Japanese Perspectives on the Death of Christ: Ch5. Endō Shūsaku and the Eternal Companionship of Christ

Japanese Perspectives on the Death of Christ: A Study in Contextualized Christology

Japanese Perspectives on the Death of Christ: 

A Study in Contextualized Christology 

(Regnum Studies in Mission) Paperback – August 10, 2021
by How Chuang Chua (Author)
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Writing with an international theological background and his experience as a missionary in Japan, How Chuang Chua presents an extremely insightful study in contextualized Christology. The careful expositions of the writings of Kitamori, Endo, and Koyama are a feast of insights into Japanese culture and theology. This book, however, is far more than an exposition of their thought. Dr. Chua also evaluates their writings for biblical fidelity and compares them to classical theories of the atonement. Their thoughts are also probed for their missiological relevance. This book brims with cultural and contextual insights.

Print length

308 pages
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Editorial Reviews

About the Author


How Chuang was born and raised in Singapore, and came to faith at the age of 9. He received his theological education at Regent College, and subsequently obtained his PhD from Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. How Chuang and his wife, Kaori, joined OMF International in 1998, and were sent from Singapore to serve as missionaries in Japan. They were involved in church planting in Hokkaido. How Chuang also served as the Dean of Students at Hokkaido Bible Institute, and as an adjunct lecturer at Japan Bible Seminary. In 2015, he was called home to be with the Lord, leaving behind his wife and his daughter, Airi.

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Table of Contents 

 

Preface 

 

1. Research Problem 

 

2. Theological and Missiological Prolegomena 

 

3. The Historical and Theological Contexts of Japanese Christianity 

 

4. Kitamori Kazō and the Pain of God 

 

5. Endō Shūsaku and the Eternal Companionship of 

Christ 

 

6. Koyama Kōsuke and the Crucified Mind 

 

7. Theological and Methodological Evaluation 

 

Epilogue: Some Missiological Reflections 

 

Bibliography

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5. Endō Shūsaku and the Eternal Companionship of Christ 

 

In this chapter, we shall explore the theological perspectives of Endō Shūsaku, focusing on his understanding of the meaning and significance of the death of 

Christ. Besides Endō, there are very few novelists in Japan whose works are consistently infused with Christological themes. In the main, the Cross for Endō is 

the supreme expression of Jesus’ identification with suffering humanity. As a result of his passion, Christ becomes reborn in the hearts of men and women as 

their eternal companion, drawing alongside them in their every trial and suffering. 

Endō Shūsaku 遠藤周作 (1923-96) is one of three Christian novelists whose works are widely read throughout Japan, by both Christians and non-Christians 

alike.¹ Along with his fellow Catholic, Sono Ayako (1931-), the wife of one of Endō’s closest friends, another well-known novelist, Miura Shumon, and the 

Protestant writer Miura Ayako (1922-99), Endō characteristically uses the medium of the novel to explore the intricate, and often frustrating, struggles between a 

Christian faith and Japanese culture.² Given that these themes are quite alien in a country where Christians constitute less than one percent of the population, the 

wide readership of their works is indeed quite remarkable.³ Of the three writers, Endō is without a doubt the most well-known. 

Endō’s popularity as a novelist is not only restricted to his native land. Just as Kitamori is the best-known Japanese theologian outside of Japan, Endō is, in all 

probability, the best-known Japanese novelist outside of Japan, considered by many to be even more famous than 1994 Nobel Laureate Ōe Kenzaburō. Endō’s 

works have been translated into no less than twenty-five languages, many with glowing endorsements by such literary luminaries as Graham Greene, Irving 

Howe, and John Updike appearing on the books’ dust jackets. In a memorial eulogy composed three years after Endō’s death, American literary critic Jewel 

Brooker recalls that Endō was revered by many in the West as “Japan’s greatest living writer,” who left his legacy as “one of the [twentieth] century’s finest writers” 

(1999: 41). Among Endo’s award-winning works are Shiroi hito, kiiroi hito (White Person, Yellow Person) (1955);⁴ Umi to dokuyaku (The Sea and Poison) (1958); 

Obakasan (Wonderful Fool) (1959); Kazan (Volcano) (1960); Watakushi ga suteta onna (The Girl I Left Behind) (1964); Ryūgaku (Foreign Studies) (1965); 

Chinmoku (Silence) (1966);⁵ Shikai no hotori (On the Shores of the Dead Sea); Kuchibue o fuku toki (When I Whistle) (1974); Samurai (The Samurai) (1980); 

Sukyandaru (Scandal) (1986); and Fukai kawa (Deep River) (1994). Except for White Person, Yellow Person and On the Shores of the Dead Sea, the other novels 

on this list have all been translated into English, not a few by Roman Catholic missionaries. 

Besides novels, Endō has also written many short stories, some professedly autobiographical, such as Haha naru mono (Mothers) (1969); Watakushi no 

mono (Mine) (1972); Gojussai no otoko (A Fifty-year-old Man) (1976); and Rokujussai no otoko (A Sixty-year-old Man) (1983).⁶ All in all, Endō’s literary output is 

prodigious, with no less than two hundred and thirty published works, including novels, short stories, essays, and plays. 

Besides literature, Endō was passionately involved in drama. He founded the theatrical company Kiza 樹座 in 1968, which he directed until his death. Besides 

performing frequently within Japan, the troupe staged two major international performances: Carmen in New York in 1980 and Madame Butterfly in London in 

1986.⁷ 

 

The Theological Dimension of Endō’s Writings 

 

Sometime in the middle of what had been a prodigious career as a novelist, Endō began to write serious non-fictional works centering on spiritual and theological 

themes, including Iesu no shōgai (A Life of Jesus) (1973); Watakushi no Iesu (My Jesus) (1976); Nihonjin wa kirisutokyō o shinjirareru ka (Can the Japanese 

Believe in Christianity?) (1977); Kirisuto no tanjō (The Birth of Christ) (1978); and Watakushi ni totte kami to wa (What God Is to Me) (1983). Through these 

quasi-theological treatises, Endō seeks to provide a way out of the dilemmas of faith raised in his novels by reconstructing the Christian faith in a manner 

accessible to his fellow countrymen and women.⁸ 

Perhaps more than anyone else – certainly more than academic theologians and philosophers – Endō has contributed to the exploration of a religious vision 

that seeks to be both Christian and Japanese, and this he has done creatively through the field of literature. A recurring theme in Endo’s novels and non-fictional works is theological dissonance – between European Christianity and Japanese religiosity, Western monotheism and Asian pantheism, and between religious triumphalism and the inescapable reality of deep suffering. Unwilling to renounce his personal Catholic faith, and at the same time unable to shake off the 

cultural underpinnings of that faith, Endō strives to find a way to reconcile Christian faith and Japanese culture. Mark Williams’ description of Endō’s works as “a literature of reconciliation” is indeed fitting, although it must be said that Williams uses that label primarily to highlight the process of growth and “reconciliation of the self” invariably experienced by the various protagonists in Endō’s novels (1999: 57). 

In any case, Endō’s writings clearly reflect his lifelong struggle with the diametrically opposite religious values of East and West. In almost every one of his novels, these polar opposites are masterfully played out, but left unresolved. Yet, despite these almost unbearable tensions that stubbornly refuse to go away, 

Endō’s protagonists always find redemption through an unexpected personal encounter with a compassionate Christ figure and, in the process, come to terms 

with the harsh reality, thereby experiencing the growth and inner reconciliation that Williams talks about. 

However, in his last novel Deep River written nearly thirty years after Silence, Endō surprises his readers by allowing the cultural and theological tensions that 

have so characterized his preceding works to dissolve altogether in a religious vision that is unabashedly pluralist, very much resembling John Hick’s. It would 

not be off the mark to say that Endō’s attempt to contextualize Christianity in Japan began with a clear, although somewhat unconventional, faith in Christ but 

ended with a syncretistic belief in “a god with many faces” (Endō, 1994: 201).⁹ Even then, in Deep River, as in virtually all his preceding works, Endō could not 

hide his deep and abiding fascination with the person of Jesus Christ, especially with the image of his shrunken, emaciated body on the cross. The confession of 

Ōtsu, the failed seminarian in Deep River, is in all probability Endō’s own: “I am being held captive by Jesus” (Endō, 1994: 310). When Endō published Silence in 

1966, he had already come to the conviction that the only means by which Christianity could take root in Japanese soil is for people to come to a new, existential encounter with Jesus Christ: not the powerful and resplendent Jesus as presented by the European missionaries, but rather a reversed Jesus who knows nothing but utter weakness, pain, humiliation, and ultimately death on the cross. It is not a coincidence then that many of Endō’s novels are sustained by the underlying Christological themes of suffering, sacrifice, and servanthood. Unlikely Christ figures that offer solace and comfort to the weak and suffering are commonplace, 

for example, the awkward, horse-faced Frenchman Gaston Bonaparte in Wonderful Fool, the jilted, loveless country girl Mitsu who dedicates her life to serve in a 

leprosarium in The Girl I Left Behind, the trampled-on bronze image of the powerless Christ in Silence, even the mynah bird in Deep River,¹⁰ or the mongrel with 

“moist, grieving eyes” in Kagebōshi (Shadows) (Endo, 1993 [1968]: 36). 

Endō is by no means an uncontroversial figure among Japanese Christians. This is hardly surprising given his rather unconventional views that are consistently 

at odds with official Catholic dogma. Once again, Endō expresses himself through the character of Ōtsu in Deep River: “All my life I have always been 

reprimanded by the Church” (Endō, 1994: 299). Here is a telling incident. Shortly after the publication of the highly-acclaimed Silence, Endō was cross-examined 

by a panel of Catholic priests at Sophia University in Tokyo in an open forum described later by his wife Junko as resembling an “inquisition” (Endō Junko, 1999: 

146). Two years before his death, in an interview with Jesuit theologian William Johnston – the translator of Silence – Endō again complained that his works 

constantly got into trouble with his fellow Catholics (Johnston, 1994: 18). If Endō’s works could arouse such discomfort among Japanese Catholics, one should 

not be surprised that evangelical Protestants would express a far greater hostility toward Endō for what they view as his extreme theological liberalism.¹¹ In spite 

of the religious controversy generated by his works, it would not be wise to dismiss Endō summarily. However one may regard them, his works are seminal, not 

only in the field of Japanese literature, but also in religious studies. This provides a good enough reason for us, through this chapter, to embark on a sustained 

study of Endō from an evangelical perspective. 

 

A Methodological Note 

 

A word on methodology is in order here. In literary criticism, one faces the immediate dilemma as to whether one could infer the true theological intent of the 

author through the characters that they have constructed in the novel. After all, as Kitamori wittingly comments, a shōsetsu 小説 (novel, literally “small theory”) 

is not a daisetsu 大説 (literally, “big theory) (1991: 331).¹² In other words, Endō is writing literature, not theology as such. Williams (2003: 296) says it well: 

“Stories could not be shaped to conform to a specific authorial theology – for, as authors, they [are] in no position, either to take charge of their characters or to 

intervene arbitrarily in their destinies.”¹³ Williams’ point is well taken. Yet, it is instructive to note that as a Catholic writer, Endō’s expressed aim is to “find God 

on the streets of Shinjuku and Shibuya, districts which seem so far removed from Him” (Endō, 2000a/12: 381, cited in Williams, 2003: 300). 

The tension between theological veracity and artistic integrity perhaps can never be fully resolved. But all is not lost. As mentioned earlier, Endō has also 

produced substantial works of non-fiction through which his theological position is clearly expressed and defended. Three such works are of particular interest 

for our purposes: A Life of Jesus (1973); My Jesus (1976); and The Birth of Christ (1978). These three works, taken together, spell out explicitly the latent 

Christological assumptions underlying Endō’s fiction, and offer us an unambiguous understanding of Endō’s views on the person and mission of Jesus. 

Moreover, a literary analysis of Endō’s fiction reveals that many of his novels indeed contain autobiographical or semi-autobiographical elements. Van C. 

Gessel, who translated The Samurai into English, makes this insightful observation: 

 

The scene in The Samurai in which Hasekura is baptized in Madrid is an eerily accurate reproduction of the ceremony in which Endō participated at the age of 

eleven. Like Hasekura, Endō did not choose Christianity of his own volition, but initially had it thrust upon him, and for some time he felt very distant from it. 

(1982: 272) 

 

There are at least two characters in Endō’s novels who are writers by profession, and who have undergone three major surgeries, very much like Endō himself: 

Suguro, who appears in the short story Mine and in the later novel Scandal, and Numada in Deep River, whose childhood experiences in Dalian, including the 

subsequent divorce of his parents, were undoubtedly Endō’s own. It is obvious that Endō has projected his personal thoughts, struggles and experiences onto so 

many of his characters. Indeed, as we listen to the voice of these characters, we get the distinct impression that we are listening to Endō himself. 

Endō, however, is not doing something original here. The fact is that literary works are never produced in vacuo, for every piece of creative work bears the 

marks of the writer’s own life experiences. In the case of Endō, the formative years of his life from his childhood, including his conversion to Christianity, up to 

the time he returned to Japan from his studies abroad are crucial for consideration. A summary account of that period is therefore given in the next section. 

Following that, we will provide a chronological overview of Endō’s key writings and, in the process, trace the development of a discernible theological theme that 

runs through virtually all of his works. This is necessary for our purposes since Endō is by vocation not a theologian but a writer. As such, his views on the 

Christian faith and on Christ in particular, can only be appropriately appraised within his total literary context. Only after we have attained a level of understanding 

of his literature will we be able to explicate the core theological themes that underlie his writings. We will look specifically at Endō’s views on the nature of God 

and the person of Jesus Christ, and discuss his perspective on the Cross against the backdrop of his broader understanding of God and of the meaning and 

significance of the life of Jesus. 

Of course, one needs to be careful not to treat a person’s ideas as if they are static. We certainly see in Endō a religious vision which was constantly evolving 

throughout his life. Nevertheless, there are several identifiable themes that consistently appear in his works, particularly the core theological and Christological beliefs that form the bedrock of his religious vision. However, considering the unexpected but definite turn that Endō took toward the later part of his life in the direction of syncretistic pluralism, it is only appropriate to round up this chapter by taking a brief look at Deep River, his last novel, and discuss how his construal of the relationship between Christianity and the other religions fits in with his final religious vision in general and his Christology in particular. 

 

Endō’s Formative Years¹⁴ 

 

Early Years and Conversion (1923-1941) 

 

Endō was born on March 27, 1923, in Tokyo, six months before the Great Kanto Earthquake. He was the younger of two boys. His father was an employee at 

Yasuda Bank (now Fuji Bank), and his mother was a violinist by training. At the age of three, his father’s work took the whole family to Dalian – Dairen in 

Japanese – in the Japanese-occupied territory of Manchuria in Northeast China. When Endō was ten, his parents divorced, and his mother brought her two sons 

back to Japan to live with her sister in Kobe. Suffering from the shame and social rejection of a divorce, Endō’s mother found solace in the devout faith of her 

sister, and soon converted to Catholicism. Shortly after that, Endō and his brother gave in to the persistent urging of his mother and aunt, and were baptized on 

Easter Sunday at the Shukugawa Catholic Church in the neighboring city of Nishinomiya. Endō had just turned eleven. He was given the baptismal name Paul, 

but never used it. 

Throughout his teenage years, Endō faithfully attended Mass every morning, and at one point even considered the clerical vocation. Years later, however, Endō 

would reflect on his baptism as a frivolous event, an act taken to please his mother than of his own volition (2000a/10: 374). This notwithstanding, Endō could 

not deny the decisive sacramental imprint that his baptism had on his life: he felt a deep change within, although a very uncomfortable one. In an early essay 

entitled Awanai yōfuku (“Ill-fitting clothes”), Endō compares his conversion experience to donning a set of ill-fitting clothing: 

 

About ten years after my baptism, it dawned upon me for the first time that Christianity was like a western suit that my mother and aunt made me wear when I was growing up […]. I suffered from the fact that this western suit did not fit. Some parts were too baggy, and others too loose. To my body this was a western 

suit and not an eastern dress. How often have I thought of throwing away this suit! How often have I tried to wear something which fitted my body […]. But I 

was unable to discard this western suit because it was given to me by those who loved me. And it was also this suit that sustained me and gave me strength 

through my growing up years […]. I did not mind the criticisms from others about my western suit because I had nothing else to wear. (Endō, 2006b: 189; cf. 

Endo, 1974 [1973]: 179; 2000a/10: 370) 

 

Elsewhere, Endō likens his faith to an arranged marriage, a forced union with a woman decided by his parents (Endo, 1974 [1973]: 179). As Philip Yancey notes 

with characteristic insight, “[Endō] could not live with this arranged wife and he could not live without her. Meanwhile, she kept loving him, and to his surprise 

eventually he grew to love her in return” (2001: 277). Despite the intensity of the inner conflict between his faith and his cultural identity which he had felt so 

keenly from the time he was baptized, by the time he entered adulthood, Endō could never deny that Catholicism had become an inseparable part of him. When 

he became a writer, he resolved to let this ill-fitting faith of his direct his entire literary career. 

 

The fact that it [Catholicism] had penetrated me so deeply in my youth was a sign, I thought, that it had, in part at least, become coextensive with me. Still, there 

was always the feeling in my heart that it was something borrowed, and I began to wonder what my real self was like. This I think is the ‘mud swamp’ Japanese 

in me. From the time I first began to write novels even to this present day, this confrontation of my Catholic self with the self that lies underneath has, like an 

idiot’s constant refrain, echoed and reechoed in my work. I felt that I had to in some way reconcile the two. (cited in Translator’s Preface to Silence, Endo, 1982 

[1966]: 13, emphasis added; cf. Endō, 2006b: 190)¹⁵ 

 

Endō never did well in school, and was therefore not able to enter university immediately after high school. However, even when he was as young as eight, the 

precocious boy displayed his penchant for writing when his composition was published in the local newspaper in Dalian. When he finished high school, Endō 

decided to pursue a literary career. However, it was not merely for the sake of writing. Endō resolved to use literature as a means to develop a clearer 

understanding of how religious faith and culture are shaped by each other. Endō then moved from Kobe to live with his father in Tokyo where he hoped to acquire 

a university education. It was an emotionally difficult decision for Endō, especially since his father had remarried. Endō was never quite able to forgive his father 

for the pain that he had caused his mother by divorcing her. 

 

Literary Studies in Tokyo (1941-50) 

 

It was in Tokyo that the eighteen-year-old Endō published his first critical essay, Keijijō teki kami, shūkyō teki kami (Metaphysical God, Religious God) 

(Mase-Hasegawa, 2004: 171). Two years later, he enrolled and was accepted into the preparatory school of the Keio University to study literature. The decision 

caused him to be thrown out of the house by his father who had wanted him to study medicine.¹⁶ This incident was to have a profound impact on Endō’s works. 

Endō then moved into a dormitory under the mastership of the Catholic philosopher Yoshimitsu Yoshihiko who affirmed his literary gifts and encouraged him in 

his reading of Japanese literature. 

In any case, Endō’s studies at Keio were disrupted by the Pacific War. He was at first consigned to work in the munitions factory at Kawasaki. Then he 

developed pleurisy, which saved him from active military conscription. When the war ended, Endō was able to resume his studies. Around this time, he stumbled 

across a book at a second-hand bookstore that was to change his life. The book, Furansu bungaku sobyō (A Sketch of French Literature), was in fact written by 

Satō Saku, a professor of French Literature at Keio. The book captivated Endō, and he read it through in one sitting, and consequently decided to study French 

Literature under Satō at Keio. The twenty-two-year-old also bought a French grammar book and immersed himself in the language for a whole month.¹⁷ When the 

school year started, Endō was disappointed to learn that Satō had gone on a year’s medical leave from the university. Undeterred, Endō wrote a letter and asked if 

Satō would tutor him privately. To his delight, Satō agreed. “Professor Sato’s residence became my university”, writes a grateful Endō in retrospect (2006a: 119). 

