Literary history describes Baba Bunkō 馬場文耕 (1718–59) as an outspoken entertainer who haunted the pleasure districts of eighteenth-century Tokyo. However, William J. Farge contends that he was much more. In A Christian Samurai, Farge argues that Bunkō’s writings express a deeply religious worldview and that Bunkō was, in fact, a Christian. This claim challenges traditional assumptions that Christianity had been largely stamped out in Japan by the end of the seventeenth century.

Farge carefully blends historical and literary analysis. The first two chapters focus more on history, laying out the context of eighteenth-century Christianity and the evidence for Bunkō’s faith. The next seven chapters turn towards his literary works, explaining how his provocative tales interacted with contemporary politics and culture, and how they expressed a distinctively Christian ethic. Farge has a deep knowledge of Bunkō’s writings and his analyses are often enlightening. The book closes with a gem: a complete translation of one of Bunkō’s story collections, An album of one hundred monsters 当代江戸百化物.

Overall, this reviewer feels that the book makes many strong points, but perhaps carries them too far. It decisively proves that Bunkō was influenced by Christianity, but is less convincing when it moves on to assert that the eccentric writer was Catholic – at least if the term is taken in its conventional sense. It amply demonstrates that his views were often different from those of his contemporaries, but it struggles to prove that these differences can only be explained by the unique reference to Christianity. The research on the broader intellectual context of Edo Japan could be deepened, and there is an unfortunate tendency to overlook the great variations within Confucian and Buddhist thought. However, despite these reservations, it is clear that this is a ground-breaking work, whose arguments, even if only in their moderate form, should be heeded by those working in the field.