GOD BETWEEN the LINES GOD BETWEEN God Between the Lines Ed

GOD BETWEEN THE LINES GOD BETWEEN God Between the Lines ed. by Tiziano Tosolini

God Between the Lines

The authors under study here belong to a wide and heterogeneous religious background. Kazi Nazrul Islam (1899–1976), the Rebel Poet of Bangla- desh, was a Muslim. Yusuf Bilyarta Mangunwijaya (1929–1999), the priest-architect of Indonesia, was a Catholic. Endō Shūsaku (1923–1996), the restless-novelist of Japan, was also a Catholic, while Huang Chun Ming (1935–), the farmer-novelist of Taiwan, is a Folk Religion believer. These authors, while very much immersed and situated in Tiziano Tosolini their own specific time and context, expressed and witnessed a common human concern, although it was embodied in culturally different forms. Furthermore, they manifested in their literary production an outstanding capability of reflecting, interpreting and narrating the cultural core of being Bengali, Indonesian, Japanese and Taiwanese respectively —From the Introduction

Asian Study Centre

d Stu y C n en ia t s r e A Xaverian Missionaries – Japan God Between the Lines Asian Study Centre Series

FABRIZIO TOSOLINI. Esperienza Missionaria in Paolo. 2002. S. Targa, F. Tosolini, T. Tosolini. To What Needs are Our Cultures Responding? 2003. S. Targa, F. Tosolini, T. Tosolini. Culture and Alterity. 2004. S. Targa, F. Tosolini, T. Tosolini. Experiences of Conversion. 2005. Fabrizio Tosolini. The Letter to the Romans and St. Paul’s Grace and Apostleship:Towards a New Interpretation. Edited with Fu Jen Catholic University Press, Taipei, Taiwan. 2005. Tiziano Tosolini. Controstorie dal Giappone. 2006. S. Targa, F. Tosolini, T. Tosolini. Faith and Money. 2006. Tiziano Tosolini ed., Women in Context. 2007. Tiziano Tosolini ed., Mission and Globalization. 20o9. Tiziano Tosolini ed., The Other Within. 2010. Tiziano Tosolini ed., Church and Culture. Selected Texts (1965–2009). Foreword by Mons. Gianfranco Ravasi, President of the Pontificial Council for Culture. 2010. Tiziano Tosolini ed., Chiesa e Cultura. Testi Scelti (1965–2009). Prefazione di Mons. Gianfranco Ravasi, Presidente del Pontificio Consiglio della Cultura. 2010. Tiziano Tosolini ed., Death and Those Beyond. 2011. Tiziano Tosolini ed., L’oggi del dialogo. 2012. Tiziano Tosolini ed., Threshold Religion. 2012. Tiziano Tosolini ed., Asia and Human Rights. 2013. Tiziano Tosolini ed., Borderline Gender. 2014. Tiziano Tosolini ed., Family Changes. 2015. Tiziano Tosolini ed., God Between the Lines. 2016. God Between the Lines

edited by Tiziano Tosolini

d Stu y C n en ia t s r e A Xaverian Missionaries – Japan Published by Asian Study Centre Ichiba Higashi 1–103–1 598–0005 Izumisano (Osaka), Japan

Private edition, 2016

Printed in Taipei (Taiwan roc) Contents

Introduction 3

Bangladesh – Sergio Targa Kazi Nazrul Islam (1899–1976) 7 Nazrul’s Life: A Parable of Exuberance, Struggle and Tragedy 9 Nazrul and Religion 27 Nazrul between Conventional and Unconventional Islam 34 Nazrul and Christianity 45 Conclusion 50

Indonesia – Matteo Rebecchi Yusuf Bilyarta Mangunwijaya (1929–1999) 55 Romo Mangun’s Life 56 The Architet 60 Fighting Exploitation and Oppression 62 A Revolution that Begins from Education 67 The Writer 69 Burung-Burung Manyar 72 Freedom and the Discovery of the True Self 75 Open Nationalism 78 Siding with the Weak and the Loser 82 “The Glory of God is Man Fully Alive” 86 Conclusion 90

Japan – Tiziano Tosolini Endō Shūsaku (1923–1996) 95 Life and Career 97 113 Historical Setting and Plot of the Novel Silence 119 Beyond the “Silence of God” 124 In Search of the Japanese Face of Christ 134 Concluding Remarks

Taiwan – Luigino Marchioron 141 Huang Chun Ming 黃春明 (1935–) 145 Some Biographical Data 148 Historical and Literary Context. Xiang Tu Wen Xue (鄉土文學), the “Nativist Literature” or “Literature of the Native Land” Movement 151 Analysis of the Short Story The Taste of Apples (ping guo de zi wei 蘋果的滋味) 158 The Value of “Com-passion” 162 Conclusion

165 Conclusion Introduction S. Targa, L. Marchioron

he essays collected in this book attempt to recognize “God between the lines” in selected literature of four Asian countries: Bangladesh, Indonesia, Japan Tand Taiwan. The first to benefit from, and marvel at, reading this literary production were the members of the Asian Study Centre themselves. The discovery of the universality of the medium of literature and of its profound insight, together with its poignant descriptions of a culturally shaped, but also constantly open human heart, led us to experience the importance of a proclamation of the Gospel that cannot but walk the way of lived out human experiences as they become codified into the multiform literary expressions of peoples. Interestingly, the authors under study here belong to a wide and heterogeneous religious background. Kazi Nazrul Islam (1899–1976), the Rebel Poet of Bangladesh, was a Muslim. Yusuf Bilyarta Mangunwijaya (1929–1999), the priest-architect of Indonesia, was a Catholic. Endō Shūsaku (1923–1996), the 4 | God Between the Lines

restless-novelist of Japan, was also a Catholic, while Huang Chun Ming (1935–), the farmer-novelist of Taiwan, is a Folk Religion believer. These authors, while very much immersed and situated in their own specific time and context, expressed and witnessed a common human concern, although it was embodied in culturally different forms. Furthermore, they manifested in their literary production an outstanding capability of reflecting, interpreting and narrating the cultural core of being Bengali, Indonesian, Japanese and Taiwanese respectively. Kazi Nazrul Islam, in a colonial context, emphasized the equality of all people unconditioned either by space or by time, culture or race, and based this on the human being’s “blood-relation” with God himself. Whatever constituted an obstacle to human emanci- pation was to be overcome, hence his often unconventional stand. In a similar context, Yusuf Bilyarta Mangunwijaya grounded his concern for solidarity, democratisation and a renewed education in the Church’s tradition. Characteristic of his vision is an open-nationalism which is itself a post-nationalism (Pasca-Indonesia), the practical fulfilment of the Pancasila principles. While Nazrul and Mangun were more concerned with a sociological and political context, Endō Shūsaku instead manifested and shaped a more spiritual and psychological struggle. He fought a cultural battle to discover Christ anew as companion of humanity, a Christ with maternal traits, a kenotic Christ who suffers with those who are tortured. Shūsaku finally hears the voice of God who speaks to him beyond the silence. Shūsaku’s internal struggle is paralleled, as it were, by Huang Chun Ming’s compassionate contemplation of seemingly insignificant ordinary people, facing the conflict between the new and the old, the rural and the urban, the traditional and the modern. This anthropological and cultural struggle, brought about by globalization, is confronted with a rediscovered virtue of compassion as a civil and social virtue, in which the emotional capacity for empathy and sympathy are regarded as part of love itself, and the cornerstone of greater social interconnectedness and humanism.

The authors wish to thank the Xaverian Missionaries for their support, those who helped us in the research and those who revised the English text: Fr. Steve McKend sx, Fr. John Fagan sx, Ms Lauren Hanson, Sr. Nancy Murphy rscj, Alberto Bertozzi and Fr. Succu G. Paolo sx (for helping with the cover design). In grateful remembrance of Fr. Everaldo Dos Santos sx, a special word of thanks goes to the General Direction of the Xaverian Missionaries, the local community of the Jakarta Procura together with the whole of the Xaverian Region of Indonesia, for fraternally hosting our annual meeting in July 2016. Finally, the Asian Study Centre expresses its heartfelt gratitude to the Xaverian Region of Japan for its continuous financial support. God Between the Lines Bangladesh

Sergio Targa

azi Nazrul Islam (1899–1976), the Rebel Poet, as he is known all over the Indian subcontinent, is controversially counted among major litterateurs of Bengal.K Living in the epoch in which Rabindranath Tagore (1861–1941) was the absolute and unchallenged king of Bengal’s literature, Nazrul managed quite easily and without artificiality of any sort, unlike other poets of the day, to carve out for himself a space in the hardened hearts of the toiling Hindu and Muslim masses of Bengal. Tagore, despite his, perhaps, superior poetic might, because of his elitist background and appeal, could not but become the greatest poet of Bengal, of the academia, of the literati circles but not of the Bengalis. Nazrul, since the publication of his masterpiece, Bidrohi, The Rebel, in 1921–22, was identified as and still is the poet of dissent. Born in British colonial India, Nazrul was not only a poet, he was also a patriot, a nationalist, a freedom fighter. His first dissent was political: all through his healthy life Nazrul hankered for political freedom from the foreign power that then was ruling India. But Nazrul’s fight was not only political it was, perhaps 8 | God Between the Lines

more than anything, also social, cultural and religious. Nazrul fought against anything which was an obstacle to human freedom and development. Allergic, as it were, to all orthodoxies, he envisaged a world united in brotherhood without exploitation of any kind. In his political zeal he therefore contested Gandhian orthodoxy in favour of direct and violent struggle against the colonial power. All forms of superstitions, hypocrisies, and religious manipulations both of Muslim religious orthodoxy and Hindu chauvinism were confronted fearlessly and unrepentantly by Nazrul. Untouchability and caste ideology, idolatry and religious corruption were not spared either. No less fierce in the end was Nazrul’s struggle to free Bengali literature from the clutches of Tagorian literary criteria and conventions. Nazrul, the rebel, fought on different fronts at the same time having in mind human freedom as his only and necessary aim. Indeed, Kazi Nazrul Islam was a poet “against”, a poet of destruction and revolution. However, all this was the necessary step ordained to a new beginning, a new creation. Armed struggle should involve the liberation of the toiling masses and should rely on the agentive and exuberant role of the youth in whom Nazrul always maintained an unshakable trust. But the centre piece of his new creation was a cultural revolution which required the fusion, as it were, of the two main religious communities of Bengal, the Hindu and the Muslim. This latter remained a permanent preoccupation for Nazrul who all through his life tirelessly endeavoured to realise what eventually turned out to be a utopia. Remarkably, in an age of nationalisms and nascent fundamentalisms, Nazrul maintained throughout a secular, non-communal approach, even in the face of incredible odds and violence. While Nazrul’s historicity is firmly set on the background of the Bengali Renaissance and its direct offshoot and successor, Nationalism, the traditions of Bengal in their double religious accretion did play their role in the formation of Nazrul the poet. Yet “the spirit of the land,” a sort of animist attitude, as it were, exerted no little influence on him and finds in the contemplation of Bengal’s lavish explosion of natural life and forms, the root of much universalism and a sense of global belonging, so much present in Nazrul’s work. His quest for universal human freedom, which is as much religious as it is secular-natural, eventually matched his unquenched thirst for truth, beauty and love. Unfortunately, Kazi Nazrul Islam despite the immense appeal he had and still has in Bengal is a loser: all that he cherished most did not materialise. The Indian subcontinent was partitioned, Bengal was divided, and all this on the basis of the two nations theory, something Nazrul, the herald and beacon of Hindu and Muslim unity, would never have accepted. And to add irony to injury, Nazrul has become the acclaimed national poet of Bangladesh, a later side-effect of the partition of British India. At present, despite the idolatrous worship rendered him by both the government and religious and cultural organisations, today’s Bangladesh is far removed from the path of humanity, the only religion worthy of the name constantly advocated by the rebel poet. Apart from paying bangladesh | 9

Nazrul, the National Poet, lip-service, very few Bengalis know today what the rebel poet was and is all about. The present paper starting out from an historical perspective wishes to enquire into the kind of religiosity Nazrul expressed and lived. It particularly attempts to unveil the place of God in his work and life. In this, special attention will be reserved for the place and role, if any, the Christian God might have played in Nazrul’s work. The enquiry will be conducted first by analysing Nazrul’s relationship with his own Muslim faith. It will then be shown that the persistent and continuous presence of God in Nazrul’s work is as much the result of an unending search for beauty, truth and love as it is the outcome of an attempted divinisation of man. While Nazrul clearly manifests a knowledge of Christianity, it is this double spiritual movement that may speak to us anonymously of the Christian God, the God between the lines. In this respect neither Allah nor Bhagaban seem to play a different role. Undeniably, the field for this enquiry is huge and unbelievably complex, if not for any other reason than that a complete critical work on Kazi Naz- rul Islam is not as yet available. The present paper will thus modestly content itself with studying only the poetic works of Nazrul, essentially leaving out the huge compositions, mainly religious songs, the poet composed in the 30s. Such an analysis will be preceded by a section devoted to Nazrul’s tragic life trajectory, highlighting in it particular events and situations which influenced the poet and his work.

Nazrul’s Life: A Parable of Exuberance, Struggle and Tragedy Kazi Nazrul Islam died in Dhaka on 29 August 1976 after having passed the previous 34 years of his life in a state which could sadly be termed a “living death.” In fact from July 1942 he had fallen seriously ill. From the following month, the Rebel Poet then completely lost his power of speech and his mind grew increasingly confused and wayward. In a strange twist of fate, in a span of one year, the two major poets of Bengal fell silent one after the other. Rabindranath Tagore had already died on 7 August 1941, exactly one year before Nazrul’s fatal illness. At the time of his demise, Nazrul was 77, yet his healthy life lasted only 43 years. This means that Nazrul’s poetic and literary career was concentrated in the short span of 22 years only. A few years indeed, enough however to fill a life, not only of the poet but of all Bengalis who found in him inspiration and dignity. As already mentioned, Nazrul is the National Poet of Bangladesh, a clear sign of the affection and honour poured on him by grateful Bengalis. Yet this same affection and honour are seemingly idolatrous and uncritical. Be it for political or religious reasons, Nazrul is often the object of hagiography, less of critical, detached, academic research. In fact, many are the dark spots in Nazrul’s life, yet few the attempts at illuminating them. Apparently the Rebel Poet despite everything is still feared by both the political and religious establishments. 10 | God Between the Lines

Nazrul’s life can be easily divided into four periods.1 The first period is obviously the formative one and it extends up to 1920. The second takes up the decade in between 1920 and 1930, the period of the poet’s rebellion. The third one extends all through the ’30s and is marked by Nazrul’s musical and mystical turn. The last period is that of the poet’s silence, from 1942 to his physical demise in 1976.

Nazrul’s Formative Phase: 1899–1920 The Rebel Poet was born on 24 May 1899 in Churulia, a small village in the Asansol subdivision of Burdwan district, now in the Indian state of West Bengal.2 It is said that Nazrul’s family originated from Patna and as Kazi (i.e. judges) they held some judicial position in the lower tiers of the legal system of late Mughal administration. Possibly the family because of this “employment” enjoyed also some land (imma estate) which however by the time of Nazrul was already lost.3 The family of Nazrul was indeed poor and the situation went from bad to worse when Nazrul’s father died in 1908. The then 9 year old Nazrul finished his first education at the local maqtab (a Muslim elementary school) and apparently took up a teaching job there. At the same time to provide for the family, he served as the mullah of the local mosque, following in his father’s footsteps. Indeed this is the start of a difficult period about which definite information is missing. Sources speak of Nazrul studying in class six around 1911 in Mathrun School (Burd- wan district). Afterwards Nazrul leaves formal education and starts his activity as a writer for leto groups’ songs (1912–13). Theleto groups were groups of wandering folk artists who used to entertain villagers by singing and dancing, usually drawing their stories from Hindu folk literature. It is while rehearsing with one of these groups that Nazrul is noticed by a Bengali Christian Guard of the Andal Branch Railway. This guard, impressed by Nazrul’s singing, takes him into his service as a young bearer. In this capacity Nazrul will bring him food and other things, while singing for the guard and his wife. Apparently Nazrul will maintain a relationship with the wife of the guard, Mrs Hironprobha Ghosh, the elder sister of one of his later class mates, and in later years visit her in Calcutta.4 After leaving the service of the Christian family, Nazrul is seen working at a baker’s shop (a tea-stall) in Asansol (1913). It is here that he is noticed by a Police Sub Inspector (daroga), Kazi Rafizullah and his wife. He is taken by them and persuaded to restart his formal studies. He is sent by the couple to their home village, Kazir Simla, in Mymensingh (in today’s Bangladesh) and in 1914 he is enrolled in class seven in the Darirampur School. Completing class seven successfully, Nazrul instead of continuing in class eight decides to

1. For the biography of Kazi Nazrul Islam, unless otherwise stated, I follow the well-researched volume of P. K. Mitra, The Dissent of Nazrul Islam: Poetry and History (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2009). 2. Apparently there are conflicting pieces of information regarding Kazi Nazrul Islam’s date of birth. Some writers would put it on 23 April 1899. R. Islam., Biography of Kazi Nazrul Islam (Dhaka: Nazrul Institute, 2014), 3. 3. Ibid., 3–4. 4. Ibid., 21. bangladesh | 11

go back to his own village (end of 1914, beginning of 1915). Once back home in Churulia, Nazrul gets admission to the Searsol Raj School from class eight to class ten (from 1915 to 1917). He will study here until he joins the newly formed Bengali Regiment. And this will be the end of Nazrul’s formal education, abruptly terminated just before final matriculation. Undoubtedly, these first years of Nazrul’s life did leave a mark on the future Rebel Poet. Nazrul apparently originated from an impoverished Muslim family which had known better times, as the title Kazi lets us surmise. His early education in a religious school together with his first employment as both a teacher and a mullah implies that from early on in his life Nazrul got to know the Muslim lore, its rituals and customs. Not only, in the maqtab Nazrul was first taught Persian and Arabic. The knowledge of these two languages will be instrumental in his new revolutionary literary style. We do not know how much Nazrul learnt of Persian or Arabic at the maqtab, we know however that that first knowledge will be increased and built upon by Nazrul’s uncle, Kazi Bazle Karim, a cousin of his father, who apparently was well-versed in Persian and was the one who introduced the young Nazrul to the leto experience. Besides, in the three years he will pass in Searsol School, Nazrul will not miss the Persian lessons imparted by Hafiz Nurunnabi, an Urdu litterateur. This is all we can say of Nazrul’s first Muslim education and formation. From what we know, it is doubtful that Nazrul received a conservative religious education as some would have us believe.5 He was indeed educated as a Muslim and formed in the Islamic faith but in the ways of a folk, village culture, something which today we might highlight as tolerant and syncretistic. It could not otherwise be explained how it became possible for Nazrul to join and work for the leto groups, wandering artists involved in music and singing, something haram (prohibited) by definition; even more frowned upon because that singing involved more often than not arguments and stories which were un-Islamic, to say the least.6 A conservative Muslim family, at least by modern standards, would not have among its members an uncle who was himself a practitioner of the leto art. And a conservative Muslim family would not have had Kazi Fakir Ahmed, Nazrul’s father, squander all his land and property because of his addiction to playing pasha, a gambling game.7 Besides Nazrul’s leto experience goes some way to explaining the deep knowledge and