Through Satō, Endō was inducted into the world of twentieth-century French Catholic literature. Endō graduated from Keio in 1948,¹⁸ and over the next two years 

took up editorial work for two publishing houses. 

 

Graduate Studies in France and Ensuing Illness (1950-1955) 

 

Two years later, Endō was chosen by the Japanese government to receive a scholarship to study modern Catholic literature in France, becoming the first Japanese to study abroad after the war. ¹⁹ With three other Japanese, the twenty-seven-year-old Endō set sail for France on June 4, 1950 on board the Marseillaise. It was on this ship where Endō first felt discriminated against (see Endō, 2000a/10: 376-91). The Japanese were relegated to a fourth-class cabin, and were not allowed to leave the ship at any port en route. 

This is understandable since the war had only recently ended, and the four Japanese were on board the vessel of a former enemy nation. Yet, as Williams rightly notes, 

 

[T]he heat and the stench that these “pioneer” Japanese students were forced to endure in their fourth-class berth deep in the bowels of the Marseille [sic] 

represented a humiliating experience and one that was to reinforce the sense of distance between East and West that Endō and so many of his generation had 

come to experience as a result of events of the Pacific War and the ensuing Occupation. (1999: 59) 

 

The arduous sea journey lasted more than a month. Endō then found himself in the academically enriching environment of the University of Lyons²⁰ where he 

was exposed to the best of French Catholic literature in a way that would never have been possible in his native Japan. He read extensively the works of François 

Mauriac, Julien Green, and George Bernanos. Yet, ironically, he became increasingly baffled by the inaccessibility of European culture to him as a foreigner. Being 

the only Japanese at Lyons further intensified his sense of loneliness. Moreover, Japan and France had still to conclude a peace treaty, and no Japanese embassy 

had yet been opened. Endo describes his experience in this way, “[T]he longer I stayed [in France] the more I felt I was bumping against a high wall. I lost all 

desire to enter the study room” (1974 [1973]: 180). Richard Durfee suggests, not unreasonably, that the source of Endō’s frustration lay in the fact that Endō had 

gone to France “as a Christian going to a Christian country, with the assumption that he would find at least as much congruity for himself there as he did being a 

Christian in Japan – a non-Christian country” (1989: 44). It would not be hard to imagine how Endō must have been treated, given the anti-Japanese propaganda 

churned out continually by the Allies during the war so recently concluded. In any case, the antagonism and alienation that Endō experienced during his three 

years in France “greatly aggravated the intensity of his internal conflict over being a Japanese Christian” (Durfee, 1989: 44). The fresh realization that he was now 

in the land of a former enemy nation and practicing their religion must have affected him adversely. It would be hard for any Japanese, let alone a Japanese 

Christian, not to feel like an outcast under these immediate post-war circumstances. 

Not surprisingly, things came to a head when Endō went into depression. After two and a half years in Lyons, he moved to Paris. However, his health collapsed 

and he had to be hospitalized for a pleurisy relapse. Realizing that he was not in any position to continue his studies, Endō returned to Japan in early 1953. That 

whole year in Japan, he was either lying in bed at home or receiving treatment in the hospital. The following year, 1954, Endō recovered sufficiently to assume a 

lectureship at Bunka Gakuin, a fine arts college in Tokyo. 

 

The Growth of a Theological Theme through Endō’s Key Literary Works (1955-1994) 

 

Endō’s distinguished literary career began at the age of thirty-two with the publication of the widely-acclaimed White Person, Yellow Person shortly after he 

returned from France, and ended forty years later with the novel Deep River. Over the course of his literary development, one can discern the growth of a 

theological theme within it, which we shall explore in this section. This theme may simply be described as contextualization, to borrow the language from 

missiological literature. Within this theme, four chronological phases, each with its own theological emphasis, are distinguishable: (1) identifying Japan as a 

spiritual mudswamp, (2) exploring the possibility of salvation through the experience of unconditional love, (3) appropriating the concept of the eternal 

companionship of the suffering Christ, and (4) realizing the vision of a plural religious reality. In the next section, we will discuss these sub-themes by examining, 

albeit briefly, some of Endō’s key works. 

 

The “Mudswamp” of Japan 

Shiroi hito, kiiroi hito 白い人、黄色い人 (White Person, Yellow Person) (1955) 

Umi to dokuyaku 海と毒薬 (The Sea and Poison) (1958) 

 

While in Japan, Endō had experienced rejection by his fellow Japanese because he was practicing what was perceived to be not only a Western faith, but the very 

faith of their enemies; and in France, in what he thought was his “spiritual homeland”, he experienced a second rejection.²¹ Endō received another blow when his beloved mother suddenly died of cerebral apoplexy in 1954. She was only fifty-eight. Not surprisingly, Endō underwent a grave crisis of faith. Instead of causing him to give up his faith, his trials led him to ponder on two matters that would become the hallmark of his writings: the meaning of suffering and death, and how one could appropriate the Christian faith as a Japanese person. 

Reflecting on his experiences in Lyons, Endō sieved out the cultural differences between Europeans and Japanese that made the former accept the Christian 

faith readily in a way that the latter could not. His initial conclusions were given literary expression through his two short stories, Shiroi hito 白い人 (White 

Person), and Kiroii hito 黄色い人 (Yellow Person), published in a single volume in 1955, two years after his return from France. 

1955 proved to be a watershed year for Endō. Besides being awarded the Akutagawa Prize, Japan’s most prestigious literary award, for White Person, Endō 

married Okada Junko, a lifelong Buddhist. It was a marriage arranged by the respective families when both Endō and Junko were still children. The following year, Endō’s only son was born. Endō named his son Ryūnosuke after the famed novelist memorialized by the Akutagawa Prize, Akutagawa Ryūnosuke.²² 

These early works, White Person and Yellow Person, lay the foundation for all of Endo’s subsequent writings. In White Person, Endō explores the innate sense 

of the transcendent God that is such an indelible part of the white person’s psyche that even in the midst of the Nazi atrocities in wartime France, the victims 

could never quite renounce the existence of God although they might denounce him for allowing such radical evil to happen. Even the first-person protagonist 

who betrays his friends to the Nazis has to confess the awareness of a transcendent being as part of the human essence (honshitsu 本質), an awareness that 

does not fade even in the face of torture (Endō, 1955: 65). The companion novella Yellow Person centers on the interactions between a renegade French priest 

who is “not able to forget God for a single moment” (Endō, 1955: 136) and several “yellow characters,” including Chiba the lapsed Christian, and Kimiko, the 

priest’s illicit lover who wears “a countenance so completely devoid of God” (Endō, 1955: 119). Through the words of the unconscionable Chiba, Endō proposes 

that the psyche of the “yellow person” is insensitive to God, sin, and death (Endō, 1955: 91-94). 

Interestingly, it is in Yellow Person that the concept of Japan as a swamp first appears. In his soliloquy, Father Durand refers to Japan as a “swamp country” 

(shimetta kuni 湿った国) in which the shoots of the gospel can hardly be planted (Endō, 1955: 152). In Silence, another renegade priest, the Portuguese 

Christovão Ferreira, is more explicit in his pronouncement of Japan as a mudswamp (numachi 沼地) in which the sapling of Christianity can only rot and wither away (Endō, 1966: 189). 

In all probability, for Endō, the lack of sensitive consciousness of God, sin, and death on the part of the Japanese constitutes the cultural and psychological 

swamp that is Japan. This hypothesis is further explored in Endō’s next major novel, The Sea and Poison, published in 1958. ²³ The plot centers on the 

clandestine experiments in vivisection conducted by Japanese military doctors on American POWs at the hospital of Kyushu Imperial University during the Pacific 

War. The protagonist is a young, talented doctor, Suguro, for whom the existence of God is a complete non-issue (Endo, 1973 [1958]: 79).²⁴ Instead of feeling 

remorse for what is clearly a moral travesty in these death experiments, the surgeon could only feel “an inevitable and extreme sense of fatigue” (Endo, 1973: 157), very similar to what Chiba experiences in Yellow Person (Endō, 1955: 91). Of course, this does not mean that Suguro does not regard what he does as wrong; at one point he even thinks that he will receive retribution for his deeds (Endō, 1955: 125). Yet the numbing inability to respond to the promptings of his conscience, as dull as they might have become, and the sheer ease with which he rationalizes his actions in the light of present circumstances, serve only to expose the dark, swampy complexity of the human heart.²⁵ 

 

The Potential of Salvation through the Experience of Unconditional Love 

Obakasan おバカさん (Wonderful Fool) (1959) Watakushi ga suteta onna 私が棄てた女 (The Girl I Left Behind) (1964) 

 

The following year after the publication of The Sea and Poison, Endō published his first humorous novel, Wonderful Fool, in which he explores the possibility of 

salvation of those without a biblical consciousness of God, sin, and death. In this novel, redemption comes in the form of an ugly-looking, dull-witted 

Frenchman with a totally unattractive persona. Yet anyone who comes into contact with Gaston Bonaparte – a direct descendant of Napoleon Bonaparte – would 

be inexplicably touched and inspired by his meekness and his readiness, foolhardy at times, to help anyone in need, even animals. For he loves unconditionally, 

even though he is constantly abused by those he loves.²⁶ 

Following the mysterious disappearance of Gaston near the end of the novel, Tomoe, who has only met Gaston a few weeks earlier, is moved to acknowledge, 

“[Gaston’s] not a fool. He’s not a fool. Or, if he is, he’s a wonderful fool […] a wonderful fool who will never allow the little light which he sheds along man’s way 

to go out” (Endo, 1974 [1959]: 180).²⁷ Later, Tomoe’s brother, Takamori, makes these telling remarks to her: 

 

Not all men are handsome and strong. There are some who are cowards from birth. There are even some who cry easily. But for such a man, a man both weak 

and cowardly, to bear the burden of this weakness and struggle valiantly to live a beautiful life – that’s what I call great […]. I feel more drawn to Gaston than I 

would to a splendid saint or hero. (Endo, 1974 [1959]: 187-88)²⁸ 

 

Even the hardcore gangster and murderer Endō (curiously named after the author himself), who bullies and spites him whenever the occasion presents itself, 

cannot resist Gaston’s genuine warm-heartedness and in the end finds himself transformed by the unwavering love of the Frenchman. 

The climax of the novel takes place at the “Big Swamp,” where Gaston, in his bid to save Endō’s life, allows himself to receive the blows of Kobayashi and 

“finally, seriously injured, collapse[s] in the shallows of the swamp” (Endo, 1974 [1959]: 231). The motif of the swamp is significant, for here Endō is perhaps 

presenting an allusion that the answer to the spiritual mudswamp that is Japan is the sort of unconditional and self-sacrificial love displayed by Gaston, the most 

unexpected figure of Christ. 

After the release of Wonderful Fool and Kumo (Spiders), an anthology of horror tales, in late 1959, Endō embarked on a two-month tour of Europe with his 

wife. However, soon after Endō returned to Japan in early 1960, he had a relapse of pleurisy and fell critically ill. He was in hospital for two and a half years, 

during which he survived three major operations. During this time, Endō’s literary productivity was understandably curtailed, but he was still able to write shorter 

works. He spent a lot of time reading about the kakure kirishitan (hidden Christians) who practiced their faith secretly as a result of the persecutions during the Tokugawa period.²⁹ After he was discharged from hospital in July 1962, he and his family moved to Tamagawa Gakuen, a university town on the outskirts of 

Tokyo, for his rehabilitation. Endō started work on a full-length novel to develop the Christ figure that he had created in Gaston, the Wonderful Fool. 

Published in 1964, The Girl I Left Behind explores the suffering, maternal nature of Christ through the female protagonist. Mitsu is a country bumpkin who is 

jilted by the worldly Yoshioka; she possesses a selfless nature predisposed to sharing the suffering of those around her. Having been diagnosed with leprosy, the abject woman admits herself into a leprosarium. However, her condition is misdiagnosed; but even after she learns about the error, she finds herself unable to abandon her new friends, those really with leprosy. The problem of suffering is a difficult one for Mitsu to bear, and she is angry at “the God who inflicts leprosy 

on little children and who ultimately confronts them with nothing but death” (Endo, 1994 [1964]: 189). ³⁰ Yet her childlikeness, strong sense of empathy, 

nurturing instincts, and enlarged capacity for personal suffering are strongly reminiscent of the image of the longsuffering Christ. Even the tragic death of Mitsu 

is no mere accident, for she willingly lays down her life in order to save those to whom she has come to extend her “hand of friendship” ( Endo, 1994 [1964]: 158). 

It is not a wonder that in the end even the unscrupulous Yoshioka should discover the indelible influence that Mitsu has silently exerted on his life. In the 

Afterword of the English translation of the novel, Endō confesses that through this novel, he had hoped “to portray the drama of ‘the Jesus I left behind’” (Endo, 

1994 [1964]: 194). He adds, “Mitsu can be seen as modeled on Jesus, abandoned by his own disciples; she is modeled on the Jesus whom all Christians are guilty 

of abandoning on a daily basis in their everyday lives” (Endo, 1994 [1964]: 194). 

In this novel too, we see the beginnings of the concept of the constant companionship of Christ, a key motif that Endō would develop in his next major novel 

Silence and a lesser known but nonetheless important work, On the Shores of the Dead Sea. 

 

The Eternal Companionship of the Suffering Christ 

Chinmoku 沈黙 (Silence) (1966) 

Shikai no hotori 死海のほとり (On the Shores of the Dead Sea) (1973) 

 

Soon after the publication of The Girl I Left Behind, Endō made his first trip to Nagasaki, the sixteenth-century “Rome of the East”, to learn more about the Jesuit 

mission and the faith of the kakure kirishitan. ³¹ There, inside the Jūrokubankan (Historical Building No. 16, also the Tourist Information Center), Endō saw a 

fumie 踏絵 “enclosed in a small wooden frame that was covered with black marks apparently made by human toes” (Endo, 1974 [1973]: 180). It was an authentic 

artifact, a small bronze plaque bearing the image of Christ that was used by the Tokugawa authorities to determine whether one was a Christian by requiring the 

person to step on it. Those who refused would be tortured, even killed. 

Endō describes the face of Christ on the fumie that he saw as “worn down” because it had been stepped on by so many people: “the formerly noble 

appearance, so solemn and strong, had changed into a tired, sad countenance” ( Endo, 1974 [1973]: 181). The image of the pathetic Christ on the fumie lingered in 

Endō’s mind for a long time even after he returned to Tokyo. Endō began to ponder over three nagging questions: 

 

First, if I had lived in that period of history, would I have stepped on the fumie? Second, those people whose black toe marks I saw – what feeling did they have 

when they stepped on the fumie? Third, what kind of people were they who stepped on it? (Endo, 1974 [1973]: 180) 

 

Endō’s desire to learn more about the Jesuit mission led him to enroll in a class on early Japanese Christian history at Sophia University. He was dissatisfied 

with the course because the lectures he attended and the books he read discussed only “those who held staunchly to their faith and died gloriously as martyrs” 

(Endo, 1974 [1973]: 181). Nothing was said about “the weaklings who compromised their convictions and trampled [the fumie] because they were forced to” ( Endo, 1974 [1973]: 181). Endō decided to use the medium of the novel to bring back to life these “cowards” who were “buried in the ashes of silence” in order to 

hear what they had to say (Endo, 1974 [1973]: 181). Extrapolating from the earlier Christ figures that he had created in his previous novels, Endō was convinced that the emaciated face of Christ on the fumie “offered a matchless opportunity to fill in the gap between the Japanese and Christianity” (Endo, 1974 [1973]: 181). 

Within a year, Silence was born. This is a historical novel set in seventeenth-century Japan when the church was horrendously persecuted by the authorities.³² It is a story of the unexpected spiritual journey of a Portuguese priest who secretly enters Japan to minister to the suffering faithful but ends up renouncing his faith in order to prevent further torture of the people he has come to serve. Yet at that very moment of his apostasy, the priest makes the transforming discovery of the 

presence of the suffering Christ who speaks to him as he steps on the fumie. 

 

You may trample. Your foot is in pain, isn’t it? It must be suffering the same pain as all the feet that have until now stepped on my face. But that pain alone is 

enough. I share your pain and your suffering. It is for that reason that I am here. (Endō, 1966: 240) 

 

Among the multiple levels of interpretation that one can make about the novel is a theological one which posits the unassuming but abiding companionship 

that Christ offers, without exception, to all who undergo deep suffering, including even the cowardly apostate Kichijirō into whose character all of Jesus’ faithless 

apostles are taken up (Mathy, 1974: 217; Endō, 1966: 239-40). In this sense, the title of the novel, Chinmoku 沈黙 (“Silence”), ultimately, is not a reference to the 

silence of God in the midst of deep suffering even though it is often taken to be so. In his reply to Rodrigues’ protest, “Lord, I resent your continual silence,” 

Christ replied, “I was not silent. I suffered beside you” (Endō, 1966: 240). A more plausible interpretation for the title is the silence of the many apostates who 

faded away into historical oblivion and whose stories were never told. 

Silence brings to fruition the major literary theme that has begun with White Man, namely, that the possibility of redemption for the denizens of the cultural 

and religious swamp that is Japan lies in the experience of being loved unconditionally by the suffering Christ. Although this theme would continue to evolve with 

Endō’s later works, its core emphases would remain the same. 

The runaway success of Silence inspired Endō to pursue the question, “[W]hat kind of Jesus is he that the Japanese can believe in and understand with genuine 

feeling?” (Endō, 1966: 182). Endō visited Palestine in 1966, the first of seven trips he would make over the next seven years. As he walked the Holy Land, Endō 

would read and reread his Bible. Endō adds, “While engaged in this reading, what spurred my spiritual development was not anything from the Catholics, but 

rather the books of Protestant scholars, particularly those of the form-criticism school – which began with Rudolf Bultmann – and the redaction and criticism 

scholars” (Endō, 1966: 182). To be sure, Endō did not accept uncritically everything he read, but he was undeniably attracted by their “approach and scholarly method” (Endō, 1966: 182). 

Through his visits to Palestine, Endō was able to confirm and crystallize his view of Jesus as he had presented it in Silence, namely, that the whole of Jesus’ life 

was defined by rejection. It also gradually dawned upon Endō that the key to resolving the conflicts he felt from being both Japanese and Christian is the incarnate companionship of Jesus, a man who experienced loneliness, weakness, and ultimately rejection. The love that Jesus offers embraces without discrimination social misfits, foreigners, outcasts, even apostates – characters that fill almost every story that Endō has written. 

In sum, Endō was now more convinced than ever that just as his “Japaneseness” denied him entry into European culture (as evidenced from his negative 

experiences in France), conversely, the triumphant Constantinian faith of European Christianity could never take root in Japanese soil. Endō’s encounter with the 

despised and rejected Jesus in his Palestinian sojourn would now launch him on a new quest to understand and convey that incarnate love which speaks to the 

marginalized and the lonely, a quest that he believed would make Christianity comprehensible to Japanese people. After collecting “data from seven years’ 

research,” Endō was ready to present his contextualized Christology, through On the Shores of the Dead Sea (Endō, 1966). This work comprises two stories told 

in alternative chapters, the first about Jesus in his historical and geographical setting, and the second about a middle-aged Japanese novelist, in all aspects similar 

to Endō, visiting Palestine to find out the truth about Jesus. Both stories converge at the same conclusion: Jesus is a powerless man who could perform no 

miracle, but could only offer his constant companionship to the sick and suffering (1973b: 213, 247). 

