Holy Ghosts: The Christian Century in Modern Japanese Fiction by Rebecca Suter (review)

Although Japan is considered to be a Buddhist and Shintō country, Christianity has, in fact, seeped into every corner of its society. The introduction of Christianity by Francisco Xavier (1506–52) in 1549 brought to Japan the Christian concepts of love, equality, human dignity, and eternal life, which were previously unknown to the Japanese people. The so-called "Kirishitan century," followed by persecution and martyrdom for more than 250 years, became a source of imagination when the hidden Kirishitan miraculously resurfaced in Nagasaki in 1865. Japanese literature, fine arts, and performing arts have all featured the Kirishitan in religious, ethical, and artistic terms since the early Meiji period.

However, a small portion of this literature and popular culture utilizes the Kirishitan century for parody and intentional misreading for the purpose of "entertainment." Although this "entertainment" has been seen in Japanese daily life since the 1950s, very little scholarly research on its raison d'être is conducted by scholars inside Japan. This "entertainment" is either ignored academically or considered simply as proof of a lack of understanding of Christianity. Therefore, Suter's book is a remarkable achievement investigating the significance and implication of such "entertainment."

This book is divided into five chapters, starting from a general survey of the history of the Kirishitan era in chapter 1. By referring to Kiri Paramore's book Ideology and Christianity in Japan (Routledge, 2009), Suter provides sufficient evidence to show that the suppression of Christianity was part of the "birth of early-modern systems of control" (p. 27). Also quoting from Ikuo Higashibaba's Christianity in Early Modern Japan (Brill, 2001), which sees hybridization, like an overlap with Buddhism, as Japan's way of accepting Christianity, Suter focuses this book on the rejection and incorporation of Christianity in modern Japanese literature and popular culture.

Several parts of this chapter are especially stimulating. For instance, Suter mistakes Francisco Xavier for a Portuguese. But in fact he was born in the Basque region of today's Spain. The Jesuits, aiming to preach the gospel across the whole world, seemed to care very little about their nationalities. Once Xavier did refer to himself in a letter as a "Portuguese," but it was only to prove that the distinction of nationality was neither essential nor important to him. In this light, Suter's translation of the letters from Organtino Gnecchi-Soldo (1530–1609), an Italian Jesuit based in the Kansai region, who pleaded to Rome to send more "Italian" Jesuits to Japan because "they could understand and identify with the local culture better than missionaries from other European countries" (pp. 15–16) is particularly interesting. The letters indicate the advantage accruing to some Jesuits from similarities between their own language and culture and those of Japan.

In this chapter, Suter also discusses the reason why missionaries were mistaken for "magicians." She quotes Higashibaba's opinion that the Jesuits' "lack of language proficiency" was the reason, because they "relied initially on Japanese converts to do the actual preaching in Japanese, while they performed symbolic and ritual functions that could be done without verbal interaction; this reinforced the image of the foreign priests as magicians in the collective imagination" (p. 32). This information comes from a letter written in 1576 by Francisco Cabral (1528–1609) who was himself reluctant to learn the Japanese language. But, in fact, quite a few missionaries mastered Japanese, including Organtino Gnecchi-Soldo, Luis Frois (1532–97), and João Rodrigues (1562?–1633), all of whom were contemporaries of Cabral, so the image of "magicians" may not have been widespread. Rather than by a "lack of language proficiency," the "magician" images were more likely caused by superstitious interpretations of the religion. Without faith in Christianity, Jesus's birth and resurrection could easily be interpreted as "magical." Suter demonstrates this to be one of the reasons "the Other" is associated with "magical power" in Japan's popular culture.

In chapter 2, "magical power...