Finding the right words
Three pairs of theological truths representing differences in Western and Japanese thoughts on the divine
A neighborhood friend once said to me, “Oh, you’re a Christian? I think Christianity is nice, but I’m Japanese, so I can’t become a Christian.” This sentiment encouraged me to search for a more Japanese expression of Christianity.
As I read the works of Japanese Christian thinkers, I noticed there were truths about God that could be paired. On one side, there would be something that made sense in my Western framework that I would naturally talk about when sharing my faith. On the other side, there would be a truth that made sense about God to a Japanese person, something that I hadn’t thought to talk about when evangelizing. I’d like to share three of those pairs: experience and knowledge, suffering and glory, and immanence and otherness. Before continuing, I want to emphasize that all six concepts speak truth about God. It’s just that for a Japanese person, three of them appear to be more interesting than the others.
Experience and knowledge
The first contrast is between the preference in Western thought to rationally argue the truths about God against the Japanese preference for seeing God in our day-to-day experiences. This contrast can be illustrated by the titles of Christian books. Cold Case Christianity by J. Warner Wallace and The Reason for God by Timothy Keller are two popular apologetics titles published in the West. Be Smaller Than Flowers (花よりも小さく) by Tomihiro Hoshino and Bloom Where You Are Planted (おかれた場所で咲きなさい) by Kazuko Watanabe are two Japanese titles about living the Christian life.
From a Japanese perspective, Westerners are too reliant on reason when it comes to matters of faith. Masao Takenaka, a professor of theology at Doshisha University, wrote of Shozo Tanaka, a social reformer who lived in a small village. “Shozo accepted and affirmed the cyclical rhythm of the four seasons as God’s gift. For him the whole created cosmos was part of the inexhaustible treasure-house of God.”1
Takenaka also notes Tanaka’s appreciation for neighbor. He quotes Tanaka, saying, “I was so stupid to search for God without paying attention to our neighbours who are so near to me. This is my mistake. For God is working among us and he is not necessarily far away.”2 Takenaka’s appreciation for seeing God in nature and neighbor is a major theme in God Is Rice.
Takeo Doi, a psychiatrist and Catholic Christian, recorded his priest’s thoughts on how much more interested Japanese people were in ethics and aesthetics rather than abstract concepts:
When we talked abstractly and logically the peasants looked sleepy, but when we touched on ethics and aesthetics, their faces lit up. I realized that Japanese people deeply appreciate the raw virtues and aesthetics of things, rather than logical matters. From then on, this knowledge helped me in all my activities.3
The Japanese connection of spirituality and nature is a constant theme in Takenaka’s God Is Rice and When the Bamboo Bends: Christ and Culture in Japan. A section of the book by Mitsuo Fukuda, Developing a Contextualized Church as a Bridge to Christianity in Japan, is dedicated to creating a church aesthetic that utilizes the five senses to engage the heart toward spirituality.
This also means that Japanese people tend to be less impressed by religious debate than Westerners. Takenaka writes, “Whenever two or three Western theologians are gathered together, there is argumentation about God. . . . they debate about God saying, ‘I argue.’” Instead, Takenaka suggests that we can know God by letting ourselves be surprised by God: “In the Bible we have many surprising acknowledgments: ‘Ha-hah! In this way, God is working in our world, in a way I did not know.’”4
Suffering and glory
God’s glory is a biblical truth. But I’m convinced it’s not the best way to start talking about God in Japan. Japanese theologian Kazoh Kitamori’s premise in Theology of the Pain of God was that God’s most important attribute was his pain, the pain that he willingly took on to redeem people who had sinned. This concept is more meaningful for Japanese people than for Westerners, for whom God’s invincibility is impressive. When we speak of God’s perfection, we start to bore people because in Japan, an untouchable power is uninteresting. Endurance of suffering, on the other hand, is more impressive. According to Kitamori:
The depth of a truly Japanese man may be determined by his understanding of this tsurasa [deep suffering]. According to the Japanese way of thinking, a man of depth, a man of understanding and intelligence, is one who understands tsurasa.5
Watching a few samurai movies can tell us that enduring pain and suffering is seen as heroic in Japanese pop culture. So while proclaiming the glory of our great God is both biblical and culturally meaningful to Westerners, Japanese people may have more esteem for someone perceived to have skin in the game. Reemphasizing God’s suffering over the glory that Westerners may emphasize can be a corrective to mission that may seem arrogant or imperialist.
Kosuke Koyama explores this in his book No Handle on the Cross. Koyama explains that when we handle things, we wield them with confidence and authority. Briefcases have handles. Lunch boxes full of high protein meals have handles. But the cross, which we are instructed to take up, does not have a handle. It is unwieldy, difficult to walk with, and eventually, you are supposed to be killed on it. So, Koyama asks, why do Christians so often go about kingdom building by carrying a briefcase instead of a cross?6 Koyama, a student of Kitamori’s and one of the first Protestant missionaries sent from Japan after World War II, taught seminary courses in Thailand and had a front-row seat to interactions between Thai Buddhists and Western missionaries. He saw the danger of mixing mission with imperialism in his chapter titled “Guns and Ointment” in Water Buffalo Theology. Koyama saw firsthand how a triumphalist approach could be seen as competitive or condescending.
