Book Review: Vitality of East Asian Christianity

Simon Cozens
June 5, 2010

It has long been a cry of Japanese Christians (particularly Hideo Ōki and Seiichi Yagi, as noted in Phillips 1981, p228
and Furuya 1997) that Japanese theology has been in a state of ‘German captivity’, particularly to the theologies of Barth and
Brunner; so much so that indigenous Japanese theologies have been actively ignored by the church and the academy alike,
with the effect that, as the introduction to the current volume points out, “theology in Japan has developed almost in parallel
not only to the Christian church but to Japanese society, seldom intersecting with either of them significantly.” Instead, the
‘vitality’ in Japanese theology has traditionally been a competition not so much to ‘root the gospel in Japanese soil’ but to
provide the most faithful commentaries on German theologians. Doctoral students at some Japanese seminaries today1 are
still required to sit entrance examinations in German, while Japanese theologians such as Kitamori (2005) and Koyama are
far better known outside Japan than inside—according to Furuya (1997, p146), although

Koyama has been regarded as a representative Japanese theologian… his contribution to theology in Japan is
almost nil. is may be due to the fact that he has been working outside Japan for so long… On the other hand,
it may also be due to the fact that until recently Japanese theologians have not been interested in the theology of
Japan.

However, during the 1960s, urbanisation, secularism and skepticism found root in the one particular strand of Japanese
theology, the traditionally liberal hotbeds such as Dōshisha University, and
thereaer, some of the problems and views that seemed unique to America–‘death of God’ theology, black theol-
ogy, liberation theology, political theology–were all alike read in Japan but with questions about their relevance
to the Japanese scene. (Phillips, 1981, p268)
e current volume is a collection of musings and dialogues on these themes, and in particular, the majority of the chapters
appear to be a hunt for a particularly Japanese expression of liberation and minjung theology. Japanese society, as every human
society, has its particular categories of marginalized and oppressed peoples, and so the book contains chapters attempting
to apply liberation theology to the burakumin2 , to resident Koreans in Japan who are denied the privileges of citizenship
even aer many generations, to women who are still regarded as second-class citizens in a generally paternalist society, and to
Okinawans3 . ere are two further chapters, one rather esoteric paper concerning the ‘image of the soul,’ and a chapter by a
Korean ‘re-examining the theology of minjung.’ We will not consider these two latter chapters in this review, concentrating
on the principal theme of the book, which is the attempt to develop a Japanese liberation theology.
Unfortunately, in part due to the diversity of situations represented in the various chapters, there is little sense of a result
being achieved; the authors highlight different situations and either theologize upon those situations, or, in the cases of the
chapters by Kuribayashi, Suh and Yamano, skip over theologizing and go straight to demanding liberation for Koreans and
1
See, for instance, http://www.kwansei.ac.jp/Contents_5041_0_0_0_0.html - retrieved 2010-03-02.
2
e burakumin are outcast people who, while ethnically Japanese, suffer discrimination due to being descended from workers in leather and blood-
related trades in the 17th century, or by being associated with villages where such workers lived.
3
Okinawa is the chain of the southernmost islands of Japan, formerly an independent state called the Kingdom of Ryukyu. Ryukyu was invaded
by Japan in the 15th century but was ran as a puppet state; it was then annexed as part of Japan proper in 1879, given to the Americans as a military
base in 1945 and returned to Japanese rule in 1972. It is still a major US military base and there is oen tension between the Americans and the local
community. e islanders are still struggling with national and cultural identity.

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women on unspoken social and ethical grounds, but there is no development of a framework by which or for which such
liberation ought to take place. erefore in reading these attempts, it is difficult to escape the feeling that the authors are
seeking to ally themselves with whatever is fashionable with the rest of the theological world, forty years too late. With an
astonishing amount of self-awareness, Teruo Kuribayashi declares that “changing hats one aer another to the tune of the
times is a deep-rooted habit among Japanese intellectuals,” (p.29) yet despite his protests to the contrary, this is precisely
what is going on in his theologising, both here and in his “eology of the Crown of orns”—seeing the global interest in
liberation theology, the writers in this collection wish to find applications in their own contexts. However, to do so is to miss
the key motivation of that same liberation theology: Liberation theology must be born out of a theological reflection upon
ones’ own experience of oppression4 .
Indeed, Kuribayashi’s (1986) “Crown of orns”, which locates the best expression of the liberative message of the Chris-
tian Gospel not in the Japanese church but in the secular Burakumin Liberation Association, therefore contains the tacit ad-
mission that theological writers do not have the experience of oppression and liberation and must find it in external sources.
Lacking this personal experience, the authors are reduced to either inventing their own oppressive experiences or making
condescending and ingratiating inferences about the experiences of others. Both of these methods are, following Gutiérrez,
unacceptable.
As an example of the former, see Watanabe’s bickering with Kuribayashi over the TUTS incident on p. 59; Kuribayashi’s
work, which Watanabe critiques, is an honest attempt to identify liberationist elements in Japanese society, locating them
in the BLA as mentioned above, but Watanabe berates him for not taking up the cause of desperately oppressed academic
theologians in their brave struggle against the heartless faculty! For the latter, see Honda’s paper in chapter six, arguing that
social care in the name of Jesus breeds discrimination and even pride amongst its recipients. (p. 152)
is is an example of what Hayashi and Baldwin (1988) identify as a particularly Japanese trait: the surface-level copying
of the form of an idea without necessarily having the underlying experiences and cultural history to fully appreciate its content.
e overall impression given, then, is one of pastiche more than authentic theology: a manufactured attempt to reproduce the
works of others, backed by a tendency to argue and debate purely for academic merit and point-scoring, rather than occasioned
by a genuine concern for the church, the Gospel or Japanese society.
Honda’s paper, however, is unique amongst the others in that it does attempt to bring Biblical exegesis to bear upon a
social issue. While his exegesis is oen questionable5 , at least he is engaging in critical and Biblical reflection based on his
experiences of the world, something one might imagine was a prerequisite for a work to be considered ‘theology.’ Contrast this
with Kuribayashi’s initial paper which introduces and compares the life stories of Malcolm X, the Islamic black liberationist,
and Saiko Mankichi, a Buddhist buraku liberationist. Just when one expects the author to bring a theological reflection to
these two stories, the article ends. In his comment aer the presentation and reflection, the author notes that discussing these
two figures in a study group about “the issues and direction for mission in East Asia” “might have been a total mismatch”
(p. 27) but bizarrely justifies this decision in terms of a need to reject Barthian thought in Japanese theology.
As we mentioned in our introduction, Barth’s thought has exerted a strong influence over the development of Japanese the-
ology until the 1960s, and it is encouraging to see theologians attempting to break free from ‘German captivity’, but the poor
quality of theological investigation in this volume means the worrying questions do remain over the present state of Japanese
theological education, particularly amongst the social/liberal tradition. ere is not even the excuse that Japanese theology is
exploring uncharted territory: Odagaki (1997) cites four key themes of investigation (meontology, theology of religions, “be-
tweenness and duality” and indigenization) since the 1970s, and Miyahara (2008) traces other indigenous Christian thought,
such as Satō’s work on a theology of leisure.
Indeed, in assessing the impact of a work of theology, we can posit two possible areas of impact: either the work may have
an impact upon the praxis of Christians, or it can form the basis for further theology which does so. We take this position on
the basis of Bevans’s (2009) definition of theology:

