The anguish of an alien:

Confessions of a Japanese Christian

by David L. Swain

D e e p River. into Japanese; another was Masahisa Uemura's Japanese

By Shusaku Endo. Translated by Van C. Gessel New translation of Christian hymns. Other factors were the
Directions, 224 pp., $19.95. translation of Russian literature by Shimei Futabatei, trans-
lations of German poetry by Ogai Mori and essays by To-
The Final Martyrs. hoku Kitamura, one of the first Japanese writers attracted to
By Shusaku Endo. Translated by Van C. Gessel. New Christianity. These factors all helped to shape what Kamei
Directions, 208 pp., $21.95. called the "spiritual revolution" that followed the political
and social revolution carried out by Meiji leaders.

W
HEN WORLD WAR II ended in 1945 there was not A spiritual revolution involves the emotions, and it was
a single active Christian writer in Japan. By 1972,, in the concomitant "emotional revolution" of the late Meiji
when the Christian Literature Society (Kyo Bun years that translated hymns played a crucial role, provid-
Kwan) began publishing its 18-volume anthology ing a new poetic language that allowed adequate expres-
of contemporary Christian literature, there were over 20. Of sion of the faith confession that lies at the heart of Chris-
the 12 novelists included in the series, seven are Catholic tian experience. From this language, says Kamei, a Bud-
and five Protestant; of five playwrights, dhist, the Japanese learned about the act
three are Catholic and two Protestant. The and meaning of confession, something
anthology was edited by novelists Rinzo Shi- which had no precedent in Japanese tradi-
ina, a Protestant, and Shusaku Endo, a Endo's first aim tion. Buddhism has a sense of penitence,
Catholic who is undoubtedly the most popu- as a writer but nothing like the awakening of self in
lar and widely read Christian writer in Japan. was to make the modern European sense. From the
In a recent issue of Japan Christian 64 hymns and the Bible, and from the church
Quarterly, Kaname Takado, publisher of far-away" attendance common among young intel-
the anthology, describes "a Japanese Chris- Christianity lectuals at the time, aspiring Meiji writers
tian writer s life and work, in a 'heathen' land came to realize that, as Kamei says, there is
where Christians are less than 1 percent of
something such a thing as "the freedom to confess."
the population, as a threefold struggle: to be close and Kamei also realized that it is impossible
a Christian, to be a Japanese and to perse- familiar to transpose meaning fully from one lan-
vere as a writer." That more than 20 Chris- guage to another. Words in each language
tian writers had emerged from this struggle
to the have nuances that are linked to native con-
was in itself "a miracle," Takado said. Japanese. cepts and customs. The appeal of transla-
The pre-World War II generation of tions is "the spell they cast on us by the mi-
Christian writers faced the same complex rage-like charm of taking the language,
struggle. With the exception of influential Christian apolo- thought and feelings of another place and people and
gist Kanzo Uchimura, who had little use for literature any- grafting them into the life and pulse of our own." Kamei
way, all others lost the battle. Their faith eventually gave claims that "excellent translations of the Bible and hymns
way to a kind of humanism, or to a special mode of thought possessed the power to penetrate the hearts of Japanese
and style known in Japan as "naturalism." None of the people and actually evoked responses of faith."
Christian writers in the 1945-95 period, however, has re- Along with the reformation of language born of the
nounced the faith. Takado attributes their survival to a emotional and spiritual revolutions, there was another
clearer grasp of and commitment to the faith. crucial formative factor: the freedom of romantic love. In
Endo s readiness to confess gnawing doubts about his the strict Confucian world of premodern Japan the
own faith or faithfulness suggest an affinity with his prewar straightforward literary treatment of sexual matters was
predecessors. While genuine, this affinity is partly one of taboo, and open treatment of sexuality did not appear in
style, a confessional style that issued from the Christian literature until after World War II. But the reality of ro-
encounter with Japan of the Meiji years (1868-1912). A mantic love, so widely acknowledged in prewar literature,
brief look at that encounter may be useful to appreciating provoked a heightened sense of sin. This gave rise to a se-
Endo s tenacity. rious tension between religion and literature, then to the
Literary critic Katsuichiro Kamei has identified five de-
velopments in the Meiji era that helped shape modern David L. Swain is a freelance writer and retired United
Japanese literature. The first was the translation of the Bible Methodist missionary in Japan.

