SOURCE: Netland, John T. “Encountering Christ in Shusaku Endo's Mudswamp of Japan.” In Christian Encounters with the Other, Edited by John C. Hawley, pp. 166-81. New York, New York: New York University Press, 1998.

In the following essay, Netland examines the ways Endō addresses the clash of Western ideology and Japanese culture in his historical novels.

The history of Christianity in Japan offers an instructive example of how difficult multicultural rapprochement can be. In spite of a Christian presence for over 400 years, Christianity remains an overwhelmingly miniscule piece of Japan's religious mosaic, its adherents amounting to little more than one percent of the population. Explanations for this phenomenon demonstrate part of the cultural impasse which has made Christianity so problematic in Japan. A Christian reading of this history might frame the narrative as a simple tale of persecution and resistance by a cynical political order which saw the foreign...