5. Kamrunessa Azad time and again returns to the argument by saying that Nazrul “was born from a conservative, orthodox Muslim family.” K. Azad, Dhormio Cetonay Nazrul (Dhaka: Nazrul Insitute, 1999), 22 (in Bengali, my translation). 6. In this respect it is interesting to note the comment of Quazi Motahar Hossain who writes: “…Nazrul played with exquisite skill and perfection in those days (i.e. 1921) when music was detested (makruh) if not prohibited (haram) in the Muslim society.” Quazi Motahar Hossain, “Nazrul Islam, the Singer and Writer of Songs,” in M. N. Huda ed., Nazrul: An Evaluation (Dhaka: Nazrul Institute, 2000), 32. For leto singing as an un-Islamic experience see also P. K. Mitra, The Dissent of Nazrul Islam: Poetry and History, op. cit., 23. 7. R. Islam, Biography of Kazi Nazrul Islam, op. cit., 5. 12 | God Between the Lines

the nearly natural assimilation Nazrul had of Hindu lore and mythology. It all certainly started in these formative years by composing songs for the leto performances while it was at the same time nourished by a liberal syncretistic Hindu-Muslim environment which, right from the very beginning of the poet’s life, spatially involved the Churulia village mosque, the old and ruined tomb of a pir shaheb and his excavated pukur (a pond) on the one side and on the other the ruins of an unidentified structure, what everybody called Raja Naruttam’s fort.8 Undeniably, “Nazrul’s mission of Hindu-Muslim cultural synthesis”9 is rooted in the lived experiences of Nazrul’s childhood among which poverty itself, the necessary ingredient which alone could make the poet’s mission of cultural synthesis not only a cold ideological or academic endeavour, but a living necessity shared by the impoverished masses of Bengal. Moreover, Nazrul’s involvement with the Christian guard and his wife, for the specific purpose of this paper, is particularly noteworthy. It is of course difficult to know if this relationship involved the sharing or learning of Christian elements. It is not difficult to surmise, however, that this connection certainly added a further dimension to Nazrul’s already pluralistic world view. This is all the more probable if we consider that beyond the short period in which the poet worked as a young bearer in the guard’s household, he then continued the relationship, at least with the guard’s wife, in later years as we already know. Not only, before that, in the three years Nazrul attended the Searsol Raj School, he and other friends were accustomed to “going to the Christian sahib’s house to learn English, taking an airgun to the secluded Christian graveyard and pretending to shoot the English there.”10 The reference to the shooting game adds a farther particular to understanding the evolution of Nazrul into the later patriot and nationalist. Indeed the years he passed in Searsol were very rich in stimuli. It was here that Nazrul got his first lessons in Indian classical music,11 something which will dominate the last part of his healthy life. And it was still here in Searsol that Nazrul got his first knowledge of revolution and freedom. In fact Nibaran Chandra Ghatak was then one of his teachers. Belonging to the Jugantar group of revolutionaries, Ghatak believed that the liberation of India from the English would come about only through armed struggle. Just when Nazrul was ending his stay in Searsol, Ghatak was arrested and sentenced to 5 years rigorous imprisonment for illegal possession of weapons. Nazrul himself will later on acknowledge Ghatak’s inspiration behind his patriotic works.12 Nazrul’s formal education will abruptly terminate before matriculation in 1917. It was then the time of the First World War and Nazrul took the chance sometime after July to

8. Ibid., 4. 9. P. K. Mitƒra, The Dissent of Nazrul Islam: Poetry and History, op. cit., 24. 10. R. Islam, Biography of Kazi Nazrul Islam, op. cit., 33. 11. P. K. Mitra, The Dissent of Nazrul Islam: Poetry and History, op. cit., 26. 12. Ibid., 27. bangladesh | 13

enlist in the newly formed 49th Bengali Regiment of the British Indian Army. There are several reasons behind this choice. The newly formed Bengali Regiment was in itself a great novelty. It represented a possibility for the Bengalis to show that they too were a martial race, that they too could fight a war. Nazrul could not miss the opportunity and joined the general wave of enthusiasm. However, it appears that Nazrul enlisted also to get military training, later to be employed for the liberation of India.13 Undoubtedly, also the military pay Nazrul would have been entitled to, did play its role for the always financially constrained Nazrul. Whatever the case, after the preliminary formalities, Nazrul was taken first to Lahore and then to Karachi where he will live the rest of his military experience. Nazrul never saw the battlefield but apparently he performed well and when the regiment was finally disbanded in March 1920, he was Battalion Quarter Master Havildar (sergeant).14 Without doubt, the more than two years of military service were as eventful as Naz- rul’s previous years had been. In Karachi, Nazrul, frustrated by the non-deployment of the regiment to the battlefield, resorted to classical studies. This was helped by the erudition in Persian language and poetry of the maulavi (Muslim religious expert) in charge of the religious instruction of the Muslim recruits of the regiment. With his help, Nazrul deep- ened his knowledge of Persian and starting with Hafiz (a famous fourteen century Persian sufi poet) he got to know the works of all the major medieval Persian poets. This of course will contribute much to the unconventional Muslim views of Nazrul. Priti Kumar writes: “Nazrul very unorthodox view of Islam was largely derived from the sufistic universalism of the non-conformist poets of medieval Iran who had often earned the reputation of infidelity and apostasy.”15 Besides, during his life in the barracks, Nazrul subscribed to all the major literary journals of Bengal making it clear to himself that while he was still holding “the sword” it was a future with “the pen” that he was choosing.16 Maintaining all through his military carrier an anti-British stance, Nazrul tried to keep himself informed about what was happening in the outside world. He certainly knew of the Russian revolution, of the Bolsheviks’ stand, the counter revolution and the freedom struggle of the Red Army. Similarly, in those years Nazrul was taking a keen interest in the Middle East and in the political games that were taking place there after the demise of the Ottoman Empire. Eventually the Russian communist revolution as much as the Turkish events in the Middle East contributed to add other strands of poetic inspiration which were already nourished by Bengali revolutionism and Persian mysticism. Indeed, Nazrul, the poet, was born in the Karachi barracks: from mid-1919 Nazrul will send to several literary journals back in Calcutta poems and short stories for publication. “The internationalism and a consciousness of pluralism in heritage that Nazrul acquired

13. Ibid., 30. 14. R. Islam, Biography of Kazi Nazrul Islam, op. cit., 60. 15. P. K. Mitra, The Dissent of Nazrul Islam: Poetry and History, op. cit., 32. 16. Ibid., 33. The images of “the sword” and “the pen” are borrowed from the same author, see p. 35. 14 | God Between the Lines

during his years in the army will be responsible for the broad cultural perspectives of his poetry and his unqualified love for all humanity.”17 Nazrul did not come from the landed aristocracy of Bengal nor did he belong to the emerging English educated elite of the bhadrolok type. His formal education remained half-done in both Muslim tradition and English new ways. Yet this, more than a draw- back, was perhaps an opportunity because it left Nazrul free to think in his own terms.18

Nazrul, The Rebel Poet: 1920–1930 Once back in Calcutta he was first put up by his childhood friend Shailajananda, a younger brother of the Christian Railway Guard’s wife. It was in the all-Hindu dormitory in which Shailajananda was staying that Nazrul had his first experience of what untouchability meant. When other students discovered that Nazrul was a Muslim they ordered both of them very roughly to leave the dormitory accusing them of having desecrated their caste purity.19 This was the first of several bad experiences Nazrul had to go through because of caste and untouchability. Needless to say, these will be some of the Hindu prejudices Nazrul will fight against later on in his poetic work. Eventually Nazrul will find lodging in the office of the Bongiyo Musalman Sahityo Potrika (Journal of Bengali Muslim Literature) where Muzaffar Ahmad, later on one of the founders of the Communist Party of India, was working and living. Nazrul did not know him personally even though from Karachi he was in epistolary contact with him because of the journal he was practically running. Before going farther it is necessary, I think, to spend a few lines to describe the relationship Nazrul had with his family back home. After having returned to Calcutta, Nazrul eventually spent a few days at home in Churulia. Apparently during that visit something not precisely determined happened between Nazrul and his mother Zaheda Khatun. The fact that Nazrul never went back home (while in good health) and never met his mother again shows that something very serious or, serious for the poet, happened. In fact in Boundeler Atmakahini (Autobiogra- phy of a Scoundrel, Saugat, May 1919) Nazrul had written:

I would hardly go home because I did not like the village much anymore… But there was a pair of eyes that always gazed out, looking for me. Those were of my loving mother. A mother’s heart is different… I never got a bit of love at home from anyone other than my mother.20

As a matter of speculation it may be surmised that Nazrul strongly suspected his mother of some kind of misbehaviour, something Nazrul was never able to forgive, so much so

17. Ibid., 35. 18. Ibid., 37. 19. Ibid., 36. 20. Quoted in R. Islam, Biography of Kazi Nazrul Islam, op. cit., 44. bangladesh | 15

that even when Zaheda died (1927) Nazrul did not show up for her funeral rites.21 This conflict with his mother will be a great source of pain and pathos for the poet who will often see in other women the motherly figure he missed so dearly. Undoubtedly, the decade 1920–1930 is strongly marked by Nazrul’s friendship with Muzaffar. It is in this period that Nazrul is drawn to politics, and to political writing. Since the very beginning of Nazrul’s stay in Calcutta, he got to know Afzalul Huq, the director of a newly launched monthly literary journal, the Muslim Bharat. A non-communal journal, Muslim Bharat will publish many of Nazrul works right from its very first issue. In its short life, 1920–21, Muslim Bharat will publish nine instalments of Bandhan-Hara, and poems such as Shat-il-Arab, Korbani, Moharram, Fateha-i-Dowazdaham, Kamal Pasha and Bidrohi. Nazrul however published with several other journals as well among which were Bongiyo Musalman Sahityo Potrika, Bongonur, Saugat, Nur. The works Nazrul published particularly through Muslim Bharat in the first year after his return from the barracks were enough to establish him firmly as a new beacon of Bengali literature. Moreover, very quickly Nazrul became acquainted with the literati world of Calcutta. Mohit Lal Majumdar (1888–1952) a poet and a literary critic, Sudha Kanta Raychaudhury (1894?–1969) Rabindranath Tagore’s secretary, Barindra Kumar Ghosh (1880–1959) an outstanding revolutionary of the Jugantar group now a director of the Narayon journal, Nalini Kanta Sarkar (1889–1984) writer and singer of fame, all became Nazrul’s friends. Besides, Nazrul’s love for singing and music made him a celebrity all over Calcutta. He used to go anywhere he was invited and sing regardless of the social status or religious affiliation of his hosts. This practice was already a breaking down of social barriers and customs, unknown to the stifling atmosphere of elitist isolation of the Bengali intelligen- tsia. Soon Nazrul became the people’s poet: “Nazrul was not an intellectual or culturist in the usual sense of these terms; he did not shut himself up in any closed shell of pride and inaccessibility, and remained open to the people at large.”22 In the meantime the political situation both at home as well as abroad was heating up. India was in turmoil following the British massacre at Jallianwala Bagh in Amritsar (Punjab). A certain General Dyer had ordered his troops to fire on an unarmed crowd. As a result hundreds of civilians, men women and children, were mowed down. Scores died and many others were injured. On the other hand, with the Treaty of Sevres, signed on 10 August 1920, most of the European parts of Turkey fell under Greek rule, while its Asian parts together with colonised Arab states passed under British suzerainty and influence.23 The Ottoman Empire simply ceased to exist. This latter event created a stir among the Indian Muslim masses. The dismembering

21. In this regard S. Soumitra, Nazrul: Antadharmiya Sampriti Ebang Shilpir Bodh (Dhaka: Nazrul Insitute, 2013), 85-9 (in Bengali). The author by analysing some of Nazrul’s writing on women seems to discover autobiographical references. See also Rafiqul Islam, Biography of Kazi Nazrul Islam, op. cit., 64; 68. 22. P. K. Mitra, The Dissent of Nazrul Islam: Poetry and History, op. cit., 43. 23. R. Islam, Biography of Kazi Nazrul Islam, op. cit., 91. 16 | God Between the Lines

of the Ottoman Empire was putting in jeopardy the very existence not only of the Sultan of Turkey but of the Caliph of Islam. Paradoxically this was the result of Britain’s victory in World War i, something which was achieved also because of the active support of the British Indian Army. The Indian Muslim preoccupation about the survival of the Caliph- ate is at the basis of the Khilafat movement which from 1920 had spread all over India. It should be mentioned that the Khilafat and the Congress leaders, among whom Mahatma Gandhi, on 4 September 1920 reached an agreement and together launched a non-cooperation movement against the British. Linked to the Khilafat movement we have also, around the same time, the exodus of mohajirs (emigrants) towards Afghanistan. In May 1919, after a third Afghan-British war, Afghanistan was eventually recognised as an independent state. This had as a result that of galvanising many Indian Muslims who now tried to cross over to Afghanistan, the free land of Islam. The migration of mohajirs was considerable even though most of them crossed over to Afghanistan with the final aim to reach Anatolia and fight for the Caliphate.24 This is the historical context in which Nazrul together with his friend Muzaffar decided to start a new daily paper called Nobojug whose first publication issued on 12 July 1920. Both Nazrul and Muzaffar, however, were penniless, so they resorted to Abul Kashem Fazlul Haq (1873–1962), an influential Bengali leader of the Congress, the Mus- lim League and the Khilafat Movement and later a politician of post-partition Bengal, who provided the money and became the paper’s editor. Despite Nazrul’s lack of experience as a journalist, the new paper was a success right from the very first issue. Most of the articles written by Nazrul belonged to two categories, those regarding political events and those dealing with peasants and workers. The first group of articles were the most poignant usually attacking imperialism in general and British imperialism in particular. In this respect, he linked India’s awakening to a long string of international uprisings including the Russian Revolution, the formation of a new Turkey etc. He envisaged thus an armed struggle to liberate India from the British oppressor. He also dealt with Indian events such as the massacre at Jallianwala Bagh and the mohajirs crossing over to Afghanistan, all always with great pathos and a nationalist spirit. These ingredi- ents were possibly what made the new paper attractive! In the second kind of articles Nazrul articulated his concern and sympathy for the oppressed and exploited peasants and workers without however a clear organic view of the situation first and on what to do second. Obviously Nobojug did not please the government. In August-September 1920 the paper did not come out because the government had requisitioned the paper’s security money. It came out again afterwards, but Fazlul Haq grew colder and colder towards both Nazrul and Muzaffar who of their own accord left the paper one after the other. In January 1921 the paper was closed down definitively.25

24. Ibid., 94. 25. P. K. Mitra, The Dissent of Nazrul Islam: Poetry and History, op. cit., 40. bangladesh | 17

It is worth noting here that Nazrul’s first poetic production had an Islamic theme and concern. However, quite soon Nazrul started the composition of poems based on Hindu motifs and tradition. Agomoni (On Arrival), a strongly politicized poem on goddess Durga, written between June and July 1920, is the first of a long series of poems on Hindu deities. What is more, not only will Nazrul alternate Hindu and Muslim themes and tradition in his work but he will consciously attempt a blend of Hindu and Muslim symbols and imageries to produce a synthetic whole, an attempt at a possible unified and single Bengali tradition. An example may clarify the idea better. Khea-Parer-Toroni (Ferry Boat) that was first published in Muslim Bharat in 1920 is a poem which deals with Mus- lim characters on a story which is definitely puranic: the boat, the river and the boatman belong to Hindu mythology!26 “He even sought to elucidate the message of one tradition with the help of the other’s symbols.”27 And this was the case, for instance, for the poems Korbani (Sacrifice) and Fateha-i-Doaj-Daham (Birth of the Prophet) among others. The first half of 1921 was relatively unproductive perhaps because of a couple of mach- inations to which the poet fell victim. The first involves the director ofMuslim Bharat Afzalul Huq who wishing to have Nazrul exclusively for his journal had sent him outside Calcutta to Deoghar. Eventually the starving poet was rescued in February 1921 by his ever present friend Muzaffar. The second machination involved instead a certain Nargis of the village of Daulatpur in Comilla, the niece of a greedy would-be publisher, a certain Ali Akbar Khan. Nargis was semi-literate but very beautiful. Nazrul fell easily in love with her and on the night of 19 June he consented to marry her. That same night, Nazrul, dis- covering Nargis’s family’s intention to keep him there, left hurriedly to never meet Nargis again.28 The marriage was dissolved and the divorce confirmed in 1937.29 These events if on the one hand show the kind of sycophants surrounding the rising star of Bengali literature, on the other they also show the naiveté of the young poet who was often prey to his own fleeting passions. The two visits of Nazrul to Comilla (April and June 1921) allowed him to make friends with a very liberal and cultured Hindu family, the Senguptas. In this family there were two women, Giribala and Birajasundari, with their three daughters, including Promila, the daughter of Giribala. Fleeing from Daulatpur, Nazrul will find refuge with this family. The motherly care of the two ladies together with the merriment and noise caused by the three young girls created a most conducive atmosphere for Nazrul who soon forgot the recent mishaps. What is more, during his stay in Comilla, Nazrul had the chance to participate in the non-cooperation movement which was spreading far and wide. Although the demand for swaraj was falling far short of Nazrul’s expectations, he did participate in

26. S. Soumitra, Nazrul: Antadharmiya Sampriti Ebang Shilpir Bodh, op. cit., 25. 27. P. K. Mitra, The Dissent of Nazrul Islam: Poetry and History, op. cit., 44 28. R. Islam, Biography of Kazi Nazrul Islam, op. cit., 113. 29. K. Sajed, “Kazi Nazrul Islam: A Chronology of Life,” in M. N. Hudaed., Nazrul: An Evaluation, op. cit., 320. 18 | God Between the Lines

and supported its demands.30 Comilla was itself busy aplenty with meetings and proces- sions. This political atmosphere helped Nazrul recover and redirect his political interests. Once back in Calcutta (8 July 1921), however, Nazrul forgot the enthusiasm the mass agitation he had witnessed in Comilla had aroused in him and instead oriented his attention towards full scale armed rebellion. This change in attitude was once again brought about by the Turkish military uprising under Mustafa Kamal Pasha (1881–1938), an Otto- man army officer. The latter, on 25 August 1921, registered his first great victory against the invading Greek army. Eventually in September 1922, Kamal Pasha will succeed in reuni- fying the Turkish mainland. Nazrul in August 1921, well before Kamal’s final victory, had already lauded the great Turkich commander with the poem Ranobheri (Drum of War). The central message of the poem was “armed struggle to death for freedom.”31 Nazrul’s support for Kamal Pasha and his struggle was in particular a dissent against mainstream Muslim opinion which in those days was coagulated around the demands of the Khilafat movement. By supporting Kamal Pasha and his creation, the nation state of Turkey, Nazrul was going against the Sultan who was also the Khalifah of Islam. At a brief distance from Ranobheri Nazrul composed Kamal Pasha, another of his famous poems. “Kamal Pasha sought to wash away all the lethargy of moderatism and the coolness of non-cooperation through a flood of enthusiasm and the spirit of a war of liberation.”32 Yet soon after, Nazrul visited Comilla for the third time and while enjoying the affection of the Senguptas he participated in the non-cooperation movement which was rein- vigorated by the visit to India of the Prince of Wales (late November 1921). Nazrul was really a bit of a maverick: he followed his often contradictory feelings and pathos on the spur of the moment! It is on his return to Calcutta that Nazrul writes his famous Bidrohi (The Rebel, end of December 1921). This poem is emblematic of Nazrul’s personality, an indomitable one, thrown against anything which may hamper the expansion of an over- powering ego. The last stanzas of the poem are symbolic of a rebellion which is against anything and everything, God included.