 

An Enlarging Religious Vision 

Samurai 侍 (The Samurai) (1980) 

Sukyandaru スキャンダル (Scandal) (1986) 

Fukai kawa 深い川 (Deep River) (1994) 

 

Around the late 1970s, Endō began to show signs of a move away from the uniqueness of Christ to a position where he considered all religions as equally 

legitimate means of salvation. The seeds of his new religious vision are first sown in the last few pages of his non-fictional My Jesus (Endō, 1976: 236-40), and 

allowed to germinate in another quasi-theological work, What God Is to Me (1983). Again, these ideas are explored and given expression through the medium of the novel. 

Among the many works that Endō produced during the last fifteen years of his life, three novels merit special mention. The first, The Samurai, was published in 

1980, and it developed the theme of the constant companionship of Christ with a deep intensity that had never been achieved before in Endō’s preceding 

novels.³³ The protagonist, Hasekura Rokuemon, is a low-ranking samurai sent to Nueva España (today’s Mexico) and España (Spain) as part of a trade mission 

in the early seventeenth century. Since it is expedient for the sake of the mission, the whole Japanese delegation receives baptism. On his part, Hasekura converts 

outwardly, but inwardly he has no intention whatsoever to change his allegiance from Buddhism to a foreign faith. The trade delegation includes Father Velasco, a 

Franciscan priest, who acts as the envoys’ interpreter. Velasco is a pompous and arrogant man who harbors no small ambition to become the next bishop of 

Japan. The contrast between Velasco and Hasekura could not be greater. 

Throughout the journey, however, the lowly samurai finds himself constantly perplexed by the image of a miserable, wretched man nailed on the cross, for he 

just cannot understand why this man, “whose arms were outstretched, and whose head drooped lifelessly” should be worshipped and addressed as Lord by 

Velasco and all the foreigners (Endo, 1982 [1980]: 83).³⁴ But as the story progresses, Hasekura begins to understand by degrees that even if he cares nothing 

about Jesus, “He is always beside us. He listens to our agony and our grief. He weeps with us” (Endo, 1982 [1980]: 243). As it later turns out, both Valesco and 

Hasekura are sentenced to death during the Tokugawa persecutions. Valesco faces his crucifixion with a renewed, tranquil faith. Hasekura by now has cultivated 

an emotional affinity with the powerless Christ with whom he can readily identify. During the last, climactic scene of the novel, as Hasekura is led away for 

execution, his retainer assures him of Christ’s everlasting presence (Endo, 1982 [1980]: 262). The samurai simply nods silently. Mase-Hasegawa rightly notes, 

“[A]t that moment, [Hasekura] identifies his pain and suffering with Jesus. Christ became [sic] the God of the abandoned” (2004: 100). For the evangelical 

Christian, it might be unsatisfactory that Hasekura dies without a clear profession of faith. But as Williams observes, the characteristic restraint with which Endō 

depicts this scene opens up “boundless potential” (1999: 64). Here is perhaps a hint of Endō’s initial openness to religious pluralism. Mase-Hasegawa picks up 

a similar thread of thought: 

 

[T]he samurai died for his lord as a Buddhist, yet he dies believing in the eternal attendance of Christ […] In the novel, Endo’s image of Christ as an everpresent 

companion provided new aspects of his belief: the universal significance of the atonement of Jesus Christ that expanded beyond religions. (2004: 100)³⁵ 

 

The next novel, Scandal, published in 1986, is Endō’s most profoundly psychological work as he explores the deep and murky workings of the human 

subconscious. The protagonist, Suguro, is a Catholic writer approaching the end of a distinguished literary career – very much like Endō himself. By all accounts, 

Suguro is the epitome of success; yet beneath the prim and proper public persona is a tormented soul who not only secretly struggles with his pedophilic urges 

but is also constantly frightened by the potential of his heart for unbridled perversion and evil. The duality of Suguro’s character is brought out into greater relief through the complex mother-figure of Madame Naruse, a selfless volunteer nurse who cares for sick children in the pediatric ward of a hospital by day and a 

matron at a sadomasochistic sex club in the red-light district of Kabuki-chō in Shinjuku by night. The gentle nurse also derives strong sexual satisfaction 

fantasizing about innocent mothers and children being trapped in a burning house. The fragmented, inner world of a person is depicted by Madame Naruse’s late 

husband in this rather unnerving way: 

 

There are several rooms inside the human heart. The room at the lowest level is like the storeroom you have here in your home […] [I]t has all kinds of things 

stored up in it. But late at night, the things you’ve locked up and forgotten in there begin to move. (Endo, 1988 [1986]: 118)³⁶ 

 

Scandal is certainly a departure of sorts from Endō’s previous novels. Yet this psychological drama, in a way reminiscent of the Twilight Zone, subverts the 

Christian’s belief in “a single integrated world created by an omnipotent God” (Williams, 1999: 180). The novel reaches its climax when Suguro comes to the 

shocking realization that the foul and filthy imposter who has been stalking him up to now is actually Suguro himself. In the following scene, Suguro sees his 

double vanish, enveloped by “a profound light […] filled with love and compassion, and with a maternal tenderness […] The light increased in intensity and began 

to wrap itself around Suguro” (Endo, 1988 [1986]: 242). In desperation, Suguro cries out, “O Lord, have mercy […] Have mercy on us whose minds are deranged” 

(Endo, 1988 [1986]: 243). This prayer constitutes the theological turning point of the novel. Suguro discovers that there is no deliverance from his divided self; 

rather, he begins a process of coming to terms with not only the mysterious reality of the human soul that presents more than meets the eye, but also the 

possibility of an open-ended God who subsumes both good and evil in his relation to the world. In the words of Hagiwara Takao, Endō’s God in Scandal “is 

ready to embrace the world as it is” (1993: 58). 

Scandal brings into question the nature of psychological and spiritual reality where good and evil dwell coexist. It also anticipates a theological openness that 

Endō would develop in his final novel Deep River. Interestingly, two years after Scandal was published, Endō wrote What God Is to Me. In the first chapter, Endō 

suggests that “it is perhaps better to think of God not as an object to relate to, but as someone who works in and through a person” (1983: 22). Endō’s proposal, 

however, becomes a conviction by the end of the chapter. 

 

It must necessarily be said that God’s workings are present even in sin and evil. Indeed God’s workings are to be found in all things. As I write my novels, it is 

gradually dawning upon me that God’s workings are manifest in everything, in sickness, in one’s desires, even in the act of embracing a woman. God is not a 

being (sonzai 存在), but a working (hataraki 働き). (Endō, 1983: 23, emphasis added) 

 

This brings us to Endō’s final novel, published just two years before his death. Deep River raises serious questions on theological reality as understood by 

orthodox Christians. The novel centers on a group of Japanese tourists visiting the Hindu holy city of Vārānasī by the River Ganges. Each person comes with a 

different set of personal agenda – which Endō skillfully explores – and each is unexpectedly brought to a profound experience of the workings of the divine 

through the rhetoric of the sacred river which symbolizes an all-encompassing spirituality. Interestingly, Mitsu, the protagonist in The Girl I Left Behind, is 

“reincarnated” in the person of Ōtsu, the main character of the novel (Endo, 1994 [1964]: 196). Madame Naruse, who disappears at the end of Scandal, has her 

role assumed by Mitsuko, the foil for Ōtsu. 

Ōtsu is a fervent Christian, but utterly pathetic in demeanor. Moreover, he has to drop out of seminary because his heterodox faith constantly gets him into 

trouble with his ecclesiastical superiors. While earnestly seeking to emulate Christ in His weakness and suffering by serving others, Ōtsu also believes that “[the] 

many different religions […] are merely various paths leading to the same place” (Endo, 1994 [1994]: 191).³⁷ Yet Ōtsu’s love for Jesus is a passionate one. He 

would wake up at four every morning to spend time “in conversation with his Lord” (Endo, 1994 [1994]: 192). Indeed, it is Christ’s eternal companionship that 

sustains him, and the selfless passion of Christ that inspires him to bear the agony of the outcasts of humanity (Endo, 1994 [1994]: 185). Before his final act of 

sacrifice, Ōtsu prays, 

 

O Lord, […] You carried the cross upon your back and climbed the hill to Golgotha. I now imitate that act. You carried the sorrows of all men on your back and 

climbed the hill to Golgotha. I now imitate that act. (Endo, 1994 [1994]: 193) 

 

In sum, while the belief in the crucified Christ and the motif of Christ’s eternal companionship are kept intact in this novel, they have become subsumed under 

an all-embracing vision of religious universalism. In this sense, Deep River is not only the culmination of a long and illustrious literary career, but also the 

realization of Endō’s ultimate religious vision. 

 

Endō’s Final Years (1994-1996) 

 

Toward the end of 1992, Endō suffered kidney failure and was admitted into hospital for a month. The following year, he underwent peritoneal dialysis but never 

fully recovered. The next three and a half years were spent in and out of hospital. Then in September 1995, Endō suffered cerebral hemorrhage which caused him 

to lose his ability to talk. On December 29, 1996, after experiencing breathing difficulties from pneumonia, Endō died. He is buried at the Catholic cemetery in 

Fuchū, together with his mother and brother. 

Despite constant struggles with ill health and lengthy periods of hospitalization throughout his life, Endō led a very active life and made significant 

contributions to literature and the arts, not only in Japan but also overseas. At various points of his life, he served as president of the Japan chapter of the Poets, 

Essayists and Novelists (P.E.N.) club, member of the Central Council of the Ministry of Education, screening member of the Akutagawa Prize committee, director 

of the Japan Artists Association, president of the Nikkatsu Visual Arts Academy, and was a founding member of the Japan Christian Art Center in Harajuku, 

Tokyo. It is noteworthy that Endō’s explicitly theological or religious agenda did not cloud his impressive literary achievements. Besides being inducted into the 

prestigious Japan Arts Academy in 1981, he received numerous awards from other countries including the Vatican. He was also conferred hononary doctorates by 

a number of Jesuit universities, including America’s Georgetown University, Santa Clara University, John Carroll University, and Taiwan’s Fu Jen Catholic 

University. The year before his death, Endō was awarded the Order of Culture, a top national honor conferred on those with exceptional achievements in the fields 

of culture and academia 

Having surveyed Endō’s personal biography and the evolution of his literature, we shall now proceed to present his key theological ideas in relation to the 

nature of God and the person and ministry of Jesus. The three main sources used for our discussion here are Endō’s principal non-fictional works on Jesus 

Christ, Iesu no shōgai イエスの生涯 (A Life of Jesus) (1973), Watakushi no Iesu 私のイエス (My Jesus) (1976), and Kirisuto no tanjō キリストの誕生 (The 

Birth of Christ) (1978). Of these three, only A Life of Jesus has been translated into English.³⁸ 

 

Theological and Christological Perspectives of Endō 

 

The Maternal God 

 

Endō confesses that while Silence contains a multiplicity of themes, the one most meaningful for him is the transformation in the mind of the protagonist of the 

image of a majestic and powerful Christ into that of a weak and suffering Christ (Endo, 1974 [1973]: 181). Interestingly, Endō understands the latter in maternal 

terms.³⁹ 

Citing Erich Fromm, he categorizes religion into two kinds: father-religion and mother-religion (Endo, 1974 [1973]: 181). In father-religion, God is depicted as a 

fierce and harsh deity who gets angry easily. He judges and punishes humans for their sins. In stark contrast stands mother-religion, in which God is to humans 

what a mother is to her children. God forgives his children no matter how sinful they are, just as a mother forgives her children no matter how bad they are. More 

than that, the God of mother-religion is a suffering God who shares deeply in human suffering. The overarching theme of Silence, states Endō, is precisely “this 

revolution from paternal religion to maternal religion, the change from the father-religion Christ to the mother-religion Christ in the experience of the novel’s 

hero” (Endo, 1974 [1973]: 181). 

In A Life of Jesus, Endō suggests that the image of God that John the Baptist embraced was that of a wrathful father. 

 

It was the image of a grim, censorious deity, as he does appear under various circumstances in the Old Testament – a deity destroying whole cities for not 

submitting to him, or falling into a terrible rage at the sins of his own people, like a despotic father, punishing without mercy the perfidy of all human beings. 

John the Baptist, wearing camel’s skin fastened at the waist with a leather strap, gave notice in advance concerning the wrath of this stern father-image of God: 

“You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? Bear fruits that befit repentance.” Such was God in the Old Testament, raging and 

punishing, against the backdrop of doomsday and the final judgment. (Endo, 1978 [1973]: 24 = Endō, 1973a: 29)⁴⁰ 

 

It is not clear if Endō had read the writings of Marcion, the second-century heretic who made a distinction between the creator-judge God of the Old Testament 

and the redeemer God of love of the New Testament. For Endō does clearly make that distinction. In My Jesus, published three years after A Life of Jesus, Endō 

writes: 

 

The God of the Old Testament is fearsome, judging, and readily punishes sin […]. In Japan, it is often said that the four most fearsome things in life are 

“earthquakes, thunder, fires, and fathers.” For instance, the father of the Meiji period was extremely strict, and was always ready to hit his children when they 

misbehaved. He was always reprimanding or punishing them for the slightest wrong committed. This is indeed the image of the God of Judaism. However, the 

God of the New Testament is akin to an ideal mother who suffers together with her children, always in the end forgives their sin no matter how severe it might 

have been, and with her whole heart always comforts them in their sorrow. (1976: 61) 

 

Endō believes that the maternal qualities of God were not only incarnated in Jesus, but that Jesus indeed came to correct the people’s misconception of God 

(Endō, 1976: 192-93). According to Endō, Jesus himself had doubts at first if the father image of John the Baptist was the true image of God (1978: 24). In the lives 

of the ordinary folk living “in the poverty and squalor of his little town of Nazareth,” Jesus knew that the last thing people needed was a God of wrath and 

judgment (Endo, 1978 [1973]: 24 = Endō, 1973a: 29-30). As he encountered the downtrodden and marginalized, he came to a growing understanding of a God 

which was increasingly divergent from that of established convention, and started preaching a “God of love who comes himself to experience the sorrows of 

humankind” (Endo, 1978 [1973]: 28 = Endō, 1973a: 36). Once Jesus had grasped the true nature of God, says Endō, the rest of his life became driven by a singular 

purpose: “to demonstrate the existence of the God of love and make it possible for other people to know the love of God” (Endo, 1978 [1973]: 44 = Endō, 1973a: 

56-57). 

This notwithstanding, laments Endō, orthodox Christianity continues to be characterized by “the European overemphasis on the paternal aspect of religion” 

(Endo, 1974 [1973]: 181). Endō goes on to claim that the father image of God has been propagated throughout the history of Christian mission, to the effect that 

“Christianity [seems] distant to us Japanese because the other aspect, maternal religion, [has] been grossly neglected” (Endo, 1974 [1973]: 181). In other words, 

even though Japanese people do understand the traditional image of strict father, they are drawn to the image of the kind mother. 

In sum, Endō believes that the true biblical image of God, namely, his maternity, speaks deeply to the Japanese in a way that a paternal image is unable to. 

According to him, the most dominant feature of the spiritual psychology of the Japanese people is a responsiveness to a religion which offers comfort and 

compassion, rejecting any kind of transcendent being who sets unattainable moral standards only to punish those who fail to live by them (Endo, 1978 [1973]: 1). 

In fact, Endō believes this to be the reason why the Japanese accepted Buddhism readily when it first came to Japan (Endo, 1978 [1973]: 1). In sum, “the Japanese 

tend to seek in their gods and buddhas a warm-hearted mother rather than a stern father” (Endo, 1978 [1973]: 1). The traditional dogma of Christianity is too 

weighed down with the wrathful God of justice for it to survive the mudswamp of Japan. This is, however, not the case with the compassionate Buddha (Endō, 

1976: 194). In Endō’s reckoning then, what Japan needs is a “God of amae” (cf. Cohen, 1993: 115-17).⁴¹ 

Kitamori, in an essay on Endō, rebuts the latter’s assertion that the Japanese can only accept Christianity in motherly terms as highly suspect (1991: 335-40). 

For one thing, culture is always changing, and it is doubtful that Japanese mentality has remained the same so many years after the war. Tongue in cheek, 

Kitamori claims from his observations that the images of the father and mother have been reversed in post-war Japan: “the indulgent father and the strict mother” 

(Kitamori, 1991: 340). Furthermore, the overly heavy involvement of the post-war Japanese mother in her children’s education has earned her a rather 

uncomplimentary appellation, kyōiku mamagon (education mama-saurus). Endō did not offer any rebuttal, but if he did, one could expect him to say that 

Kitamori’s argument does not in any way change his understanding of God as always kind and forgiving rather than stern and judging. In any case, Kitamori’s 

comment raises the problem of representing divine realities given the inevitability of cultural change, therefore meaning that any metaphors are constantly 

shifting. 

However, Kitamori is quite right to suggest that Endō rejected the image of the paternal God because of the hatred he felt toward his father, and in its place, 

created an idealized image of the maternal God while being influenced by his feelings toward his suffering mother (1991: 336).⁴² Endō himself admits to the 

difficulties he had with his father: 

 

It had been that, as a youth, I had first tasted the bitterness of life, there that I had learnt to hate my father. I had experienced loneliness, and from the pained 

expression of my mother, I had come to know the countenance of an unhappy woman. Had I not had that experience I may well have rejected Christianity long 

ago. (cited in Noble, 1991: 28) 

 

In sum, Endō understands God not as an all-powerful judge, but as one who suffers like a mother does, and therefore identifies with the suffering of his 

children. This motherly God reveals himself supremely, for Christians at least, in the incarnated life of Jesus. 

 

The Jesus of History and the Christ of Faith 

 

Endō understands the person of Jesus Christ as comprising two parts: the historical Jesus and the post-resurrection Christ, reminiscent of Martin Kähler’s 1892 

classic work Der sogenannte historische Jesus und der geschichtliche, biblische Christus. ⁴³ This bipartite distinction, as reflected in Endō’s two-volume treatise 

A Life of Jesus and The Birth of Christ, does not, however, compromise the unity of the person of Jesus Christ. Endō consistently regards Jesus as the Christ, 

historically, but more significantly, at the theological level.⁴⁴ However, there is a fundamental and profound difference at the cognitive and affective level, a new 

apprehension mediated by the transfiguration of the historical Jesus into the metahistorical Christ. For Endō, it is the cataclysmic event of the Cross that is crucial 

in bringing about this new level of understanding and experience of the risen Christ. 

 

Jesus the Ineffectual Man 

In the preface to the American edition of A Life of Jesus, Endō sums up his theological intention: 

 

Jesus as I depict him is a person who lived for love and still more love, and yet he was put to death, for he chose to live without violent resistance […]. I wrote 

this book for the benefit of Japanese readers who have no Christian tradition of their own and who know almost nothing about Jesus. What is more, I was 

determined to highlight the particular aspect of love in his personality precisely in order to make Jesus understandable in terms of the religious psychology of 

my non-Christian countrymen and thus to demonstrate that Jesus is not alien to their religious sensibilities. (1978 [1973]: 1) 

 

In this biography on Jesus, Endō attempts to construct a new imago Christi, one that fully expresses the mother image of God. As mentioned above, the 

fundamental presupposition underlying Endō’s Christology is that the Jesus of historical fact is different from the fictive Christ of faith. In the Birth of Christ, 

Endō (1978) seeks to demonstrate how the latter actually originated in the kerygma of the early church. To begin, Endō employs Bultmann’s program of 

demythologization and removes every trace of the supernatural, both from Jesus’ personality and from his ministry. However, Endō operates from a different 

motivation. It is not that he does not believe that God can do miracles; it is just that miracles symbolize power, and that compromises the reality of human 

suffering. 

 

Jesus walked through the mountain coves and the gullies where these forsaken lepers were forced to live. He wanted to restore their healthy bodies. He wanted 

to restore to the blind the use of their eyes. He wanted to make the lame walk. He wanted to bring back a lost child to a bereaved mother. 