CHRISTIAN CENTURY November22-29,1995 1120

exaggerated tendency among a large coterie of writers to
dwell on the ugly and harsh dimensions of human nature,
the trend known as naturalism.
S
OME OF the writers immersed in this naturalist
mode seemed grossly egocentric and self-indul-
gent. Yet at its best this mode became a secularized
tell-it-like-it-is confessional style that contempo-
rary Japanese writers have adopted as a way of attesting to
their own sincerity. Endo has made himself a master of this
style: much of his writing is autobiographical in its source
if not in its specifics. What sets Endo apart from prewar
writers is that he uses the confessional expression of his
doubts and failings as a way of indicating how doggedly de-
termined he is to hang on to his faith. This point is particu-
larly evident in the 11 stories compiled in The Final Mar-
tyrs and in the novel Deep River, ably translated by
Brigham Young University scholar Van C. Gessel. (Deep
River has recently been made into a film by Kei Kumai.)
In a 1973 essay, Endo described his sense of distance
from both Christianity and its European cultural setting.
At his mother's insistence and his sister's bidding, he was
baptized at age 11. He enjoyed an untroubled boyhood
until he entered prep school, where he dis-
covered that his faith was a "ready-made
suit that did not fit." At the university he
majored in French literature and read Endo uses
many European "conversion accounts." his confessions
They seemed to him like a return to one's
hometown. By contrast, his own journey of
ofdoubt
faith was not a homeward-bound journey; and failure
instead, it filled him with "the anguish of an as a way
alien." The first Japanese student to study
overseas after the war, he was in France for
of indicating
two and a half years and his loneliness was his determination plies, he too will someday make it home.
acute. But his main problem was his in- to hang
tense sense of distance not only from Eu-
ropean culture and sensibilities, but even onto
more from Westernized Christianity his faith.
Hence his first aim as an aspiring writer
was to make "far-away Christianity" into
something close and familiar for the Japanese.
In this endeavor he needed to develop a suitable style,
and in his first medium-length novel, White Man (1955), he
apparently found the key, for it won him the coveted Akuta-
gawa Prize for promising new writers. The crowning success
of this initial phase of his writing was Silence (1966), the story
of a foreign missionary in Nagasaki during the early 17th-
century persecution of the Christians. The missionary's in-
herited image of Christ is of a Jesus of majesty and power, an
orderly Jesus who is himself governed by order. The hero,
like many of his Japanese associates, is forced by his perse-
cutors to tread on afumie plaque with an image of Christ or
E
the Holy Mother Mary. Refusing to step on the plaque
meant torture and death; the alternative was betrayal and
renunciation of faith. The threatened hero sees in thefumie
an image worn smooth by the footsteps of broken-spirited
apostates: the face of a Christ who suffers as we suffer.
Endo credits critic Jun Eto with having clearly seen that
1121
"the face of Jesus on the fumie is the mother's face in
Japan." He notes Erich Fromms distinction between
mother-religion and father-religion. In the latter, God is to
be feared; he gets angry, judges and punishes. Mother-re-
ligion is different: God treats us as a mother treats a bad
child. She forgives and suffers with us. For this distinction
Endo need not have relied on Fromm alone. Most East
Asian countries have a strong shamanistic tradition where-
in the gods, often female, are nurturing and forgiving. In
contrast to this is the enduring and dominant Confucian
tradition, which is more interested in order than in deity;
like a traditional father, it is ethically rigid and demanding,
and fully capable of anger and punishment.
In any case, Endo found that European Christianity
overemphasized the paternal, judgmental aspect of reli-
gion, and neglected the maternal, nurturing, forgiving side
of faith. Silence marked the end of the period in which he
focused on rectifying this imbalance.
Most of Endo's themes recur throughout his works, as
evidenced in The Final Martyrs. The tide story concerns
the "far-away Christianity" resisted by Japanese culture,
and the pain of apostasy. "Adieu" reflects the alienation he
felt while studying in France. In "Shadows" and "The Last
Supper" we find the compassion of Jesus
for sinful weaklings. Endo's confessional
style is particularly vivid in several stories
that draw on his childhood in China, and
his parents' divorce in 1933. The theme of
paternal-maternal tension underlies
"Heading Home," a story of his mother's
funeral. A Japanese priest serving in the
Philippines returns home, a stolen dog
finds his way home and now his mother has
headed home (heaven). Maybe, Endo im-
The more forthrightly autobiographical "A
Sixty-Year-Old Man" suggests Endo's