I am Bhrigu33 the Rebel I’ll stamp my footprint on the chest of God; sleeping away indifferently, whimsically,

30. Swaraj was what Gandhi and the Congress were after in those years. The demand for swaraj involved a form of dominion status for India, something of the sort Australia was enjoying. In the days of Comilla (June- July 1921), Nazrul was infected with popular enthusiasm and for a while supported the non-cooperation movement of both the Congress and the Khilafat. 31. P. K. Mitra, The Dissent of Nazrul Islam: Poetry and History, op. cit., 49. 32. Ivi. 33. Bhrigu is a mythological Hindu figure. Belonging to the group of seven rishi (great seers) he was charged to test who in the divine trimurti, Bhrama, Shiva and Vishnu, was the greatest. The story goes that he stamped his foot on Vishnu’s chest to wake him up, and witnessing to Vishnu’s kind reaction, Bhrigu proclaimed him the Greatest. bangladesh | 19

while creation is suffering. Yes, I am Bhrigu the rebel, I’ll put my footmark on the bosom of God! I’ll rend the heart of God, the lawgiver capricious! I am the hero in endless rebellion alone have I risen above the world holding my head high forever.34

The poem was published first by Bijoly in January 1922 and then eventually in the following February by Muslim Bharat. Bidrohi was highly acclaimed and Nazrul’s fame shot up to the stars. From the Soldier Poet Nazrul had been transformed into the Bidrohi Kobi, the Rebel Poet. Around the same time in which Bidrohi was composed another important poem, on the same theme of rebellion, saw the light of day, Bhangar Gan (The Song of Demolition). This had been requested by Basanti Devi, then in charge of the weekly Banglar Kotha and the wife of Chitta Ranjan Das (1870–1925) who at that time was in jail. Das was later to be known as Deshbondhu (Friend of the Country). Once out of jail he will maintain a very friendly relationship with Nazrul. The latter admired Chitta Ranjan for his championing the cause of Hindu-Muslim friendship. These poems together with others which followed suit (Prolayollash, Delight of Destruction, April 1922; Dhumketu, The Comet, August 1922; Raktambara-dharini Ma, The Mother in Red Robe, August 1922; Anondomoyir Agomoni, On the Arrival of the Goddess of Delight, September 1922; Shikol Parar Gan, Song of Enchainment, April 1924; Bidrohir Bani, The Rebel’s Message, April 1924; and Jhar, Tempest, June-July 1924) firmly identified Kazi Nazrul Islam as the Rebel Poet. After the success and intoxication brought about by Bidrohi, Nazrul went back to the Senguptas in Comilla. He remains there from February to May 1922. In that period he acknowledges the love of Promila, then 14 years old. The poem Bijayini (Victorious Lady) refers to Nazrul’s surrender to Promila’s love. On 25 June 1922 after circa a month from his return from Comilla, Nazrul’s favourite poet, Satyendra Nath Datta dies at the age of 40. Nazrul on hearing the sad news writes an impassioned editorial for the journal Sebak. Unfortunately that editorial will be published removing the “hinduani chehara”35 (hinduistic appearance). Nazrul will never ever maintain any contact with Sebak from then on. The incident marks the beginning of Nazrul’s clash with so called orthodox Islam. The practice of manipulating Nazrul’s writings to accommodate communal Islamic quarters started here and will last for several decades. A few weeks after breaking his relationship withSebak , Nazrul embarked on a new enterprise: he founded a biweekly called Dhumketu. Its first issue came out on 12 August 1922 and was a great success. The paper was the organ of Nazrul’s rebellion against “Brit-

34. The translation is my remake of the translations provided by P. K. Mitra (The Dissent of Nazrul Islam: Poetry and History, op. cit., 51) and K. Sajed (at ). 35. P. K. Mitra, The Dissent of Nazrul Islam: Poetry and History, op. cit., 55. 20 | God Between the Lines

ish imperialism as well as other orthodoxies such as Hinduism, Islam, and Gandhism that controlled people’s thought and activities in India at the time.”36 Dhumketu did not represent any particular ideology or party; yet all ideologies or parties who sought revolution and freedom found in it their own mouthpiece. The third issue, for instance, was markedly Marxist in content. Nazrul’s editorial, while describing the plight of peasants and workers, called them to an armed revolt against their exploiters. In the seventh issue instead, Nazrul was drawing on the heroic tradition of Islam and in the eighth issue, while celebrating Kamal Pasha’s victory Nazrul wrote: “We were worried that the entire Muslim world might have been turning non-violent. We must remember, the moment Islam lays down its sword, it is finished.”37 Eventually in its thirteenth issue (13 October 1922) Nazrul the Rebel, was calling for India’s full independence. Dhumketu was a type of wake up call to a nation which had fallen asleep and had withdrawn from the original revolutionary impetus of people like Nibaran Chandra Gha- tak and Barindra Kumar Ghosh. Indeed the journal started its publications at a time of a political vacuum. The non-cooperation and Khilafat movements had already lost steam. On 4 February 1922 a mob had attacked and lynched 22 policemen in Chauri Chaura police station (Gorakhpur district, Uttar Pradesh). As a result Mahatma Gandhi had called off the non-cooperation movement signalling at the same time the end of the cooperation between Hindus and Muslims of the Khilafat movement. The latter had become itself pointless after September 1922, when Kamal Pasha’s military triumph established the basis for a new, secular and nationalist Turkey. Dhumketu often attacked religious hypocrisy and bigotry which he often identified with outward religious behaviour and practice. Obviously, Dhumketu’s fierce attacks on religion drew the attention of communal quarters. The editorial of the journal Islam Dar- shan in its Kartik issue 1329 be38 wrote: “The wicked Dhumketu and its arrogant editor is no longer satisfied with just chewing the chewed leftovers of Hindu scriptures, but have now launched an evil attack on the sacred religion of Islam and Islamic shariah.”39 In the same issue an article titled Lokta Musalman Na Shaitan (Is the Man a Muslim or a Devil?) referred to Nazrul as “an enemy of God” and “a manifestation of the devil.” Not only, the author called for him to be “impaled on the stake” or for his decapitation!40 In the twelfth issue ofDhumketu Nazrul published Anondomoyir Agomoni a highly politicized poem ending with the revolutionary mantra Bande Mataram (Hail Mother, i.e. India).41 Needless to say, the issue was proscribed by the government. On 8 November

36. Ibid., 56. 37. Quoted in R. Islam, Biography of Kazi Nazrul Islam, op. cit., 172. 38. This Bengali date would correspond to the period from 16 October to 15 November 1922. 39. Quoted in R. Islam, Biography of Kazi Nazrul Islam, op. cit., 194. 40. Ibid., 195. 41. The expression Bande Mataram is found for the first time in Anondomath, an 1882 novel by Bankim Chandra Chatterji (1838–1894). It seems that the politicization of the expression employed to indicate ‘Mother India’ was a later invention of the nationalists. bangladesh | 21

1922, the police raided the office ofDhumketu yet the paper’s twenty-second issue came out on 17 November. Nazrul was arrested in Comilla on 23 November under charge of treason. On the same day his collection of articles Jugobani (Message of the Age, published on 26 October 1922) was proscribed. In January 1923 he was given one year’s rigorous imprisonment. And that was the end of Dhumketu too. After Nazrul’s release from Jail on 15 December 1923, he was hailed as a hero and accorded grand receptions here and there in Bengal. Worthy of mention is the reception he had in Medinipur in February 1924. It was to the people of Medinipur that Nazrul, some months later, would dedicate another of his famous poems, Bhangar Gan (Song of Demolition). But what actually struck a serious blow to Hindu-Muslim tradition and conventions, was not an article or a poem, it was the life of Nazrul itself. On 25 April 1924 in Calcutta Nazrul married, with the full support of his mother-in-law, Promila Sengupta, then only 16 years old. The wedding took place according to Islamic canons, which however did not require her to convert to Islam.42 The new family started its new life in Hugli where Naz- rul since the time of Dhumketu had made friends with a number of radical young men. It will be here in August 1924 that two important collections of poems of rebellion will be published, Bisher Banshi (Flute of Venom) and Bhangar Gan (Song of Demolition). Both these works will be proscribed a few months later: the former on 22 October 1924 and the latter on 11 November 1924.43 It was here in Hugli that Nazrul’s first son was born.44 Defy- ing once again social custom and convention Nazrul named him Krishna Muhammad alias Azad Kamal (Kamal the free). In the names he gave the unfortunate child45 were collated all that Nazrul believed in most: the synthesis of Hindu-Muslim cultures in an organic whole and the armed revolt for freedom symbolised by Kamal Pasha. Nazrul’s marriage was particularly frowned upon by a section of the Brahma Samaj. This found an outlet in the newly launched weekly Shanibarer Chithi (Saturday’s Letter). Apparently the journal had the clear aim to belittle Nazrul and his work.46 The Muslim community, it seems, was not upset at Nazrul’s marriage with a Hindu girl. It did become upset, however, a year later when on the occasion of Deshbondhu Chitta Ranjan Das’ untimely death (16 June, 1925) Nazrul composed for the esteemed friend five songs and poems to honour his memory, later on published together in the collection Chittamana (August 1925). Among these poems there was one called Indrapatan (The Fall of Indra, i.e. the king of gods). This poem in particular was targeted by the articleIslam Boiri Musal- man Kobi (The Muslim Poet, Enemy of Islam) appeared in the Journal Muslim Darpan. It wrote:

42. P. K. Mitra, The Dissent of Nazrul Islam: Poetry and History, op. cit., 64. 43. R. Islam, Biography of Kazi Nazrul Islam, op. cit., 477. 44. I have been unable to find the date in which Krishna Muhammad was born. 45. This son of Nazrul survived only a month. Ibid., 222–23. 46. Ibid., 227ff. 22 | God Between the Lines

We have been deeply grieved upon reading this poem because the defiance, dearth of religious understanding and lack of conscience that he has displayed here, he will hurt any Muslim… The insulting manner in which he has treated religion in the poem Indrapatan has made Poet Nazrul Islam a criminal before the Muslim community… It will not be too much to say that if he does not practice caution from now on and continue to write in the same wayward manner, then legal action will be taken against him in court… If he insults Islam thus, God’s curse will soon fall upon him.47

It is a fact that after the death of Deshbondhu Chitta Ranjan Das, Nazrul moved to the political left. In November 1925 Nazrul and others founded the Labour Swaraj Party of the Indian National Congress. In the following December, a weekly publication, Langol (Plough), starts as the party mouthpiece with Nazrul as director. Significantly, each issue of Langol would carry the famous dictum of the fifteenth century Vaishnava poet Chan- didas:

Hear, ye man, my brother: man is the Truth above everything else there is nothing above that.48

The manifesto of the Party was published in Langol’s special number. It advocated India‘s complete independence with social and economic equality for its people through an unarmed revolution. Nationalization of industries, mines etc. was also called for.49 The new party was born to fill a felt vacuum created by disillusionment with both Gandhian non-cooperation tactics and terrorist revolutionism. Langol lasted only a few months up until April 1926 when it was practically taken over by Gonobani (People’s Message), a new publication with Muzaffar Ahmad as editor. Nazrul ensured his cooperation with Gonobani which more than Langol, however, leaned towards Marxism. For the whole of 1926–7 the peasants and workers question remained preeminent in the political activism of the poet. A number of poems published mainly in Langol and then collected in Samy- abadi (Believer in Equality, December 1925) are witness to the poet’s political stand of those days. The change from the Jugantar type of revolutionism to a more radical and Marxist one is also signalled by Nazrul changing residence from Hugli to Krishnanagar. Nazrul will stay in Krishnanagar from January 1926 to December 1928. It is here that Nazrul will have a prolonged contact with and possibly an understanding of the Catholic community living there. Indeed, he himself was living in a Christian house, Grace Cottage, rented for

47. Quoted in R. Islam, Biography of Kazi Nazrul Islam, op. cit., 237–38. 48. Quoted in P. K. Mitra, The Dissent of Nazrul Islam: Poetry and History, op. cit., 69. 49. Ivi. bangladesh | 23

the occasion.50 In Hugly the poet was living in extreme poverty burdened with debts. A certain Hemanta Kumar Sarkar, a Congress man from Krishnanagar involved with leftist politics came to Nazrul’s rescue. He cleared up the poet’s debts and transferred the family to his home town, some 115 kilometres to the north of Calcutta. In February 1926 at Krish- nanagar the Bengal Peasants and Workers Party was launched to replace the Congress affiliated Labour Swaraj Party.51 And then came the communal riots of April 1926 in Calcutta which shattered Nazrul’s utopic ideal of Hindu-Muslim cultural amalgamation. Yet Nazrul never submitted to it and up to the last he struggled for his cherished aim of sociocultural unity between Hin- dus and Muslims. During the Provincial Assembly of the Congress held in Krishnanagar in May 1926 he attempted to sooth the communal tensions with the song Kandari Hunshiar (Beware Captain). But the Assembly could not but ratify the end of the Hin- du-Muslim alliance which had started with the Khilafat movement and had continued with Deshbondhu Chitta Ranjan Das, another staunch believer in Hindu-Muslim unity.52 While continuously and vehemently writing against communalism and on the necessity of Hindu-Muslim unity,53 from June 1926 Nazrul makes several tours of East Bengal. In November 1926, most contradictorily,54 Nazrul contests for one of the two Muslim seats in the Dhaka constituency (Bengal Legislative Assembly). He will lose the election and with it his security money.55 On 9 September 1926 Nazrul’s second son, Arindam Khaled alias Bulbul is born.56 The birth of this son brought new life and inspiration to the financially constrained and politically disillusioned poet. During a protracted period of illness Nazrul directed his poetic enterprise towards the composition of Ghazals, Persian poetic songs. In this period Nazrul’s friendship grew with Dilip Kumar Roy (1897–1980) a famous singer in those days and the first interpreter of Nazrul’s Ghazals.57 The rejuvenation of Nazrul that

50. R. Islam, Biography of Kazi Nazrul Islam, op. cit., 251; J. R. Mondol, Karpasdangae Kobi Nazrul (Khulna: Bishop House, 2014), 56–7. 51. Ibid., 259. 52. Ibid., 260–61. 53. See for instance the two articles, Mandir o Masjid (Temple and Mosque) and Hindu–Musulman, which appeared respectively in the 26 August 1926 issue and in the 2 September 1926 issue of Gonobani. Ibid., 262. 54. The contradiction resides in the fact that Nazrul contested a communal seat! 55. P. K. Mitra, The Dissent of Nazrul Islam: Poetry and History, op. cit., 76. The electoral result was a fore- gone conclusion. The then electoral procedure established that only landed Muslim males could vote. Things being so, it was obvious that the poor and landless people of East Bengal who felt and shared Nazrul’s message of freedom and equality were completely excluded from the franchise. Muzaffar and the friends at Gonobani had discouraged him from contesting the election, yet Nazrul did not listen to anybody and plunged into it. 56. Arindam comes from Sanskrit and means “he who has won all his enemies”. It is an appellation for Indrajit, Arjuna but also Shiva and Vishnu themselves. Khaled instead was a companion of the prophet of Islam noted for his military tactics and prowess. The two names somehow refer to military dexterity. Bulbul instead is the Persian name for the Nightingale, a bird very common in Persian poetry. Even this name signals the change in Nazrul’s poetic orientation. 57. P. K. Mitra, The Dissent of Nazrul Islam: Poetry and History, op. cit., 79. 24 | God Between the Lines

the musical turn had caused, brought about also in 1928 new romances. During the poet’s visit to Dhaka on the occasion of the second annual conference of the Muslim Sahityo Samaj (The Muslim Literature Society) Nazrul fell in love with a certain Fazilatunnesa, a brilliant and beautiful student in the mathematics department of Dhaka University. Unfortunately for the poet she “all along treated the married, poverty ridden poet with stiffness and utter indifference.”58 The frustration the poet had experienced with Fazilatunnesa was somewhat made up for with the friendship the poet developed with two young beauties of Dhaka, Uma Maitra alias Rotan and Protibha Som (1913–2006) alias Ranu. Rotan was an exquisite sitarist while Ranu a vocalist who as a matter of fact became, after Dilip Kumar Roy, the best interpreter of Nazrul’s songs.59 It was said that Nazrul was particularly emotional and inspired when singing with them! By 1929 Nazrul is deeply into the world of music. From the beginning of the year Nazrul comes into contact with the Gramophone Company which further increases his popularity. Nazrul, while continuing to be the Rebel Poet, now becomes also the poet of the masses. On top of all this in September 1929 Nazrul has another son, Kazi Sabyasachi Islam.60 At the height of his popularity on 15 December 1929 Nazrul is honoured by a huge crowd at the Albert Hall in Calcutta and crowned as Bengal’s National Poet. The reception, attended indistinctly by both Hindus and Muslims, was presided over by eminent personalities of the time including Acharya (Teacher) Prafulla Chandra Roy (1861–1944) and Netaji (Commander) Subhash Chandra Bose (1897–1945).61 The decade we have been studying would be incomplete if we were to forget the debate, at times very harsh, to say the least, between new poets and writers headed by Nazrul and the old Bengali literary Tagorian orthodoxy. The debate polarised around two journals the Shanibarer Chithi and the Kallol (Uproar) and took up most of the second half of the 20s. Kallol since its first issue “protested against Tagore’s elitism and naive optimism and severely derogated the very unhealthy contemporary trend of senseless imitation of Tagore.”62 In its second issue (May-June 1923), when Nazrul was still in jail, Kallol published Nazrul’s Sristi Sukher Ullashe (In the Delight of Creation’s Happiness) where Nazrul “extolled a down-to-earth optimism and an intense interest in mortal life ignoring Tagore’s spiritual transcendentalism and flights to the world of the nebulae.”63 Unfortunately, soon after the triumph of the national reception and his ever increasing popularity, Nazrul concluded the decade of rebellion with a tragedy. On 7 May 1930

58. Ibid., 81. 59. Ibid., 81–2. 60. Continuing the habit of naming his sons with both Hindu and Muslim names, Sabyasachi etymologically means ambidextrous. The name is an appellation of Arjuna, the hero of the Mahabharata, who could aim an arrow with both his arms indistinctly. 61. P. K. Mitra, The Dissent of Nazrul Islam: Poetry and History, op. cit., 85. 62. Ibid., 258. 63. Ibid., 259. bangladesh | 25

Nazrul’s beloved Bulbul at the age of three and a half dies of smallpox. This tragedy is at the basis of Nazrul’s change of poetic orientation. From rebellion to spirituality: this will be the characteristic of Nazrul’s following years before his final silence.

Nazrul, The Time of Music and Spirituality: 1930–1942 The agony of his beloved son had prompted Nazrul to try anything that could have saved him. Nazrul’s interest and involvement in “fatalism, mysticism, and magic power”64 is of this time. The musical phase in Nazrul had started earlier, after the birth of Bulbul, but now it became all-inclusive and exclusive. Yet Nazrul the Rebel continued to rebel in his own way. Against musical conventions, he created new music. He is the inventor, as it were, of a totally new genre of Islamic songs completely new in Bengali tradition, and he did so by overcoming singlehandedly and courageously old stereotypes and superstitions which had made music haram in the Muslim community. After a period in which Nazrul helped by Ustad (Maestro) Jamiruddin Khan (died in 1939), was attracted to and learned Indian classical music, he devoted himself to the creation of devotional songs for Muslim, Sakta and Vaishnava devotees.65 Significantly all these songs belonging to such diverse traditions were such that whoever listened to them could be persuaded that the writer could not but be a believer or belong to the faith he was singing about.66 Nazrul in this new phase changed medium of expression as it were, but his philosophy remained the same: the unification in a single sociocultural tradition of Hindus and Muslims. Equally, this unifying mission was brought to bear on the different souls of Hinduism. Not only did Nazrul try to reconcile Hindus and Muslims but also Hindus and Hindus, Saktas and Vaishnavas.67 What is more, his songs did not exhaust themselves in religious devotional- ism but maintained in their content calls to freedom and equality something which was heavily and violently present in the poet’s earlier phase. The birth of Kazi Aniruddha68 in 1931 will come to lessen somewhat the heavy burden Bulbul’s death had left behind. Soon after the death of Bulbul, Nazrul had started exploring different paths of spirituality. In search for mental peace, he first approached a certain Barada Charan Majumdar (1886–1947), a yogi. In 1940 Nazrul will write an introduction to a book by Majumdar on yoga. In that introduction he refers to him as to his guru, indicating him as the “real inspiration behind all his achievements.”69 Since Majumdar was a Shaivite yogi of the

64. Ibid., 86. 65. Sakta refers to the religion of the Goddess, revered and prayed as Sakti, force. It usually reserves a central place to the goddess Kali, at least in Bengal. 66. This comment can be found in S. Soumitra, Nazrul: Antadharmiya Sampriti Ebang Shilpir Bodh, op. cit., 27. 67. Ibid., 28. 68. Aniruddha means uncontrolled, unrestrained or without obstacles. The name refers to the grandson of Krishna, son of Pradiyumna. 69. P. K. Mitra, The Dissent of Nazrul Islam: Poetry and History, op. cit., 89. 26 | God Between the Lines

Sakta persuasion, he was also a practitioner of secret tantric practises called Kali Sadhona. It is said that even the Rebel poet entered this esoteric world. The more than one hundred Shyama Songit (Songs of the Black Goddess, i.e. Kali) he composed in honour of the Goddess might be an expression of the poet’s new practice. But Nazrul is also reported to have followed a Muslim darvish (member of an ascetic Muslim sect) in Sufistic ma’rifat (mystic) spiritualism in search of secret meaning in the Koran.70 In these years we find Nazrul’s work in translating Persian poetry particularly that of Hafiz and Khayyam who in their respective time had earned the title of infidels (kafer) because of their heterodox views of Islam. Worthy of mention in this decade is also Nazrul’s collaboration with All India Radio transmitting from Calcutta and Dhaka. When things seemed to be settling down another tragedy struck Nazrul. His wife Promila suffered a crippling paralysis which without killing her condemned her to bed. Nazrul attempted anything that came his way to cure her. He spent all his money but nothing could be done.71 It is said that only then Nazrul may have recovered some interest in traditional Islamic worship.72 From 1939 Promila was bedridden. After the Pakistan Declaration was adopted in the Lahore conference on 24 March 1940, Nazrul had the chance several times to write articles against it.73 Nazrul never wanted the partition of India or a Muslim state.74 Fortunately for him, Nazrul was no longer conscious of himself when partition came about in 1947. While at the Calcutta Radio Station on 9 July 1942, Nazrul fell sick. In a few months he lost completely and for ever his power of speech and his mental balance.75

Nazrul, The Silenced Poet: 1942–1976 This last phase of Nazrul’s life is underlined unbelievably by his silence. The bard of revolution and freedom, beauty and exuberance is reduced to a state of “living death,” not even a shadow of his formal self. From July 1942 whatever happens just does not concern Nazrul anymore. Promila herself, despite her illness, will take loving care of Nazrul from her sick bed. She will die on 30 June 1962 without Nazrul even noticing it. According to her will, she will be buried in Churulia, the birth place of the poet. Nazrul remains only an empty simulacrum. In 1943 a Nazrul Niramoy Samity, a committee to care for his treatment, is formed. Nazrul and Promila will be sent to several Indian mental institu- tions but to no avail. In 1945 Calcutta University will award Nazrul the Jagattarini Gold Medal. In 1953 the samity sends them to London and Vienna where, however, nothing

70. Ibid., 90. 71. Ibid., 91. 72. Ivi. 73. R. Islam, Biography of Kazi Nazrul Islam, op. cit., 462. 74. P. K. Mitra, The Dissent of Nazrul Islam: Poetry and History, op. cit., 92. 75. R. Islam, Biography of Kazi Nazrul Islam, op. cit., 464. bangladesh | 27

can be done. Nazrul and Promila come back to Calcutta. In 1960 Nazrul is awarded the Padmabhushan,76 by the Government of India. Under state arrangement on 24 May 1972, Nazrul is brought to Dhaka, the capital of the independent state of Bangladesh which had emerged after a bloody war of independence from Pakistan. In 1975 Dhaka University confers on Nazrul an honorary degree in Literature. In 1976 Nazrul will be given Bangladeshi citizenship and awarded the Ekushe Padak77 by the Bangladesh Government. In the same year on 29 August Nazrul will eventually abandon the simulacrum he had been living in for the previous 34 years. He will die in the pg Hospital in Dhaka and be buried with a huge participation of the people next to the Dhaka University central mosque. Indeed Nazrul, the Rebel Poet, was silenced for much of his life, yet this silence may have been his last form of rebellion against a world which had betrayed and dismantled one after the other all that he had dreamt about and cherished, from an undivided India and Bengal built on the foundation of Hindu-Muslim unity, to the socio-economic freedom of their people.

