“the Japanese have a western mindset? I don’t think so. Maybe the Taiwanese do. No. Well then, surely the Russians, or the South Koreans do. No, I don’t think they do either. Those with a western mindset are a minority in the world. Philosopy is provincial, Economics is universal.”
OK...
So then, the above-listed cultures...
Throw bomb-strapped children into battle?
Commit mass murder against unarmed civilians?
Use civilians as human shields in their combat operations?
Use civilian facilities to house military assets?
Do not outfit their military personnel with uniforms, but send them to intermingle with the civilian population?
Decapitate those whom they think unworthy?
Instruct their peoples to kill all non-adherents to their religious creed?
Sir, philosophy may indeed be “provincial,” but the moral law is universal, because it is God’s law—written indelibly upon the hearts of all men.
western culture goes far deeper than political expressions of democracy and free-market economics... The heart of western culture is the Christian Faith, and the Judeo-Christian heritage. I do not know of Taiwan, but Japan, South Korea and Russia all have/had significant Catholic populations. The Christian Faith is what defines western civilization... not economics.
RTO
Japan has very few Christians.
The current Wikipedia article Religion in Japan (section Christianity) gives the figure of 0.8% of the population. However, the Wikipedia is quite unreliable, and particularly so on these kind of subjects where some cranks around the world feel obligated to add their own opinions. However, looking at the more reliable The CIA World Factbook, its estimate is very close to the Wikipedia number at 0.7%. (From what I have seen, I would say that even 0.7% seems high to me. I suspect those numbers probably include ethnic Koreans and other non-Japanese segments of the population.)
Also, the previously mentioned Wikipedia article states that most Japanese Christians are Protestant. From what I have seen, that statement seems accurate to me although no source is given for that statement. Another Wikipedia article, Roman Catholicism in Japan, puts the number of Catholics in Japan at 500,000.
A better source of information would be the Catholic Bishops' Conference of Japan, but while their website has a very interesting history of Catholicism in Japan here, they don't seem to have any numbers for the number of Catholics in Japan.
So where does the conduct of the Christian church during the time of the Inquisitions fall in this Western Heritage?