 

But a look of sadness came to his eyes when he could not do it. He held the hand of a leper, or a lame man, and he pleaded earnestly his desire to take upon 

himself their misery and pain. He asked for a share in their suffering, a chance to be partners with them. (Endo, 1978 [1973]: 72 = Endō, 1973a: 96-97, emphasis 

added) 

 

Jesus could not accomplish all the miracles the crowds pleaded for. In the towns by the lake he sat to wipe the sweat from a fever-wracked patient whom others 

had abandoned, and through the night he quietly held the hand of a mother who had lost her child, but miracles he could not do […]. What they needed more 

than miraculous cures was love. Jesus knew the longing of human beings for changeless, enduring companionship. They needed a companion, the kind of 

mother who could share their wretched suffering and weep together with them. He believed that God by his nature was not in the image of a stern father, but 

was more like a mother who shares the suffering of her children and weeps with them; and in order to bear witness to the love which God bore for these men 

and women in their misfortunes, whenever Jesus met them near the Lake of Galilee he prayed that in God’s kingdom they would arrive at his way of seeing 

things. (Endo, 1978 [1973]: 80 = Endō. 1973a: 107-8) 

 

Endō describes Jesus emphatically as “essentially without power” (1978: 165).⁴⁵ Therefore, it is this Jesus who, by virtue of his utter powerlessness, had no 

capacity to heal, but only the ability to identify completely with the loneliness and hopelessness that inflict the sick and the poor. An essentially weak Jesus could 

give nothing that the people wanted, but he could offer the only gift that the people really needed: love. 

For Jesus recognized that the greatest misfortune that could ever befall a human being is to be unloved (Endo, 1978 [1973]: 108). Since his heart was ablaze 

with God’s love, Jesus sought to devote his whole life asserting the presence of God’s love in the world, “to cast the fire of love into the world” (Endo, 1978 [1973]: 

112). To achieve that, he aspired to become not just a companion to suffering people, but “the eternal companion of all people” (hitobito no eien no dōhansha 

人々の永遠の同伴者) (Endo, 1978 [1973]: 118, emphasis added). 

It needs to be noted that Endō implicitly assumes the divinity of Christ, but draws hardly any attention to it. This is understandable since doing so would only 

jeopardize his project of presenting a powerless Jesus. There is, therefore, nothing in Endō’s writings that deals with the nature of Christ or the doctrine of the 

Trinity. 

 

The Death of Jesus 

Recalling the canticle of the Suffering Servant in Isaiah 52, Jesus came to the sobering realization that to become the eternal companion of all humanity requires 

no less than the ultimate sacrifice. 

 

In order to become man’s eternal companion, in order to demonstrate the reality of the God of love, he [Jesus] himself had to meet death in its most harrowing 

form. He had to go through every misery and pain that men and women go through, because otherwise he could not truly share in the misery and pain of 

humankind, and because otherwise he couldn’t face us to say: “Look, I am at your side. I have suffered like you. Your misery – I understand it; I went through it 

all myself.” (Endo, 1978 [1973]: 125 = Endō, 1973a: 174, emphasis added) 

 

According to Endō, Jesus had constantly rejected the title “Christ” or “Messiah” (1973a: 121). When the people realized that he could not fulfill their messianic 

expectations to overthrow the Romans who were occupying their land, they turned against him, resulting in his crucifixion. It was a pathetic death that Jesus died. 

Contrary to the Gospel records, Endō asserts, on the day Jesus died, there was no earthquake, no darkness spread across the land, the temple curtain was not 

torn, no rocks were split nor any grave opened, and the sky remained what it had been: “The fact is that nothing extraordinary happened at all” (Endō, 1973a: 215). 

On the cross, Jesus suffered the absolute silence of God but, in that suffering, displayed his profound love for the world of suffering humanity. 

 

Jesus displayed on the cross nothing but utter helplessness and weakness. Nowhere does the passion narrative depict Jesus except in this utterly powerless 

image. The reason is that love, in terms of this world’s values, is forever vulnerable and helpless […]. Jesus, powerless on the cross, is the symbol of love – nay 

the very incarnation of Love. (Endo, 1978 [1973a]: 147 = Endō, 1973a: 206) 

 

Endō believes that the image of Jesus, who once participated in the very earthly conditions of human frailty and misery, failure, guilt and shame, but now 

hanging lifeless on the cross, speaks deeply to the Japanese in a way that the triumphant, risen Christ and the symbol of the empty cross do not. For instance, in 

The Samurai, it was “[the] man with the drooping head, that man scrawny as a pin, that man whose arms stretched out, nailed to the cross” that appeals to 

Hasekura the doubting samurai, “not the Christ whom the affluent priests preached in the cathedrals of Nueva España” (Endo, 1982 [1980]: 242-43). 

As previously alluded to, Endo confesses that it is the transformation of the majestic Christ into a pathetic Jesus that he had intended to be the theme of 

Silence (1974 [1973]: 181). The protagonist, Father Rodrigues, believes in a powerful Christ, and brings this image with him to Japan. It is “from the strong face of 

Christ he gained courage to evangelize” (Endo, 1974 [1973]: 181). At last, however, he is apprehended and brought before the fumie, the bronze image of the 

suffering Christ on which he is to step. 

 

Standing there, he saw an image of Christ he had never seen before, an image shaped by Japanese hands. It was not the orderly, solemn face he had conceived 

as a European, but the worn-out face of a Christ suffering as we suffer. (1974 [1973]: 181, emphasis added) 

 

As the priest agonizes at the prospect of renouncing his faith, he hears Jesus on the fumie saying, “Trample! 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” (Endo, 1982 [1966]: 271; also Endo, 1974 [1973]: 297). Some years after Endō’s 

death, Father Inoue Yōji, Endō’s lifelong friend, discovered that in the English translation of Silence, the verb “trample” is in the imperative mood, whereas in the 

original Japanese text, the expression is 踏むがいい (fumu ga ii), which is in the permissive mood, rather than 踏め (fume), which would be imperative (Endō 

Junko, 1999: 145; compare Endō, 1966: 219, 240 with Endo, 1982 [1966]: 271, 297). The permissive expression – translated, “You may trample on me” – certainly 

captures better the compassion of a non-coercive Jesus than the word “Trample!” in the command form. Eto Jun, a literary critic, comments, “The face of Jesus 

on the fumie is the mother’s face in Japan” (cited in Endo, 1974 [1973]: 181). Endō agrees wholeheartedly with Eto’s comment. Through the fumie scene, Endō 

intends the crucified Jesus to be the ultimate embodiment of the motherly nature of God. 

To summarize Endō’s position, the tragic death of Jesus is not to be interpreted in vicarious or penal substitutionary terms. Rather the cross, where Jesus 

experienced the absolute silence of God, becomes an emblem of identification in all human suffering (cf. Küster, 2001: 130-31). The existential human problem, 

for Endō, is not sin but suffering. Hence, instead of understanding Jesus as sin-bearer, Endō would have it that Jesus entered deeply into human suffering 

through his Passion. In other words, on the cross Jesus did not suffer for us; rather he suffered like us. In the process, he became transfigured into a sympathetic 

companion of all those who suffer, like Father Rodrigues in Silence. Endō’s understanding of the death of Christ is hence closer to the moral influence theory, or 

more specifically, the contingent historical view. 

 

The Historicity of the Resurrection 

Since Endō has already demythologized away all the miracles from the Gospel records, it is understandable if he should also want to deny the historicity of the 

Resurrection. But this is not the case. It is true that he finds the account of the Resurrection “creepy” (usukimiwarui 薄気味悪い), and the absolute conviction of 

the apostles that Jesus rose from the dead perplexing (Endō, 1973a: 250). “Why did the disciples continue to insist on the factuality of anything so preposterous 

as the resurrection, an idea ridiculed even by the people of their own times?” Endō asks (1978 [1973]: 176 = Endō 1973a: 250]. Yet, interestingly, he maintains the 

historicity of the Resurrection, claiming that “[t]he recent painstaking research by Campenhausen has corroborated the historical authenticity of the empty tomb” 

(Endo, 1978 [1973]: 177 = Endō, 1973a: 251). In fact, curiously, Endō considers it easier to argue that the miracles did not exist but were subsequently written into 

the Gospel accounts by the disciples than it is to argue that the Resurrection did not happen (1973a: 249). Later, in My Jesus, Endō makes the same claim that the 

Resurrection is “indeed an attestable historical event just as the Bible teaches that it is” (1976: 155). And in the Birth of the Christ, Endō again affirms that “the 

sudden disappearance of [Jesus’] body from the tomb is not a fanciful tale concocted in the Bible but a fact […]. The Bible speaks of the ‘empty tomb’ as the result 

of Jesus’ resurrection” (1978: 22). 

However, it should be said that, after writing the Birth of Christ, Endō began distancing himself away from the historical veracity of the Resurrection. In the 

section “The Resurrection of Jesus” in What God Is to Me (1983: 84-87), Endō defines the resurrection of Christ wholly in spiritual terms: “When Jesus’ central 

teaching remains in the disciples’ hearts, he becomes alive in them. This is one manifestation of his resurrection” (Endō, 1983: 86). 

Regardless, Endō has consistently deemed the historicity of the Resurrection as far less important than that which it is supposed to signify in relation to the 

remarkable life of Jesus before his crucifixion (Endō, 1976: 155). Endō is simply not convinced that the actual physical event of the Resurrection alone could bring 

about such a radical, earth-shaking change in the disciples. That being the case, he is presented with a real problem, especially in the light of his consistent 

depiction of a feckless and helpless Jesus stripped of all divinity: How is it that the cowardly disciples who fled during the capture of Jesus were suddenly 

transformed into fearless men so soon after the death of their teacher, men who went on to “turn the world upside down”, and even build a church which has 

long outlasted them? Endō considers this as “one of the deepest mysteries we encounter in reading the Bible” (1973a: 221). 

In all probability, “close on the time of Jesus’ death there occurred something electrifying enough to make the hearts of the disciples do a somersault” (Endo, 

1978 [1973]: 163 = Endō, 1973a: 230). Something amazing happened, something “different in kind yet of equal force in its electrifying intensity” such that it does not matter even if the Resurrection did not actually happen (Endo, 1978 [1973]: 177 = Endō, 1973a: 252). Endō elaborates, 

 

At least, logic impels us to conclude that, whatever it was that might have happened, it was enough to change the “powerless” Jesus in the hearts of the 

disciples into the “all-powerful” image of Jesus. And then we are constrained to suppose that this other event, whatever its nature, was enough to also 

persuade the disciples that the resurrection of Jesus was a fact. (Endo, 1978 [1973]: 177 = Endō, 1973a: 252 emphasis in text) 

 

It is not a wonder that Endō should name the last chapter of his biography on Jesus Nazo 謎, which means riddle or puzzle. In the final analysis, the sudden, 

supernatural transformation of the disciples is a nazo. Endō (1973a: 240-46) offers a tentative hypothesis to explain what happened to transform the disciples so 

dramatically, which he would later expand and confirm in My Jesus (1976: 150-168) and The Birth of Christ (1978: 15-42). The answer hinges not so much on the 

physical event of the Resurrection, but on what transpired when Jesus was hanging on the cross. This is where the true significance of the Cross is to be found. 

 

The True Significance of the Cross 

According to Endō, the key to understanding the dramatic transformation of the disciples is found Jesus’ last words, the three sets of utterances that he made 

from the cross amidst the silence of God: 

 

“Father, forgive them, for they know not what they are doing.” 

 

“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” 

 

“Father, into your hands I commit my spirit.” (1973a: 241; 1976: 164; 1978: 18) 

 

These cries from the cross “made their shattering impact on the disciples” (Endo, 1978 [1973]: 171 = Endō, 1973a: 241). To the disciples, it was inconceivable 

that a man could still love and forgive his enemies in the face of violent death, but Jesus did. Also, Endō argues that the words, “My God, my God, why hast thou 

forsaken me?” were not a cry of despair, but in the context of Psalm 22, they constituted a prayer of profound trust. These words were linked to the next utterance, 

“Into thy hands I commit my spirit,” an expression of utter dependence on God despite God’s stony silence. Jesus’ supreme manifestation of love so moved the 

disciples, surmises Endō, that they became awakened to a true understanding of Jesus and of all that he had been teaching them before he died. The disciples 

now realized how they had misunderstood the mission of Jesus, and became emboldened to carry on Jesus’ mission of actualizing God’s love in the world. 

Having a true understanding of Jesus and his teaching, the disciples “began to feel that Jesus might still be close by their side. Their state of mind was like the 

feeling of a child bereaved of its mother, when the child can still feel how the mother, even after her death, always remains close by” (Endo, 1978 [1973]: 174 = 

Endō, 1973a: 246). In other words, the image of Jesus as dōhansha 同伴者 (companion) is being born in their hearts (Endō, 1973a: 246). 

 

The Birth of Christ the Eternal Companion 

It is telling that Endō’s A Life of Jesus does not contain any birth narrative. The book begins with the chapter “Farewell to Nazareth.” For Endō, the real birth 

narrative of Jesus is not the Bethlehem nativity – which, in any case “is not a fact” (1973a: 253) – but the birth of Christ in the hearts of men and women. Indeed, 

Endō understands this to be the true significance of the Resurrection: Jesus died, but is risen as Christ in the hearts of his followers as their eternal companion 

(1976: 167-68; 1983: 86). This explains the Birth of Christ as a sequel to A Life of Jesus. 

The birth of Christ, as it were, did not happen overnight. As mentioned above, the disciples were profoundly moved that Jesus, while hanging on the cross, did 

not express the slightest hint of anger, but continued to manifest love by asking God to forgive his enemies. According to Endō, the Roman centurion’s 

exclamation, “Surely he was the Son of God” (Mt. 27:54), was not in response to the earthquake and the accompanying miraculous phenomena – for nothing of 

the sort happened – but to Jesus’ expression of love, forgiveness, and faith through his unexpected three utterances from the cross (1973a: 242). And that 

exclamation takes up the exact sentiments of the disciples as they recalled Jesus’ earthly mission and finally began to understand what his ministry as the Son of 

God was really about. 

With his characteristic literary flair, Endō describes “the long and painful night” the disciples went through before the Resurrection (1978: 23-42). This was not 

an unfruitful night. Throughout the night, they replayed the last words of Jesus on the cross in their minds and pondered on their true significance. They recalled 

how when he was alive, Jesus, despite his utter powerlessness, served so selflessly among the people simply by being with them. He had nothing to give to the 

people but himself, and this he did supremely on the cross. The disciples now realized that here was the Suffering Servant prophesied in Isaiah 52 (Endō, 1978: 

32-34). Through “the long and painful night”, they came to a new understanding of Jesus the Son of Man, and created these teachings about him: 

1.“The Son of Man must suffer many things, and be rejected by the elders, chief priests, and teachers of the law, and that he must be killed and after three days 

rise again (Mk. 8:31). 

2.“The Son of Man is going to be betrayed into the hands of men. They will kill him, and after three days he will rise” (Mk. 9:31). 

3.“The Son of Man will be betrayed to the chief priests and teachers of the law. They will condemn him to death and will hand him over to the Gentiles, who will 

mock him, spit on him, flog him and kill him. Three days later he will rise” (Mk. 10:33-34). 

4.“The Son of Man must suffer much and be rejected” (Mk. 9:22). 

5.“The Son of Man in his day will be like the lightning, which flashes and lights up the sky from one end to the other. But first he must suffer many things and 

be rejected by this generation” (Lk. 17:24-25). 

6.“The Son of Man will go as it has been decreed” (Lk. 22:22).⁴⁶ 

7.“The Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many” (Mk. 10:45). (Endō, 1978: 30-31)⁴⁷ 

Endō claims that many scholars do not believe that these sayings were original to Jesus, but were made up by the disciples (1978: 31). For Endō, even if these 

sayings were not uttered by Jesus directly, they nonetheless express the very purpose of his life and ministry as his disciples understood it after his death (Endō, 1978: 31). More than anything else, these seven sayings about the Son of Man constitute the foundation of the Church which had already begun to come into 

being on the eve of the Resurrection. In other words, “even before the actual event of the Resurrection, the resurrection of Christ had already begun in the hearts of the disciples” (Endō, 1978: 22). 

The resurrection of Christ is more than a cognitive experience for the disciples. Even as they began to understand the true significance of Jesus’ earthly life, 

they would also come to experience his incarnational companionship in their hearts. This is borne out in the touching episode of the two disciples’ encounter 

with the risen Christ on the Emmaus road. While not denying that these two might have actually met the risen Christ, Endō attaches far greater significance to 

their psychological state: 

 

Before the disciples knew what had happened, I am sure, the vivid feeling was born in them that Jesus, though he had died, was still very close to them. It was 

for them no act of abstract meditation; it was a non-metaphorical, tangible realization. Jesus wasn’t dead. What is more, they came to sense that Jesus actually spoke to them. (Endo, 1978 [1973]: 174 = Endō, 1973a: 246) 

 

In a word, the disciples were experiencing the birth of Christ in their hearts as their eternal companion. 

The encounter with the risen Christ on the Emmaus road therefore becomes the archetypal experience of Christ’s companionship for all of his followers. As 

with the first disciples, so it is in the hearts of all believers that the suffering Jesus is reborn as Christ the eternal companion. Elizabeth Willis observes that this is 

indeed the experience of Rodrigues in Silence, not only during the time of his apostasy but also later in his conversation with Jesus about Judas the betrayer: “It is 

the vivid reality of this presence which makes the meaning of Christ’s past suffering on the cross so powerfully relevant to Rodriguez’ predicament, transforming 

his faith” (1992: 99). 

Interestingly too, Endō gives a personal example of his belief that Christ lived in his mother’s heart when she was alive. Endō is certain that it was Christ who, 

through her mother’s life, led him to become a Christian (1983: 80-81). The life of Christ in his mother as Endō understands it is the true meaning of the 

resurrection of Christ (Endō, 1983: 81).

==

32-34). Through “the long and painful night”, they came to a new understanding of Jesus the Son of Man, and created these teachings about him: 

1.“The Son of Man must suffer many things, and be rejected by the elders, chief priests, and teachers of the law, and that he must be killed and after three days 

rise again (Mk. 8:31). 

2.“The Son of Man is going to be betrayed into the hands of men. They will kill him, and after three days he will rise” (Mk. 9:31). 

3.“The Son of Man will be betrayed to the chief priests and teachers of the law. They will condemn him to death and will hand him over to the Gentiles, who will 

mock him, spit on him, flog him and kill him. Three days later he will rise” (Mk. 10:33-34). 

4.“The Son of Man must suffer much and be rejected” (Mk. 9:22). 

5.“The Son of Man in his day will be like the lightning, which flashes and lights up the sky from one end to the other. But first he must suffer many things and 

be rejected by this generation” (Lk. 17:24-25). 

6.“The Son of Man will go as it has been decreed” (Lk. 22:22).⁴⁶ 

7.“The Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many” (Mk. 10:45). (Endō, 1978: 30-31)⁴⁷ 

Endō claims that many scholars do not believe that these sayings were original to Jesus, but were made up by the disciples (1978: 31). For Endō, even if these 

sayings were not uttered by Jesus directly, they nonetheless express the very purpose of his life and ministry as his disciples understood it after his death (Endō, 

1978: 31). More than anything else, these seven sayings about the Son of Man constitute the foundation of the Church which had already begun to come into 

being on the eve of the Resurrection. In other words, “even before the actual event of the Resurrection, the resurrection of Christ had already begun in the hearts 

of the disciples” (Endō, 1978: 22). 

The resurrection of Christ is more than a cognitive experience for the disciples. Even as they began to understand the true significance of Jesus’ earthly life, 

they would also come to experience his incarnational companionship in their hearts. This is borne out in the touching episode of the two disciples’ encounter 

with the risen Christ on the Emmaus road. While not denying that these two might have actually met the risen Christ, Endō attaches far greater significance to 

their psychological state: 

 

Before the disciples knew what had happened, I am sure, the vivid feeling was born in them that Jesus, though he had died, was still very close to them. It was 

for them no act of abstract meditation; it was a non-metaphorical, tangible realization. Jesus wasn’t dead. What is more, they came to sense that Jesus actually 

spoke to them. (Endo, 1978 [1973]: 174 = Endō, 1973a: 246) 

 

In a word, the disciples were experiencing the birth of Christ in their hearts as their eternal companion. 