Nazrul and Religion Kazi Nazrul Islam was indeed a rebel. His struggle was against all the orthodoxies which somehow hindered man’s expansion and freedom. So much so that “his uncontainable courage and hatred of the false, ugly gods, his consuming thirst for freedom, led him inexorably to political activism.”78 He hated all the false, ugly gods, among which also the gods of religions, the gods in whose names injustices, oppression and enslavement of man by man were perpetrated and justified. In the depiction of Nazrul’s life trajectory above we have noticed the shift in Nazrul’s poetic attitude and work between the decade of rebellion in the 20s and the decade of spirituality and music in the 30s. This change must be clearly understood though: Nazrul did not alter his previous stance against all the false gods but justified it, highlighting the essence of the true, liberating gods. Undoubtedly, “Nazrul… took the position that the source of his poetic voice was transcendental. He attributed the source to God and repeatedly described himself as an ‘instrument,’ through whom the lute is played, or as a ‘river whose flow I am’.”79 Indeed the two decades are inexorably linked together, representing a continuum of development, a deepening of the poet’s own awareness about life and a sense of the

76. The Padmabhushan is the third highest civilian award of the Republic of India. It is conferred to people who have excelled in any particular service to the Nation. 77. The Ekushe Padak is one of the highest civilian recognition awarded by the People’s Republic of Bangladesh in several fields, including those of education and culture. 78. M. H. Abu, “The Personality and Poetry of Kazi Nazrul Islam,” in M. N. Huda ed.,Nazrul: An Evaluation (Dhaka: Nazrul Institute, 2000), 13. 79. W. E. Langley, Kazi Nazrul Islam: The Voice of Poetry and the Struggle for Human Wholeness (Dhaka: Nazrul Institute, 2009), 31. 28 | God Between the Lines

catholicity it involves. This amounts to Nazrul’s discovery of mysticism: the realisation of the interconnectedness of all. On the one hand such an insight brings about in the poet a strong feeling of global belonging which goes far beyond Nazrul’s specific identity as a Muslim, a Bengali, an Indian, a Rebel and a Poet. But it is precisely this interconnectedness and global belonging which give Nazrul his quality of rebel: very post-modern in attitude, he “engaged in the deconstruction of almost every category he encountered— class, race, state, gender, aesthetics, power and religion—yet he did not share the view that a unified experience is impossible.”80 In fact, on the other hand, Nazrul does not lose sight of the “master plan”, as it were. Nazrul’s interest in the particulars, by decon- structing or recreating them, is also determined by a unified vision of God-life. Nazrul appears to subscribe to Ramakrishna Paramahamsa (1836–1886) famous dictum “jatra jib, tatra shib,” 81 “Where there is life there is God.” Nazrul particularly in his second decade of poetic activity seems to lose himself more and more “in the eternal quest for the Spirit of Life.”82 In an unending dialectic between particular and universal, Nazrul manages to keep together plurality and singularity, diversity and unity in God. This is all the more important when the dialectic is applied to human beings. Nazrul’s transcultural, transnational and transreligious attitudes are established on a holistic view of mankind whose single components are recognised as the abodes of God. His poem Manush (Man) expresses well the idea:

Don’t laugh, my friend—the self within us is fathomless and infinite. Do I—or does anyone—know what greatness may lie within that self?… Who knows what is one’s limit or origin! Who finds what path to follow? Whom do you hate, brother, whom do you kick? Perhaps within his heart resides the ever-awaked God! Or perhaps is nobody that important, of great or high esteem—but someone Who’s covered with filth, badly wounded and battered, and burning with sorrow. Yet all the Holy Scriptures and houses of worship are not as sacred as that one tiny human body!83

80. Ibid., 90. This last statement of Langley is not post-modernist, but reflects Nazrul’s awareness. 81. S. Soumitra, Nazrul: Antadharmiya Sampriti Ebang Shilpir Bodh, op. cit.,37. 82. M. H. Abu, “The Personality and Poetry of Kazi Nazrul Islam,” op. cit., 19. 83. Quoted in W. E. Langley, Kazi Nazrul Islam: The Voice of Poetry and the Struggle for Human Wholeness, op. cit., 159. The poemManush was published in Samyabadi on 20 December 1925. The collection gathers poems on equality. I remind the reader that 1925 and 1926 are the most political years, as it were, of the Rebel Poet. bangladesh | 29

Moreover, the above quoted excerpt from Manush clearly and unambiguously shows that by comparison religion’s most sacred symbols, as scriptures and their respective places of worship may be, are less sacred than a tiny human body. Significantly, Nazrul does not compare the self or soul or spirit of man and the religious symbols, but the material, very visible and often despicable part, the body. Once again, a particular, the little and insignificant human body, is universalised and sanctified in such a way that not even religious scriptures can compare to its sacredness. Perhaps it is because of Nazrul’s attention to the materiality of human beings that he was also very sensitive to their plight. Kazi Nazrul Islam knew what poverty was and could understand the poor better than others. This is why “Nazrul is the only poet recognised by all distressed and suffering Bengalis despite their Hindu, Muslim, Buddhist and Christian religious and racial differences.”84 Nazrul, in fact, did not write for the critics or academia, but for the people with whom he identified completely.85 In many of his poems Nazrul sides with the underdogs be they a repressed nationality as in the case of the Turks and Kamal Pasha,86 a repressed social class (i.e. the workers in Sromiker Gan; the fisherman in Dhiborder Gan; the peasants in Krisaner Gan),87 a gendered group88 or just individuals. This uncompromisingly taking of sides by Nazrul was not welcomed in the aseptic and sterile environs of the then Tagore dominated literary circles of Bengal. Nazrul was thus accused of “polluting the unstained compound of literature by letting in the filth of uncouth poverty and degraded humanity in the name of realism.”89 Yet Nazrul never went back on his own steps and kept his fight for political, economic and social equality as the flag of all his life. It is significant to notice that the rebellious attitude of Nazrul ordered to the global liberation of humanity would be dismissed only when the latter would be freed from violence and oppression. In the very last few verses of Bidrohi (The Rebel), perhaps Nazrul’s most famous poem, the one because of which he was chris- tened the Rebel Poet, Nazrul says:

Weary of struggles, I, the great rebel, shall rest in quiet only when I find the sky and the air free of the piteous groans of the oppressed. Only when the battle fields are cleared of jingling bloody sabres shall I, weary of struggles, rest in quiet, I the great rebel.90

84. K. Azad, Dhormio Cetonay Nazrul, op. cit., 106 (my translation). 85. M. H. Abu, “The Personality and Poetry of Kazi Nazrul Islam,” op. cit., 23. 86. K. N. Islam, Agnibina (Dhaka: Ahmed Mahmud Haque of Mowla Brothers, 2014), 31ff. 87. All these poems are to be found in K. N. Islam, Sarbahara (Dhaka: Osman Goni Agami Prokashoni, 2007). 88. See Nari in K. N. Islam, Samyabadi (Dhaka: Osman Goni Agami Prokashoni, 2010), 22ff. 89. P. K. Mitra, The Dissent of Nazrul Islam: Poetry and History, op. cit., 265. 90. Trans. by K. Chowdhury at . Original poem in Bengali in K. N. Islam, Sonchita (Dhaka: Mawla Brothers, 2013), 15. 30 | God Between the Lines

In his essay Bhikkha Dao (Give Alms) Nazrul wrote: “Oppression, oppression! Look, oppression has taken up its ugly and terrible form. The rich with their riches, the powerful with their sticks, Muslim and Hindu religious specialists with their scriptures, they all try hard to kill man.”91 And in this sentence lies the dialectic relationship Nazrul entertains with religion. The religion of humanity was indeed the religion of the Rebel Poet in whose name he could fight the false and ugly gods of religious orthodoxies Hindu or Muslim as the case may have been. It is highly significant that in Manush, the poem already quoted above, Nazrul manifests his religious inclinations first by divinising man, as it were, and then by counter- poising this true god with the false gods that both the Hindu priest (thakur) and Muslim mullah think of representing.

“O Priest, please open the door! A hungry god is at your doorstep it’s time for worship.” Awakened by this dream the priest rushes to open the temple door with eager anticipation: His day might have finally arrived to get rich as a king from the blessings that this god may bestow upon him. Instead, there’s this traveller-clad in rags, thin, with a feeble voice, saying: “Please, open the door, Father—I haven’t eaten anything for seven days!”

The priest slams the door on his face! Turning around to continue on his journey through the dark night the hungry traveller says: “This temple belongs to the priest, O God, not to you!” At the mosque, the mullah is overjoyed, by the huge amount of leftovers of meat and bread from yesterday’s offerings. Just then a sickly traveller arrives at the door, saying: “Father, I have been hungry for the last seven days!” The mullah reacts: “What a botheration! You’re starving?—Just go and drop dead in some cattle graveyard!

91. Quoted in S. Soumitra, Nazrul: Antadharmiya Sampriti Ebang Shilpir Bodh, op. cit., 37 (my translation). bangladesh | 31

Besides—do you say your prayers?” “No, Father,” replied the hungry man. “That does it—out” shouts the mullah shutting the door on his face, holding on to the meat and bread.

The hungry man continues on his journey, saying: “I have lived for eighty years without saying a prayer, yet you’ve never deprived me of my food. But the mosques and temples, O Lord—human beings have no claim on them. Mullahs and priests have locked all their doors!”92

The translation does not do justice to the beauty of the original Bengali, yet at least from the perspective of the content the translation is good enough to underline three con- trapositions: the first is that between the poor traveller and both the Hindu priest and Muslim mullah; the second is the contraposition between God and its “secretaries,” and third, that between God and the poor traveller. As far as the first contraposition is concerned, both the business like and greedy attitudes of the religious specialists clearly show up. They do not recognise the god at their door and as such fail to harness his blessings. Not only, by doing nothing do they themselves deprive the poor traveller of their own blessings in the form of food. Interest- ingly, Nazrul, the poor traveller, in all this, sadly recognises not the fault of God but of the priests, of religion: “This temple belongs to the priest, O God, not to you!” The second contraposition in fact sets God against his religious secretaries and clearly separates them! Eventually in the third contraposition the poor traveller recognises the absolute goodness of God that, unlike his mullah, had fed him for eighty years without asking a single prayer of him. If indeed Nazrul rebels against something, it is not against God as such but against all the religious paraphernalia established in his name. The same poem had opened with uncompromisingly explaining what Nazrul’s religion is all about:

I sing the song of equality there is nothing greater than man, nothing more glorious than him! Neither because of place nor of time can man be separated, nor because of religion nor of race in any place and time, in each and every house He is the brother of man.93

92. Manush (Man) trans. by K. Sajed at . Original Bengali in K. N. Islam, Samyabadi op. cit., 10. 93. Trans. by D. Das. I wish here to acknowledge the great help received from Mrs Dipali Das in understanding and translating Nazrul’s original poems. 32 | God Between the Lines

This couple of verses may be considered as the summation and condensation of Nazrul’s religious creed. Equality of all men, unconditioned either by space or by time not even by culture or race, is Nazrul’s main belief, a belief which is founded on man’s blood relation94 with God, as it were, the “He” of the last sentence. It is on the sacredness of God and God’s unity that the sacredness and unity of mankind is established. Again, man’s divinisation looms high. In another famous poem, Iswar (God), Nazrul boldly states:

The whole creation looks at you while your own eyes are shut. You search for the creator instead of searching for yourself. O self-inflicted Blind, open your eyes, look at yourself in the mirror. You’ll see His shadow fall on your body.95

Man is indeed the way to God. It is the mysterious relationship between God and man, a sort of unseen umbilical cord, which founds Nazrul’s concern, to say the least, for the welfare of Indians, Bengalis and eventually of humanity itself. This fathomless relationship also explains why Nazrul cannot be parcelled and possessed by any ideology, religion or community:96 his concern may be born out of particular circumstances but eventually it transcends them in what we have called his spirit of catholicity and global belonging. During the 20s Nazrul was strongly attracted by Marxism but he never became a Marx- ist. He participated and supported Gandhi’s non-cooperation movement and then left it. He sided with the Jugantar’s revolutionaries but left them also. He shared in anything, participated in everything yet he was also and always beyond all that simply because the source of his poetic voice was transcendence, by definition always incommensurable with practical realisations. So, was Nazrul a religious person? Indeed he was. His theism has never been questioned. His poetry is full of continuous references to gods and religious images even though often these are used in a secular way, as it were.97 In this respect it may be said that for Nazrul religion is “mainly to live justly and beautifully,”98 he wants a bhorat-jomat jibon,99 to live a life to the full, without oppression and injustice, in freedom and dignity, something which he finds compromised in the present because of the five orthodoxies

94. This is the literal meaning of the word gæti translated as “brother” in the verse above. 95. Iswar translated by K. Sajed at . See Bengali original in K. N. Islam, Samyabadi op. cit., 9. 96. See Abul Rushd, “Nazrul’s Islam’s The Rebel,” in M. N. Hudaed., Nazrul: An Evaluation (Dhaka: Nazrul Institute, 2000), 100. 97. P. K. Mitra, The Dissent of Nazrul Islam: Poetry and History, op. cit., 186. 98. S. Soumitra, Nazrul: Antadharmiya Sampriti Ebang Shilpir Bodh, op. cit., 37 (my translation). 99. Ivi. bangladesh | 33

Nazrul Rebelled against.100 This is the “secular” aim behind Nazrul’s usage of religious symbols and imageries. Indeed Nazrul privileged and gave much more importance to karma rather than dharma.101 He thus writes:

I do not want Brahma, Allah or Bhagaban. If indeed someone with these names is there, He himself will come and show up. I have a great and urgent work to carry out. I have a boundless and huge debt towards mother earth.102

It is as if Nazrul has no time to waste on these irrelevant questions: his duty is first and foremost towards mother earth. In a way Nazrul does perceive the complications involved in trying to create amity among religious traditions. This is why he seems to want to unite all men in karma-sagor (the ocean of works),103 beyond religions but not beyond God though. In possibly his last discourse before falling ill (Calcutta, April 1941, on the occasion of the 25 years of the Bengal Muslim Literary Society) he wrote: “In that day do not look at me only as to a Muslim, if I come I will only come as the servant of the One without a Second, above any Hindu and Muslim identity, beyond all races and communities.”104 Obviously beneath this disappearing of religious determinants remains Nazrul’s core religion of humanity. Be it The One without a Second, Bhagaban, Shib or Allah, Nazrul is adamant in his task of human liberation. In the refrain of the following excerpts from the song “All Praise to Allah, all glory to Him,” the poet extolls Allah’s praise and glory, while the verses in between are a litany of works Nazrul feels he owes to mother earth. To the reader the decision about their secular or religious character.

All praise to Allah, all glory to Him. Let peace prevail and equality win, let truth reign supreme, let all unhappiness and misery, all oppression and tyranny, all cowardice and falsehood perish for good, for good! All glory to Allah, all praise to Him. Let all pain and sorrow,

100. The five orthodoxies are: 1. British imperialism; 2. Gandhian political strategy; 3. Islam orthodoxy; 4. Hindu chauvinism; 5. Tagorian literary orthodoxy. P. K. Mitra, The Dissent of Nazrul Islam: Poetry and History, op. cit., 20. 101. In this context karma and dharma represent respectively work and religion, where work refers to practical works of justice, truth and goodness; while religion here is taken to refer to celebrations, rituals, etc. 102. Quoted in S. Soumitra, Nazrul: Antadharmiya Sampriti Ebang Shilpir Bodh, op. cit., 30 (my translation). 103. Ibid., 31. 104. Quoted in ivi, my translation. 34 | God Between the Lines

all disease and want disappear. … Let dishonesty, ignorance, greed and selfishness perish! All glory to Allah, all praise to Him; … Rise up, all the downtrodden and oppressed of this earth, unite and wrest your right from the tyrannous lords, … Let there prevail again on this earth equality and comradeship. All glory to Allah, all praise to Him.105

Nazrul between conventional and unconventional Islam

Undoubtedly Nazrul was a religious person, but was he a Muslim? The answer might beg the question, yet it is worth answering. Before delving into it, however, the reader should be alerted about the quicksand that the subject represents. Unfortunately, when Islam is involved scholars and researchers, particularly if they are Muslim and Bangladeshi, feel rather shy and often unable to go against received orthodoxy and hagiographic visions of Kazi Nazrul Islam, the appointed national poet of a country which still struggles between a Bengali cultural identity and a Muslim religious one, a non-problem in Nazrul’s understanding, yet a sore one for Bangladesh. Even after 117 years from Nazrul’s birth, he still is a controversial and possibly dangerous poet for all establishments, the religious one in primis. Of late, however, modern generations not only do not find Nazrul dangerous, they just simply ignore him altogether.106 Nazrul himself used to say that he was a Muslim, even though he never accepted to be limited by this definition or circumscribed by such a belonging. “I am a Muslim but

105. Translated by K. Chowdhury from the Bengali original Joy Hok! Joy Hok. Retrieved at . This translation is unsatisfactory. To my understanding, it augments the song’s religious undertones. See the original title which literally may be translated as “Let There be Victory, Let There be Victory” and Chowdhury’s rendering “All Praise to Allah, all Glory to Him.” Additionally, it is noteworthy that this song belongs to the second period of Nazrul’s poetic activity, the one marked by music and mysticism, yet while its tone is certainly more quiet and calm, a certain distance away from the overtones of Nazrul’s previous “cyclonic” compositions, the themes and content are nevertheless the same! 106. See S. A. Mallik, “A Lost Soul,” in The Daily Star, 27–5–2016. Retrieved at . Indeed, Nazrul is unsettling and perhaps this is why he is often forgotten, as this article cleverly shows. bangladesh | 35

my poems are for all countries, all times and all races; if I say that the poet is a Hindu, a Muslim and so on, this becomes the source for lots of mistakes.”107 It is as if he is saying: if humanity is parcelled into watertight compartments, the poet’s message loses its universal appeal and instead of unifying people, Nazrul’s aim, it divides them along sectarian lines, something Nazrul always avoided and abhorred. Yet Nazrul was a Muslim and proudly so. In the 1925 letter he wrote to Ibrahim Khan, a school principal, he states: “The true life-force of Islam resides in its people’s strength, its advocacy of democracy, universal fraternity and equal rights for all. This is Islam’s novelty and greatness. I accept that and so do lots of non-Muslims. Relying on this greatest truth of Islam not only poems but epics too can be written. I am only a little poet, yet with many of my writings I have sung this glory of Islam.”108 These words of Nazrul are quite important to fix and determine Nazrul’s relationship with Islam, the religion he was born in. Nazrul loved Islam and the reasons are clearly spelt in the quotation above. Without doubt what we have called above, Nazrul’s religion of humanity, fighting spirit, his own persistent and constant siding with history’s underdogs come out of Islam, or at least that brand of Islam influenced by Persian Sufism. Thus we may wholeheartedly accept what Kamrunessa Azad says about Nazrul’s limitless respect and love for Islam and his prophet,109 his obedience towards religion, his great love and devotion for Allah110 yet these expressions must be contextualised and qualified otherwise they risk to betray and portray the commentators own beliefs and creed more than Nazrul’s. As I have already remarked above, Muslim commentators often feel shy and embar- rassed in dealing with Nazrul’s Islamic faith, because, to say the least, it was unconventional. A clear example of this hermeneutic impasse can be seen in Kamrunessa Azad when before starting the treatment of Nazrul’s relationship with Islam she states: “Islam is the religion of peace, the religion of humanity. The unavoidable duty of each and every Muslim is to establish deep faith towards its main tenets.”111 Such an introduction to Naz- rul’s Islamic faith seems at least preposterous. In fact Nazrul himself in an article which appeared in the eighth issue of Dhumketu, already quoted above, where he praised the Turks’ victory over invading Greek forces (September 1922) he wrote: “The moment Islam gives up the sword, it will exist no more.”112 The seeming stalemate about Nazrul’s own positioning vis-à-vis his religious faith can be sorted out if we introduce the distinction, admittedly not very Islamic, between private and public domains. It appears that this distinction did operate in Nazrul for whom Islam