Koyama writes that a more appropriate attitude for missionaries might be called the Crucified Mind, which he contrasts with the Crusader Mind. He gives the following anecdote to introduce the concept:
One day some years ago I met a missionary couple from the West at Bangkok Airport. They had just arrived. They expressed a view that Thai Buddhism is a manifestation of demons. How simple! Thirty million people in the Buddhist tradition of 700 years were brushed aside in one second.7
This Crusader Mind “bulldozes people and history without appreciation of their complexities.” In contrast, the Crucified Mind sees people; it sees a neighbor who is a Buddhist rather than just Buddhism. It is a mind that sees a person and loves that person because a mind that looks at a person and sees an obstacle or an enemy fails to love God (1 John 4:20).8
Koyama recounts in Mount Fuji to Mount Sinai the conversion of his grandfather, one of the earliest Japanese Protestants in history:
My paternal grandfather became a Christian after he listened, in Tokyo, to a certain British gentleman, Mr. Herbert George Brand . . . The gospel of Christ which my grandfather heard was presented in broken Japanese with a heavy English accent. What a moment of inspiration to hear the gospel in a broken language! One of the few things I still remember from my grandfather about his conversion to Christianity from Buddhism was that he was impressed by this man who was able to say that Jesus Christ is Lord without ever making derogatory comments upon Japanese culture or Buddhism. “This made me to follow Christ!” he told me.9
An approach that foregoes polemics is likely to be seen as embodying the self-denial that Japanese people expect to find in authentic religious experience.
Immanence and otherness
The third aspect of God that resonates more with Japanese people is the way God is close to us—his immanence over his otherness or holiness. Kitamori said in Theology of the Pain of God that God’s pain was required so that he could draw close to humanity.
Kitamori used to illustrate this point in classes by wrapping a silk handkerchief around a handful of razor-sharp augers.10 Kitamori wrote, “What is salvation? Salvation is the message that our God enfolds our broken reality. A God who embraces us completely—this is God our Savior. Is there a more astonishing miracle in the world than that God embraces our broken reality?”11 Immanuel, God with us, is probably the best sounding news in the entire Christian faith for Japanese people. Koyama writes in Water Buffalo Theology that “The God who involves Godself in the history of the salvation process of dead-alive – lost-found is the God who says, ‘Your problem is my problem.’”12 God commits himself.
Koyama, Kitamori, and Takenaka agree on the implication that the person who seeks to make Christ known can best do so by being present in the lives of the people they are evangelizing.13 While Western Christianity talks about heaven, holiness, and additional “other-oriented” goals, Japanese people are much more focused on their own setting. Takenaka calls this the furusato (old village or hometown) mentality.14 On my podcast, Pastor Kentaro Matsuda shared with me how “God with us” is so much more interesting to regular Japanese people than “you can go to heaven.”15 The Japanese are interested by how religion affects them right here, right now. In another episode, this Japanese pastor who had been ministering in Japan for over fifty years gave his opinion that the most important part of our message is “God wants to be with you.”16
Experience and knowledge, suffering and glory, and immanence and otherness are three pairs of theological truths that represent differences in Western and Japanese thoughts on the divine. There are more. However, I am confident that, if I can follow my own advice and use more of the theological vocabulary that resonates with Japanese people, my presentation of the gospel will be better heard.
1. Masao Takenaka, God is Rice: Asian Culture and Christian Faith (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 2009), 56.
2. Ibid., 60.
3. Doi Takeo, 土居 健郎, 信仰と「甘え」 増補版, [Faith and Dependence, Expanded Edition] (Tokyo: Shunjūsha, 1992), 120. Translated by deepl.com.
4. Takenaka, God Is Rice, 8–9.
5. Kazoh Kitamori, Theology of the Pain of God, 5th revised ed. (Tokyo: Shinkyo Shuppansha, 1958; Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 2005), 135.
6. Kosuke Koyama, No Handle on the Cross: An Asian Meditation on the Crucified Mind (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 2011), 1–8.
7. Kosuke Koyama, Water Buffalo Theology, 25th anniversary ed. (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1999), 153.
8. Ibid., 159.
9. Kosuke Koyama, Mount Fuji to Mount Sinai: A Critique of Idols (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1985), 15–16.
10. Koyama, Water Buffalo Theology, 84.
11. Kitamori, Theology of the Pain of God, 20.
12. Koyama, Water Buffalo Theology, 155.
13. Koyama, Water Buffalo Theology, 155; Kitamori, Theology of the Pain of God, 55; Takenaka, God Is Rice, 90.
14. Takenaka, God Is Rice, 22–23.
15. Jon Robison, Recording of an interview with Pastor Kentaro Matsuda. JCATS 11 “Focus on Heaven or Earth?: Japanese evangelism and felt needs.” (June 1, 2023) https://youtu.be/pWXXbLuEuMI (0:00-15:10min).
16. Jon Robison, retelling of an interview with a Japanese pastor. J-CATS podcast “Wisdom for missionaries from a 50 year veteran Japanese pastor” https://youtu.be/wHdlak0O5cU (8:55-10:25min).