ИНКУЛТУРАЦИЈА ИЛИ ТРАНСФОРМАЦИЈА: ХРИШЋАНСТВО У РОМАНУ ТИШИНА ЈАПАНСКОГ ПИСЦА ЕНДО ШУСАКУА
INCULTURATION OR TRANSFORMATION: CHRISTIANITY IN THE NOVEL SILENCE BY THE JAPANESE WRITER ENDO SHUSAKU

Summary/Abstract: Endo Shusaku had always been recognized as the greatest “Catholic writer” in Japan, even dubbed as Japanese Graham Greene. Indeed, by far the biggest part of his opulent literary work is obviously dedicated to the very question of how to cope with his own catholic faith. He had been thinking of Christianity as being essentially at odds with his Japanese making ever since he received it as a boy, by his mother’s will. This insight was going to inspire his endeavors to recast the Christianity so as to come to a different understanding of it, that would be acceptable for the Japanese and, at a later stage, for all non-Europeans. In his novel Silence, such a Christianity is conceived of as being based on an image of the suffering Christ, a Christ not so much the redeemer as a fellow traveler through the sufferings of the weak ones. Thus imagined, Christ seems to be made feeble and deprived of his divine prerogatives to fit a rather anthropocentric perspective, with his metaphysical meanings in a traditional sense reduced to almost nothing. Such a version of Christianity forged by Endo resembles more modern discourses of the Japanese Buddhism than the sturdily articulated dogmata and strictly observed set of creeds, mandatory for every Catholic. Willing to create an oriental Christianity, Endo humanized it, much in the manner of the liberal theology eager to be inclusive and tolerant of almost any form of faith, as long as it is professing love. The weak theology of Endo is well-suited as a literary model of human dialogue with God, in a work of fiction. However, as a mode of human relationship to the divine transcendence, which we believe actually was the principal goal of Endo’s thought, it is reduced to the “weak faith”, that is not obligatory anymore for either side related, neither Christ nor man.

• Details
• Contents