107. Quoted in S. Soumitra, Nazrul: Antadharmiya Sampriti Ebang Shilpir Bodh, op. cit., 35 (my translation). 108. Quoted in K. Azad, Dhormio Cetonay Nazrul, op. cit., 64 (my translation). 109. Ivi. 110. Ibid., 51. 111. Ivi. See also 107. 112. Quoted in P. K. Mitra, The Dissent of Nazrul Islam: Poetry and History, op. cit., 195. 36 | God Between the Lines

has a private, individual dimension and a public, societal one. While Nazrul in September 1928 was attending a meeting of the Provincial Muslim Students’ Association in Sylhet, before singing one of his songs, he was asked if music was permitted in Islam. Avoiding a direct reply, he commented that he sang because of the joy in his mind, without caring for any authority and that if somebody would chase him out because of his music, he will leave and sing somewhere else. This reply caused another question, this time about the poet’s habit of daily prayer (namaj). “Nazrul, again emphasizing his individual freedom, asserted that this was a personal matter and could not be inquired into by another per- s on .” 113 From what we know, Nazrul was a Muslim, yet his poetic work speaks to us of an Islam mainly in its public dimension and domain. And to this one we now orient our enquiry. Nazrul’s religious unconventionality begins by refusing both the then Bengali Muslim revivalism and the Khilafat movement. Uncompromisingly, in the fourteenth issue of Dhumketu Nazrul states: “Islam will never be rescued through these religious hypocrisies; the characteristic feature of Islam is the sword, neither beard, nor prayer, nor fasting.”114 He is adamant in saying that rituals and outward religious paraphernalia are not essential in Islam. Islam’s true spirit for Nazrul is readiness to fight for freedom. In the dialectic of external-internal and superficial-essential Nazrul rebelled time and again against his community’s mistaken education (kushikkha), blind faith (ondhobiswas) and scripture’s ‘imprisonment’ (sastraboddhota) indicating all these as the true reasons for its lagging behind.115 Quite an attack if we consider that Nazrul firmly believed that Islam’s greatest message was “independence of the mind!”116 With much suffering, Nazrul had to recognise that “our Bengali Muslim society is just a praying society (namaj pora somaj). You may commit any sort of sin, and this society will not tell you anything. But if you do not say your daily prayer, then you will be summoned to explain yourself.”117 Nazrul reflects all this in his poetic work. The thematic relating to scriptural narrow-mindedness is very present in the following excerpt of Samyabadi (Believer in Equality):118

Whoever you are, my friend, whatever holy books or scriptures

113. Ibid., 220. In another place also Nazrul appears to hint at the same private and public dimensions of Islam: “The Muslim community makes a mistake: it links my poems with my personality, that is, with Nazrul Islam.” Quoted in S. Soumitra, Nazrul: Antadharmiya Sampriti Ebang Shilpir Bodh, op. cit., 53 (my translation). 114. Quoted in ivi, 194–95. The religious hypocrisies Nazrul talks about refer to the Khilafat movement and its non-violent stance and the revivalist Muslim movements which emphasised regeneration of the Muslim community by clearly separating it from the Hindu one, on unmistakably sectarian lines. 115. S. Soumitra, Nazrul: Antadharmiya Sampriti Ebang Shilpir Bodh, op. cit., 53. 116. P. K. Mitra, The Dissent of Nazrul Islam: Poetry and History, op. cit., 195. 117. Quoted in S. Soumitra, Nazrul: Antadharmiya Sampriti Ebang Shilpir Bodh, op. cit., 53. 118. Samyabadi in K. N. Islam, Samyabadi op. cit., 7. Trans. by K. Sajed retrieved at . bangladesh | 37

you stomach or carry on your shoulder or stuff your brains with the Quran, the Puranas, the Vedas, the Bible, the Tripitaka, the Zend-Avesta, the Grantha Saheb why do you waste your labour? Why inject all this into your brain? Why all this like petty bargaining in a shop when the roads are adorned with blossoming flowers?

Indeed the poem contrasts the staleness of scriptures with the freshness and beauty of a God who can be traced as much in the blossoming flowers lining Bengal’s roads as well as in man’s immortal heart, His true abode.

Open your heart within you lie all the scriptures, all the wisdom of all ages within you lie all the religions, all the prophets, your heart is the universal temple of all the gods and goddesses. Why do you search for God in vain within the skeletons of dead scriptures when he smilingly resides in the privacy of your immortal heart? I am not lying to you, my friend.

Nazrul never tires of rebelling against scriptures and their hypocritical use. In a poem already mentioned above, Manush (Man), Nazrul writes:

Who are they—hating human beings yet kissing the Quran, the Vedas, the Bible? Snatch away those books from them. The hypocrites pretend worshipping those books by killing the human beings who have, in fact, brought those books into existence.

Listen, you ignorant: human beings have brought the books, the books never brought human beings!119

119. Manush translated by K. Sajed at . Original Bengali in K. N. Islam, Samyabadi op. cit., 11. 38 | God Between the Lines

Similarly to what Nazrul says of scriptures and their use, there is a parallel narrative which deals with places of worship as well. In August 1926 in an article called Mondir o Mosjid (The Temple and the Mosque) published in Gonobani and written in the wake of the 1926 Calcutta riots, Nazrul wrote:

He the God of all mankind, today is the prisoner of the temple’s dungeon, the mosque’s lockup, the church’s jail. Molla, priest padre and monk120 keep watch over him like wardens of a prison… I have noticed that Allah did not come to salvage the mosque of Allah. Nor did Mother Kali come to guard her temple. The pinnacle of the temple broke off: the dome of the mosque cracked. There was not the least sound from Allah and Kali… It is for the good of mankind that these places of worship are constructed. Man is not created for the sake of the places of worship.121

Nazrul often in his work blames the so called self-appointed “private secretaries” of God, the scholars of the scriptures.

Don’t shudder, Hero, don’t be intimidated by the scholars of the scriptures— they’re not God’s “private secretaries.” We all are His manifestation…122

In doing so he seems to shift the blame for the enmity between Hindus and Muslims from the common people to their religious specialists. In an article called Hindu-Musal- man, published in Gonobani on 2 September 1926, after the bloody Calcutta riots, Nazrul wrote:123

One can live with the truth of religion, but it is the books of laws that have become so overbearing that people have revolted against it in different periods. One should not have difficulty tolerating Hinduhood (hindutto) or Muslim-

120. These indicate the specialists of particular religions, the Muslim, Hindu, Christian and Buddhist respectively. 121. Trans. by J. T. O’Connel, “The Temple and the Mosque,” inNazrul Insitute Journal, vol. 2, April 1992, 106–14. 122. Iswar translated by K. Sajed at . See Bengali original in K. N. Islam, Samyabadi op. cit., 9. 123. The following excerpt has been translated by Mohammad Omar Farooq and retrieved at . I have slightly modified the translation to better its English rendering. Original in Anisuzzaman ed., Nazrul Rochonaboli (Dhaka: Bangla Academy, 1996), vol. 1, 883–84. bangladesh | 39

hood (musalmanotto), but Tiki-tto and Dari-tto124 is intolerable because those seem to engender lots of animosity and friction. Having Tiki is not essential to being a Hindu, it may be pedantry. Similarly, Dari is not essential to being a Muslim, it is for mullahood. These two brands of hair-bunches have caused so much hair-pulling. Today’s squabble is also between pundit and mullah, not between Hindus and Muslims. The mace of Narayan and the sword of Allah will not have any problem, because they are just the same, and the weapon in one hand will not strike that same person’s other hand. He is pronoun (shorbonam), all names have merged in Him. In all this fight and squabble it is comforting to know that Narayan or Allah is neither Hindu nor Muslim. He has no Dari or Tiki. He is absolutely clean! I am so upset about this Tiki-Dari business because this seems to be the reminder to human beings that I am different, you are different. These outwardly marks make humanity forget her eternal blood relation.

Nazrul’s lifetime dream was undoubtedly the unity of Hindus and Muslims something which in his view was far beyond the artificiality and expediency of the unity advocated by both the Khilafat and the non-cooperation movements. The unity he was propound- ing was established on the Islamic principles of equality and fraternity, which completely rejected the sectarian approach to Islam which was then being rehearsed by both the revivalist movements and the just born Bengali Muslim middle class. But Nazrul’s unity-dream was not just born out of a religious belief; it was also the fruit of sociocultural and historical considerations. Indeed, his proposal was founded on the realisation that Hindus and Muslims had the same history and sociocultural heritage. That unity was to be built through love and intermarriages. His familial life was the practical realisation of what he was after: the creation of a unified Bengali nation partaking of a same Hin- du-Muslim blood line. His poetical work, with its unprecedented fusion of Hindu and Muslim symbols and images, was its cultural realisation. The following excerpt from one of Nazrul’s songs, expresses well the idea the poet has as far as the relationship between Hindu and Muslim should be:

Hindus and Muslims are two brothers. They are India’s two luminous eyes. They are trees from the same garden, the Debdaru one the Kodom the other. They are like the continuously flowing Ganges and Shindhu rivers. They both come from the same Himalaya, they both empty in the same ocean. They are like the Bul Bul and the Kokil birds: in the same garden they sing all along. …

124. Nazrul is playing with words. Tikitto and Daritto are respectively the science of Tiki and of Dari. The former refers to a tuft of hair wore by Hindus as a sign of sanctity and holiness. Dari is instead the beard worn by Muslims to indicate their Islamic orthodoxy. 40 | God Between the Lines

Being Brothers they quarrel, but they do it always on their mother’s lap, and sweet is this quarrel of the two small brothers born at a short distance one after the other. … Crazy are those who think of Allah and Bhagaban as something different.125

Unfortunately the riots between Hindus and Muslims from 1926 will become a sad reality despite Nazrul’s unrepentant and continuous work for amity. In this respect it is worth mentioning his famous poem Kandari Hunshiar (Beware Captain) which was sung in May 1926 at the Provincial Congress meeting in Krishnanagar. The poem explicates the political importance of Hindu-Muslim unity in the national struggle for India’s freedom while at the same time reminding his audience about the human link between all the sons of India, be they Muslim or Hindu.

You must lead them to victory. O Captain, my captain, the helpless nation is going under water, it does not know how to swim. I shall watch tonight your determination, grim yet bright, to free the country from slavery. “Are they Hindus or Muslims?” Who ask this question, I say. Tell him, my Captain, the children of my mother are drowning today.126

Since the unity between Hindus and Muslims is one if not the most important theme running through Kazi Nazrul Islam’s work, examples and texts could be easily multiplied. However the few quoted above may suffice for the point being made. The rebel poet did rebel against religion as long as this is taken to indicate, rules, regulations, celebrations etc. and as long as this is manipulated by hypocrites and cheaters. Nazrul never liked so called religious exteriority, instead “He always gave supreme importance to religion’s hidden and internal truth.”127 But what was this truth, beyond and over the spirit of democracy, of universal fraternity and of equal rights for all already met above?128 In fact, for Nazrul religion is justice and tolerance.

125. Hindu Musulman Duti Bhai. Trans. by D. Das. Original Bengali at . 126. Kandari Hunshiar in K. N. Islam, Sarbahara op. cit., 18. Trans. by K. Chowdhury retrieved at . I have slightly modified the final sentence: from “the children of the motherland” to “the children of my mother.” 127. K. Azad, Dhormio Cetonay Nazrul, op. cit., 167 (my translation). 128. See also P. K. Mitra, The Dissent of Nazrul Islam: Poetry and History, op. cit., 195. bangladesh | 41

Send again, Hazrat, from Heaven the message of justice and toleration! I can no longer see this hateful hitting between man and man!

Tell them, Hazrat, tell them all who pretend to follow thy divine call, to love all men as the creatures of God! And to regard all as the creation of God!129

Significantly the prophet of Islam, Hazrat Mohammed, is clearly identified as the bearer of a message of justice and tolerance. In a world where these are in short supply he is asked to reaffirm that message. Not only this but the prophet is also asked to remind all those who pretend to be religious, that to be so one must love man, God’s creature. Nazrul seems to state that only he who loves man can get to Allah, while he who hates him staves off Allah himself. This is the message we evince from the following excerpt:

Do not harm anyone, that harm will be attached to the Kaaba. The more you hate man, the more God slips far away from you.130

The idea is that one cannot worship the creator without first honouring his creation. Sig- nificantly, Nazrul, faithful to his unitary cultural stance, repeats the same idea this time fashioning it with a Hindu idiom.

If Narayan hasn’t got a caste why is caste such a fuss among you? You spit in the face of the son while worshipping the Mother with incense!131

But who is this creator? Undoubtedly Nazrul believed in a merciful God, the one whose main characteristic is not to judge man but to save him. This is what, at least, transpires

129. “Send from Heaven Again” translated by Mizanur Rahman, retrieved at . Courtesy of M. N. Huda ed., Poetry of Kazi Nazrul Islam in English Translation (Dhaka: Nazrul Institute, 2000), 615. 130. Quoted in K. Azad, Dhormio Cetonay Nazrul, op. cit., 108 (my translation). 131. Quoted in ibid., 171 (my translation). Narayan is another name for Vishnu. The son referred to is the low caste or untouchable while his mother is the goddess! 42 | God Between the Lines

from the following excerpt, taken from Roj Hashore Allah Amar Koro Na Bichar (In the Last Day Do not Judge me O Allah):

If you really wish to judge, why the name Rahman, the Most Kind? Why did you give the knowledge that by that name salvation we will find? On that Day, as a humble mendicant, when I will beg of you, O Lord, the Dominant! Will you be able to turn me away with hands empty? Don’t judge me, O Allah, don’t judge me!132

These ideas admittedly are developed by Nazrul in the second half of his poetic life. How- ever, I am convinced that at that time Nazrul only expresses them more elaborately. They indeed were and always have been at the origins of his poetic creativity, part and parcel of that poetic voice we have already spoken about above. This is certainly the case for Truth, Beauty and Love, the three muses, as it were, behind Nazrul’s poetic creations, the three names of God, the three ways Nazrul experienced Him. In the Rajbandir Jabanbandi (Deposition of a Political Prisoner), a text he prepared in jail while awaiting his trial for sedition in January 1923, Nazrul unambiguously wrote:

On one side is the Royal Crown, on the other the flame of the Comet. One is a king with a sceptre in his hand; the other is the Truth, with the sceptre of justice. On the side of the king are state-paid government employees. On my side is the King of all kings, the Judge of all judges, the eternal Truth, the awakened God.133

To speak the truth and to serve it giving free passage to the poet’s creation is ecstasy, incredible joy. This is what Srishti Shukher Ullashe (The Ecstasy of Creation)134 is all about. But still clearer is the reference to God-truth we find in the poem Iswar:

The sea-board traders trade in jewel— they are merchants of jewels but pretend that they know the jeweller. They have not dived into the depths of the gem bearing seas. Instead of delving into the scriptures

132. Trans. by M. O. Farooq retrieved at . 133. Translated by K. Sajed, Kazi Nazrul Islam. Selected Works (Dhaka: Nazrul Insitute, 1999), 211–19. 134. Srishti Sukher Ullashe in K. N. Islam, Sonchita op. cit., 15. A Trans. by R. K. Talukdar, retrieved at . bangladesh | 43

delve, friend, into the ocean of truth.135

Continuing his polemics with religious specialists, Nazrul compares the jewels of the scriptures with the Jeweller himself, the ocean of truth. But God is also Beauty the source of all that is beautiful. Interestingly, in one of his early poems, Pralayallash (The Ecstasy of Destruction) Nazrul “Welcomes the Beautiful who… comes in the garb of the Terrible.”136 The Terrible, because he is the destroyer, however, is not identifiable with the non-beautiful or the ugly. Indeed in Nazrul’s life the Eternal Beauty has come to him in different garbs, in different shades, some positive some negative as he states in Amar Sundar (My Beautiful), a sort of autobiographical introspection into his own creative life published in Nobojug in June 1942, a short time before he fell ill. Intriguingly, in this, which we may also call a confessional statement, he highlights sixteen shades of beauty. “(1) shokti sundor (power beauty), (2) ontorotom sundor (heart-laden beauty), (3) prokash sundor (expression as homeland); (4) jouban sundor (youth beauty), (5) prem sundor (love beauty); (6) shok sundor (grief beauty), (7) sneho sundor (beauty of filial affection), (8) shishu sundor (infant beauty), (9) proloy sundor (destruction beauty), (10) songhar sundor (beauty of slaughter), (11) dhyan sundor (beauty of meditation), (12) dharitree sundor (beauty of Earth), (13) pushpito sundor (beauty of flowering), (14) bish sundor (beauty of poison), (15) srishti sundor (beauty of creation) and (16) sworno-jyoti sundor (Beauty of the Golden Glow).”137 Notably the ways in which Nazrul discovers beauty respond to his need to see beauty not as something abstract and disembodied, but as something embodied in material forms, morally and socially relevant.138 Remarkably, then, this list ends with the sworno-jyoti sundor, the Beauty of the Golden Glow, the source and the end of all other beauties, what he will also call his Excellent Beauty. This Nazrul had already explicated in a discourse held in 1941, we have already quoted above, Jodi Ar Banshi Na Baje (If the Flute Blows no More):

I consider this pride as the messenger of non-beauty. Pride is not divine it is rather demoniac. My worship is not for non-beauty, my Allah is the best Beauty. To me he is always dear Beauty, loving Beauty, interesting Beauty, joyous Beauty… my excellent Beauty.139

135. Iswar translated by Zakeria Shirazi at . See Bengali original in K. N. Islam, Samyabadi op. cit., 9. 136. Pralayallash in K. N. Islam, Agnibina op. cit., 7. Trans. by K. Chowdhury retrieved at 137. Mohammad Nurul Huda, The Mystic in the Rebel, 25–May 2013. Bdnews24.com at . I have slightly edited the quotation (i.e. modified the capitalisation of some words) to standardise the text. 138. W. E. Langley, Kazi Nazrul Islam: The Voice of Poetry and the Struggle for Human Wholeness, op. cit., 84. 139. Translated by Subrata Kumar Das, retrieved at . Original in Anisuzzaman et Al., Nazrul Rochonaboli (Dhaka: Bangla Academy, 1996), Vol. 4, 125–28. 44 | God Between the Lines

And the distance from God-Truth, God-Beauty to God-Love is indeed very short. Writes Nazrul: “I have no hesitation to say today that I have received the mercy of Allah—my ultimate beloved ‘al Gafur al-Wadud’ (the ultimate forgiving and loving) has freed me.”140 What we have called above Nazrul’s mysticism, founded on the realisation of universal interconnectedness, finds his highest manifestation and fulfilment in the identification and dissolution, as it were, of the poet with the source of his poetic voice.