struggle to be a faithful Christian/Japanese/
writer by exposing his vague temptations to
flirt with teenage girls at the very time he
was trying to rewrite his Life ofJesus. Only
"The Box" touches on the problem of indigenous world-
view: it depicts a sincere European woman, trapped in
wartime Japan and desperate for food, who is cruelly be-
trayed by the secret police—an ugly picture of a supreme
state that renders all else relative and thus dispensable.
The stories of The Final Martyrs, with publication
dates ranging from 1959 to 1985, are a good sampling of
his style and themes. But there is no distinct thread that in-
dicates Endo's own consciousness of the evolution of his
work. The inclusion of an essay like "The Anguish of an
Alien" would have served this purpose well.
NDO HAS labored to depict Jesus as one who is
not the all-powerful, majestic Jesus, but one who
stands with us an ever-faithful companion. He
undertook seven visits to Israel with a twofold
goal: to create a portrait of Jesus that would ring true to
Japanese readers, and to construct a background that drew
CHRISTIAN CENTURY November22-29,1995
on more than his own subjective feelings. The result was a
novel, Around the Dead Sea, and a critical biography, The
Life of Jesus, both issued in 1973.
What impressed Endo most during his sojourns in Is-
rael was the absence of rivers like those he knew in Japan.
The one river that looks like a river, he said, is the Jordan;
but it is-too small to be called a river, and it is framed by
bleak wilderness, not fields and villages. It falls short of the
river as the image of the flow of humanity. But then he vis-
ited India, where he saw people burn their dead and throw
the ashes into the Ganges. "I also saw them lay the corpse
of a child in a small boat and set it adrift in that mother
river/ The land that gave birth to the religion in which
Jesus was brought up is a land without a mother river. I
think perhaps Jesus himself suffered from this lack."
If it sounds audacious to suggest that Jesus suffered a
cultural handicap, consider this: Endo suggests that Jesus
found a substitute for a mother river in the Sea of Galilee.
It was from this lake region that Jesus drew together his
community of followers—those who would betray and for-
sake him, but then become men of conviction and boldly
spread their faith in him.
Deep River grew from Endo's discovery of the Ganges
and from his effort to rediscover a face of Jesus that
would appeal to the "pagan" sensibilities of the Japanese.
His confessional instincts produce in the novel a gener-
ous range of Japanese characters. They are brought to-
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gether when they happen to join the same sightseeing
tour of India. Isobe has recently lost his wife to cancer,
and is on a vague and somewhat guilty search for her in
some reincarnated form. Mitsuko is a bitchy divorcee
who has faked everything in life, including love; she has
no admitted goal except a curious longing to find a man
named Otsu, whom she once seduced. Kiguchi seeks ex-
piation; during a desperate retreat in Burma during
Japan's Asian war, he had eaten the flesh of a fallen com-
rade. The tour guide Enami came to India to study reli-
gion, but he works as a guide to make a living; he is both
the prism that provides the reader with insights into
India's realities and the mirror that reflects the crassness
of culturally illiterate tourists.
While each member of the party finds some solution to
his or her problem, the story focuses on the strange re-
union of Mitsuko with Otsu, whose former awkwardness
as a student is now magnified by his status as a Catholic
priest—or his nonstatus, for he is constantly reprimanded
by his superiors for some discrepancy or perversion of tra-
ditional doctrine or practice. An outcast from his own re-
ligious community, Otsu locates the corpses of the poor
who have no one to carry their bodies to the cremation
site, and casts their ashes into the Ganges. He does this
because he believes that if "that man" were here, he
would do the same.
The Japanese tourists are appalled that he puts the
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ashes of the dead into a river teem-
ing with worshipers who not only
bathe in but also drink from its wa-
ters. Mitsuko is equally repelled by
Otsu's weird calling, for she sees
Otsu s God as impotent and pathet-
ic. Yet in the end she wades into the
murky waters.
Mitsuko turned her body in
the direction of the rivers flow.
"This is not a real prayer. Fm
just pretending to pray," she ra-
tionalized, embarrassed at her-
self. "Like my fabrications of
love, this is just a fabricated
prayer."
At the end of her range of vi-
sion, the river gently bent, and
there the light sparkled, as
though it were eternity itself.
J have learned, though, that
there is a river of humanity.
Though I still don't know what
lies at the end of that flowing
river. But I feel as though Yve
started to understand what I

