A Gentile, Ranaldo McDonald, a Foreigner in Hire: Treading Experience at the Nagasaki Magistrate's Office during the Kaei Era

A Gentile, Ranaldo McDonald, a Foreigner in Hire: Treading Experience at the Nagasaki Magistrate's Office during the Kaei Era

Ranaldo MacDonald was no mere drifter who happened to arrive in Japan at the end of the Edo period. Born in North America and raised as a neophyte, he had developed a rational understanding of faith that did not recognize divinity in sacred images or idols themselves. This religious viewpoint was expressed in a very peculiar way at the Nagasaki Magistrate's Office when he stepped on the steps of the shrine.

When confronted with the picture presented to him at the magistrate's office, MacDonald stepped on the statue without hesitation. For him, it was not an act of betrayal of faith, but merely the act of putting his foot down on an object. This attitude was surprisingly appalling given the Japanese stereotype of Christians refusing to step on statues, but it was also the safest institutional response. To tread or not to tread, that was the only question, and the moment he did, he was treated as someone who was not a member of the forbidden sect.

However, the religious questioning that followed the stepping on made the contours of the person of MacDonald more prominent. Asked by the magistrate if there was a God in heaven, he answered frankly that he believed in the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit and that God was omnipresent. This answer accurately expressed the core of his faith, but its abstract nature was beyond the Japanese understanding. In the process of going through a translator, his words were arranged, and the official record would state that he answered that there was neither God nor Buddha. Here McDonald's inner life was greatly simplified by the filter of institutions and translation.

This discrepancy was not due to his ignorance or the ruthlessness of the magistrate's office. McDonald spoke with sincerity, the Japanese maintained formality in order to maintain order, and the passers-by made adjustments so as not to upset the situation. What resulted was a strange image of the new believers being understood as near-religious gentiles. MacDonald did not strongly deny this misunderstanding, and he surrendered himself to the Japanese system.

This treading experience was also an important turning point that determined his stay in Japan. By being positioned as a dangerous but ideologically ungraspable missionary, he was spared severe punishment and eventually took on the role of teaching English to the tsunyaku. The attitude he exhibited at the trampling led the Japanese to conclude that he was difficult to deal with, but not one to be excluded.

Ranald McDonald was one of the first Westerners to adapt to the Japanese religious system through treadmill work. At the same time, his experience embodies the atmosphere just before the end of the Edo period, when different cultures barely coexisted without fully understanding each other. Behind the silence of the trampled statue, the flexibility and loneliness of his character quietly emerge.