Japan has had three Catholic prime ministers, and its current empress was raised and educated in the faith. How did a non-Christian nation come to foster more Catholic leaders than the United States, particularly when Protestantism is said to define Christianity in Japan and Catholicism is believed to be but a fleeting element of Japan's so-called Christian century? This volume reveals that, far from being a relic of the past - something brought to Japan by missionaries and then forgotten - Catholicism offered, and continues to provide, an authentic and alternative way for Japanese believers to maintain "tradition" and negotiate modernity.