294 - The Christology of Shusaku Endo

The Christology of Shusaku Endo
By Fumitaka Matsuoka

CHRISTIAN theology undertakes the two-fold task of revealing, on the one hand, the depth of human life in the light of the revelation of God in Christ, and, on the other hand, enriching our perception of revelation by the setting in which it takes place. A Japanese Catholic novelist by the name of Shusaku Endo attempts to do just that.

Endo has produced several works which interpret the meaning of Christian faith for contemporary Japanese. Three of these have been translated into English: Silence (Chimmoku), translated by William Johnston, Tokyo Sophia University and C.E. Tuttle, Co., Rutland, Vermont (1969,1972); The Golden Country (Ogon no kuni), translated by Francis Mathey, Tuttle, Co., (1970); A Life of Jesus (Iesu no shogai), translated by Richard A. Schuchert, SJ, Paulist Press (1973, 1978).*

I

Endo locates the point of contact between Japanese life and the Gospel in what he observes, and has experienced personally, to be the essence of Japanese religious awareness. This he sees as the sense of failure in life and the subsequent shame and guilt that leave a lasting impact upon a person's life. Such theological notions as love, grace, trust, and truth are intelligible only in the experience of their opposites, Endo sees them incarnate in the person of Jesus through his own experience of failure, rejection, and, most of all, ineffectualness. Only rarely has modern Christianity presented the story of Jesus as the one to

Fumitaka Matsuoka is the minister of the Church of the Brethren in Oakland and Fremont, California. A doctoral graduate of Union Theological Seminary, Richmond, he also serves as adjunct faculty member at the Pacific School of Religion in Berkeley. Shusaku Endo in recent years has become a recognized Japanese novelist and popular interpreter of Christian faith. Some of his books have been translated into English, but, as this intriguing introduction suggests, he deserves to be better known. Endo's life of persistent illness and family disruption provides unusual perspective on his understanding of Jesus as the one who identifies especially with all "ineffectual" persons. Endo's dialectic between the father-figure and the mother-image suggests why Christianity has had such great difficulties among the people of Japan. The illustrations in this article are by Nancy Dale Muldoon and are reproduced with the permission of the publishers from Endo's A Life of Jesus, Paulist Press, 1979.
* Endo's other Christian writings include, in English titles, On the Shore of the Dead Sea, The Birth of Christ, The Women of the Bible, The Home of HIdden Christians, The Steel Yoke, and Samurai. Three of his novels have been translated into English, published by the Taplinger Publishing Co., New York: The Sea and Poison, Volcano, and When I Whistle.

295 - The Christology of Shusaku Endo

whom those who had failed, were rejected, lonely, and alienated could turn and find understanding and compassion. Endo argues that it is our universal human experience of failure in life that provides us with an understanding of Christian faith in its depth.

Endo concentrates on the "ineffectual" image of the person of Jesus as symbolized in the Japanese notion of the fumie A fumie is a figure representing Jesus (or Mary, the mother of Jesus), mounted on a piece of wood or a copper plate. It was used in the seventeenth century by a government that considered Christianity to be a threat to national security. If one tramples on the fumie, that person is either a nonChristian who has no guilt conscience in doing so, or a Christian who violates allegiance to Christ. It was a clever psychological ploy, taking advantage of the importance of Japanese filial piety and allegiance to a person of superior authority.

When Endo saw a fumie in a Nagasaki museum, he thought not only of those brave martyrs who refused to trample but also those who abandoned their faith. The question he poses is this: "Who is Jesus Christ for those who have failed in life, for those who are overcome by temptation and continue to bear the burden of guilt?

II

Endo's initial response to this question is developed in his book Silence. Here God is portrayed as the one who remains silent even in the extreme agony of believers. But God's silence is God's message. It is the silence of "accompaniment" for the forsaken and the suffering. The silence of God on the fumie is not the silence of "nihil." The image of Christ, though crudely carved by a non-Christian artist, becomes the mediator of God's accompaniment when seen through the eyes of faith, for the agony of apostasy is truly an agony because of the faith which precedes it. Here Endo develops a distinctly Japanese perception of faith.

The religious mentality of the Japanese is, just as it was at the time when the people accepted Buddhism, responsive to one who "suffers with us" and who "allows for our weakness," but their mentality has little tolerance for any kind of transcendent being who judges humans harshly, then punishes them. In brief, the Japanese tend to seek in their gods and buddhas a warm-hearted mother rather than a stern father. With this fact always in mind, I tried not so much to depict God in the father-image that tends to characterize Christianity, but rather to depict the kind-hearted maternal aspect of God revealed to us in the personality of Jesus (A Life of Jesus, p. 1).

A life lived under the agony of personal failure and with the feeling of guilt and shame is what Endo calls the "grotesque" realm of life. Humans become open to what is beyond, for the grotesque touches upon the sacred. And the sacred reveals itself in the maternal image, even in the person of Jesus. Here Endo qualifies the maternal image to mean whatever includes one's total dependence.

Somewhat akin to Schleiermacher's "feeling of absolute dependence"

296 - The Christology of Shusaku Endo

upon God, which pervades all our receptivity and our spontaneous activity with the awareness that our freedom is a gift from outside, the Japanese notion of dependency means a total passivity in the presence of divine grace. It, in turn, allows a person to accept one's vulnerability and to be freed from the sense of guilt and shame that surround the person. It provides the person with a sense of self-acceptance but without a particular norm by which one's worth is measured.

