Christ in Japanese Culture: Theological Themes in Shusaku Endo’s Literary Works (review)

A quick glance at the title of Emi Mase-Hasegawa’s study of the Japanese author Endō Shūsaku, Christ in Japanese Culture: Theological Themes in Shusaku Endo’s Literary Works, alerts the reader to the considerable challenge she has taken upon herself. On the one hand, in focusing on Endō’s contribution to theological discourse, she is simply picking up on the conventional portrayals of the author, especially in Japan, as a specifically “Christian author.” And, in seeking in this study to examine Endō’s evolving attitude to the tactics adopted by the Christian missions to Japan—and to analyze his burgeoning belief in interfaith dialogue as a sine qua non for true globalization—she is elucidating the very real contribution made by Endō beyond his widely acknowledged literary legacy. At the same time, however, the title represents an acknowledgment of the tightrope she will be walking and of the dangers inherent in seeking to mine an overtly and explicitly literary oeuvre for theological insights.

By and large, Mase-Hasegawa succeeds in rising to the challenge. This is due in large measure to her open acknowledgment, explicit from the outset, that this study eschews any pretensions at conventional literary criticism and concentrates, rather, on the sense of genuine affinity she has come to share, as a fellow member of Japan’s Christian minority, with Endō’s own spiritual journey (albeit with only his literary corpus as a guide). As Mase-Hasegawa acknowledges, “it may not have been his deliberate intention to work out a cultural hermeneutics of the Gospel or to form a contextualized theology” (p. xxii); reading his oeuvre, however, this is exactly what she (and many others) have alighted upon, and this study is her attempt to identify the central tenets of this theology.

In one sense, therefore, this is a book that was waiting to be written. Ever since publication of his best-selling novel Chinmoku (Silence) in 1965, it is little exaggeration to say that, particularly in Japan, the subject of Endō’s emerging theology has captured the public imagination, arguably at the expense of a more concerted consideration of the literary dimensions of his project. From his vision of Japan as a “swamp” in which the “roots” of Christianity were always destined to “rot and wither” (p. 237; this image is familiar to any reader of Chinmoku), through the image of Christ as the dōhansha (the constant companion who shares the trials and tribulations of his creations) that is central to Samurai (1980), to the exposition in his final novel, Fukai kawa (Deep river, 1993), of a genuine religious pluralism, much has been made of the evolution evidenced in Endō’s theological understanding. Mase-Hasegawa has been painstaking in her analysis of this progression, specifically on the influence on Endō of the pluralist theology of John Hick. And, in seeking to analyze this through the prism of the various models of religious inculturation (her preferred term for this complex process) posited by Takeda Kiyoko (in her classification of Japan’s response to Christianity into five discrete types) and by Stephan Bevans (who also identifies five comparable yet significantly different models), she has afforded this study a theoretical framework that is at once convenient and appropriate for her purposes.

In support of her vision of Endō as an author who “deconstructs the religiosity of Jesus and stresses his human nature” (p. xxiii), Mase-Hasegawa introduces the concept of Koshintō, described here as “the indigenous beliefs/spirituality of the Japanese” (ibid.) possessed of a strong “syncretizing capacity,” that has helped condition the inculturation of Christianity into Japan (p. 35) and “continues to play an important role in [the Japanese] understanding of themselves” (p. 183). Arguing that it is Koshintō that unconsciously underlies Endō’s understanding of Christianity, she cites this as the common and unifying thread between the three stages she identifies in his career: 1947–65, the “preparatory stage” when...