Contained in:
  • Il dono dell’airone
  • Edited by Luca Capponcelli, Diego Cucinelli, Chiara Ghidini, Matilde Mastrangelo, Rolando Minuti
Book Chapter

Inculturazione religiosa o risoluzione dialettica? Fukai kawa (1993) e il Cattolicesimo di Endō Shūsaku nel contesto letterario del Giappone del Novecento

  • Massimiliano Tomasi

Catholic author Endō Shūsaku (1923-1996) has gained worldwide acclaim for his novels and short stories that explore the conflicts between ethnicity, faith, and native Japanese religious sensibilities. A number of international scholars have interpreted his works as an effort towards religious inculturation and a search for a form of Christianity that resonates more harmoniously with the Japanese spiritual landscape. However, this article challenges such an interpretation, positing that Endō’s oeuvre primarily functions as a dialectical response to the prevailing discursive paradigms of the past, rather than being a conscious attempt at evangelisation. In particular, I argue that his final work, Fukai kawa (Deep River, 1993), stands as a tangible testament to his deliberate attempt to propose an all-encompassing religious pluralism capable of overcoming the binary divisions inherited from earlier literary debates.

  • Keywords:
  • Christianity,
  • Religious Pluralism,
  • Inculturation,
  • Christology,
  • Pantheism,
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Massimiliano Tomasi

Western Washington University, United States

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  15. University of Hawaii Press, 2006.
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  20. Gessel, Van. 1999. “The Road to the River: The Fiction of Endō Shūsaku.” In Ōe and Beyond:
  21. Fiction in Contemporary Japan, a cura di Stephen Snyder and Philip Gabriel, 36-57. University of Hawai’i Press.
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  29. Tomasi, Massimiliano. 2018. The Dilemma of Faith in Modern Japanese Literature: Metaphors
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  • Publication Year: 2024
  • Pages: 191-202
  • Content License: CC BY 4.0
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Chapter Information

Chapter Title

Inculturazione religiosa o risoluzione dialettica? Fukai kawa (1993) e il Cattolicesimo di Endō Shūsaku nel contesto letterario del Giappone del Novecento

Authors

Massimiliano Tomasi

Language

Italian

DOI

10.36253/979-12-215-0422-4.19

Peer Reviewed

Publication Year

2024

Copyright Information

© 2024 Author(s)

Content License

CC BY 4.0

Metadata License

CC0 1.0

Bibliographic Information

Book Title

Il dono dell’airone

Book Subtitle

Scritti in onore di Ikuko Sagiyama

Editors

Luca Capponcelli, Diego Cucinelli, Chiara Ghidini, Matilde Mastrangelo, Rolando Minuti

Peer Reviewed

Number of Pages

390

Publication Year

2024

Copyright Information

© 2024 Author(s)

Content License

CC BY 4.0

Metadata License

CC0 1.0

Publisher Name

Firenze University Press

DOI

10.36253/979-12-215-0422-4

ISBN Print

979-12-215-0421-7

eISBN (pdf)

979-12-215-0422-4

Series Title

Connessioni. Studies in Transcultural History

Series ISSN

2975-0393

Series E-ISSN

2975-0261

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