eological knowledge cannot simply consist of intellectual clarification or religious affection. e knowledge
4
Gutiérrez (1988, pp. xxx–xxxi) describes how the theology of Latin America did not come out of the middle-class academic environment but was
developed primarily through the experience of the poor.
5
For instance, on p. 158ff. he sees John and Jesus’ calls for μετάνοια purely in terms of compassionate action, and denies any spiritual meaning; he
mentions John’s “baptism of μετάνοια” in Mark 1:4, yet removes it from its context of “for the remission of sin”—see discussion in Stein (2008, p45)

2
 that is the result of our theologizing is a knowledge that leads to the transformation both of ourselves and of our
world. (p. 54)
In other words, a theology which proceeds, in Park’s words, ‘in parallel…to society’ is not truly contextual, and a theology
which is ‘in parallel…to the Christian church’ cannot be regarded as truly theology. e authors of this work have attempted
to create a work of theology which is explicitly of contextual, rather than universal, application, and this is admirable, but the
impact of such a theology must be judged, in Bevans’ terms, by its applicability to transform praxis. e most one might say
about this book is that it provides arguments and example which could form the basis of a future transformative theology,
but currently it lacks both the cohesive structure required for application and the Scriptural or Traditional engagement and
reflection required to be considered as a basis for further theological investigation.
ere are many opportunities for developing works of indigenized Japanese theologies which will have the kind of prac-
tical or foundational impact we are expecting. In terms of impact upon Christian life, we will need to see the construction
of a Japanese hermeneutic, something presently untouched by native theologians, and further development of contextualized
ecclesiologies such as Fukuda’s (1992). For theologies of the second type, which will form the foundation of further thought,
see authors such as Miyahira (1997). Both of these were developed outside of Japan, in Western theological seminaries. Iron-
icallly, where ompson (2008, p5) sees the “agenda of academic theology” as “now significantly different from that of the
Churches” in Western theological circles, the situation in Japan is reversed—it appears to be that only outside of Japan can a
relevant, authentic and contextual Japanese theology be developed.

References
Bevans, S. B. (2009). An Introduction to eology in global perspective, Maryknoll, New York: Orbis Books.

Fukuda, M. (1992). Developing A Contextualized Church As A Bridge To Christianity in Japan, PhD thesis, Pasadena, Fuller
eological Seminary.

Furuya, Y. (1997). A history of Japanese theology, Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans.

Gutiérrez, G. (1988). A eology of Liberation: History, Politics and Salvation, London: SCM Press.

Hayashi, S. and Baldwin, F. (1988). Culture and management in Japan, Tokyo: Univ of Tokyo Press.

Kitamori, K. (2005). eology of the Pain of God, Eugene, Oregon: Pickwick Publications.

Kuribayashi, T. (1986). A theology of the crown of thorns: Towards the liberation of the Asian outcasts, PhD thesis, New York,
NY, Union eological Seminary.

Miyahara, N. (2008). Christian theology under feudalism, nationalism and democracy in Japan, in S. Kim (ed.), Christian
theology in Asia, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, chapter 6, pp. 109–128.

Miyahira, N. (1997). A Japanese Perspective on the Trinity, emelios 22: 39–51.

Odagaki, M. (1997). eology aer 1970, in Y. Furuya (ed.), A history of Japanese theology, Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans.

Phillips, J. M. (1981). From the Rising of the Sun: Christians and Society in Contemporary Japan, Maryknoll, New York: Orbis
Books.

Stein, R. H. (2008). Mark, Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Academic.

ompson, D. M. (2008). Introduction: mapping Asian Christianity in the context of world Christianity, in S. Kim (ed.),
Christian theology in Asia, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, chapter 1, pp. 3–21.

Watanabe, H., Kaneko, K. and Yoshida, M. (eds) (2004). Vitality of East Asian Christianity, Delhi: ISPCK.