Drunk with the wine of divine love I am oblivious of all. Abandoning the mosque my leader comes this way I hear him call. At the end of worldliness, for my prayers and fasting I seek not of God Heaven’s blessings. As Qais loved Laili and the world forgot, as Farhad loved Shirin and the world remembered not, so do I love my God with whom I have merged my lot. The moth is not afraid of being burnt to death it rushes to the fire. The sea cannot quench the skylark’s thirst the rain water does the bird desire. The chakor141 pines for the moon though she is up in the sky. The sunflower hungers for the sun though far far away does it lie. In the same way I seek for my God, no calculations do I make.142

140. From the discourse of Kazi Nazrul Islam, “Submission in the Path of Allah” delivered on 23 December 1940 at the Calcutta Muslim Students Conference. Original in Anisuzzaman et Al., Nazrul Rochonaboli Vol. 4, op. cit., 117–22. Trans. by unknown. Retrieved at on 20–4–2016. 141. The term chakor comes from Sanskrit, and means “the bird enamoured of the moon.” 142. Original Bengali Khodar Premer Sharab Piye (The Wine of God’s Love) translated by Kabir Chowdhury, retrieved at . bangladesh | 45

Nazrul and Christianity Nazrul was a Muslim and highly valued his religion even though his religious ways and understanding might have been unconventional. This is testified to by the harsh reactions Nazrul aroused in his own community. Significantly, however, despite recriminations and accusations, among which that of replacing Islamic monotheism with Hindu polytheism,143 Nazrul never backtracked on his beliefs and maintained his Islamic stance. Indeed, the second and last decade of his poetic activity, the one marked by mysticism, saw a diminishing of attacks against him and his views. This however was not determined by Nazrul’s conversion to a more orthodox Islam, it was instead the result of a change of tone and language which contented fundamentalist quarters. Undeniably, Nazrul had started out from an Islamic perspective, but eventually ended up dissolving himself in the Beauty of the Golden Glow or excellent Beauty. It was his “unquenchable thirst for the ultimate beauty”144 which marked all his life, particularly the last part. Because of this unquenchable thirst he refused any sort of parochialism but searched anywhere and everywhere, without constraint for Truth, Beauty and Love. Nazrul’s work does in fact show the vastness of his religious knowledge: he is at home with the Muslim tradition and lore but so is he with the Hindu tradition and lore. He jumps from one religious tradition to the other without apparent difficulty. Hinduism and Islam are the two main religious streams he commonly refers to. Yet other streaks of spirituality appear here and there in his work. Christianity is one of these. For Nazrul any religion’s essence, what he calls ontornihito satya145 (not its rituals, rules and regulations) is for him a way to divine truth, but just a way. The destination is something different, as the jewels are different from the Jeweller. It is in this perspective only that we now turn to the possible Christian influences operating in Nazrul. As far as we know Nazrul had two important encounters with Christianity during his short life: the first is his encounter with and working for the Christian guard of the Andal Branch Railway (1912) and the other, perhaps more important, is the period of nearly three years (1926–1928) he lived in Krishnanagar in close contact with the Catholic community present there. We do not know for sure if these encounters became a chance for Nazrul to get to know Christianity, even though we may surmise so. For sure Nazrul was not anti-Christian, supported the foreign missionaries then numerous in the area and maintained friendly relationships with the Christian population.146 Whatever the case, it is a fact that in his artistic creations Nazrul manifests a discrete knowledge of Christianity. Conventionally, we may divide Nazrul’s works where Christian references appear into three groups. The first is the group of poems in which Christianity, in one or the other of

143. P. K. Mitra, The Dissent of Nazrul Islam: Poetry and History, op. cit., 215–16. 144. From the speech Nazrul gave while addressing the fourth annual conference of The Bongaon Sahityo Samity on 16 March 1940. Quoted in Rafiqul Islam, Biography of Kazi Nazrul Islam, op. cit., 461. 145. K. Azad, Dhormio Cetonay Nazrul, op. cit., 167. 146. J. R. Mondol, Karpasdangae Kobi Nazrul op. cit., 58–9. 46 | God Between the Lines

its elements, is directly quoted together with other religions. The second is the group of poems in which Christian elements are quoted alone, with no reference to other religions. The third group instead contains poems with possibly implicit references to Christianity without mentioning it directly. A few examples for each group will hopefully clarify the issue. In the first group we have already met a couple of poems, Manush and Samyabadi. These are the kind of poems in which Christianity is quoted in a list together with other religions. In Manush for instance it is written:

Who are they—hating human beings yet kissing the Quran, the Vedas, the Bible?147

In this sense quoting the Bible has only an exemplary meaning and it gives comprehen- siveness to the point being made, that is, scriptures are not as important as human beings. The same happens though more complexly in Samyabadi.

I sing of equality in which dissolves all the barriers and estrangements, in which are united Hindus, Buddhists, Muslims, Christians. I sing of equality. … with the Quran, the Puranas, the Vedas, the Bible, the Tripitaka, the Zend-Avesta, the Grantha Saheb why do you waste your labour? … This heart is Neelachal, Kashi, Mathura, Brindaban, Budh-Gaya, Jerusalem, Medina, Ka’aba. This heart is the mosque, the temple, the church. This is where Jesus and Moses found the truth. In this battlefield the young flute player sang the divine Geeta. In this pasture the shepherds became prophets. In this meditation chamber Shakya Muni heard the call of the suffering humanity and decried his throne.

147. Manush translated by K. Sajed at . Original Bengali in K. N. Islam, Samyabadi op. cit., 11. bangladesh | 47

In this voice the Darling of Arabia heard his call, from here he sang the Quran’s message of equality.148

The idea is again to list several different religions to achieve completeness and advance the same point: that human dignity is above and over all other determinants and differences and that that dignity is housed in man’s heart, the universal temple. This is achieved by mentioning the faithful of diverse religions (Hindus, Buddhists, Muslims and Christians), their scriptures (the Quran, Puranas, Vedas, Bible, Tripitaka, Zend-Avesta), their holy cities (Neelachal, Kashi, Mathura, Brindaban, Budh-Gaya, Jerusalem, Medina, Ka’aba), their places of worship (mosque, temple and church) and finally their founders (Jesus, Moses, Krishna, Buddha, Hazrat Mohammed). As a matter of speculation, it may perhaps be surmised that Jesus is here closely connected with truth while Mohammed with equality. The latter is certainly a central theme in Nazrul’s comprehension of Islam. It may also be the case that in the same guise Nazrul understood Jesus as truth or as he who is associated with it. In this group of poems Christianity is just mentioned as an explicative device. In the second group we may mention poems like Nari (Woman), Daridro (Poverty), and Barangona (Prostitute). In Nari, for instance, Nazrul mentions the Original Sin.

Who calls you a hell-pit, woman? Tell him—the Original Sin was not a woman— it was the male, Satan! or the Sin or Satan is neither man nor woman…149

The concept of Original Sin does not exist in Islam so that the idea must have been taken from Christianity, and possibly from Catholic theology. In Daridro instead there is this interesting reference to Christ himself.

O poverty, thou hast made me great. Thou hast made me honoured like Christ with his crown of thorns.150

The poet compares his poverty with the poverty of Christ, something which in the case of the latter has been given form through the crown of thorns. Significantly and against

148. Samyabadi in K. N. Islam, Samyabadi op. cit., 7. Trans. by K. Sajed retrieved at . 149. Nari in K. N. Islam, Samyabadi op. cit., 20ff. Trans. by K. Sajed quoted in W. E. Langley, Kazi Nazrul Islam: The Voice of Poetry and the Struggle for Human Wholeness op. cit., 168. 150. Daridro in K. N. Islam, Sonchita op. cit., 103ff. Trans. by K. Chowdhury, retrieved at . 48 | God Between the Lines

common sense Nazrul’s poverty is that which gives him honour, in the same way in which the crown of thorns honoured Christ. In Barangona the reference instead is also to Mary.

Who calls you a prostitute, Mother? Who spits at you? … Jesus, the great lover, had a bewildering birth! … If Ahalya151 can regain her freedom and mother Mary can become a goddess, Why can you not become worthy of worship?152

Obviously the reference here is to the extraordinary birth of Jesus from his mother Mary which is here employed as an example to somehow rehabilitate prostitutes. Apart from the direct quotation of the two Christian names, it is interesting to notice that the whole poem offers an extraordinary interpretation of prostitutes and prostitution which is not very Islamic, to say the least. It is impossible not to recollect here the gospel of the adul- teress in John 8:1–11! In the three cases quoted above, Nazrul manifests a knowledge of things Christian and to employ them at ease. The third group, as I said, gathers works in which Christian references are implicit and may be surmised only from the actual content. Undoubtedly this is uncharted ground, open to debate. In a very nice song Allah Amar Probhu (God is my Lord) Nazrul writes:

Allah is my Lord. I fear no one. Muhammad is our prophet. Throughout the world his praise is sung.153

Listening to this it is difficult not to think of Psalm 27:1 or of Psalm 118:6 or of other bibli- cal passages.154 It can similarly be said of a passage in Kuli-Mojur (Coolies and Labourers).

Let the heaven dawn upon all let the people of all ages, all countries stand on the shore and listen to the flute-call of unity. And if one human being is hurt, then let the whole of humanity feel the pain equally.

151. In Hindu mythology Ahalya was the wife of the sage Gautama Maharishi. She was deceived and seduced by god Indra and thus cursed by her husband. She was eventually released from the curse by the god Rama. 152. Barangona in K. N. Islam, Samyabadi op. cit., 17. Trans. by K. Sajed retrieved at . In some parts the translation has been slightly modified by me. 153. Trans. by K. Chowdhury, retrieved at . 154. See for instance Romans 8:31; Hebrew 13:6 etc. bangladesh | 49

If one human being is humiliated, then let it be considered humiliation for the whole of humanity.155

Matthew 25:32 and his vision of the day of judgement looms high here! Likewise in the article “The Temple and The Mosque” Nazrul writes:

It is for the good of mankind that these places of worship are constructed. Man is not created for the sake of the places of worship… Let all humanity come and stand beneath the single canopy of the sky, in the courtyard of the one great temple illuminated by the moon and sun and stars.156

Even here the words of Jesus appear to reverberate in between Nazrul’s lines. Sentences like “the Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath,”157 or “believe me, a time is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem,”158 come to mind easily. Before concluding our inquiry into the Christian hints in Nazrul’s poetry, we must briefly consider a short novel written by our poet while living in Krishnanagar. Mrityu- khudha (Hunger for Death), published in 1930, recounts the story of Mejobou, the wife of a second son, and her poverty stricken family. The story centres on widowedMejobou ’s conversion to Roman Catholicism. The narration starts with Nazrul introducing the Christian and the Muslim living side by side in Krishnanagar. Both are very poor, both belong to the same group of people: some converted some did not. They often fight with each other over nothing yet they forget about it easily and they go on living as good neighbours. Their great poverty is that which, paradoxically, allows them to continue their life: “They forget all, the only thing they cannot forget is their unending suffering, their unrelenting poverty.”159 And this is also the perspective in which Nazrul looks at these people, be they Christian or Muslim. What is more, religion does not appear to be a great barrier in their interrelations: Kurshi a Catholic girl flirts with Paikel, Mejobou’s youngest brother in law, a secret everybody knows of! Nazrul indeed is not concerned with religion here but with poverty. Before dying, Shejobou, one’s third son’s wife and sister in law of Mejobou, clinching to her sick child says: “Allah, you gave me loads of sufferings! Stop now! If you have to take my child, take him two days after having taken me!”160 Yet Mejobou is portrayed by Nazrul in

155. Kuli-Mojur in K. N. Islam, Samyabadi op. cit., 26. Trans. by S. Kamal, quoted in W. E. Langley, Kazi Nazrul Islam: The Voice of Poetry and the Struggle for Human Wholeness, op. cit., 118. 156. Trans. by J. T. O’Connel, “The Temple and the Mosque,” op. cit., 106–14. 157. Mark 2:27. 158. John 4:21. 159. K. N. Islam, Mrityukhudha (Dhaka: Mowla Brothers, 2015), 9. All the quotations from this novel are my translation. 160. Ibid., 21. 50 | God Between the Lines

glowing traits. “She does not tell lies; her words turn always out to be true.”161 She has such a strong personality that even her shashuri (mother-in-law) fears her. In a word, she is everybody’s dulali mee (beloved girl).162 Nazrul speaks of her as she who “plays and roams in the free sky, in the free wind.”163 After an encounter with a couple of foreign Christian missionaries who attempt in vain to cure her Shejobou, Mejobou starts frequenting them. Eventually she becomes Christian along with her two small children. Nazrul’s reaction is clear. “If Mejobou freely converted to Christianity, I will not say a word!” Otherwise, says Ansar, another character easily identifiable with our poet, I will create a fuss!164 When Ansar confronts Mejobou the latter will tell him: “I did not become Christian all at a sudden, you have made me a Christian little by little.”165 Ansar understands and replies: “Our faith-blind community tortured you and many other women forcing you all to become Christian.”166 Indeed Ansar/Nazrul praises Mejobou for her courage and freedom and only recommends her not to forget the people she comes from. Nazrul does not see her conversion as something tragic or to be avoided. Freedom is that which has to be safeguarded, nothing else. In the novel Nazrul does not refer to Christianity as a religion but refers to it only as a social compartment along with others. Of course, he recognises Christian specific attention to the service of humanity but he is much more attracted by the beauty of Mejobou’s freedom and resolution. Significantly, when talking with some friends about their style in wearing the sari, shoes etc. Mejobou comments: “I did not come here to become a mam-sahib (a foreign lady), I came here to become a full human being: in our community (i.e. the Muslim) we lack light, air, life so like an imprisoned bird I cut the bars of my cage and came away.”167 And this is indeed what Nazrul cares about: humanity and its full realisation. If Christianity is able to achieve that, Nazrul is ready to acknowledge it. In a way, even Mrityukhudha may be listed in what we have called the first group of Nazrul’s works.

Conclusion Kazi Nazrul Islam was the poet of rebellion and dissent. His religion throughout his life was the religion of humanity. For this religion he consumed his life in a form of sacrificial offering. Freedom from any political, religious and sociocultural obstacle along with the construction of a just and equal society had been Nazrul’s aim all throughout. This paper, starting by introducing Nazrul’s tragic life trajectory, has proposed a comprehension of the poet which sees his poetic personality unfolding and building upon a gradual search

161. Ibid., 22. 162. Ivi. 163. Ibid., 23. 164. Ibid., 51. 165. Ibid., 52 166. Ivi. 167. Ibid., 67. bangladesh | 51

for Truth, Beauty and Love. Rebellion and destruction themselves, major characteristics in our poet’s early life, are the result of that same search for Truth, Beauty and Love, a kind of necessary steps preceding the rising of a new creation. Undoubtedly, behind Naz- rul’s inspiration or poetic voice there is a deep sense of transcendence which little by little comes to be identified more and more clearly with God. Undeniably Nazrul’s spiritual afflatus comes from his own religious tradition which however is assimilated by Nazrul in a non-conventional way. It is due to this, in fact, that nasty and harsh accusations are moved against him by fundamentalist Muslim quarters. His comprehension of Islam involves a strong sense of equality, fraternity and freedom. On these bases he is able to discard anything, including religious rites and paraphernalia, which may constitute an obstacle to the achievement of those goals. Undoubtedly, for Nazrul religion is only a means to an end which in the case of Nazrul is the union with God, the excellent Beauty, the Beauty of the Golden Glow. Obviously this is Nazrul’s later achievement, something he matured in the second half of his life and of his poetic carrier. Nazrul’s landing ground, as it were, has a lot in common also with a certain spiritual tradition of Bengal, that which I have also called the “spirit of the land.” To this tradition belong among others Lalon Shah168 and the Sufi tradition of Islam itself.169 Characterised by a marked universalism and a non-communal attitude this tradition may have indeed permeated the Rebel Poet from his early days with the leto groups. Whatever the case, Nazrul’s spiritual parable starts with humanity, the universal temple, and ends in God, the source and centre of all connectedness. The paper, in the end, attempted also en enquiry into the poet’s Christian influences. While, in this regard, elements have indeed been pointed out, it must also be clearly stated that true religious and mystical phenomenology and experiences get incredibly similar and close to each other despite religious traditions’ diversities. In times when to dissent or to do something different from received or perceived religious orthodoxy, as in present day Bangladesh, may cost one’s life, Kazi Nazrul Islam, the Rebel Poet, reminds us of the one and only true religion worthy of the name:

… all the Holy Scriptures and houses of worship are not as sacred as that one tiny human body!170

168. Lalon Shah or Lalon Fakir (circa 1774–1890) is a famous mystic of Bengal who underlined non- sectarian and universal principles of human brotherhood, rejecting any distinctions of caste and creed. See A. I. Hossain, Lalon Shah: the great poet (Dhaka: Palal Prokashoni, 2009). 169. A Sufi also called pir is a Muslim mystic. They first propagated Islam in the Bengal countryside. Today’s Islam in Bangladesh and in much of North India owes to them its mass diffusion. See R. M. Eaton, The Rise of Islam and the Bengal Frontier: 1204–1760 (London: University of California Press, 1993). Unfortunately in today’s Bangladesh they are another target of fundamentalist Islam. 170. Manush, quoted in W. E. Langley, Kazi Nazrul Islam: The Voice of Poetry and the Struggle for Human Wholeness, op. cit., 159. 52 | God Between the Lines

References

Abu, Mohammad Habibullah 2000 “The Personality and Poetry of Kazi Nazrul Islam.” In M. N. Huda ed., Nazrul: An Eval- uation. Dhaka: Nazrul Institute. Anisuzzaman ed. 1996 Nazrul Rochonaboli. Vol. 1–4. Dhaka: Bangla Academy. Azad, Kamrunessa 1999 Dhormio Cetonay Nazrul. Dhaka: Nazrul Insitute. Eaton, Richard M. 1993 The Rise of Islam and the Bengal Frontier: 1204–1760. London: University of California Press. Hossain, Abu Ishahaq 2009 Lalon Shah: The Great Poet. Dhaka: Palal Prokashoni. Hossain, Quazi Motahar 2000 “Nazrul Islam, the Singer and Writer of Songs.” In M. N. Huda ed., Nazrul: An Evalua- tion. Dhaka: Nazrul Institute. Huda, Mohammad Nurul 2013 The Mystic in the Rebel, 25–May 2013. Bdnews24.com at . Kazi, Nazrul Islam 2014 Agnibina. Dhaka: Ahmed Mahmud Haque of Mowla Brothers. 2015 Mrityukhudha. Dhaka: Mowla Brothers. 2010 Samybadi. Dhaka: Osman Goni Agami Prokashoni. 2007 Sarbahara. Dhaka: Osman Goni Agami Prokashoni. 2013 Sonchita. Dhaka: Mawla Brothers. Islam, Rafiqul 2014 Biography of Kazi Nazrul Islam. Dhaka: Nazrul Institute. Langley, Winston E., 2009 Kazi Nazrul Islam: The Voice of Poetry and the Struggle for Human Wholeness. Dhaka: Nazrul Institute. Mallik, Sadya Afreen 2016 “A Lost Soul.” In The Daily Star, 27–5–2016. Retrieved at . Mitra, Priti Kumar 2009 The Dissent of Nazrul Islam: Poetry and History. New Delhi: Oxford University Press. Mondol, Joseph Rana 2014 Karpasdangae Kobi Nazrul. Khulna: Bishops House. bangladesh | 53

O’Connel, Joseph T., 1992 “The Temple and the Mosque.” In Nazrul Insitute Journal, vol. 2, April 1992, 106–14. Sajed, Kamal 2000 “Kazi Nazrul Islam: A Chronology of Life.” In M. N. Huda ed., Nazrul: An Evaluation. Dhaka: Nazrul Institute. 1999 Kazi Nazrul Islam. Selected Works. Dhaka: Nazrul Insitute. Soumitra, Sekhar 2013 Nazrul: Antadharmiya Sampriti Ebang Shilpir Bodh. Dhaka: Nazrul Insitute.

The following websites gather many of Kazi Nazrul Islam’s works and their English translation.

. . . Indonesia

Matteo Rebecchi

iterary tradition in Indonesia has roots in ancient times. In the past, some ethnicities in the Archi- pelago could only rely on the oral transmission of wisdomL passed by mouth from generation to generation. But in Java and in other regions, which possessed a written language, epics and mythological stories soon became books that became available to readers till today. In modern times, a number of contemporary writers and novelists have appeared, some of whose works have found appreciation even abroad and have been translated into foreign languages. Among the Catholic authors, Yusuf Bilyarta Mangun- wijaya, a diocesan priest who belonged to the Semarang Arch- diocese in Central Java, represents an outstanding example of a talented novelist and essay writer. Mangunwijaya’s human experience and literary work are fruits of his multifaceted personality, which made of him an eclectic and creative personage, well known even outside the boundaries of the Catholic Church in Indonesia. The main concern of Mangunwijaya was to be close to the poor, to express his 56 | God Between the Lines

solidarity and also to bring them back to their own original dignity as children of God, elevating them to a more dignified life. His vision was to make human beings become “more human.” This strong ideal made of him an unconventional shepherd, who did not serve his flock mainly through sacramental ministry, but also through social work and through his concrete choice to live among the poor. This spirit became the inner motivation for his literary work too. Being a well-educated and multitalented person, with extensive knowledge in several subjects, Mangun- wijaya dedicated himself also to writing essays on several themes, especially concerning cultural, religious, and social issues. His deepest desire was, however, to write novels. He did not want to communicate only with highly educated people. He was convinced that a novel can be read and its message easily understood both by the lecturer in the university and by the simple woman in the village. In this paper I present Mangunwijaya’s life and several aspects of his existence, as concrete expressions of the his spirit of concern for humanity that made him a social worker, an architect, an educator, and also a writer. Finally, I try to analyse, although only in passing, one of his literary works, that is Burung-burung Manyar (The Weaverbirds), a novel which was awarded the South-East Asian Writers’ Award in 1983 in Thailand. This novel, which has been translated into Dutch, Japanese, and English, contains several leitmotifs which refer to Mangunwijaya’s main concern to elevate the human condition to its proper dignity.

