

00:50:48.480 but we'll put that up there. Thank you very much. Blood based. Appreciate that quite a bit.

00:50:53.840 All right, guys. Well, we're going to go ahead and wrap this up. Once again,

00:50:58.320 thank you so much for coming on, man. It's been a fantastic conversation. Great talking with you.

00:51:03.280 If it's your first time on this YouTube channel, guys, you need to subscribe,

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00:51:22.400 time.

The Auron MacIntyre Show - November 12, 2025

How Christianity Became Elite in Japan ｜ Guest： Crémieux ｜ 11⧸12⧸25

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