The encounter with the risen Christ on the Emmaus road therefore becomes the archetypal experience of Christ’s companionship for all of his followers. As 

with the first disciples, so it is in the hearts of all believers that the suffering Jesus is reborn as Christ the eternal companion. Elizabeth Willis observes that this is 

indeed the experience of Rodrigues in Silence, not only during the time of his apostasy but also later in his conversation with Jesus about Judas the betrayer: “It is 

the vivid reality of this presence which makes the meaning of Christ’s past suffering on the cross so powerfully relevant to Rodriguez’ predicament, transforming 

his faith” (1992: 99). 

Interestingly too, Endō gives a personal example of his belief that Christ lived in his mother’s heart when she was alive. Endō is certain that it was Christ who, 

through her mother’s life, led him to become a Christian (1983: 80-81). The life of Christ in his mother as Endō understands it is the true meaning of the 

resurrection of Christ (Endō, 1983: 81). 

 

The Working Power of the Holy Spirit 

 

Endō is largely silent on the Holy Spirit in his writings, supposing it to be a subject “difficult for Japanese people to understand” (1983: 175). Instead of the person 

of the Holy Spirit, Endō prefers to talk about the working of the Spirit (Seirei no hataraki 聖霊の働き) (Endō, 1983: 176-77). It was this working of the Holy Spirit, 

explains Endō, that has empowered him and sustained his faith through the various trials he has encountered thus far in his Christian life (Endō, 1983: 176). In 

retrospect, Endō recognizes “the presence of an invisible power” (me ni mienai aru chikara 目に見えないある力) which provided the driving force for his 

literature, and identifies this invisible power as the working of the Spirit (Endō, 1983: 176). He even attributes the circumstances surrounding his illness over a 

three-year period in the early 1960s to the invisible working of the Holy Spirit, for he is convinced that had he not been taken seriously ill for such a long time, he 

would not have written Silence. 

In addition, Endō argues that while the working of the Spirit is of the “same essence” (honshitsu 本質) in all instances, the shape (katachi 形) of its 

manifestation is different for each person.⁴⁸ Endō elaborates, “In the case of the apostles, the working of the Spirit brought about in them an awakened 

understanding of Jesus; in the case of Paul, the working of Spirit enabled him to transcend the law and receive Christ into his own life” (Endō, 1983: 177).⁴⁹ 

Curiously, he then gives the example of the power of the Buddha (hotoke no chikara 仏の力) derived from the embodiment of the dharma by a bodhisattva as a 

parallel to the working of the Spirit (Endō, 1983: 177). Just as a Buddhist experiences the power of the Buddha and is changed by it, so similarly the Christian 

experiences the working power of the Spirit and is transformed by it (Endō, 1983: 177). Beyond this, Endō has nothing more to say about the Holy Spirit. 

It is clear that Endō makes a distinction between the working power of the Holy Spirit and the eternal companionship of Christ. It is through the former that the 

latter is experienced. The concept of the personal, indwelling Spirit of Christ in the believer is absent in Endō’s pneumatology. 

 

The Origins of the Church 

 

A crucial point needs to be made about the formation of the Church. Other than the first two chapters which deal respectively with the death of Christ and the 

night before the Resurrection, the rest of The Birth of Christ is really an account of the beginnings of the Church based on the narratives of the Acts of the 

Apostles and church tradition. It is clear that for Endō, the birth of Christ is coterminous with the birth of the Church, the gathering of all believers in whose 

hearts is the common, eternal companionship of Christ. The early Church was characterized by intense persecutions under the Roman authorities, resulting in 

violent deaths, including the execution of James, Peter and Paul. According to Endō, through these persecutions, the Church encountered “a silent God”, and as a 

result longed for the “the return of Christ” to restore Jerusalem as the city of God (Ps. 122:26-27) (1978: 231). However, God never seemed to break his silence, 

and Christ did not return as he had said that he would. For the early Christians, both the silence of God and the eschatological hope in Christ’s return became 

another nazo (riddle), and they have remained so for all subsequent believers. A couple of observations can be made at this point. It is clear that Endō interprets 

the silence of God as the common felt experience of all believers who undergo prolonged and unrelieved suffering. One could say that Endō is perhaps overly 

presumptuous here. That notwithstanding, his concept of divine silence does raise real tensions in his thought, for he posits at the same time the eternal 

companionship of Christ in the hearts of all who suffer. 

These tensions do not seem to bother Endō, however. The point he wants to make is that instead of giving in to an abject despondency, the suffering Church 

found the needed energy for her faith to grow in the dual mystery of the silence of God and the promised return of Christ, a faith sustained by the eternal 

companionship of Christ (Endō, 1978: 232). That energy fueled the passion of the early Christians to preach the gospel wherever they went. Matsuoka Fumitaka 

puts it this way, 

 

Endo’s response to this question [of the silence of God] is the eschatological expectation of the coming of the triumphant Christ. God’s silence meant hope 

and not “nihil.” Maranatha was for the disciples the longing of a child for the mother who died. Thus the apostolic church was born out of the disciples’ 

determination to face their own self-defeat squarely in the face of their rediscovery of the meaning of the person of Jesus. It was born out of their conviction 

that Jesus will return as the one who accompanies them in their struggle with the heavy burdens of guilt and shame over their betrayal. Jesus is transformed 

into the Christ who is their eternal companion in their inevitable sufferings and despair. (1982: 297) 

 

With the establishment of the Church, the birth of Christ from the death of Jesus is now complete. Endō cites Peter’s declaration in Acts 2:36 to substantiate 

his case: “God has made this Jesus, whom you crucified, both Lord and Christ” (1978: 242). People of every age since, in their need for love, have constantly 

sought an eien no dōhansha (eternal companion) (Endō, 1978: 250). Therefore, despite the many sins committed by so-called Christians in the history of the 

Church, the Christ of faith continues to be born afresh in the hearts of men and women everywhere even today (Endō, 1978: 251; Endō, 1994: 350-51). 

 

The Hermeneutical Key to Understanding Endō: Fact and Truth 

 

One may rightly ask how Endō could cognitively maintain such an enduring distance from the physical resurrection of Christ, especially since he does not deny it, 

and focuses rather on its spiritual meaning instead. The key to understanding this lies in the determined distinction that he makes between fact (jijitsu 事実) and 

truth (shinjitsu 真実) (e.g. Endō, 1973a: 52-54, 253-54). The former is historical, but the latter transcends history. Using the example of the Nativity, Endō remarks, 

“As all mankind has craved for the reality of Bethlehem, so also did the authors of the New Testament crave it. The birth of Jesus in Bethlehem may not have been 

a fact for them, but it was truth for their souls” (Endo, 1978 [1973]: 179 = Endō, 1973a: 154). In other words, something can be universally true even if it is not 

historically factual, for “the human condition is not to be circumscribed by tangible facts” (Endō, 1973a: 154).⁵⁰ This radical dichotomy between fact and truth is 

highly debatable, for it seems to imply that truth can be conveyed through, even perhaps based on, a falsity. However, this explains Endō’s insistence that there is 

no need to accept the factuality of the miracles as recorded in the Gospels – even of the Resurrection – in order to appreciate the truth that they are intended to 

convey, namely, the truth about the kingdom of God as “a universe of love based on the presence of a companion to all mankind” (Endo, 1978 [1973]: 87 = Endō, 

1973a: 121). On the contrary, accepting these as facts may cause the truth to be obscured, even missed completely. In sum, what finally matters is not the fact 

(jijitsu) of Jesus, but the truth (shinjitsu) of his life, death, and resurrection.⁵¹ 

In an essay published in 1980, entitled Watakushi no bungaku to seisho 私の 文学と聖書 (“My Literature and the Bible”), Endō elaborates the distinction 

between fact and truth in literature: 

 

I have no intention of writing down facts (jijitsu). If I did, the result would no longer be a novel. Rather, to write a novel is to record truths (shinjitsu), not facts. 

Thus, having examined those around me, I analyse them […] and gradually the character germinates […]. The art of creating a novel is to use “truths” to 

reconstruct “facts”: real “facts” themselves are totally unimportant to the novelist. (cited in Williams, 1999: 20, emphasis added)⁵² 

 

Endō’s point is well taken, insofar as it is kept within the parameters of the novel. However, A Life of Jesus is not a novel, although one might argue that it is 

written with the genre style of the novel. When it comes to the Christian faith where divine revelation is historically mediated, the methodological validity of 

separating the kernel of truth from its husks of fact must be seriously questioned. Besides the ontological relationship between fact and truth which needs to be 

closely examined, the ethical issues involved in willfully separating the two have to be addressed as well.⁵³ 

In any case, Endō’s hermeneutical approach to reality sheds light on his tenacious belief that as the events of the first century recede from view, the Jesus of 

history must give way to the Christ of faith. Indeed, claims Endō, even in the conversion narrative of the apostle Paul, it is clear that the person Paul encountered 

on the Damascus road was the Christ of faith, not the Jesus of history whom he had never met (1978: 152). This again is highly questionable as it is not clear if 

Paul ever made that distinction. After he was struck blind and fell to the ground, then Saul asked “Who are you, Lord?” To which the Lord replied, “I am Jesus, 

whom you are persecuting.” Even more so than the Emmaus road narrative, Paul’s encounter with Jesus is presented in a way which is completely grounded in 

real, historical circumstances. Indeed, Jesus did not even use his title Christ when identifying himself to Paul. 

Nevertheless, Endō’s marked distinction between fact and truth causes him to insist that like Paul, we should not to be fixated with the Jesus of history but 

experience the Christ of faith in our hearts. This point has already been well labored. Perhaps at this juncture, the words of Takahashi Takako, a fellow Catholic 

novelist of Endō’s, would provide a fitting summary of what Endō considers to be “this most essential point”: 

 

When I visited a certain convent, a sister said that she did not believe in a Christ who lived two thousand years ago, but that she believed in the risen Christ. I 

gasped and had the impression that now I had understood everything. Christ, not as a man, but whose presence as a man has come to an end, lives on another 

level which embraces the level of reality in which we live. (cited in Endō, 1977: 210) 

 

Kitamori’s Critique of Endō 

 

In 1991, Kitamori published a book entitled, Ureinaki kami: Seisho to bungaku 愁いなき神ー聖書と文学 (Weeping God: The Bible and Literature). This book 

consists of eleven chapters, each devoted to a discussion of a literary figure. The first three chapters discuss Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, and the French writer André 

Gide, while the last eight each cover a Japanese novelist. The common theme running through all the chapters is that of suffering. In this book, Kitamori basically 

provides an analysis of the writings of each of these figures and compares the portrayal of suffering in their works with his own understanding of divine pathos. 

The last chapter of the book, Ashi no itami no bungaku 足の痛みの文学 (“Literature of the Pain of the Foot”), is a discussion of Endō. ⁵⁴ The chapter title, an 

obvious allusion to the pain that Father Rodrigues feels as he lifts his foot to step on the fumie in the climactic scene of Silence, is not original to Kitamori, but an 

expression concocted by one of Kitamori’s friends to suggest its apparent affinity with Kitamori’s Kami no itami no shingaku 神の痛みの神学, since both deal 

with the subject of pain. The linguistic similarities between the two expressions, phonetically and graphically, are not lost on the Japanese reader. 

For Kitamori, however, the similarities between Endō’s Ashi no itami no shingaku and his Kami no itami no shingaku end at the pun (1991: 304). First, he 

clarifies that the pain of God in his theology is the result of “God loving and forgiving humans who have betrayed him” (Kitamori, 1991: 306, emphasis added). 

As we have seen, the key hamartiological concept in Kitamori’s formulation is the betrayal of God’s love by humans, for without this, it is impossible to 

understand the meaning of the pain of God. For Kitamori, the betrayal of God is an act of treason of the highest order, which can only arouse the wrath of God 

(Kitamori, 1991: 306). However, God still chooses to love and forgive sinners, the very ones who have betrayed him. This is no easy love, for in the process of it 

overcoming wrath, pain is necessarily generated (Kitamori, 1991: 306). Put another way, the pain of God is the “intertwining” (karamiai 絡 み合い) of God’s love 

and his wrath caused by his betrayal at the hands of those he loves (Kitamori, 1991: 306). Turning his attention to the episode of Father Rodrigues’ act of 

apostasy in Silence, Kitamori points out that, while on the surface the act of stepping on the fumie appears to be an act of betraying God, it actually is not since it 

is Christ who spoke from the fumie and encourages Rodrigues to step on it (Kitamori, 1991: 306-307). 

Kitamori cites Romans 5:6 and 5:10 to further his argument (Kitamori, 1991: 308). He points out that in the first verse, Paul emphasizes that “while we were still 

powerless, Christ died for the ungodly” (emphasis added). In the second, the emphasis shifts to the fact that it was “when we were God’s enemies [that] we were 

reconciled to him through the death of his Son” (emphasis added). Kitamori then makes the point that all humanity is simultaneously powerless and at enmity 

with God (Kitamori, 1991: 308). It is such humanity that Christ died for. Indeed, it is because of sinful humanity that Christ died. Kitamori notes that this dual 

theological identity of the human race is absent in Endō’s literature (Kitamori, 1991: 309). Endō’s focus is only on the weak and the powerless, the subjects of 

God’s compassion and empathy. In so doing, Endō ignores the biblical fact that humans are also enemies and betrayers of God, and so does not view humans as 

the subject of God’s wrath (Kitamori, 1991: 309). 

Since humans in Endō’s theological anthropology are understood as weaklings and not as God’s enemies, their existential problem becomes understood as 

that of suffering and not sin. In other words, the principal tenet of Endō’s anthropology is that of suffering humanity, not sinful humanity. Hence, in Endō’s 

reckoning, Christ chose to suffer the cruelest form of death in order to be able to identify with and share in all the sufferings of all humanity (Kitamori, 1991: 329; 

cf. Endō, 1973a: 283). In this respect, it appears that Endō’s thought is heavily colored by Buddhism, perhaps more than he cares to admit. In any case, the idea of 

Christ dying for the sins of humanity is absent in Endō. Kitamori puts it this way, “[In Endo] there is only the Christ who bore together with humanity their 

powerlessness, anguish, and suffering; the Christ who bore sin’s judgment and divine wrath, humanity’s just deserts, has completely vanished” (1991: 330). In 

Kitamori’s assessment, and rightly so, Endō’s understanding of the death of Christ is therefore defective because incomplete (Kitamori, 1991: 327-28). 

Kitamori insists that the enmity between a holy God and sinful humanity is an essential factor that must be recovered in understanding the true significance of 

the Cross. Such an enmity cannot be resolved by divine compassion and empathy alone (Kitamori, 1991: 309). This is why the cross of Christ cannot be 

understood apart from God’s love and God’s wrath. For, on the cross, not only was divine love supremely displayed, but also divine wrath. Furthermore, it was 

on the cross, stresses Kitamori, that Christ bore fully the wrath of God, “the curse of God,” so that humanity – powerless and at enmity with God – could be 

saved from it (Kitamori, 1991: 309). 

Kitamori speculates that Endō’s weak understanding of sin is likely inherited from Ruth Benedict’s classic work The Chrysanthemum and the Sword, published 

in 1946, the same year that Kitamori’s Theology of the Pain of God was released (Kitamori, 1991: 315-18). The Japanese translation of Benedict’s book came out in 

1948, and it aroused huge public interest. In any case, Kitamori charges Benedict with essentializing Japanese moral consciousness in terms of shame as 

opposed to guilt, and believes that Endō picked this up when he wrote The Sea and Poison (cf. Benedict, 1946: 222-27). Even though Endō does allude to sin as 

moral failure in his works such as The Sea and Poison and Scandal, he seems to think that his countrymen and women understand sin not in terms of the guilt 

that results from moral failure, but experientially through a vague but heavy sense of emotional fatigue (cf. Mathy, 1974: 214; Durfee, 1989: 49; Kitamori, 1991: 

316-17). This sense of fatigue may never be fully extirpated; rather it is through the suffering that results from struggling with constant fatigue that existential 

meaning is derived. In any case, the connection that Kitamori makes between Benedict and Endō is certainly an interesting one – not verifiable but nonetheless 

plausible.⁵⁵ If Kitamori’s hypothesis is indeed true, then one could surmise that the mudswamp in Yellow Person and Silence is not so much a cultural reality as it 

is a creation by Endō, imbued with his own understanding of God, sin, and death. 

Without a biblical understanding of sin, there can be no concept of divine wrath. Hence, one may also say that Endō’s God has no wrath. As in the case of the 

Buddha, Kitamori would argue that a god without wrath is a god who cannot experience pain in and by himself (cf. Kitamori, 1986: 37). Endō’s God may indeed, 

in the name of love, presume to share in the pain of suffering men and women, and even experience their pain. But in the final analysis, he cannot know the pain 

of being betrayed – unlike Kitamori’s God. The reason is that Endō’s God has no ontological capacity to experience pain, only love.⁵⁶ One may, in rebuttal, say 

that Christ did suffer pain in his Passion. That is certainly true, Kitamori would reply, but without divine wrath, the pain that Christ suffered is nothing more than 

a “sentimentalized pain” (1991: 339). 

In sum, there is no divine pain in Endō, only human pain which God or Christ can experience only by partaking in it. This is evidently borne out in the two 

scenes of Rodrigues’ apostasy in Silence.⁵⁷ In both scenes, the word “pain” appears eleven times altogether in the Japanese text – twice as an adjective (itai 痛い), 

three times as a verb (itamu 痛む and its grammatical conjugations), and the other six times as a noun (itami 痛み, or itasa 痛さ) (1966: 218-19, 240). It is 

noteworthy that ten out of these eleven instances refer to Rodrigues’ emotional duress, the pain of those who step on the fumie, or the pain of suffering 

humanity. The eleventh instance refers to the pain that Judas felt in his heart when he betrayed Christ (Endō, 1966: 240). In other words, none of these words 

refers to the inherent pain of Christ or of God. The words of Christ from the fumie in the first scene are instructive: “You may trample on me. More than anyone 

else I know the pain in your foot. It was to be trampled on by you [plural] that I was born in into this world. It is to share your [plural] pain that I bore the cross” 

(Endō, 1966: 219, emphasis added). 

According to Kitamori, because Endō accepts only the reality of divine love and rejects even the slightest possibility of divine wrath, he deliberately uses his 

writings to convert Christianity from a father-religion to a mother-religion (Kitamori, 1991: 335). However, for Kitamori, both paternal wrath and maternal love are 

evident on the Cross (Kitamori, 1991: 337). 

As we have seen above, Kitamori is convinced that Endō’s understanding of God is “strongly influenced by his personal experiences” (1991: 335). Richard 

Schuchert, the translator of A Life of Jesus, shares Kitamori’s view, suggesting that Endō’s belief that unless Christianity is changed, it cannot take root in 

Japanese soil, is really “an extrapolation of [Endō’s] own interior conflict” (1978: 3). 

Finally, Kitamori makes a comment on Endō’s methodology which is worth pondering. He warns that unless the Bible is allowed to shed its light on literature, 

rather than allowing literature to define its message, we will end up, like Endō, misconstruing what the Bible is really saying (Kitamori, 1991: 338-39). Kitamori’s 

comment is relevant in the light of Endō’s adamant insistence that there is no necessary connection between facts and truth. Endō would argue that the art of the 

novel lies in the author’s skill in reconstructing historical “facts” from timeless truths, or to illustrate them (Williams, 1999: 20). The question that presents itself 

is whether it is methodologically valid to impose the literary framework and assumptions of the novel onto theology and biblical studies. 

