Journal: Southeastern Theological Review
Volume: STR 11:2 (Fall 2020)
Article: The Christ Of The Mudswamp: Christology In Japanese Perspective
Author: Naomi Noguchi Reese

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The Christ Of The Mudswamp:
Christology In Japanese Perspective

Naomi Noguchi Reese

Trinity International University, Deerfield, IL

In this article, I examine Christology in Japanese perspective through the lens of Japanese novelist Shusaku Endo 遠藤周作 and illustrate how Endo’s Christ, who is weak and humble, is fitting to Japanese sensibility. To this end, I first present a brief summary of Endo’s life and the history of Japan, and then discuss his Christology, along with his metaphor of the mudswamp, which Endo uses to explore the relation between faith and culture in Japan. The essay concludes with a brief criticism of Endo’s Christology and some points of application for sharing Christ with Japanese. In the end, I argue that despite the shortcomings of Endo’s Christology, Endo succeeds in conceptualizing Christ as one who can fathom the contortions and suffering of the mudswamp’s inhabitants—Japanese. Christ in this context is therefore not the triumphant Christ of the West, but rather the meek and sorrowful Christ, the eternal companion of the weak and the wretched, the Christ who inhabits Japanese sensibility.

Key Words: Endo Shusaku 遠藤周作, eternal suffering companion, evangelism of Japanese, fumie 踏み絵, ill-fitting clothes, ineffectualness, Japanese Christology, Kakure Kirishitan 隠れ切支丹 (hidden Christians), maternal Christ, mudswamp

“Trample! Trample! I more than anyone know of the pain in your foot. Trample! It was to be trampled on by men that I was born into this world. It was to share men’s pain that I carried my cross.”1 These were the words of Jesus through a fumie 踏み絵2—a small bronze plaque bearing the image of Christ—spoken to Sebastian Rodrigues, as he was forced to step on the fumie by his captor, Nagasaki magistrate Inoue Masashige 井上政重.3

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This is the climactic scene from the Japanese novel Silence 沈黙.4 Silence tells the story of a young Portuguese Jesuit priest, Sebastian Rodrigues, who struggles to find the meaning of faith and the presence of God in the midst of severe persecution in seventeenth-century Japan. His face worn down due to constant trampling by recanting Christians, the image of Jesus that appears on the fumie speaks softly to an anguished Rodrigues.

Since its publication in 1966, Silence has captured the hearts and minds of Japanese people—both Christians and ...