Romo Mangun’s Life Yusuf Bilyarta Mangunwijaya,1 commonly known as Romo (father, in Javanese) Man- gun, was born in Ambarawa, Central Jawa on May 6, 1929. He was given the baptismal name Yusuf and the Javanese name Bilyarta. He was the first of twelve children, seven of whom were girls. His parents were both teachers. His father, Yulianus Sumadi, taught in an Elementary School, whilst his mother taught in a kindergarten. Most probably, his parents’ profession and dedication to children’ education, became an important legacy which triggered Romo Mangun’s passion for study, exploration, and the quest for the truth, but also inspired his profound desire to renovate the concept and methodology of children’s education in Indonesia. Romo Mangun would carry within him permanent good memories of the atmosphere of harmony experienced in his own family. They were not rich, but they were happy. His parents were the ones who seeded ethical and human values in the heart of the little Mangunwijaya. From childhood, he often heard from his father: “This life is not only about looking for rice and money, but it’s about the quest for what is truly good.”

1. Romo Mangun’s biographic data are mostly taken from F. T. Indratno ed., Humanisme Y. B. Mangunwijaya (Jakarta: Kompas Media Nusantara, 2015), 18ss and Y. B. Mangunwijaya, Saya Ingin Membayar Utang Kepada Rakyat (Yogyakarta: Penerbit Kanisius), 17–48. indonesia | 57

The little Mangunwijaya enrolled in the Holland Inlander School (his) in Magelang, an elementary school run by Dutch friars. This turned out to be the most beautiful time in his life. He really enjoyed the teachers and their pedagogical methodology. Accord- ing to his testimony, the his way of teaching was able to trigger love for the truth and facilitate the seeding of positive attitudes in the hearts and minds of those little pupils.2 It was not only a matter of merely memorization of topics taught by the teachers, but it was a school of life, a true formation of individuals. The methodology was rather modern. Besides learning topics, the pupils were taught to develop their skills and talents. Therefore, they were encouraged and trained to speak in public, sing, write, tell stories, and act out simple theatrical pieces. To Mangunwijaya, the most interesting exercise was the Voorlesen, namely repeating in one’s words and in the local language a tale previously read by the teacher. But this heavenly atmosphere experienced at his unfortunately would not last forever. The Japanese invasion in 1942 put an end to this happy experience. Schools were closed everywhere, and this fact profoundly shocked the little Mangunwijaya. In 1943 he enrolled in an Elementary school in Magelang and then in Semarang, in a Technical School. Later, he moved again to Yogyakarta where he continued attending classes in two schools at the same time: Sekolah Teknik Mataram in the morning, and Sekolah Menengah Angkatan Muda Katolik Republik Indonesia (amkri) in the afternoon. Then the revolution broke out in 1945 so that Mangunwijaya was forced to interrupt his studies once again. The pupils were invited to put aside their books in order to join the struggle for liberty. Mangunwijaya reminisced that after the proclamation of independence on August 17, 1945, he joined in actions against the oppressors, especially in stealing cars belonging to the Japanese. At that time, all the students were mobilized to support the resistance and were gathered in the Vredeburg Castle located in the city of Yogyakarta. Mangunwijaya joined the Tenth Battalion under the command of Mayor Suharto,3 who became President of the Indonesian Republic in 1966. Mangunwijaya felt strong admiration for this elegant, good-mannered, and handsome personage, even though later President Suharto’s way of ruling the country became a primary target of Romo Mangun’s criticism. Mangunwijaya had the chance to join in military operations in Magelang, Ambarawa and Semarang. At the end of the hostilities, he answered the call of the Bishop of Malang (East Java) who was looking for students to open a new school, the Sekolah Menengah Atas Dempo. There, besides going to school, Mangunwijaya became an activist in Catholic organiza- tions. It was at that time that he had the opportuniy to attend a celebration of the victory of the Indonesian Republic against the Dutch, in which Mayor Isman, the Commander of the Indonesian Republic Student Soldiers (trip), gave his speech saying these words:

2. Y. B. Mangunwijaya, “Pengakuan Seorang Amatir,” in Sindhunata, ed., Menjadi Generasi Pasca- Indonesia (Yogyakarta: Penerbit Kanisius, 1999), 124–25. 3. Y. B. Mangunwijaya, Saya Ingin Membayar Utang Kepada Rakyat, op. cit., 43. 58 | God Between the Lines

Do not call us heroes or flowers of the Nation. Because of the war, we have learned how to wound and kill. Because of war we have burned down houses. Our hands are bloodstained. We have learned dirty things. We are young people that have not grown up normally. We do not ask you to praise us, but only one thing… to give us the chance to become normal human beings. Once again, to become normal human beings.4

This speech struck those who attended he gathering, who suddenly become silent for a long time. To Mangunwijaya, however, those words were not only a challenge to reflect on and regret the absurdity of violence. He could not sleep at night and he felt a call from inside. Then he was invited to join a retreat in order to pray and meditate on what he was feeling and eventually he understood that the call was from God, who was asking him to give up his own life for the sake of his people. It was the call to humanize humanity, to give back their stolen dignity to the poor and the exploited. He understood that the freedom achieved by Indonesia was only the first step toward the true freedom deserved by his people. Independence was just the beginning of a process that needed continuation. As a matter of fact, the temptation to exploit the weak, or even the risk of bloodshed in internal fights were still concrete possibilities even after the proclamation of independence from the colonial power. Moreover, true freedom is not merely the independence of the Nation, seen as an abstract concept, but, in the mind of Mangunwijaya, it must correspond to the end of exploitation and injustice. For this reason, Mangunwijaya felt the call to consecrate himself to the struggle to erase any kind of enslavement and oppression, a struggle which at the time of liberation from the colonial power had just begun at an embryonic level. Furthermore, the experience of being a member of a guerrilla movement made him aware that the poor were in fact the category of people most affected by the consequences of war. When attacked, a soldier could run away and escape the enemies, but local villagers, the poor, could not go anywhere and so they were extremely exposed to harassment and any kind of violence. During that period Mangunwijaya felt very sorry for those simple countrymen who gave support and protection to Indonesian fighters in the time of revolution, putting their own lives at risk, and it is for this reason that he wanted to dedicate himself to “pay back his debt to his people.”5 According to his own admission, being a Catholic, he understood that the best way to dedicate himself to the poor, along with putting aside the temptations of wealth and power, was to become a consecrated person, a person who belongs to God.6 After his graduation from junior high school in Magelang in 1951, Mangunwijaya

4. F. T. Indratno, ed., Humanisme Y.B. Mangunwijaya, op. cit., 20. My translation. 5. Y. B. Mangunwijaya, Saya Ingin Membayar Utang Kepada Rakyat, op. cit., 27–8, and Y. B. Mangunwijaya, Gereja Diaspora (Yoygakarta: Penerbit Kanisius, 1999), 27–9, 207. 6. Y. B. Mangunwijaya, Saya Ingin Membayar Utang Kepada Rakyat, op. cit., 35. indonesia | 59

decided to join the Minor Seminary of St. Peter Canisius in Mertoyudan. Then, he continued the curriculum of studies for the preparation to priesthood at St. Paul Major Seminary in Yogyakarta. Finally, he was ordained a priest by Mgr. Soegijapranata.7 This bishop became an inspiring model to the young Romo Mangun. According to him, Mgr. Soegijapranata, apart from being a symbolic personage for the whole Indonesian Church as its first native Bishop, was also a key figure in the struggle for independence. The young bishop knew very well the first president, Sukarno, and worked together with him and other important politicians when the Dutch tried to reconquer Indonesia after the withdrawal of the Japanese. The bishop of Semarang stood up for independence and actively supported Sukarno and the ministers of his cabinet who were detained by the Dutch in Yogyakarta in 1948–49. And all of this was done by contradicting the policy of the conservative Catholic Party in Holland, which was against the Indonesian upheaval. Mgr. Soegijapranata was able to convince them that the struggle for freedom was not in fact rebellion but, instead, it was a legitimate right of his people.8 Mangunwijaya became a diocesan priest. He did not look for any international con- gregation, like the Jesuits who were very much present in Java at the time. Most probably, the motivation for such a choice was grounded in his strong desire to be rooted in his own territory and to be close to poor and humble people.9 After his ordination, Mgr. Soegijapranata gave Romo Mangun the assignment to study architecture in the Institute of Technology of Bandung. The reason for this request was the fact that the Church needed to explore the possibility of building churches and other buildings according to new architectural canons, pioneering an enculturated Indonesian style. Romo Mangun spent only one year in Bandung, because he suddenly moved to Aachen, Germany, in 1960, where he continued his studies and finally graduated as an architect in 1966. Back in Indonesia, in 1967 Romo Mangun began teaching architecture at a university in Yogyakarta (Universitas Gajah Mada), but he felt that this profession was not in line with his inner desire to be close to the least and the marginalized. For this reason, in 1980 he eventually decided to give up teaching. It was at that time that Romo Mangun addressed his attention to the poor conditions of a slum area along the river Code (Kali Code) in Yogyakarta. People had occupied its riverbanks and were living in unhealthy and miserable houses. Criminality, prostitution, exploitation, and violence were widespread in the settlement, so that the Government had already decided to evict the inhabitants to clean up and refurbish the area. Romo

7. Ibid., 27–8. 8. Ibid., 27. 9. Ivi. According to Romo Mangun analysis, diocesan priests are the true priests of the people, the part of the clergy which is closer to the lower layers of society and oftentimes have given radical witness of the Gospel. This was especially evident during the French Revolution, when diocesan priests, in particular those living in the countryside, were those who gave a clearer witness of simplicity, poverty and closeness to the poor, compared to the rest of the clergy, both religious and bishops, who were very much colluded with aristocracy and power. See Y. B. Mangunwijaya, Gereja Diaspora, op. cit., 190. 60 | God Between the Lines

Mangun, who in the meantime had started living there, obtained from the government permission to postpone this program and at the same time he gave birth to a project of revitalization of the area. After six years the conditions of Kali Code were transformed and the slum had already assumed a new look. But Romo Mangun decided to leave this experience behind and to try a new project. He moved to Grigak, Gunung Kidul, a remote area in the south coast of the Java Island. He settled down there, after having built his house, made of wood and modelled on Kali Code’s style. He had spotted a water spring not yet utilized by the villagers. Being aware of that, Romo Mangun, started a new project to bring clean water to the population by building a water conduit, on behalf of the poor, who, in that area were 100% Muslim. This project was accomplished in a few years. Eventually he supported Kedung Ombo villagers, in Central Jawa, who had become victims of the governmental project of building an artificial lake for irrigation and for the production of hydroelectric energy. The formation of the artificial lake, which covered an area of 30 Km resulted in the eviction of the villagers and destroyed their houses and fields. Once again, Romo Mangun sided with the oppressed. He supported their struggle for the payment of fair compensation for the damage caused by the project. At first, the Supreme Court in Jakarta agreed to pay Kedung Ombo villagers with a compensation that surprisingly surpassed their request. But nobody was really thinking that that decision would materialize. As a matter of fact, later the verdict was suspended. Once again, the poor experienced exploitation and became victims of the developmental projects of the country implemented by the Suharto’s government.10 Romo Mangun died of a heart attack after giving a speech in the Seminar Mening- katkan Peran Buku dalam Upaya Membentuk Masyarakat Indonesia Baru (Elevating the Role of the Book in the Endeavour to Shape a New Indonesian Society) in the Hotel Le Meridien in Jakarta on February 10, 1999.

The Architect Kali Code’s people were threatened with being evicted, as their settlement was located within the riverbanks of the Code River and also because of the awful sight offered by that slum located not far from the centre of the city of Yogyakarta. The plan to evict Kali Code settlers was scheduled for the year 1983. Romo Mangun asked and obtained from the government a postponement of the plan, and at the same time he was able to propose his project of renovation of the slum. Romo Mangun put in action all his skills and enthusiasm in order to make of this location a place worthy to live in. He started working on renovation, reconstruction, and revitalisation of the settlement, which, after two years of

10. Y. B. Mangunwijaya, Saya Ingin Membayar Utang Kepda Rakyat, op. cit., 54–6, 91. indonesia | 61

work, became a characteristic spot in town.11 The houses were built from simple material (wood and bamboo), and were painted in bright colours according to Javanese motifs. It was established that the houses would not become the property of their tenants. Instead, they were rented at a symbolic amount of money, and once the lodgers were able to find better accommodations, the houses had to be given to other people. Besides that, Romo Mangun planned the construction of public buildings for facilitating socialization, meetings, or artistic performances. In few years, the Kali Code neighbourhood became health- ier, more comfortable, and aesthetically more valuable. Furthermore, Romo Mangun’s project was also able to change the mentality of Kali Code’s people so that their social condition and lifestyle could be improved. People started having better jobs, opening small businesses, working as parking attendants, etc. Romo Mangun’s achievements were appreciated even abroad: in 1992 he was awarded the Aga Khan Award for Architecture in the Muslim World for his architectural work in Kali Code. After some years, living in Kali Code became much more refined and comfortable. Not all the problems, such as prostitution and delinquency, were solved, but major improvements had already been achieved. Romo Mangun, however, did not want to become the Kali Code “Godfahter,”12 generating an inopportune dependence of Kali Code people on himself. For this reason, he finally left this experience behind, beginning a new journey to live in solidarity with the poor in another area. The Kali Code experience did not die with the departure of its father. Nevertheless, recently, in the year 2002, the characteristic entrance gate was demolished, and some permanent buildings were built in Kali Code which did not match Mangun’s original idea about the revitalisation of the area.13 His commitment to solidarity with marginalized people did not prevent Romo Man- gun from being a creative and productive architect outside the narrow boundaries of the Kali Code. Some of his works realized over the years are the St. Theresia Church and the Salam Building in Jakarta (1971), the Holy Cross Church in Jakarta (1993), the Sanctu- ary of Sendangsono, close to Yogyakarta (1972–1991), and the Fermentum Seminary in Bandung (1996). Other buildings and architectural works have also been established in other places. The philosophy behind Romo Mangun’s architecture is grounded in the same spirit which inspired him in doing social work. The building is valuable if it is able to serve the people who will use it. The architectural work must become a place worthwhile to live in, and its beauty must mirror the sacral dignity of mankind, because every man and woman reflects the image of God. Moreover, the building, in particular a church, must

11. A description of the Kali Code revitalisation is available at . 12. Y. B. Mangunwijaya, Saya Ingin Membayar Utang Kepada Rakyat, op. cit., 37. 13. E. P. Napitupulu, “Memahami, Merawat, Meneruskan, dan Melestarikan Pesan dalam Karya-karya Arsitek Y. B. Mangunwijaya,” in F. T. Indratno ed., Humanisme Y.B. Mangunwijaya, op. cit. 122. 62 | God Between the Lines

express its function of helping people to experience the journey towards the Transcen- dent. Its purpose is to help the soul to see the unseen. In this regard, Romo Mangun’s favourite architect was the great Swiss-French artist Le Corbusier who, according to him, is an outstanding example of an architect whose buildings can help people to experience contemplation.14 The creativity of Romo Mangun is also expressed by a number of symbols and orna- ments that embellish his works, some of which are taken from the Christian tradition or from the Sacred Scriptures. Romo Mangun was also very concerned to project buildings which could fit into the cultural environment. An example of this in the Javanese context is the Sanctuary of Sendangsono, an open space of pilgrimage and prayer, where people live experience contemplation not by merely entering a closed building but by immerging themselves in the natural environment. Finally, Romo Mangun was also very attentive in choosing the material for his works, preferring inexpensive but good quality material. This choice fits with the lifestyle of the architect, and also with his choice to be on the side of the simple and the poor. There is no need for luxurious materials in order to build a beautiful building, just as a man is valuable and possesses his own dignity even if he is poor. According to Erwinthon P. Napitupulu, the architectural works of Romo Mangun number 84 (some of which did not come to final realization). At present, ten of them have already been dismantled.15

Fighting Exploitation and Oppression Mangunwijaya’s concern for the poor made of him an unconventional priest and he was aware of that. He used to say that the Church needs a crown, which is the sacramental and liturgical ministry, but that she also needs a vestment, which is her concrete option for the poor.16 In several writings and interviews Romo Mangun had the opportunity to express harsh criticism against the policy of the Suharto Government (commonly called Orde Baru, New Order), which, according to him, had created new forms of exploitation of the weakest layers of society, something not truly different from what they had experienced as a colony. In the past, a foreign country had dominated and oppressed the Indonesian people. Now, after independence, freedom had become an exclusive good enjoyed only by a few privileged categories of people, namely the members of the elite in power. Freedom had not yet become a common good enjoyed by the lowest layers of society. According

14. On the symbolic meaning of the Chapelle à Ronchamp of Le Corbusier, see Y. B. Mangunwijaya, Manusia Pascamodern, Alam dan Semesta (Yogyakarta: Penerbit Kanisius, 1999), 64, 69–94. 15. On the Architectural works of Romo Mangun see E. P. Napitupulu, “Memahami, Merawat, Meneruskan, dan Melestarikan Pesan dalam Karya-karya Arsitektur Y. B. Mangunwijaya,” in F. T. Indratno ed., Humanisme Y.B. Mangunwijaya, op. cit., 111–36. 16. Y. B. Mangunwijaya, Saya Ingin Membayar Utang kepada Rakyat, op. cit., 24–6. indonesia | 63

to Romo Mangun the poor had been exploited by the Dutch, but their condition had not improved after the proclamation of independence in 1945. Moreover, under the rule of Suharto, poverty became even worse because of the need for quick progress and for the development of the country, which did not take into account the protection of the weak and the safeguard of their rights. According to Orde Baru policy, development (pembangunan) was a task to be reached at any cost, a cost that was payed especially by those who had no possibility to defend themselves. In the ancient Javanese tradition, as well as in other Indonesian cultures, it was believed that victims (tumbal) were necessary for the safety of major constructions such as bridges or public buildings. The unfortunates were usually girls or young boys. It is said that after digging the foundation of the bridge over the river Progo, in Yogyakarta, a girl was asked to dance in the dig and then she was suddenly stoned and buried by the builders under the foundation of the pillars, as a sacrificial victim for the safety of the bridge. On the occasion of the building of the Kali Krasat bridge, it was rumoured that school principals in the area were asked to deliver a number of pairs of children’s eyes to be offered in sacrifice for the safety of the bridge.17 The Orde Baru policy divinized the program of progress which did not take into consideration the rights of the least advantaged. It was a policy that, like ancient Javanese customs, called for victims. The commitment of Romo Mangun in the struggle for the defence of the exploited was mainly expressed by his solidarity with them. It is for this reason that Romo Mangun asked for and obtained an assignment outside the common pastoral track in order to be free to live among the poor in Kali Code and in the remote area of Grigak.18 Moreover, he produced a number of articles for national magazines in which he strongly criticized the tyranny of the Orde Baru and the perpetuation of a feudalistic culture, which merely prioritized the interests of the elite in power. In the climate of social control implemented under the Suharto’s rule, Romo Mangun was one of the free voices defending the weak.19 He dared to go against politicians, but he also criticized the army and the police, which, at the time, meant putting his own life in danger. Romo Mangun’s dream was the construction of a nation concretely shaped on the principles of Pancasila, the five pillars of the Indonesian Nation.20 His desire was to see the realization of democracy and justice for all the components of society, including the weakest ones. On several occasions Romo Mangun expressed the idea that the principles of Pancasila had been conceived and formulated by people of great ideals. According to him, in 1928, at the time of the so called Sumpah Pemuda (the Youth Pledge in which were