 

The Many Faces of God 

 

Toward the end of his life, Endō became decidedly pluralist in his religious orientation. In this section, it is appropriate to take a brief look at his so-called 

ultimate religious vision. The two sources that yield the most helpful information on Endō’s final thoughts on religion, and on Christ in particular, are his last 

novel Deep River and the journal in which he recorded the writing process and progress of Deep River from August 1990 to May 1993. The writing journal was 

published posthumously in 1997, and again in 2000.⁵⁸ 

In a 1994 interview with the Jesuit William Johnston, Endō expresses his deep interest in inter-religious dialogue, especially the dialogue between Christianity 

and Buddhism (Johnston, 1994: 18). ⁵⁹ Endō believes that “Buddhism and Christianity have in common the belief that what Buddhists call the Great Source of 

Life and what we call the Holy Spirit dwells within us and surrounds us” (Johnston, 1994: 19). At the same time, he acknowledges that there are “vast differences” 

between the two religions (Johnston, 1994: 18). In this regard, Endō finds the theme of love to be the most irreconcilable point of contention. Buddhism teaches 

that love is a form of attachment that needs to be removed along with all other attachments, while the central message of Christianity is love (Johnston, 1994: 18). 

⁶⁰ Nonetheless, Endō feels that Christianity, which emphasizes the external relationship between God and humans, has a lot to learn from Buddhism in the area 

of self-knowledge or human consciousness (Johnston, 1994: 19). Moreover, since Buddhism has become so entrenched in Japanese culture, shaping it and being 

shaped by it, both Johnston and Endō are agreed that “there can be no inculturation of Christianity in Japan without dialogue with Buddhism” (Johnston, 1994: 

19). 

The vastly different beliefs and practices in the various religions notwithstanding, around the time he started writing Deep River, Endō had arrived at a position 

where he readily subscribed to John Hick’s idea that the Ultimate Reality behind the religions is the same. The “central question” for Endō is: How does one 

address this Ultimate Reality? He asks, “Do we call it the Christ or the Buddha?” (Johnston, 1994: 20). The nature and naming of the Ultimate Reality is further 

explored in Deep River. 

Endō’s journal entry dated Thursday September 5, 1991 is extremely revealing of the decisive influence exerted by Hick on Endō’s Deep River: 

 

A few days ago, I was on the second floor of Taiseido Bookstore when I happened by chance to see [John Hick’s] Shūkyō tagen shugi (Problems of Religious 

Pluralism) at the corner of the bookshelf. It seemed to have been left there by a store clerk or a customer, and forgotten. But more than a mere accident, it was 

as if my subconscious had summoned it. Since my encounter with Jung, which was quite a while ago, I had not had the same feeling of being stirred up in my 

heart until I read this book. Hick is a Christian theologian, but he believes that the different world religions are in fact seeking the same God, only through 

different paths, cultures, and symbols. He also criticizes Christianity for maintaining the tendency of subsuming the other religions within itself while at the 

same time claiming to dialogue with them following Vatican II. He also makes the daring claim that true religious pluralism has no place for a theology that 

proclaims Jesus as the Christ. In other words, the problems of Jesus’ incarnation and the Trinity should be subject to the surgeon’s knife. Since two days ago, I 

have been overwhelmed by this shocking book. And then so it happened that a staff member from Iwanami Publishing Company visited me and gave me the 

same author’s Kami wa ōku no na o motsu (God Has Many Names). Now I am absorbed in reading the book. (Endō, 2000b: 23-24)⁶¹ 

 

Endō is clearly enthralled by the fact that the idea of religious pluralism could be espoused by a Western Christian who is not only his contemporary but a 

distinguished scholar.⁶² As intimated earlier, Endō had actually asserted the validity of all religions as early as 1976. However, until his encounter with Hick, he 

apparently supposed that such a view was a distinctly non-Western view. Indeed, Endō’s view of religion, which Morimoto refers to as “[a] Japanese reverberation 

of Hick’s pluralism” (2003: 163), represents quite accurately the general attitude taken by many Japanese. 

There are many ways to climb Mount Fuji. You can approach the ascent from the north, south, east, or west […]. In the same way, if one person lives sincerely 

as a Buddhist, and another lives sincerely as a Christian, in the end they will both arrive at the same truth. In other words, they may travel on different roads, but I 

think they will reach the same destination. (Endō, 1976: 236) 

Endō’s religious relativity becomes fully articulated in Deep River, primarily through Ōtsu who, on the one hand is branded as a heretic by the church, and on 

the other finds it impossible to renounce his Catholic faith inherited from his mother. There is no doubt that throughout the novel Ōtsu acts as Endō’s 

mouthpiece on matters of religious conviction. Concerning the religions, Ōtsu is said to be “fond of these words” of Mahatma Gandhi: 

 

There are many religions, but they are merely various paths leading to the same place. What difference does it make which of those separate paths we walk, as 

long as they all arrive at the identical destination? (Endo, 1994 [1994]: 191) 

 

Why then, one might ask, did Endō become a Christian, and not, say, a Buddhist? Endō provides this reply, “The answer is simple. I happened to find myself in 

the world of Christianity, not of any other religion” (1976: 236, emphasis added).⁶³ As we have seen from the account of Endō’s baptism, his conversion to 

Catholicism was the result of circumstance rather than choice. Again, we find Endō expressing the circumstantial nature of his inherited faith through Ōtsu in 

Deep River, in which the latter tells the rector of his seminary that it is only “natural” for him to be a Christian since he has been raised in a Christian family, and 

that it would therefore not be right for him to revert to being a Buddhist since he has never been one in the first place (Endō, 1994: 198). But this does not mean 

that his faith is not a genuine one. Ōtsu also affirms that another person being born and raised in a non-Christian family and naturally becoming a believer of that 

family’s religion is but a different manifestation of divine grace (Endō, 1994: 195). Endō’s conversion experience, as reflected in Ōtsu’s, is truly indicative of the 

tendency of many Japanese people to view religion as a family matter and not merely a personal one. 

This, of course, does not mean that one is not free to convert to another religion. Endō, once again through his mirror character Ōtsu, likens conversion to 

choosing a marriage partner (Endō, 1994: 195; Endō, 1983: 209). Although Endō has never been able to give up his Christian faith, try as he might, he offers this 

advice to the person seeking religious truth and fulfillment, “Why don’t you try one religion after another – Buddhism, Christianity, Islam – and then decide which 

best suits your disposition and circumstances?” (Endō, 1994: 195). Conflicting truth claims between the religions does not seem to be an issue for Endō at all. 

This is, of course, hardly surprising given Endō’s views on “fact” and “truth”. 

It is evident that while Endō started out seeking to present Christianity in a way that is culturally intelligible to his fellow countrymen and women, he gradually 

developed a religious vision which is pluralist and syncretistic. Three years after the publication of The Samurai, Endō wrote What God Is to Me, in which perhaps 

for the first time he moves beyond the mother imagery and describes God as an abstract, all-pervasive, unnamed force which one could arbitrarily choose to call 

X, or even “Onion” (tamanegi) (1983: 208). This theme is picked up in Deep River in the conversation between Ōtsu and his former college mate, the cynical 

Mitsuko, who cannot relate to the word kami 神 (God). 

 

“Sorry. If you don’t like that word [kami], we can change it to another name. We can call him Tomato, or even Onion if you prefer.” 

 

“All right, then, just what is this Onion to you? You said at school that you really didn’t understand him very well when someone asked you whether God 

existed.” 

 

“Sorry. To be honest, at that time I really didn’t know. But now in my own way I do.” 

 

“Tell me.” 

 

“God is not so much an existence as a force. This Onion is an entity that performs the labours of love.” 

 

“That’s even more repulsive. How can you use unsettling words as ‘love’ with a straight face? And what do you mean by ‘labours’?” 

 

“Well, for instance, the Onion found me abandoned in one place, and at some time he gave me life in a completely different location.” 

 

Mitsuko chortled. “That hasn’t got anything to do with the power of your Onion. Your feelings just sent you off in that direction.” 

 

“No, that’s not true. It was the work of the Onion transcending my own will.” For the first time Ōtsu spoke decisively […] (Endo, 1994 [1994]: 63-64) 

 

Elsewhere in the novel, Jesus is identified with the Onion. Note this autobiographical sketch of Endō in the following letter that Ōtsu wrote to the 

spiritually-restless Mitsuko: 

 

My mother told me all about the person you call my Onion, and she taught me that this Onion was a vastly more powerful accumulation of this warmth – in 

other words, love itself. I lost my mother when I got older, and I realized then that what lay at the source of my mother’s warmth was a portion of the love of my 

Onion. Ultimately what I have sought is nothing more than the love of that Onion, not any of the other innumerable doctrines mouthed by the various 

churches […] 

 

My trust is in the life of the Onion, who endured genuine torment for the sake of love, who exhibited love on our behalf […]. [W]hen I suffer alone, I can feel the 

smiling presence of my Onion, who knows all my trials. And just as he told the travelers on the road to Emmaus when he walked beside them, he has said to 

me, “Come, follow me.” (Endo, 1994 [1994]: 119) 

 

At other times, the concept of the Onion-God borders on pantheism: “I don’t think God is someone to be looked up to as a being separate from man […] I 

think he is within man, and that he is a great life force that envelops man, envelops the trees, envelops the flowers and grasses” (Endo, 1994 [1994]: 118). In the 

same letter, Ōtsu encourages Mitsuko with these words, “But just as my Onion is always beside me, he is always within you and beside you, too. He is the only 

one who can understand your pain and your loneliness” (Endo, 1994 [1994]: 120). 

Endō’s move toward an increasingly syncretistic faith seems to have received a propulsive force after his numerous visits to India in the late 1980s and 1990s 

(Williams, 1999: 192). He was deeply impressed by the crowds of people, each carrying their own individual burdens, daily thronging to bathe, even die, in the 

Ganges River. These were people whose Hindu spirituality he could not doubt as inauthentic. At the holy city of Vārānasī, located at the confluence of the Ganges 

and the Yamunā rivers, Endō “detected a location rich in symbolism, an echo of the collective unconscious in which the lives of all mankind, regardless of 

background and life experiences, can be seen brought together into the flow of the great river” (Williams, 1999: 192). In India, Endō discovered the existence of 

another spiritual world which is different from any with which he was familiar. It was a world no less real; indeed it appealed deeply to his deepest religious 

sensibilities (Williams, 1999: 193). 

It is interesting that despite his pluralist mindset, Endō’s commitment to Jesus, albeit the Jesus of his own imagination, remains strong. William Johnston 

recalls hearing a Catholic priest in the United States saying that “the interesting thing about Endō is that he is fascinated with the person of Christ. He is always 

talking about Christ, struggling with Christ, trying to understand Christ, experiencing the presence of Christ” (1994: 18). Endō’s response is that a Christian 

engaging in inter-religious dialogue must not flinch from “a firm commitment to Christ,” for otherwise “something fundamental might be lost” (Johnston, 1994: 

19). Evidently, the death of Jesus and the eternal companionship of Christ continue to be existentially significant for Endō, as seen in this testimony by Ōtsu: 

 

When the Onion was killed […] the disciples who remained finally understood his love and what it meant. Every one of them had stayed alive by abandoning 

him and running away. He continued to love them even though they had betrayed him. As a result, he was etched into each of their guilty hearts, and they were 

never able to forget him. The disciples set out for distant lands to tell others the story of his life […]. After that, he continued to live in the hearts of his 

disciples. He died, but he was restored to life in their hearts. (Endo, 1994 [1994]: 184-85)⁶⁴ 

 

Williams describes this passage as providing “the most concerted attempt in Endō’s entire corpus to encapsulate the essence of the dōhansha [i.e. 

companion]” (1999: 208). It is ironic that this unequivocal affirmation of Christ’s abiding companionship should be found in the murky waters of Deep River. 

Obviously for Endō, Christological exclusivism is not a theological criterion at all for the appropriation of Christ’s universal presence. In this regard, Harold 

Netland rightly observes that Endō’s pluralist theology approximates the theocentric Christology of the Catholic scholar Paul Knitter, rather than Hick’s 

reality-centered pluralism (personal communication). While Knitter agrees with Hick that the idea of Christological uniqueness in the sense of Christ being the 

only way to God “violates not only Christian revelation but [also] the revelation found in other faiths” (1985: 175), he does not go all the way with Hick by 

jettisoning Christ altogether. Rather, Knitter believes that “a theocentric, non-normative reinterpretation of the uniqueness of Christ” is more helpful in the light of 

the competing truth claims from other religions (Knitter, 1985: 200). In other words, rather than insisting on a soteriological uniqueness for Christ – a key tenet in 

evangelical theology – Knitter proposes what he calls a “relational uniqueness” as a new way to understand the person and work of Christ (Knitter, 1985: 171).⁶⁵ 

Here, we can see echoes of Knitter in Endō’s conviction that Christ is but one of the many faces of God, although there is no clear evidence that Endō read 

Knitter. 

In summary, Endō, on the one hand, insists that unless one believes the existence of God in all religions, there is no possibility of real dialogue; on the other, 

he highly values the significance of Christ, especially his death and ensuing companionship. The key to Endō’s ability to maintain this paradox is his belief that 

“God has many different faces,” an expression which appears, in varying forms, no less than three times in Deep River (1994: 196, 198, 201). This expression is, 

in all probability, inspired by John Hick’s book God Has Many Names (1986 [1982]). 

In other words, Endō resolves the almost unbearable tension between his personal faith in Christ and his religious pluralism by asserting that the man 

crucified on the cross is but one of the many faces of God. Or conversely, one may also say that he is the God with many faces. This same God also dwells 

among Jews and Muslims, presumably putting on a different face for the benefit of different people. Clearly Endō in his assertion goes beyond the inclusivism of 

his own Catholic church. Indeed, in Deep River, Ōtsu explicitly rejects Karl Rahner’s notion that “noble people of other faiths [are] actually Christians driving 

without a licence” because it does not lead to “a dialogue among equals” (Endō, 1994: 198). 

Given such a radical interpretation of God and of Jesus Christ, it is not a wonder that Endō should reject words such as “heresy” (itan 異端) or “pagans’’ 

(ikyōto 異教徒) as “meaningless” (1976: 236; cf. Uchida, 1991: 26). Endō criticizes Christians who use these words against people of different religious 

persuasion as lacking sensitivity and imagination, and worse, as committing the sin of arrogance (1976: 237). There is certainly a point in Endō’s harsh comment, 

but taken too far, it would become a case of the pot calling the kettle black. 

Endō’s wife of forty-three years, Junko, has this to say of her late husband’s last novel Deep River, “Endo arrived at a view in which he saw every human being 

entering a flow of the great life symbolized by the River Ganges. In his view human life transcends the small boundaries set by various religions and is resurrected 

in the flow of the great life” (1999: 148). Indeed, through the spiritual soliloquy of his alter ego, Mitsuko, Endō himself hints that after a lifetime of pursuing 

Christ, he has reached his ultimate religious vision: 

 

I believe that the river embraces these people and carries them away. A river of humanity. The sorrows of this deep river of humanity. And I am a part of it. 

(Endo, 1994 [1994]: 211) 

 

It is most telling that, at his death, in accordance to his last wishes, a copy each of Silence and Deep River were placed with his body in the coffin. 

 

Western Influences on Endō 

 

In the penultimate section of this chapter, we will consider very briefly some Western influences on Endō’s works. This subject is beyond the scope of this study, 

but is, of course, worthy of extensive research in itself. To begin, Endō’s exposure to modern French literature – first in Keio through Satō Saku, and then in 

Lyons – constitutes a significant factor in the shaping of his literary ideas. In particular, the influences of three French Roman Catholic writers, François Mauriac, 

Julien Green, and Georges Bernanos, are particularly discernible in Endō’s works. ⁶⁶ Endō’s A Life of Jesus seems to have been inspired by Mauriac’s Life of Jesus 

(1936), if not in content then certainly in concept. Both works emphasize the suffering love of God in Christ. Also, the selfless and utterly devoted curate in 

Bernanos’ The Diary of a Country Priest (1936) probably gave Endō his first inklings of what a Christ figure could look like in the twentieth century. Interestingly 

too, the religious struggles of Green as evidenced in his first conversion from Protestantism to Roman Catholicism in 1916, then to Buddhism shortly after, and 

then back to Catholicism in 1935, are in some way reflected in the tensions in Endō’s uncomfortable identity as a Japanese Christian. 

At the risk of over-simplification, the three French writers write on common themes relating to the unrelieved tensions and unresolved paradoxes of the 

spiritual life, and the struggle of the soul in search of salvation in the midst of spiritual darkness, within and without. At the same time, the vision of God and his 

provision of redemption through unexpected means and in unexpected places is never lost. In that sense, their works provide a bulwark against the spirit of 

naturalism that was characteristic of twentieth-century France. Although the principal theme in Endō’s works is suffering, he deals with it by plumbing the depths 

of the human soul and shows the darkness therein. Redemption comes in Endō’s works in unexpected ways, mainly through the encounter with a most unlikely 

person with an almost unnatural capacity to love. Unresolved tensions abound in Endō’s novels as well. In the same way as his French predecessors, the 

religious themes in Endō’s works provide a strong cultural alternative to the spirit of naturalism that infected Japan after the Second World War. It is not 

unreasonable to suppose that Endō’s literary achievements have contributed to the usually rather large number of prominent writers in Japan who converted to 

Catholicism in their adult lives. 

Endō’s portrayal of the weak and suffering Christ is reminiscent of the paintings of the pathetically human Christ by the French Christian artist Georges Rouault 

(1871-1958). Rouault’s many portrayals of the suffering – and sometimes clownish – Christ are a radical departure from those of earlier periods when the tendency 

was to convey a sense of divine dignity even in suffering. As William Dyrness (1971: 186) notes, “[In Rouault’s art], Christ’s presence is a presence of suffering in 

and with our sufferings”. It is not clear if Endō had ever encountered these paintings, but it is highly conceivable that he did, especially given the fame and deep 

spiritual devotion of Rouault. 

Endō readily acknowledges his indebtedness to Western precedent for many of his ideas (Williams, 1999: 248, f.n. 69). For example, the portrayal of some of 

his characters with multiple, divided selves – such as Suguro and Madame Naruse in Scandal – is derived, at least in part, from the precedent found in Graham 

Greene’s character Francis Andrews in The Man Within (1929) and Dostoevsky’s Golyadkin in The Double (1846) (Williams, 1999: 248, f.n. 69). 

Williams (1999: 179-88, 197-203) and Mase-Hasegawa (2004: 151-53) have also demonstrated the heavy influence of Jungian psychology in some of Endō’s 

works, notably Scandal and Deep River. 

 

Evaluative Summary 

 

It must be remembered from the outset that Endō writes as a novelist and essayist rather than as an academic theologian. One must expect, therefore, that there 

are a number of theological loose ends in his thought that cannot be tied up neatly. Yet through his creative writing, one cannot help but recognize that Endō is 

indeed engaging in the task of doing contextual theology. The manner of his theologizing is neither discursive nor homiletic, but narrative, principally through the 

medium of the novel. Endō’s perspective on the death of Christ is hence more accurately described as a literature of the Cross rather than a theology of the 

Cross. 

Endō started out as a professed Catholic. For the most part of his life, he honestly struggled with the foreignness of his inherited faith. He did not believe that 

the Christian faith has to remain foreign, and so embarked on a lifework of constructing a cogent alternative to the prevailing image of the God of Western 

Christianity. Even though in the end he viewed Christianity as one of numerous equally legitimate paths to salvation – whatever the word “salvation” may mean – 

Endō had always believed in the possibility that Christianity could become a religion that the Japanese could identify as their very own. Like the protagonist Ōtsu 

in Deep River, Endō would spend a lifetime deconstructing traditional, Western Christianity, and recreating “a Christianity that fits the Japanese heart” (Nihonjin 

no kokoro ni au kirisutokyō 日本人の心にあう基督教) (Endō, 1994: 107).⁶⁷ 

In contrast with Kitamori’s focus on the pain of God, Endō’s emphasis is on the suffering of humanity. Therefore, even though the common theme between 

Kitamori and Endō is pain, it is construed theocentrically for the former, and anthropocentrically for the latter. It is not a wonder then to find that Endō’s 

Christology is fully circumscribed by the existential reality of human suffering. It is completely a Christology from below, with the kenotic principle applied to 

such an extreme that the Son of God is made to become a totally passive and ineffectual person in order that he might identify with all the suffering of 

humankind. In other words, the suffering of Christ is construed to mirror the suffering of humanity. 