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 was yearning for through all the many mistakes of my
past.
She clutched her fist tightly and searched for the fig-
ure of Otsu beside the funeral pyres.
What I can believe in now is the sight of all these
people, each carrying his or her own individual bur-
dens, praying at this deep river. At some point, the
words Mitsuko muttered to herself were transmuted
into the words of a prayer. I believe that the river em-
braces these people and carries them away. A river of
humanity. The sorrows of this deep river of humanity.
And I am part of it.
She did not know to whom she directed this manu-
factured prayer. Perhaps it was towards the Onion
[Otsus playful word for
God] that Otsu pursued.
Or perhaps it was towards
something great and eter-
nal that could not be limit-
ed to the Onion.
lin solo that plays the tune of only one aspect of [our]
inner self. Rather it should be an orchestra that responds
to all the chords of [our] being, just because it is [ours],
good or bad/'
If literature is to deal with the fullness of humanity,
then it must be able to go beyond psychological novels, or
those which tackle the unconscious. It must forge its way
into a third dimension: "the territory of demons." Endo
does not boast that his work always gets into the demonic,
but he feels that his efforts to do so set his work apart. If it
does, it is because, as he says, "I have to read the Bible. It
is the supreme work of literature. It excels Greek tragedy
and other drama in describing man's struggle with the
transcendent." •

When Silence was first

published, its harshest crit-
ics were Catholics. Deep
River may also spark criti-
cism, for Endo suggests that
the many faces of God are
seen not only in Christianity
and Judaism but also in Hin-
duism, Buddhism and Islam.
Worse, he has embraced
universalism: the whole of
humanity is ultimately em-
braced by the eternal arms
of the mother river. Accep-
tance of Endo's version of
Indian spirituality is also un-
certain in the pragmatic,
materialist ethos of Japan.
Still, an emphasis on the
awesome mystery of god-
head and the wondrous am-
biguity of humanity may be
welcomed in a jaded post-
modern world.
That, however, is not
Endo's primary concern. He
has always been suspicious
of the term "Christian litera-
ture," for that generally
turns out to be mere apolo-
getics. There is only litera-
ture, and sometimes the
Storyteller, Interpreter,
writer is a baptized Chris-
tian. "If the Christianity that
I believe in, that I am trying
to believe in, that I want to
believe in all my life, is really
the truth, then it is not a vio-
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1125 CHRISTIAN CENTURY November22-29,1995

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