Writing about the relationship between religion and culture is no easy matter, even when the scope of the investigation is restricted to one literary figure. Emi Mase-Hasegawa's book Christ in Japanese Culture is an attempt to read the late twentieth-century literature of Endō Shūsaku as a “secondary theological text” (p. 10).
Endō was, of course, one of the greatest figures of postwar Japanese literature, and he is generally studied as such. Religious themes, obviously a major part of his writing, and his own Catholic religiosity are often addressed in literary studies. Mase-Hasegawa, however, who earned her doctorate in theology, makes clear that she is not embarking on another literary study, but rather seeks to look directly as a theologian at Endō's take on Christianity.
For Mase-Hasegawa, who approaches Endō through the methodological lens of missiology (the theological study of Christian mission), the most important element in Endō's engagement with Christianity was his Japanese nationality. Through Endō, Mase-Hasegawa seeks to explore what she sees as problematic issues in the relationship between, as the title suggests, “Christ and Japanese Culture.”
The most difficult task for any study of this kind is to establish some parameters or definition of what that “Japanese culture” is. Mase-Hasegawa attempts this in chapter 2, “The Japanese Religio-Cultural Context,” which opens with a ten-page summary of 1,500 years of Japanese religious history. This is not too badly delivered. What follows, however, is an analysis of that history through the lens of koshinto [sic], which Mase-Hasegawa explains as “a spirituality that lies at the core of Japanese sensibility and which has continually influenced the country's religious history” (p. 28). Mase-Hasegawa proceeds to link this Japanese religious spirituality to other allegedly “unique” attributes of the Japanese people, for example, their psychology (p. 41).
In chapter 3, “Endō Shūsaku's Approach to Christianity,” Mase-Hasegawa presents Endō's literary and religious life in three phases: a first phase, 1947–65, which she associates with conflict between his Christian faith and his Japanese nationality; a second phase, 1966–80, which she associates with a reconciliation between these two; and a third phase, 1981–93, when she describes Endō as having arrived at a position where he could mutually integrate the two. In this chapter, Mase-Hasegawa also discusses what she sees as a range of incongruities and conflicts related to Endō's position as both a Japanese and a Catholic author.
The research content of Mase-Hasegawa's work lies in chapters 4 and 5, which attempt to locate what she calls Endō's “image of Christ” through close analysis of four of his novels. Chapter 4 deals with Silence (1966), Mother (1969), and The Samurai (1980). Chapter 5 deals exclusively with Deep River (1993). The image of Christ that Mase-Hasegawa uncovers in the first three novels emphasizes what she calls a “weak faith differing from Christian triumphalism” (p. 110), rooted in ideas of love and solidarity with the poor (p. 133). In discussing Deep River, she adds to this the idea of a “Kenotic Christ in a pluralist” social context (p. 147). All of these images of Christ Mase-Hasegawa links to what she sees as the pervading influence of koshinto as a kind of essentialized Japaneseness acting through Endō.
This is not to say that Mase-Hasegawa ignores non-Japanese theological influences on Endō. Indeed, chapter 5 also contains Mase-Hasegawa's insightful analysis of the relationships between John Hick's ideas of religious pluralism and Endō's literature. She introduces Hick's influence on Endō in parallel with a discussion of the economic rise of Japan by the 1980s and links the two to argue for a change in Endō's conception of Christianity away from the idea of Japan as a passive recipient of Western mission to an active agent of integration. The complex interaction and reinterpretation of Hick's ideas through Endō that Mase-Hasegawa argues for, in particular her historicization of this interaction and her interpretation of it in terms of missionary history, is promising. This discussion is solidly backed up by references to Hick in Endō's diaries and explication of the role of the translator of Hick, Mase Hiromasa (professor of philosophy at Keio, and the author's father) in Endō's readings.
On the other hand, missing from Mase-Hasegawa's theological analysis of Endō is any consideration of Catholic spirituality. For anyone who is accustomed to Catholic (particularly Jesuit) spirituality, Mase-Hasegawa's associations of Endō's conceptions of Christ with love and solidarity with the poor (p. 111) seem very familiar. Her claiming of these conceptions instead for koshinto seems misplaced. Mase-Hasegawa insightfully points out the influence of Pure Land Buddhist conceptions of Kannon on elements of Endō's conception of Christ—but she then labels these clearly Chinese Buddhist conceptions as Japanese koshinto. Despite Endō being a Catholic influenced by Chinese Buddhism, Mase-Hasegawa for some reason seems determined to cast him as a Shintoist engaging with a Christianity that in Mase-Hasegawa's hands is decidedly Protestant.
Ultimately, though it claims to be about Endō's Christianity and its relationship with Japanese religious tradition, the book fails to sufficiently engage either. On the one hand, the history and practice of Catholic spirituality are simply ignored; on the other, Japanese religious history is presented in a caricatured fashion—with little reference to the sizeable body of quality scholarship available. The author's references in the second chapter on Japanese religion rely on dated and questionable scholarship of the D. T. Suzuki variety (on Suzuki, see Judith Snodgrass, Presenting Japanese Buddhism to the West: Orientalism, Occidentalism, and the Columbian Exposition [Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2003]; or Brian Victoria, Zen at War [Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, 1997]). Although her bibliography shows some (although nowhere near enough) quality work by the likes of Breen, Sueki and Teeuwen, she fails to employ these at all in her analysis. This results in an old-fashioned culturalist take on Japanese religion that to a reader today looks just as nakedly nationalist as its historical origins indeed were.
The rather unsavory nationalist feel of the work is not helped by its almost religious avoidance of any mention of China, World War II, or the political conditions of Japan during that war. This despite these clearly influencing Endō's literature, and being themes in much academic study of it—particularly on Silence. The author's uncomfortable handling of anything China related extends to her avoiding discussion of Endō's childhood in occupied China and her rendition of the name of the city where he lived—she gives the name of the city of Dalian only in its Japanized form (Dairen), and refers to it as part of “Manchuria” rather than China (p. 61).
Although one would have thought that even the most introductory readings in East Asian religion would have acquainted the author with the name Tu Wei-ming, she gives Wei-ming as his surname in both the footnotes and bibliography (pp. 17, 239). This, unfortunately, is just the tip of the iceberg of misprints and editorial oversights. Many series published by Brill are faultless. As well as clearly not having even glanced at the copy, the series editors in this case, H. Bolitho (who of course worked with Tu Wei-ming for decades at Harvard) and K. Radke, did not even bother to have the author or publisher organize an index—a sparse list of names is all that is provided.
Mase-Hasegawa has attempted an ambitious piece of scholarship on a fascinating topic. She has presented some interesting ideas, but in the end has been let down by an essentialist and out-of-date approach to Japanese religion.