Indeed, Endō shares the view with Buddhism that the existential human problem is suffering, not sin. The ministry role of the Son of God becomes defined as 

an empathetic participant in human suffering rather than the substitutionary bearer of human sin. Hence the reason why Jesus had to experience the most 

harrowing form of death then is not so that he can experience the full import of the wrath of God on behalf of humanity, but that he can truly share in the misery 

and pain of every human being. The death of Christ therefore has no saving efficacy in the traditional sense. That is, there is no atonement in Endō’s theology of 

the cross. Undoubtedly the cross is the supreme manifestation of divine love, but it is not a love that redeems humans from their sin, but a love that identifies 

fully with humanity in their suffering. For on the cross, Jesus suffered not for us, but like us. In other words, the cross for Endō symbolizes identification but not 

redemption in the classical sense of being delivered from divine punishment. In fact, there is no punishment in the maternal religion which he has transformed 

Christianity into, because there is no divine wrath to speak of in the first place. 

Indeed, the God of Endō has become radically domesticated such that not even sin can provoke him to anger. For Endō, love is the only divine identity. 

However, while it is true that the Bible teaches that “God is love” (1 John 4:16), it is quite a different thing from claiming that “love is God.” One is reminded of C. 

S. Lewis’ warning that “[l]ove, having become a god, becomes a demon” (1960: 83). In the case of Endō, the monism of divine love so characteristic of his 

literature ends up deconstructing the true meaning of the Cross. 

Furthermore, when it comes to the Resurrection, Endō appropriates what he sees to be its true meaning not from its historicity – for that is irrelevant even if it 

is factually true – but from the idea that Jesus who paid the ultimate price of identification with humanity is now born into the hearts of men and women as 

Christ, their eternal companion. It is clear that Endō does not want personal Christian faith to rest on the triumph of Christ’s resurrection, but on the suffering 

love of Jesus. Perhaps Endō believes that faith in the human and suffering Jesus, rather than the divine and victorious Christ, is more easily appropriated by the 

Japanese people. Colin Noble puts it this way, 

 

In refusing to desert those who betrayed his love, Endo’s Jesus exhibited in death the comforting compassion which will perhaps appeal to the religious psyche 

of the Japanese. It is Endo’s hope that the Japanese will, as he believes the disciples did, find in the love that transcends betrayal and death a Jesus in whom 

they will put their trust as an eternal companion. (1992: 10) 

 

Yet, without Christ’s powerful and decisive victory over sin and death, one can have all the love in the universe and still not make any sense of the pain and 

suffering to which Endō is so sensitive. 

In conclusion, the two central themes underlying Endō’s perspective on the death of Christ are Jesus’ identification with human suffering, and the eternal 

companionship of Christ. These are important biblical themes, prone to be forgotten. In a very real sense, because of his suffering, Jesus is able to sympathize 

with every person who suffers (Heb. 4:14-5:10). It is curious that evangelical churches tend to “rush through” Good Friday in order to celebrate Easter Sunday. 

According to Marva Dawn, churches who consciously observe Good Friday tend to be more involved in mercy ministries than those who do not (personal 

communication). Moreover, the resurrection of Christ is more than a doctrine of orthodoxy; it is the experiential reality of his companionship mediated through 

the indwelling Spirit in the heart of the believer (cf. Mt. 28:20; 1 Cor. 6:19-20; Gal. 2:20). 

However, these two themes of Jesus’ suffering and Christ’s companionship do not give us the whole meaning of the death of Christ. Indeed, in the canticle of 

the Suffering Servant, which Endō cites substantially both in A Life of Jesus (1973a: 113-15, 243) and The Birth of Christ (1978: 33-34), the Servant is portrayed not 

only as one who “took up our infirmities and carried our sorrows” (Is. 53:4), but also one who “was pierced for our transgressions, [and] crushed for our 

iniquities” (Is. 53:5). It is clear from Isaiah 53:10 that God caused Jesus to suffer so as to make him “a guilt offering” for the sin of humanity. This part of the verse, 

however, is left out in all three instances that Endō cites from the Song. The principal role of the Suffering Servant is that of sin bearer, not sympathizer of 

suffering. 

Interestingly, Endō’s understanding of the Cross recalls the contingent historical perspective of Elizabeth Johnson: 

 

The narrative memory of the life, death, and resurrection, and outpouring of the Spirit in Jesus the Christ traces the way of divine compassion in the midst of 

historical sin, death, and defeat. This living anamnesis of Jesus shows that instead of being absent, the gracious mystery of God is in the midst of historical 

suffering enabling resistance, bringing about healing, promising ultimate liberation. Instead of final failure, a future is promised to the defeated of history, who 

in the end are all of us. (1994: 18) 

 

Although one wonders if Endō shares Johnson’s vision of an “ultimate liberation.” It seems that for Endō, the present companionship of Christ is all there is to 

comfort the sick and suffering. Existential meaning is to be found here and now in the very midst of suffering, not in the hope of some future deliverance. For 

that, the abiding presence of the suffering Christ seems to be enough. 

In any case, Endō’s Christological agenda leads him to write A Life of Jesus in such a way that the Gospels are selectively – and rather bizarrely – interpreted. 

Hagiwara points out that even the rather liberal New Testament scholar Tagawa Kenzō accuses Endō of disregarding proper biblical scholarship by choosing only 

those passages that serve his purpose of distilling the shinjitsu no Iesu (the true Jesus) from the jijitsu no Iesu (the factual Jesus) (1993: 60). In his work Shūkyō 

to wa nanika (What is Religion?), Tagawa presents historico-linguistic evidence to uncover what he disdainfully refers to as Endō bushi 遠藤節 (Endō tune) with 

its underlying jakusha no ronri 弱者の論理 (logic of the weak), asserting that it has “nothing to do with the teachings of Jesus” (cited in Kenzō, 1993: 55). It is 

clear that in A Life of Jesus, “the total fact of Christ” is not presented (so Newbigin, in Hunsberger, 1998: 195). The message that Jesus preached cannot simply be 

reducible to the singular attribute of love; it encompasses a more comprehensive vision of the reign of God. Catholic missiologist Stephen Bevans helpfully 

defines Jesus’ vision of God’s reign as shalom, “that rich Hebrew word that means justice with peace and peace with justice” (2002: 130). 

In his book Models of Contextual Theology, Bevans classifies Endō as someone who practices what he calls the “transcendental model” of contextual theology 

(Bevans, 2002: 107). In this model, the starting point is “one’s own religious experience and one’s own experience with oneself” (Bevans, 2002: 104).⁶⁸ Bevans is 

right, of course. Earlier, Schuchert (1978: 3) and Kitamori (1991: 336) have already pointed out that Endō’s ideas of God and Christ are derived from his personal 

experiences, particularly his failed relationship with his father, than from Scripture. One can hence see why Endō rejects the father image of God which connotes 

severity, discipline, judgment, and little else.⁶⁹ It is a pity that Endō did not allow his defective idea of fatherhood to be corrected by Scripture’s portrayal of the 

true fatherhood of God but jettisoned the idea altogether.⁷⁰ In its place, he recreated God in the image of his mother. Such a theological presentation of God, 

besides being inherently flawed, has no claim to universality (cf. Bevans, 2002: 109). The same argument applies as well to his Christological construction. The 

ineffectual Jesus is the result of overstretching the biblical portrayal of a meek and lowly Jesus, and viewing him only through the lens of suffering. 

It is a biting irony that Endō should reject what he perceives to be a triumphalist, Western Christology only to embrace the negative assumptions that underlie 

the historical criticism of modern Western scholarship (cf. Endō, 1973a: 53-54). His Enlightenment mindset is also evident in the way he distinguishes between 

truth and fact (Endō, 1973a: 52-54). Endō insists that one does not have to accept the factuality of the miracles as recorded in the Gospels in order to appreciate 

the truth that they are intended to convey, namely, the truth about the “kingdom of God as a universe of love based on the presence of a companion to all 

humankind” (Endō, 1973a: 120). 

On the subject of fact and truth, a brief excursus is in order here. It appears that many Japanese people are not concerned about historicity as long as truth is 

preserved or conveyed. This topic came up at a conversation that took place in June 1960 between Paul Tillich and some Buddhist scholars and students of Ōtani 

University, the Pure Land Sect Buddhist university in Kyoto. (Tillich was visiting Japan at that time.) A couple of important points were made in relation to the 

historicity of the Buddha. Firstly, Buddhists have always assumed the Buddha’s historicity since no historian had ever said otherwise (Wood, 1961: 49). However, 

the eternal nature of the dharma kaya⁷¹ does not depend upon the historicity of the Buddha (Wood, 1961: 50). It is clear that the Buddhist position on the Buddha 

is diametrically opposite of the Christian position on Christ and the Word of God. 

When Koyama was working in Thailand as a missionary, he learned that the Thai outlook of life, especially its understanding of history, is very much influenced 

by Buddhism (1972: 42-50). The same can surely be said of Japanese culture. For example, very few Japanese would in fact regard the events recorded in the two 

ancient texts of the Kojiki (Record of Ancient Matters) and Nihonshoki (Chronicles of Japan) to be historically authentic, yet these two texts are considered to 

constitute the spiritual and moral foundation of Japanese culture and nationality. To be sure, there are historical events recorded in the Nihonshoki, but much of 

this text, and virtually everything in the Kojiki, are a telling of the mythological exploits and follies of the deities. But the stories are crafted in such a way so as to 

present a particular “truth” about the genesis of Japan and the Japanese people, and it is from this “truth” that the values of Japanese culture come into being. 

Many Western Christians find the Japanese indifference to history hard to comprehend, for biblical revelation assumes an intrinsic relationship between truth and 

history.⁷² Koyama calls the Japanese perspective the “cosmological” view of history, contrasting it with the “eschatological” view of history as taught in the Bible 

(1999: 20-21). He has much to say about the fundamental importance of history and historicity. The relationship between fact and truth is an important 

missiological issue, and we will pick up this discussion again in the next chapter. 

Some may argue that a miracle needs not be factual in order for it to be true, since what is important is the meaning behind it rather than what actually 

happened. Even so, it is not hard to see the problems that occur when historicity and truth become so radically separated as in the case of Endō, where he 

unwittingly placed himself on the slippery slope of syncretism. It is really not surprising that in the end Endō’s religious vision should become pluralist and 

syncretistic. Endō might have started out seeking to commend to his fellow countrymen and women a Japanese expression of Christianity, but ended up with no 

credible message since there is now no compelling reason why one should become a Christian if all religions, notwithstanding their different historical accidents, 

indeed lead to the same timeless truth. 

Despite his professed allegiance to Christ, the contents of Endō’s religious pluralism in his later life are uncannily similar to John Hick’s. This is hardly 

surprising considering the acknowledged influence Hick has on Endō. The reader is directed to Harold Netland (2001: 221-46) who has most ably provided a 

critique of Hick’s model of religious pluralism, a critique which equally applies to Endō’s (see also Morimoto, 2003). The point to note here is that, in the case of 

Endō’s quest for religious and cultural authenticity, the biblical integrity of the message is unfortunately sacrificed. 

It is indeed a positive thing to pursue with passion an authentic expression of one’s religious and cultural identity. The problem arises when personal 

experience and one’s social location are used uncritically as the locus of revelation at the expense of Scripture. Furthermore, while Endō’s overriding concern for 

taking seriously the cultural psychology of the Japanese is commendable, an inherent danger lies in the fact that given the inevitability of social and cultural 

change, the gospel message needs to be constantly adapted. The question is: How do we decide on the parameters of adaptation? How do we ensure that the 

gospel does not metamorphose into something unrecognizably Christian? We will pick up the discussion in chapter 7. Until then, we will now turn our attention 

to Koyama Kōsuke. 

 

¹ There are an inordinate number of baptized Christians among novelists and playwrights in post-war Japan, such as Ōhara Tomie, Takahashi Takako, Miura 

Shūmon, Yashiro Seiichi, Inoue Hisashi, Ogawa Kunio, Moriuchi Toshio, Tanaka Sumie, Shiina Rinzō, and Takadō Kaname. Most of these writers are Catholic. 

See Endō, “At the Baptism of One Friend after Another …” in Japan Christian Quarterly 43(4) (Fall 1977), pp. 208-10. 

² Within the genre of the modern Japanese novel (shōsetsu), Endō and Sono, and Miura, belong to a coterie of writers known as the Daisan no shinjin 

第三の新人 (Third generation of new authors). The art of these post-war writers is characterized by what Mark Williams refers to as “the vision of the divided 

self” (1995: 5). An exemplification of this trait is the “[depiction of] composite individuals as protagonists” (Williams, 1995: 5). See Williams (1999: 1-24) for an 

introduction to the literary distinctives of the Daisan no shinjin authors. 

³ Endō himself acknowledges, “It is no simple matter for a Christian in Japan to write novels on Christian subjects. What has bothered me most is the uneasy 

feeling that my readers who are unfamiliar with Christianity will completely miss what I am saying. What I sense at once because I have known it intimately for 

years may elude them completely […]. This is not true in the West” (Endo, 1974 [1973]: 184, emphasis added). 

A word on notation is in order here. Many of Endō’s fictional works have been excellently translated into English. When his Japanese works are referred to in this 

dissertation, the English translation is often cited. In this case, the year in brackets in the bibliographical information refers to the year of publication of the 

original Japanese text. Where a single year is stated, the reference is to the citation of the original text. Also, the orthography of “Endō,” or “Endo” as the case 

might be, conforms exactly to the bibliographic information of the work cited. In all his translated works, the name is consistently rendered as “Endo,” that is, 

without the macron marking the long vowel. 

⁴ Although published together in a single volume in 1955, Shiroi hito, kiiroi hito is actually comprised of two separate works: Shiroi hito (White Person) and Kiiroi 

hito (Yellow Person). The former was awarded the prestigious Akutagawa Prize. 

⁵ It was Silence, Endō’s most famous novel and the winner of the Tanizaki Prize, which won him international acclaim. A movie was made in 1971 based on the 

novel, directed by Shinoda Masahiro. Endō met with Martin Scorsese in the US in 1991 to discuss the possibility of remaking the movie (Endō, 2006: 267). This 

second movie finally came out in 2016. 

⁶ All the short stories in this list have been translated into English: the first two in the Fall 1974 issue of The Japan Christian Quarterly, and the last two in the 

book The Final Martyrs (1993), a collection of nine other of Endō’s short stories translated into English by Van C. Gessel. It is noteworthy that a number of 

Endō’s short stories are written in the first person, and include many of his own real-life experiences. 

⁷ The company disbanded in November 1997, just over a year after Endō’s death. 

⁸ Other than A Life of Jesus, none of Endō’s other non-fiction books have been translated into English. 

⁹ For an excellent treatment on how Endō’s religious vision evolved over the course of his lifetime, see Mase-Hasegawa (2004: 59-85). 

¹⁰ In this novel, the writer Numada keeps a pet mynah bird to which he constantly confesses the secrets of his heart. Then Numada undergoes a major surgery 

during which his heart stopped for a time, but miraculously recovers. When he wakes up four hours later, he discovers that his mynah has died. It then dawns 

upon Numada that the mynah might have died in his place (Endō, 1994: 132-33). 

¹¹ On his visits to Japan in 1997 and 2000, both times speaking to evangelical churches on a lecture circuit, Philip Yancey, a huge fan of Endō, had this to say: 

“Whenever I mentioned him in one of my lectures, a Japanese Christian would come up afterward and solemnly advise me that Endo might not be the best 

example to use” (2003: 281). 

¹² The word daisetsu 大説 is coined by Kitamori by combining the Chinese characters for “big” (大) and “theory” (説) in order to make a point about the novel, 

or shōsetsu 小説. The character 小 means “small.” 

¹³ In a 1994 interview with Van C. Gessel, for example, Endō expressed his annoyance with Western critics who were constantly debating the meaning of the 

famous “mudswamp of Japan” statement in Silence. Endō said, “The most frequent question I am asked by foreign journalists is, ‘Why do you call Japan a 

“mudswamp”?’ It’s always ‘mudswamp, mudswamp.’ That’s actually a term used by one of the characters in the novel, not by me” (Gessel, 1999: 150). Endō’s 

exasperation is understandable, but transferring the blame to one of his characters does not relieve him of the responsibility for developing the mudswamp motif, 

not only in Silence but also in his other novels such as White Person, Yellow Person and Wonderful Fool as we shall see later. 

¹⁴ A detailed chronology of Endō’s life is found in Endō, Endō Shūsaku essei senshū I (Selected Essays of Endō Shūsaku, Vol. I) (Tokyo: Kōbunsha, 2006), pp. 

254-71 as well as in his “Fukai kawa” sōsaku nikki (Diary of the making of Deep River), (Tokyo: Kōdansha, 2000), pp. 193-211. 

¹⁵ Unless notated otherwise, all subsequent citations from Silence are taken from the 1982 English translation by William Johnston (Tokyo: Kōdansha), and are 

referenced as Endo (1982 [1966]). 

¹⁶ Although Endō moved back to his father’s home after the war, the relationship between father and son was severely strained. It was not until 1989 when Endō’s 

ninety-three-year-old father was dying that there was some measure of reconciliation. Endō’s older brother had already died in 1977, and so the senior Endō was 

all alone. 

¹⁷ Endō had wanted to study French at a private school, but the only European language that was taught in Japan at that time was German. 

¹⁸ According to Mase-Hasegawa, Endō’s graduation thesis is entitled Neo-Thomism ni okeru shiron (Poetic Theory in Neo-Thomism) (2004: 172). 

¹⁹ One of the three other Japanese was Inoue Yōji, whom Endō would develop a lifelong friendship with. Inoue was to spend nearly eight years in a Carmelite 

monastery in France. He is today a well-established Catholic theologian in Japan. See p. 74, n. 72 above; see also p. 171 below. 

²⁰ The city of Lyons is better known today as Lyon, and the university as the University of Lyon (Université de Lyon). 

²¹ Endō’s experiences in France would later be “hauntingly captured” in the autobiographical work Foreign Studies, published in 1965 (Brooker, 1999: 142). 

²² Endō Ryūnosuke is currently working as the Head of Publicity for Fuji Television. 

²³ This novel was awarded the Shinchōsha Literary Prize and the Mainichi Shuppan Prize. 

²⁴ Unless notated otherwise, all subsequent citations from The Sea and Poison are taken from the 1973 English translation by Michael Gallagher (Tokyo: Tuttle), 

and are referenced as Endo (1973 [1958]). 

²⁵ From time to time, one still hears a missionary misquoting Endō saying that the Japanese have no concept of God, sin, and death. The reality is more complex. 

Endō does not deny that Japanese people, like everyone else, have an understanding of God, sin, and death. But in a polytheistic culture informed by the Buddhist 

teaching on reincarnation and nirvana, and where relational harmony is highly prized, it is to be expected that its adherents will not share the clearly defined 

theological understanding of God, sin, and death as propagated by the West. In relation to the Western worldview, the swamp analogy therefore seems 

appropriate to Japan. 

²⁶ Harold Netland notes that Endō’s “wonderful fool” finds a Western precedent in Dostoevsky’s “idiot” (personal communication). See Fyodor Dostoevsky, The 

Idiot (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992). 