Endo sees the archetype of this notion of dependency in the relationship between mother and child within the cultural context of Japan. In the silence of God at the height of the spiritual agony of the person who is about to abandon the faith, the person hears Jesus on the fumie saying: "Trample, trample! It is to be trampled on by you that I am here."

In Endo's biography, Jesus appears to be a mother-figure, the embodiment of the divine relationship with those who betray God. Jesus' identity is portrayed as one who participates fully in the human "grotesque" realm of life. Endo sees Jesus' short span of life in terms of the contrast between his thoroughgoing identification with those who are weak, frail, and rejected and his disciples' attempt to project their own images and expectations upon him. This discrepancy eventually led to the "ineffectual" image of Jesus by those who came to know him, and to the cross. The "ineffectual" Jesus has a way of speaking to the contemporary Japanese which the triumphant image does not. Endo's Jesus participates in the very earthy conditions of human frailty, temptation, lack of integrity, failure, guilt, and shame. The sacred is in the midst. This is the theme of Endo's A Life of Jesus.

III

But this theme is a prelude to the profound question of faith: "Why and how did the ineffectual Jesus come to be transformed into the Christ of glory?" This question is treated in The Birth of Christ. The point of contact between the realm of the "grotesque" and the sacred is the key to the above question. The realm of the grotesque in the Gospel is the disciples' experience of shame and guilt over their betrayal of Jesus. Their gradual awareness of the thorough-going nature of Jesus' identification with those who came to him, despite their wrong and misunder-

297 - The Christology of Shusaku Endo

stood expectations of him, was related to their betrayal and subsequent desertion at the most crucial moment of his life. Jesus' utterance on the cross, "Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do" is the key to their new understanding.

Here a unique Japanese cultural force is at work in Endo's interpretation of the resurrection. In a culture where honor means living up to one's own picture of oneself, a person may suffer from guilt and shame though no one knows of that person's misdeed. A mere confession does not relieve the person of the guilt and shame. One must live with them, for they are etched into one's being so deeply. However, guilt and shame can also be the roots of virtue. A person who is sensitive and copes creatively will carry out all the responsibilities of a human being. And this correlation between the sense of shame and guilt, on the one band, and virtue, on the other, plays a significant role in Endo's notion of the resurrection. The disciples' experience of guilt and shame over their misreading and mistreatment of Jesus led them to their faithful devotion and their determination to actualize Jesus' forgiving love and God's silent accompaniment in their own lives.

Such determination and devotion do not come easily, just as the rediscovery of the significance of the person of Jesus was not unanimous among his followers. Endo argues that the presence of those who saw Jesus purely in his ineffectualness led believers to bind themselves together with a stronger bond. Such, Endo says, was the first step toward the birth of the apostolic church.

But the silence of God still haunts Endo even in the birth of the church. How did the early Christians face the silence of God on the cross? There must be an explanation. Endo's response to this question 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

298 - The Christology of Shusaku Endo

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.

IV

Endo's Cbristology appeals to the contemporary Japanese because of the depiction of Jesus as participating fully in the human condition of vulnerability. So Christianity is the story of one who failed, was rejected,

and alienated. Endo argues persuasively that our universal human experience of being vulnerable provides the genuine locus of our religious faith and experience. Christians of the past were too preoccupied with the "father" image of God and the expectation of Jesus who would come as king. By so doing, we have ignored the "maternal" dimension which speaks to human failure and rejection more poignantly.

Perhaps the most controversial aspect of Endo's Christology lies in its understanding of resurrection. As God's eternal accompaniment, the resurrection speaks convincingly to those who are reared in Japanese culture. It is peculiarly Japanese in character. An inevitable question is whether it is transferable to another culture that does not share a similar maternal image of religious orientation. The question pertains to the possible universal quality of Christian faith.

And perhaps a more serious and tantalizing aspect of Endo's reading of the meaning of faith is that God's silence as God's eternal accompaniment implies an element of uncertainty or the possibility of "nihil." Only through eyes of faith can God's silence be also God's accompaniment. Without faith, it is meaningless. The person who accepts the Christian faith in a culture either apathetic or hostile walks a fine line between these two possibilities. Endo's contribution to Christology lies at this point.

The Christian faith, when it is transplanted into the soil of Japan, the "swamp," could either be the Gospel, or it could be total meaninglessness. This fact cannot be ignored. To avoid it is to do serious injustice to

299 - The Christology of Shusaku Endo

the setting in which faith is nurtured and comes alive. One always walks in this valley of the shadow of doubt, doubt that haunts the believer even in the moment of the deepest affirmation of faith. At the same time, doubt points to the ultimate mystery of God. The finite cannot contain the infinite after all. That is the meaning of God's silence.

And for Endo, faith is the acceptance of God's act of accompaniment in the human riddle of life. The emphasis is on the receptive character of faith. Faith is the acceptance of the power itself out of which we come and to which we go.

Endo is aware of the totally receptive notion of faith as possibly interpreted through the belief of the Jodo sect of Buddhism. But he transforms it to absolute faith, a faith that can lose its very concrete content and still exist as an absolute affirmation of life-as life and being as being. Here the Christian notion of faith takes on an ever richer significance within the non-Christian setting of Japan. The traditional Reformation understanding of sola fide as the unconditional acceptance of grace is transformed into a yet richer and deeper dimension.