Rinzo Shiina's Christian Literature: Faith in the Resurrected Jesus
Introduction: What is Faith for Rinzo Shiina?
As Christian writers in Japan, prominent names such as Shusaku Endo and Ayako Miura are often cited, but could it not be said that it was Rinzo Shiina who bore the fruit of faith at the very point of approaching the core of Christianity: the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus?
Deep within the heart of Shiina, who appeared on the postwar literary scene creating existentialist novels, lay the scars of his apostasy from the labor movement. I introduced the details of this background in "A Pioneer of Existentialist Literature in Japan: Rinzo Shiina's 'Midnight Banquet' | Rima-chan". Under the pressure of the security authorities during the crackdown in the Keihanshin region on August 26, 1931, which even resulted in deaths in prison, Shiina submitted a written statement of apostasy during his appeal trial and was released.
What could save him from the deep sense of guilt for betraying his organization and comrades? The entirety of Shiina's existence, having survived the postwar period, was staked on that.
Meeting Sakae Akaiwa
It was Pastor Sakae Akaiwa of the United Church of Christ in Japan, Yoyogi Uehara Church, who led Shiina to Christianity. As he was called a "Red Christian" at the time, Pastor Akaiwa, who showed understanding of Marxist thought, was devoted to Bultmann's "demythologization" (Entmythologisierung). He came to the realization that the miracles in the Bible should not be accepted as historical facts, but rather interpreted to question the existence of all human beings across time—"those placed in a situation of decision as volitional beings before God." Although he had broken away from Marxist thought, for Shiina, who was accustomed to rational thinking, Pastor Akaiwa's sermons, which drew a line from evangelical interpretations faithful to the original meaning of biblical phrases, were easy to accept.
Shiina, who was baptized by Pastor Akaiwa on December 24, 1950, came to the realization around February or March of 1951, when reading the scene of Jesus' resurrection in Chapter 24 of the Gospel of Luke, that "a person who has received the gift of the resurrected Jesus begins to live in a way that is dead yet alive."
In the midst of postwar despair and poverty, Shiina, who had been in a state of "living yet dead," created a dramatic turn toward a state of "dead yet alive" through his faith in the <resurrected Jesus>. What kind of change had actually occurred in Shiina?
Now, let us look at the scene where Jesus is executed, buried, and said to have risen on the third day.
While they were talking about this, Jesus himself stood among them and said to them, "Peace be with you." They were startled and terrified, and thought that they were seeing a ghost. He said to them, "Why are you frightened, and why do doubts arise in your hearts? Look at my hands and my feet; see that it is I myself. Touch me and see; for a ghost does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have." And when he had said this, he showed them his hands and his feet. While in their joy they were disbelieving and still wondering, he said to them, "Have you anything here to eat?" They gave him a piece of broiled fish, and he took it and ate in their presence.
When Shiina read this scene, he said, "The duality of the dead yet living Jesus shattered in an instant all the inevitabilities of this world that I had considered absolute." This is because the <resurrected Jesus>, who embodied the "duality" of life and death, is "neither in life nor in death, but outside of life and death, and yet beyond life and death." The basis for "peaceful coexistence between death and life" in human beings was provided, and he says that "a person who has received the gift of the resurrected Jesus begins to live in a way that is dead yet alive."
The emotion of Shiina, who encountered the <resurrected Jesus>, is also evident in the following passage.
The resurrected Jesus appeared before his disciples. I have strived not to let this figure of Jesus out of my sight for even an instant, with an urgency like that of a traveler lost in the dark night finding a single light.
Let us further examine what this <resurrected Jesus>, who had such a strong influence on Shiina, really was.
Atonement for Sin
If you read the New Testament, you can see that not only Peter and Judas Iscariot, but God himself was about to abandon Jesus. According to Ken Sato, a New Testament scholar, the "psychological motive" of the "Jerusalem primitive church," which centered on Jesus' disciples, lay in "an act of compensating for the guilt of having betrayed Jesus and letting him die alone" by the disciples who had abandoned Jesus and fled when he was captured in the Garden of Gethsemane (the "place of oil pressing"). Their "resurrection" representation was due to the fact that they "also understood it as forgiveness for their own betrayal of Jesus." Regarding the "Jerusalem primitive church," Sato states, "Psychologically speaking, by uniting in that way, they began the 'work of mourning' (S. Freud) for him while bearing the guilt of having betrayed and abandoned Jesus themselves, leading him to his death" ("History of the Biblical Era: New Testament Volume," Iwanami Shoten, 2003).