²⁷ Unless notated otherwise, all subsequent citations from Wonderful Fool are taken from the 1974 English translation by Francis Mathy (Tokyo: Tuttle), and are 

referenced as Endo (1974 [1959]). 

²⁸ Williams is right to suggest that Takamori’s words serve “as a precursor of similar depictions by Endō of the ‘weak’ Kakure (Hidden) Christians” (1999: 87). In 

particular, the “cowards” anticipate the Judas-like figures that invariably appear in Endō’s historical works, such as Kichijirō in Silence and Kisuke in Saigo no 

junkyōsha (The Final Martyrs). The Final Martyrs, a short story published around the same time as Wonderful Fool, is Endō’s first work on the kakure kirishitan, 

the hidden Christians who practiced their faith secretly as a result of the Tokugawa persecutions. The English translation appears as the lead story in the 1993 

anthology of the same title. 

²⁹ As mentioned in the preceding footnote, the subject of the kakure kirishitan was not new to Endō. Indeed, Endō had always displayed a deep fascination with 

their faith and history. 

³⁰ Unless notated otherwise, all subsequent citations from The Girl I Left Behind are taken from the 1994 English translation by Mark Williams (London: Peter 

Owen), and are referenced as Endo (1994 [1964]). 

³¹ For an overview of the Jesuit mission and the kakure kirishitan, see pp. 42ff above. 

³² For a masterly summary of the plot of the novel, see Bosch (1994: 73-75). 

³³ The Samurai, which won the Noma Literary Prize, is in all probability the second most widely read of Endō’s novels outside of Japan, after Silence. 

³⁴ Unless notated otherwise, all subsequent citations from The Samurai are taken from the 1982 English translation by Van C. Gessel (London; Peter Owen), and 

are referenced as Endo (1982 [1980]). 

³⁵ Interestingly, Mase-Hasegawa calls The Samurai Endō’s “inner autobiography” (2004: 179). 

³⁶ Unless notated otherwise, all subsequent citations from Scandal are taken from the 1988 English translation by Van C. Gessel (London: Peter Owen), and are 

referenced as Endo (1988 [1986]). 

³⁷ Unless notated otherwise, all subsequent citations from Deep River are taken from the 1994 English translation by Van C. Gessel (New York: New Directions), 

and are referenced as Endo (1994 [1994]). 

³⁸ Since the definite (or indefinite) article does not exist in the Japanese language, the title Iesu no shōgai could be translated as either “The Life of Jesus” or “A 

Life of Jesus.” The former is certainly the more natural reading, and one can only guess that the use of the latter as the English title reflects the Jesuit translator’s 

warning that the work is Endō’s own interpretation of the four Gospels rather than official church teaching. Perhaps this could also explain why the sequel The 

Birth of Christ has not been translated. 

³⁹ The use of the image of the mother is very common in modern Japanese literature, appearing frequently, for example, in the works of literary giants such as 

Izumi Kyōka, Dazai Osamu, Tanizaki Jun’ichirō, and Kawabata Yasunari, among others. Endō, however, is unique in the way that he transposes the image of the 

mother onto the Christian God. See Hagiwara Takao, “The Role of the Mother in Modern Japanese Literature: The Case of Shūsaku Endō,” in British Columbia 

Asian Review 7, no. 1 (Winter 1993/94), pp. 55-63. 

⁴⁰ References to the 1978 English translation of A Life of Jesus are notated as Endo (1978 [1973]). Whenever a citation is taken from the translated text, the 

equivalent reference to the 1973 Japanese text will be given alongside. 

⁴¹ See p. 55 above, esp. n. 42. Doron Cohen defines amae (甘え) as “the feeling of normal infants toward the mother: dependence, the desire to be passively 

loved, and the unwillingness to be separated from the mother’s protection and face the reality of the world” (1993: 115). According to psychiatrist Doi Takeo 

(1981), amae extends to adult life and shapes personal and social reality in Japan more than in any other culture. 

⁴² Kitamori, however, is wrong when he says that “Endō lost his mother when he was fifteen or sixteen” (1991: 336). The fact is that Endō’s mother died in 1954, 

when Endō was thirty-one years old. 

⁴³ Historische means “historical”, that is, relating to factual events. Geschichtliche, on the other hand, means “historic”, that is, referring to an existential 

“history” that creates an impact on the believer. Kähler – the teacher of both Barth and Bultmann – never intended to divorce the two, but to suggest that while it 

is true that the historical-scientific method may fail to uncover the historical Jesus, it does not compromise the historic, biblical Christ whose impact comes 

through the preaching of the Bible by the church. Endō seems to be adopting Kähler’s approach, although his conclusions about both the historical Jesus and the 

Christ of faith are quite different from Kähler’s. 

⁴⁴ In contrast, there are scholars who attempt to effect a radical separation between the historical Jesus and the Christ of faith. See, for example, Alvar Ellegård, 

Jesus: One Hundred Years Before Christ (Woodstock, N.Y.: Peter Mayer, 1999). 

⁴⁵ This expression aptly translates honshitsu teki ni muryoku 本質的に無力) in the original text (Endō, 1973a: 232). 

⁴⁶ It is interesting that Endō deliberately leaves out the second part of the verse, “but woe to that man who betrays him.” Endō does not consider Judas’ betrayal 

to be any more than the betrayal of the other disciples when Jesus was arrested (1973a: 177). On the contrary, Endō believes that by trying to return the thirty 

pieces of silver, Judas was expressing his faith in Jesus, and that when Jesus was sentenced to death, he felt too that he had to die (Endō, 1973a: 177). Although 

betrayed by Judas, the condemnation of Jesus was only for the moment; in case of Judas, however, betrayed by Caiaphas, he suffered condemnation down 

through history (Endō, 1973a: 177). Endō writes, “Jesus understood the suffering of Judas. Even on the man who betrayed him, Jesus poured out his love” (Endō, 

1973a: 177). 

⁴⁷ Contrary to Endō’s conjecture, the Gospel records show that the disciples did not come to any new understanding of Christ on the eve of his resurrection. Even 

after the Resurrection, it took a while for them to believe him and understand his mission (see Mk. 16:14; Lk. 24:36-49; Jn. 20:19-21:23). 

⁴⁸ Endō does not, however, elaborate on what this “essence” might be other than describing it vaguely as an “invisible power” (1983: 176). 

⁴⁹ In this passage, Endō uses the ordinary, intransitive verb mesameru 目覚める to describe the awakening of the disciples to the truth about Jesus. Elsewhere, 

he uses another intransitive verb satoru 悟る to describe the same experience (Endō, 1973a: 243; 1978: 20). This is also a common word, but can also be used to 

describe the Buddhist experience of enlightenment. Indeed, the noun satori 悟り means enlightenment in the religious, often Buddhist, sense. However, it is 

highly debatable whether Endō regards the disciples’ awakening as similar to the enlightenment of the Buddha. 

⁵⁰ Endō, however, does not go as far as some who insist that truth can only be universal if it is absolutely free from any historical conditioning. See, for instance, 

Book IV of Immanuel Kant’s Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone (1960 [1793]: 139-190), where a “pure” religious faith predicated on a dehistoricized 

knowledge of God becomes all but reduced to a universal moral code. See also Vinoth Ramachandra’s critique of Raimundo Panikkar’s vision of an ahistorical 

transcendental mystery (Ramachandra, 1996: 76-108). 

⁵¹ Takayanagi Shun’ichi (1979: 612) correctly points out the choice of jijitsu 事実 and shinjitsu 真実 is intended to create a pun. The common word for truth is 

shinri 真理. The word shinjitsu is better translated as “truthfulness” or “faithfulness,” and is used, for example in Romans 3:4 to describe God. Perhaps Endō is 

saying that while the New Testament traditions surrounding Jesus’ life may not be jijitsu, they are shinjitsu in the sense of being a “symbol of God’s faithfulness 

to humankind in the reality of Jesus” (Takayanagi, 1979: 613). 

⁵² This problem is, of course, not unique to Endō, but a central issue in literature. As Williams rightly points out, Endō’s concern recalls the debate in the late 

nineteenth century between Mori Ōgai and Tsubouchi Shōyō on the distinction between “actuality” and “reality” in literary writings (1999: 20). 

⁵³ This is one of the criticisms brought up against the movie End of the Spear (2006), based on the true story of the killing of five North American missionaries 

by a group of Waodani men in Ecuador in 1956. The question raised is this: In the name of conveying truth, how far is one allowed to change historical facts in 

the telling of a story? See Kathryn Long, “More Than Meets the Eye: An Historical Perspective on ‘The End of the Spear’,” presented at the Annual Meeting of the 

North Central Region of the Evangelical Missiological Society, Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, Deerfield, IL: 2006. 

⁵⁴ It is not clear if Kitamori and Endō ever met or spoke with each other. It would not be surprising if they did, especially since Endō participated as a Catholic 

representative in the Christian Pavilion at the 1970 Osaka World Expo. Kitamori was the chairman of the committee that organized the Christian Pavilion. 

However, other than the critique of Endō in Kitamori’s book, there is no record of any interaction between the two men. 

⁵⁵ It is extremely unlikely that Endō had not read the book given its popularity. 

⁵⁶ One could further argue that in Kitamori’s theology, the ontological relationship that exists between God and his creation means that when humans, created in 

the image of God, betray his love, God, without compromising his freedom, necessarily feels the pain of betrayal, just like the father in the Parable of the Prodigal 

Son in Luke 15:11-32. In contrast, there is no theology of creation underlying Endō’s thought; consequently, the relationship between God and humans seems to 

be an arbitrary one, perhaps like the relationship between the Buddha and the rest of humanity as well. There is hence no possibility of any betrayal. God, like the 

Buddha then, is not compelled to experience pain as a result of human misbehavior. 

⁵⁷ There are two scenes relating to Rodrigues’ apostasy. The first scene is the actual scene of the apostasy (Endō, 1966: 218-19). The second scene takes place 

toward the end of the book (Endō, 1966: 240). Here, as he hears the confession of Kichijirō, Rodrigues plays back in his mind the vivid event of his apostasy and 

even carries on an extended conversation with Christ. 

⁵⁸ The 1997 edition of the journal is out of print. The 2000 edition includes not only Endō’s writing journal, but also an essay by Katō Munenari entitled Shūkyō 

no konpon ni aru mono (“The Fundamentals of Religion”), a transcription of a conversation between Miura Shumon and Kawai Hayao in 1997 concerning the 

journal, a commentary by Kisaki Satoko, and a chronology of Endō’s life. It is this later edition that is referred to in this dissertation, and is referenced as Endō 

2000b. 

⁵⁹ Deep River and its English translation were both published in 1994. In the novel, Ōtsu, a devoted follower of Christ, sends a letter to Mitsuko in which he 

writes, “We live in a time when we must hold dialogue with other religions” (Endo, 1994 [1994]: 122). 

⁶⁰ Since Endō radicalizes love as the supreme need of humankind, and the hallmark of Jesus’ life and ministry, naturally he will not be able to accept the Buddhist 

attitude toward love (cf. Johnston, 1994: 18). 

⁶¹ The Japanese translation of Hick’s Problems of Religious Pluralism is published in 1990, and that of God Has Many Names in 1986. 

⁶² Hick was only a year older than Endō. 

⁶³ This is a point that John Hick makes as well. For a helpful account of Hick’s pluralism, see Netland (2001: 158-72). 

⁶⁴ Two brief points need to be made here. Firstly, although there was the act of betrayal on the part of the disciples, it did not provoke wrath in the betrayed Jesus. 

Kitamori would then argue that no real pain was inflicted on Jesus. Secondly, the word that Endō used that is translated “guilty” in this passage is ushirometai, a 

common and non-theological word describing the feeling of being reproached by one’s conscience. 

⁶⁵ For Knitter’s understanding of Jesus in the context of the theology of religions, see his No Other Name? A Critical Survey of Christian Attitudes Toward the 

World Religions (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1985), as well as his Jesus and the Other Names: Christian Mission and Global Responsibility (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 

1996). 

⁶⁶ For an introduction to these authors, see their most famous award-winning works: Mauriac’s Vipers’ Tangle (1932), translated by Gerard Hopkins (Chicago, IL: 

Loyola Press, 2005); Green’s The Dark Journey (1929), translated by Vyvyan Holland (Dallas, TX: Texas Bookman, 1996); and Bernanos’ The Diary of a Country 

Priest (1936), translated by Pamela Morris (New York: Carroll & Graf Publishers, 2002). Mauriac was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1952. 

⁶⁷ Endō also clarifies that it has never been his intention to use his writings as an evangelistic means to convert people to Christianity (1983: 203). He basically 

wants to present Christianity as one viable religious option, among several, for Japanese people. 

⁶⁸ It is interesting to note that Karl Rahner’s theology is also associated with the transcendental method. One of Rahner’s theological presuppositions is that the 

“experience of grace from within [every human being] […] is the most original and most important root of all Christian piety and holiness” (cited in Kress, 1982: 

26). See Kress, 1982: 24-32 for an exposition on Rahner’s theological methodology. 

⁶⁹ By contrast, the novels and theological works of the Scottish novelist George MacDonald (1824-1905) are consistently governed by theme of the fatherhood of 

God. MacDonald understands fatherhood as “the last height of the human stair whence our understandings can see him afar off, and where our hearts can first 

know that he is nigh” (1867: 21). MacDonald’s experience of his father stands in stark contrast with Endō’s: “In my own childhood and boyhood my father was 

the refuge from all the ills of life, even sharp pain itself” (1885: 48). 

⁷⁰ MacDonald offers this piece of advice to those with a poor view of fatherhood: “‘You must interpret the word by all that you have missed in life. Every time a 

man might have been to you a refuge from the wind, a covert from the tempest, the shadow of a great rock in a weary land, that was a time when a father might 

have been a father indeed. Happy you are yet, if you have found man or woman such a refuge; so far have you known a shadow of the perfect, seen the back of 

the only man, the perfect Son of the perfect Father. All that human tenderness can give or desire in the nearness and readiness of love, all and infinitely more 

must be true of the perfect Father – of the maker of fatherhood, the Father of all the fathers of the earth, specially the Father of those who have specially shown a 

father-heart.’ This Father would make to himself sons and daughters indeed – that is, such sons and daughters as shall be his sons and daughters not merely by 

having come from his heart, but by having returned thither – children in virtue of being such as whence they came, such as choose to be what he is He will have 

them share in his being and nature – strong wherein he cares for strength; tender and gracious as he is tender and gracious; angry where and as he is angry” 

(1885: 48-49). Later, of course, Karl Barth would make a similar argument that one does not decide on the meaning of God’s fatherhood by observing human 

fathers, but rather one understands the potential of human fatherhood by observing God the Father (1975: 389). 

⁷¹ The dharma kaya or hōshin 法身 in Japanese, is a key concept in Mahayana Buddhism. It literally means Truth-Body, and refers to the unmanifested principle of 

the Buddha out of which all phenomena arise, and return upon dissolution. 

⁷² Many Asians who suffered under the Japanese during the war continue to be bewildered and perplexed by the persistent efforts on the part of many Japanese 

government leaders and historians to deny that there was ever a Nanjing Massacre or that women were forced to work in frontline war brothels despite 

overwhelming evidence produced by third party historians. See Yoshida Reiji, “Sex slave history erased from texts; ’93 apology next?” in the online edition of The 

Japan Times, http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/nn20070311f1.html, Mar 11, 2007 (accessed Apr 9, 2007).

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Book review: Japanese Perspectives on the Death of Christ

Created ByOMF-International

Reviewed by Michael Widmer, OT Lecturer at Hokkaido Bible Institute

Mission Round Table 16:3 (September–December 2021): 31 

Japanese Perspectives on the Death of Christ

How Chuang Chua. Oxford: Regnum, 2021. ISBN 978-1506483702. 308pp.

 

Writing with an international theological background and years of experience as a missionary in Japan, Chua offers a well-researched and insightful study in contextualized Christology. The book is based on Chua’s PhD dissertation submitted to Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. Prof. Netland (doctoral supervisor) greatly endorses the book and provides a thoughtfully written short biography up to the untimely death of How Chuang Chua in 2015.

The book starts with an anecdotal story. A missionary was preaching the gospel in Japan and concluded with the following plea: “Jesus Christ died on the cross for your sins. If you accept him as your personal Lord and Savior, you will have everlasting life.” After the meeting, so the story goes, an elderly lady approached the missionary saying: “Sensei, how can the death of Jesus cause me to go to heaven? Besides, I don’t want to go to heaven, I just want to be where my ancestors are.” Most missionaries to Japan can relate to the challenge of communicating the message of the cross in a way that is both intelligible and is perceived as truly good news. Chua acknowledges all the effort that missionaries have put into creative and culturally intelligible ways of communicating the gospel. However, he takes contextualization a step further by looking at how influential Japanese Christian thinkers have appropriated the cross for themselves.

By providing an overview of the history of Christianity in Japan and a summary of the development of Christian theology in Japan, Chua sets the context for the heart of the book, which contains three in-depth expositions of three modern Japanese thinkers: Kitamori Kazō (1916–1998), a theologian; Endō Shūsaku (1923–1996), a novelist; and Koyama Kōsuke (1929–2009), a missionary and theological educator. All three agree that the cross demonstrates God’s suffering love. For Kitamori, the cross is the site where the God of love embraces his enemies—the very ones who have betrayed that love and hence come under his wrath. The divine embrace is thus an act characterized by deep pain. In Endō’s religious writings, the theme of the divine embrace is also prominent. It is an indiscriminate embrace of a maternal God—especially of the weak, the helpless, and the cowardly. Endō departs considerably from biblical teaching by focusing only on divine love and ignoring divine judgment. For Koyama, the cross reveals an impassioned God who continually moves toward the periphery in search of that one lost sheep. He develops a missiology of the cross using the motif of the crucified mind. Through the writings of these three Japanese scholars, Chua insightfully illuminates cultural themes, religiosity, and the nature of Japanese Christianity. Common to all three writers are the themes of suffering, self-negation, and universal embrace. Chua evaluates their writings both in the light of biblical teaching on the cross and classical Western theories of atonement, and shows how these themes have parallels in Japanese culture.

Suffering is an existential human reality in Buddhism. All three writers project the motif of patient suffering onto God. Self-negation finds concrete expression in Japanese cultural values, such as harmony (wa) and modesty (kenkyo), and in the aesthetic qualities of simplicity. The cross provides the model for Christian life and service based on another-centered self-denial. Universal Embrace highlights parallels between the universal mercy of Amitabha Buddha and the grace of the Christian God. In a highly communitarian society like Japan, the exclusion from one’s group is highly stressful and repugnant. It is probably for this reason that there is no mention of the subject of hell in the writings of any of these authors. Interestingly, the three are less interested in how the cross saves than they are in the divine demeanor displayed through it. Chua summarizes their views as “Christ suffered because of us; Christ suffered like us; Christ suffered for us.”

The impassioned God who identifies with the suffering of the people seems to resonate more readily with Japanese than the sovereign God who judges them. For this reason, Chua suggests that gospel preaching should focus on the manner of God’s suffering love and on what God has done through the painful death of Christ in order to redeem us from judgment of sin and death.

In the final chapter, Chua offers three suggestions for an evangelical approach to cross-cultural theologizing, suggesting that we appropriate: (1) the incarnation as a theological model; (2) epistemic humility as a theological virtue; and (3) canonicity and catholicity as theological principles. Missionaries must avoid what Koyama calls a “passive answer-theology,” and should cultivate a “lively invitation-theology,” meeting people on their own terms and inviting them to walk with Jesus so that they can taste and see that the Lord is good (Ps 34:8).

Overall, this book is an excellent model of how to do theology in conversation with the global church. It is a treasure trove of contextual insights into Japanese appropriations of the cross. Any reflective practitioner who is involved in cross-cultural communication of the gospel will greatly benefit from this work.

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