Like Jesus' disciples, did Shiina not also find forgiveness for the sin of betraying his organization and comrades in the <resurrected Jesus>?
Paul preached, "Since all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God; they are now justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus" (New Common Translation, "Letter to the Romans" 3:23-24). Shiina, too, was justified by the redeeming cross and resurrection of Jesus.
In "Midnight Banquet," Shiina's debut work in the postwar literary world, the narrator, Sumaki, had once been involved in the labor movement, was imprisoned, and had a mental breakdown in prison, leading to his confinement in a hospital ward. Moreover, he had a past where Nakamura, whom Sumaki had filled with his ideology, died in prison. Sumaki was branded a "sinner" by his uncle, Senzo Kurihara, and was scolded in a dark apartment converted from a warehouse that survived the air raids, saying, "This is your prison, and you are its convict."
At this time for Sumaki, the existence of God was only a premonition. However, eventually, Shiina arrived at Christian faith, being saved by being freely "justified" by God. It showed a brilliant path of soul regeneration for an apostate writer who had faced the postwar period with a deep sense of guilt.
Karl Barth's "Loosening" and Humor
Shiina published "Barth's Art Theory" in the magazine "Finger," presided over by Pastor Akaiwa (Issue No. 8, July 1951). In it, there is a sentence: "Barth says that Christians are also saved by the promise of the future, but in reality, they are not saved, but only that their harsh human existence is loosened by the promise."
"Loosening" (Yurume) is translated as "loosening the heart" in Masayoshi Yoshinaga's translation of Barth's "Church Dogmatics" II/2 (Chapter 4, Section 17, "Gratitude"), and is considered "what we can experience and possess in the present as Christian freedom." According to Barth, what sets humans free, premised on the promise of future salvation by God, is "loosening," and it is said to be realized through "art and humor."
For Shiina, inspired by Barth, humor is what connects God and man, the infinite and the finite, eternity and time, and Christian faith and literary works. For example, the scene of Jesus' resurrection depicted in the Gospel of Luke 24:36-43, which we saw earlier, is considered to be "the limit and at the same time the essence of humor." Every time he reads "the act of Jesus desperately showing his hands and feet to the bewildered disciples, asking them to look," that is, "the act of trying to make humans understand what is impossible to understand," Shiina says he "cannot help but smile with a certain painful emotion."
Shiina's literature, which perceives "the death and madness of the era in absoluteness," is permeated with the rejection of "absoluteness" as a motif. The background to Shiina's adoption of such a motif is his experience of suffering from ideologies that tried to dominate humans absolutely. Despite the fact that fascism, which ignores civil liberties and workers' rights, and communism, which forced loyalty to the organization, were originally opposing ideologies, he could not help but feel the "death and madness of the era" where they clashed violently. According to Shiina, "the limit of humanity" lies in the "dilemma" that "to fight against one absoluteness, there is no other place to be than in another absoluteness that opposes it." He says that to overcome this, one must have a "third place beyond either-or."
In "Finger" No. 6 (May 1951), there is an unsigned article titled "Barth's 'Pneumatology'" that inspired Shiina.
Having the ear of the heart to hear the words of Christ, coming to feel gratitude for his work, and at the same time taking responsibility for the proclamation about Christ, and finally having conviction toward people for the sake of Christ, is nothing other than the freedom we receive when Christ breathes into us and gives us his Holy Spirit.
From his experience in the prewar labor movement, Shiina tried to stand in a truly liberated place, fighting against the "absoluteness" forced upon humans, and moreover, ensuring that the fight itself did not take on "absoluteness." It was Shiina's Christian literature that a human being, given freedom through Christian faith, tried to depict with "humor."