17. Y. B. Mangunwijaya, Tumbal (Yogyakarta: Yayasan Bentang Budaya), 6. 18. Y. B. Mangunwijaya, Saya Ingin Membayar Utang Kepada Rakyat, op. cit., 26. 19. Y. B. Mangunwijaya, Tumbal: Kumpulan Tulisan Y.B. Mangunwijaya, op. cit., 5. 20. 1) Belief in the one God; 2) Just and civilized humanity; 3) The unity of Indonesia; 4) Democracy guided by the inner wisdom in the unanimity arising out of deliberations amongst representatives; 5) Social justice for the whole of the people of Indonesia. 64 | God Between the Lines

stated for the first time the three principles of the future Nation: one Nation, one People, one Language), a generation of young well educated people were able to give shape to the ideals of the future Indonesian Nation that were lately incorporated in the Pancasila principles. This generation received its education in the context of the recent colonial period, but they were able to enjoy a positive pedagogical system which was an expression of the so called Ethische Politiek (the Dutch Ethical Policy which had been adopted by the Dutch government since 1901 in order to pay back its moral debt toward the Indonesian population).21 The 1928 generation was concerned about the future of their people and the good of every Indonesian person. They had suffered under colonial rule and so they were fully dedicated to shaping the new country. They were not yearning for self-interest or for power. This generation, according to Romo Mangun, became the foundation of the struggle for freedom that later led to the proclamation of independence on August 17, 1945.22 It was the same generation that gave birth to a democracy that lasted until the rise of Suharto’s dictatorship in 1966 after the resignation of the first President of the Indonesian Republic, Sukarno. The rule of Suharto began with the repression of the attempted plan to overthrow Sukarno, allegedly planned by leaders of the Indonesian Communist Party working together with some high ranking officials (the so called g30s Movement), which ended up in the killing of seven high ranking officials of the Army on October 1, 1965. Suharto successfully directed the military operations which neutralized the attempted coup d’état. During the following months, the anti-Communist repression produced the worst bloodshed recorded in the history of the country, witnessing the massacre of members and sympathizers of the Indonesian Communist Party between 1965 and 1966.23 After that, democracy no longer ruled in Indonesia. A new fascist government practically overthrew the Pancasila. The military gained power and implemented a system with a disciplined, pyramidal, and hierarchical ruling structure. The New Order, according to Romo Mangun, brought Indonesia back to the feudalism of ancient times, in which the rulers had absolute dominion over their people and in which those who could handle a sword could dominate the others. It was an elite system, in which the powerful and rich people held dominion over the lower layers of society. It was a system, like any fascist regime, that called for victims, new tumbal, for the sake of the wealth of those who ruled the country.24 Even if it is undeniable that Indonesia achieved significant progress during the three decades of Suharto’s power, especially from the economic point of view, it was

21. Y. B. Mangunwijaya, Saya Ingin Membayar Utang Kepada Rakyat, op. cit., 94. 22. Y. B. Mangunwijaya, A. Sudirarja, “Humanisme Religius dan Nasionalisme yang Terbuka, Faham Dasar Pendidikan Mangunwijaya,” in F. T. Indratno, Humanisme Y. B. Mangunwijaya: Menghargai Manusia dan Kemanusiaan, op. cit., 9–13. 23. On this dark page of Indonesian history, see Kurniawan, ed., Pengakuan Algojo 1965 (Jakarta: Tempo Publishing, 2013). A good book that sheds light upon facts and responsibilities of the g30s Movement is J. Roosa, Pretext of Mass Murder: The September 30th Movement and Suharto’s Coup d’État in Indonesia (Madison, Wisconsin: The University of Wisconsin Press, 2006). 24. Y. B. Mangunwijaya, Saya Ingin Membayar Utang Rakyat, op. cit. 194–96. indonesia | 65

also clear, according to Romo Mangun, that the Orde Baru made of Indonesia one of the most corrupt countries in Asia and maybe in the world, and a champion in violations of human rights, where perpetrators of major crimes could enjoy impunity. Romo Mangun, however, did not only blame Suharto or only his dictatorial way of ruling the country. The protest of Romo Mangun went far beyond the limits of an unjust policy implemented by a dictatorship aiming at working for the interests of the ruling elite. Mangunwijaya was aware of the fact that a particular kind of government is in some ways the product of a particular culture and society. According to him, Suharto was able to rule for more than thirty years because his people gave in to that. Tyranny lasting for so long can happen only if in some way the society supports it and also provides the cultural tools to set it up.25 According to Romo Mangun a humble disposition is needed to observe the Indonesian culture on the whole, as a mixture of values and discrepancies, virtues and defects, good and evil. In this regard, one of the main criticisms offered by Romo Mangun is directed against the indulgence of Indonesian people towards a feudal mentality. This attitude, can be seen as a legacy of the ancient culture and history of the Archipelago, which was ruled with an iron fist by local sovereigns and sultans. Moreover, the Java- nese tradition itself strongly recommends respect towards those in power. According to the ancient teachings of the Paramayoga, the true Javanese individual must unfailingly respect the will of the gods, submit himself to the kings, and be obedient to his parents.26 Violations of such rules will surely produce catastrophic outcomes. For this reason, the ruler cannot be questioned and criticized, but he can only be praised and respected. 27 Another element that supports submission to the ruler in the Javanese culture is the fatalistic idea of the inconsistency of the world and life. Any worldly reality is seen as pure illusory appearance (fana). This world is only a vague image of the true one. It is a mere microcosm destined to annihilation, whilst reality is to be found after death. This worldly life is just a “pull off for a while to have a drink.”28 For this reason, a good education, aimed at shaping the right Javanese character, is to produce the individual who humbly accepts and fits in the place to which he or she is destined by fate and the gods within the hierarchical ladder of society.29 Thus, no criticism, protest or hope to change one’s destiny are allowed. According to Romo Mangun, this feudalistic and fatalistic mentality produces dreadful outcomes. It provides the justification for discriminatory policies and for the exploita-

25. Ibid., 192, 205–6. 26. Ibid., 22, 96. 27. Despite the common opinion of the unfailing excellence of the Javanese civilization, according to Mangunwijaya Javanese history is full of intrigue and violence. The aristocracy and the class of knights were not always symbols of integrity: the tradition says that the three things longed for by knights and nobles were horses, birds, and women. TheWayang (shadow plays) depict the army as gangs of robbers threatening the people, rather than as heroes. See Y. B. Mangunwijaya, Saya Ingin Membayar Utang Kepada Rakyat, op. cit., 195. 28. Y. B. Mangunwijaya, Saya Ingin Membayar Utang Kepda Rakyat, op. cit., 95. My translation. 29. Ibid., 190. 66 | God Between the Lines

tion of the weakest groups in society. It shapes the attitude of submission and prevents people from condemning wrong policies and protesting against the rulers. It gives way to victimization of those that have no chance or sufficient power to defend themselves. In a word, the feudalistic traditional vision of society calls for victims, it needs tumbal. Hence, a nation like Indonesia could witness the outburst of anger and violence that happened in the Communist repression of 1965, the one in Timor Timur, or the killings and rapes perpetrated in May, 1998 in Jakarta and in other towns. The stereotypical ideas of the Indonesian character as gentle, good mannered, willing to help the others, looking for harmony, refusing violence, are real attitudes only in normal conditions. In stressful or in emergency situations, the Indonesian character can turn violent, at an unexpected degree. Romo Mangun likens it to magma boiling under the surface of the ground, likely to erupt at any time. This idea is expressed harshly by the following words—words that, honestly, I personally only partially agree with:

Besides freeing from chains of poverty, ignorance and underdevelopment, there is another work that must be accomplished, that is: liberating the Nation and the Indonesian people from the attitude and the character of low self-esteem… that stems from a mentality of porters and servants, always ready to lick the boots of those who are above and to step on those who are below, being disloyal to friends, ready to betray and sell them out, enjoying and being prone to slander and destroying the fame and the opportunity of fellows… a character unwilling to stand for the truth and so enslaved by the yearning for others’ admiration and the need to feel safe at any cost, even if that means sacrificing other people, even innocent ones, and for that reason one gets easily accustomed to untruthfulness which is covered by the false excuse of preserving harmony…, freeing them from being driven by moods so as to think and act on the basis of principles and fairness, to not become opportunist, silent and servile (without loyalty to principles, one would follow any lord who is believed to provide some benefits). All of this can be understood as the consequence of centuries of oppression under the rule of local aristocracy or foreign colonial powers, so that people have become used to shelter within the walls of a self-defending mentality based on the feeling of powerlessness, always pursuing anything that is illusory and wrongly believed able to save one’s pot in the kitchen or his prestige. By doing that, however, people become pretenders, hiding themselves behind the mask of pride or they defend themselves by use of boastfulness; nevertheless, nature is truthful and therefore it disconcerts and snares them, so that all of this ends up to be frustrating and disappointing, plunging people into full apathy, making them resigned and hopeless, looking only for the easiest way, but in the end they give up, they fall into the ravine of self-destruction killing themselves and also their beloved ones; it is a kind of self-destruction that is still indonesia | 67

psychologically unrevealed but that is already well known abroad, so that it has been put into the dictionaries of international languages as… amok.30

These words clearly show how Romo Mangun looked at his own cultural background: a vision that does not disown positive values and his genuine love for his own Nation and people, but that is also able to observe and criticize those weaknesses and potentially destructive attitudes that must be fought against.

A Revolution that Begins from Education Romo Mangun was aware that fighting poverty and oppression is not a mere matter of changing the governmental system or implementing better laws. If the mentality of people does not change, any structural improvement becomes useless. As we have seen above, the roots of discrimination and exploitation are grounded in the traditional culture. It is for that reason that the true solution to injustice must touch and influence the culture of the Indonesian people itself. It is a matter of renovating the mentality, to make a culture improve on the basis of following its own positive values and struggling against its own weaknesses. It is a long way to go, a struggle that does not admit of shortcuts and takes time, as rice needs a well prepared ground, as the fruits need a tree to be planted first, beginning from its seed. Thus, this revolution begins from culture and it needs the renewal of the tool that can concretely transform it, namely the educational system.31 It is for this reason that Romo Mangun was strongly committed to education. He himself tried to create a new pedagogical methodology in his Dinamica Edukasi Dasar (Dynamic Elementary Education). At the same time, he made use of his writings and conferences to strongly criticise the current educational system in Indonesia. First, Romo Mangun asserts that the educational system must be renewed from its own foundations, namely beginning from the elementary school.32 According to him, any attempt to ameliorate the quality of education starting from upper levels-such as university or high school—is likely to fail. In fact, if the first step in the educative ladder is weak and crumbling, then all the following steps will be badly affected, generating unsatisfactory outcomes. Moreover, the government should be more active in providing basic education of good quality not only to the offspring of the elite who have the opportunity to pay for good private schools or even to look for excellent education abroad. The government should provide education to everyone and everywhere, including those populations living in remote areas, where poverty goes along inevitably with illiteracy and ignorance.

30. Ibid., 188–89. My translation. On the sociologic interpretation of the “amok” phenomenon with particular reference to 1965–66 mass–murder events, see H. Sulistyo, “Pembunuhan Massal 1965–1966: Vendetta dan Jingoisme,” in Kurniawan, ed., Pengakuan Algojo 1965 (Jakarta: Tempo Publishing, 2013), 84–9. 31. Y. B. Mangunwijaya, Saya Ingin Membayar Utang Kepada Rakyat, op. cit., 148. 32. Ibid., 19, 85. 68 | God Between the Lines

Romo Mangun created an experimental elementary school in Yogyakarta, the Din- amika Edukasi Dasar or ded (Dynamic Elementary Education),33 a school that was planned from its beginning for children of poor families, those who were more neglected by the governmental educational system.34 Once again, Romo Mangun put into practice his principle to side with the poor and with marginalized people. But his particular concern for the weak was not the only characteristic of this experiment. In fact, Romo Mangun tried to develop his own pedagogical system in order to propose an alternative model to the current educational program. First, Mangunwijaya thought that Indonesian education was unable to help children become fully human, aware, responsible, and ready to face challenges. Students were forced to adapt to a teaching system that was mostly uniform. Moreover, the way of teaching was mainly based on mere memorization of topics; that in fact, meant brainwashing the pupils. As a matter of fact, in the Indonesian school system there was not enough space for developing children’s creativity and their ability to explore. Paradoxically, Romo Mangun thought that the way of teaching he experienced during colonial times was far more progressive and profitable than the current one. The Dutch friars who ran his elementary school were able to develop children’s skills and to push them to be creative and to expand their curiosity, so that pupils were not only given the right answers, but were encouraged to find out the right questions about reality, thus opening their minds towards personal research. This was something that had been lost in the current governmental program, which, according to him, had become a mere tool for “socialization.”35 The current pedagogy implemented in schools aimed merely at preparing people that submissively fit into the pyramidal structure of Indonesian society. It was a system that tended to reproduce and perpetuate the same old ideas in the younger generations. It looked like a factory that produced useful cadres for the maintenance of the social structure, with a very disciplined hierarchical and military-like organisation, but that had nothing to do with true humanization of the pupils. The governmental program aimed in fact to preserve the status quo, to form people ready to obey commands, to fit into their place in society, quietly and fatalistically ready to accept an unsatisfactory situation. This pedagogical system, according to Romo Mangun, was a tool for strengthening a pyramidal social structure constructed on a feudalistic ruling system, something that did not really differ from the pedagogy implemented under the colony that was in need of servile workers for the interests of Dutch business.36

33. Ibid., 20, 70. 34. Ibid., 132–33. 35. Ibid., 96. 36. A. Sudiarja, “Humanisme Religius dan Nasionalisme yang Terbuka, Faham Dasar Pendidikan Mangunwijaya,” in F. T. Indratno, ed., Humanisme Y. B. Mangunwijaya: Menghargai Manusia dan Kemanusiaan, op. cit., 15–6; Y. B. Mangunwijaya, Saya Ingin Membayar Utang Kepada Rakyat, op. cit., 77–87; 143. indonesia | 69

According to Mangunwijaya, we should go back to the Socratic idea of maieutics. Within a pupil there is already the great teacher. Everything that has to be learned, is already inside the child, as with a pregnant woman ready to give birth. The teacher has the midwife’s function to help the pupil to generate knowledge. The pupils have potentiality and talents and so they become subjects, and not merely objects, of their own education. In order for that to happen, children must be given the opportunity to express their talents, to share their experiences, to make explorations. The function of the teacher is to arouse the interest of the child towards the content of teaching, to help him or her to see why it is good to study, and to feel the usefulness of that knowledge. Normal children are all intelligent enough to study any topic, but often they are just uninterested because they do not understand why they have to learn about those topics. The teacher must be able to trigger the pupil’s curiosity: if this happens, the pupil will start exploring and researching with no need to push him or her too much.37 Another important element of the educational vision of Mangunwijaya is the need of a supportive environment, so that children can feel the sense of family where they can learn how to mutually help one another and to collaborate. The current pedagogy emphasized competition and performance, whilst children need a familiar milieu so as to help each other and to learn together. Romo Mangun said that a school should give the impression of being a family, a “convivium,” more than a place where children are encouraged to step on the others in order to emerge on top and to achieve tasks. Mangunwijaya tried to implement this educational vision concretely in the Dinamika Edukasi Dasar or ded (Dynamic Elementary Education), an experiment with the purpose of achieving the fundamental aim of education that, according to another Indonesian pioneer in education, Driyarkara, is “humanizing human beings.” 38

The Writer Mangun’s concern for the poor and the exploited, pushed him to use his skills as a writer in producing valuable literary works. His production is divided into two realms, first the essays and articles, and then the novels. Romo Mangun was also often asked to give conferences and seminars on different topics related to political, religious, social, and educational problems. Several magazines and newspapers interviewed him or published his articles, most of which are now collected in several books published post mortem. But,

37. Y. B. Mangunwijaya, Saya Ingin Membayar Utang Kepada Rakyat, op. cit., 80–2. According to Mangunwijaya, two attitudes are needed in education: asih and jirih, two Javanese words that mean love and fear. Thus, the teacher must make use of love and discipline in teaching. At the same time, in particular situations teachers can ask for discipline, but the request must be balanced with the effort to trigger interest and love for the subjects. See ibid. 82, 103. 38. A. Sudiarja, “Humanisme Religius dan Nasionalisme yang Terbuka, Faham Dasar Pendidikan Mangunwijaya,” in F. T. Indratno, ed., Humanisme Y. B. Mangunwijaya: Menghargai Manusia dan Kemanusiaan, op. cit., 5 and F. T. Indratno, “Manusia Humanis Menurut Romo Mangun”, in Ibid., 29. 70 | God Between the Lines

as a matter of fact Romo Mangun’s preference was to write novels, a choice due to his love for the least advantaged. He was convinced that scientific literature can be accessible only to educated people, who represent the elite in society. Mangunwijaya wanted, however, to speak to everybody, especially to those who were neglected and forgotten by the intellectual world. He believed that telling stories was the best way to reach people who are not able to grasp the meaning of scientific and systematic papers. For this reason, writing novels was his way to communicate, educate, share his convictions, but also to express criticisms and dreams for the future, while hoping to be understood by everybody, even by children and simple women in the countryside.39 Romo Mangun did not share much about his passion for reading, but his vast knowledge on different topics discloses a passion for it. Apart from his knowledge of architectural matters, which was part of his academic formation, in his writings one can find many quotations and references to different authors appertaining to several realms: he could easily swing from philosophy to politics, from sociology to astrophysics, from religion to architecture, from literature to anthropology. According to Antonius Sudiarja, however, Romo Mangun was not an intellectual or a scientist in a strict sense; in other words, he did not have a systematic and rigorous methodology. His papers and writings are not filled with detailed footnotes, and also some inaccuracies can be found here and there. Romo Mangun was an eclectic and creative personality, more keen to offer criticism than to produce scientific and detailed analysis. He was a prophet who was able to see and uncover problems, and then give inspiration. His thoughts, therefore, which are still at an embryonal stage, must be taken up by other people to deepen and develop them for further analysis and concrete implementation.40 Nevertheless, behind his writings there is a profound and vast culture supported by his passion for investigation and study. For him, becoming a novelist was a passion that was rooted in the education he received at the elementary school, where pupils were pushed to write stories. Neverthe- less, writing had never been an easy work to accomplish. According to his own admission, the novel Burung-burung Manyar required seven years of work, whilst Romo Rahadi needed four. Sometimes the first idea changed so that the final result was completely different from the original inspiration. In some cases, some happenings or advice given by other people became new inspirational impulses to keep on writing.41 But in any case,

39. Y. B. Mangunwijaya, Saya Ingin Membayar Utang Kepada Rakyat, op. cit., 31. 40. See A. Sudiarja, “Humanisme Religius dan Nasionalisme yang Terbuka, Faham Dasar Pendidikan Mangunwijaya,” in F. T. Indratno, ed., Humanisme Y. B. Mangunwijaya: Menghargai Manusia dan Kemanusiaan (Yogyakarta: Kompas Media Nusantara, 2015), 3. According to A. Sudiarja, several of Romo Mangun’s concepts are still at an embryonic stage and deserve further enquires. The ecclesiology proposed in the book Gereja Diaspora has not yet been taken into consideration by theologians. His pedagogic methodology has not been studied yet, as well as some of his concepts such as: Humanistic Religiosity, Open Nationalism, Post-Indonesian and Post-Einstein man. See ibid. 41. See Y. B. Mangunwijaya, Saya Ingin Membayar Utang Kepada Rakyat, op. cit., 32. indonesia | 71

even if he liked to define himself as an “amateur” writer,42 Romo Mangun was not willing to publish a half-done or unripe work. He could publish a novel only when he considered it satisfactorily accomplished. Some of his works were awarded prizes, especially Burung-burung Manyar, which won the Juri Yayasan Buku Utama 1983 Award (which in fact the author did not receive, due to a veto), and the South-East Asian Writer Award in 1983 in Thailand.43 Romo Manguns’s work is grounded in Indonesian history and culture. The novel Burung-burung Manyar is constructed on the framework of the traditional Wayang (Java- nese shadow play) stories.44 Its characters refer to the protagonists of Javanese epics, so that the story, moral teachings, and cultural values, can be easily caught by an Indonesian reader. But his novels also put on display social or political matters. The novel Durga Umayi, tells the story of a woman who metaphorically embodies the reality of the Indone- sian Nation. The title itself is the combination of two opposite realities, namely the human and beautiful side (Umayi) that turns into a dehumanizing character (Durga). It depicts the ambiguity of the Indonesian Nation, which in reality combines two divergent components, swinging between beauty and awkwardness, goodness and cruelty. The protagonist at the beginning becomes a victim, but in the end she becomes a successful though a cor- rupted woman, ready to sell her body in order to achieve her aims. Her success, however, is costly: she becomes a victimizer and finally realizes that her prosperity results from an exploitation that damages members of her own family. Durga Umayi is a metaphor of the Nation that has been exploited and victimized in times of colonialism, but that currently has turned around to become a victimizer and oppressor of its own people. Finally, the main focus of Mangunwijaya’s writings is humanity and the dream of con- tributing to humanizing it, trying to elevate the dignity of those who have experienced being robbed of it. Romo Mangun never wrote for the sake of pure self-enjoyment. Con- sistent with his ideals and concrete way of living, Mangunwijaya wrote in order to side with the weak and exploited people. All his literary work aimed at defending the rights of the poor and bringing back human dignity to victimized people. For this reason, most of his works harshly blamed those in power, who were seen to be the main cause of the dehumanization of the poor. Due to the historical context, Romo Mangun addressed his protest mainly against Suharto’s way of ruling the Nation. But, as we have already seen

42. Ibid., 29. 43. See Y. B. Mangunwijaya, “Pengakuan Seorang Amatir,” in Sindhunata, ed., Menjadi Generasi Pasca- Indonesia, op. cit., 139. 44. See B. Soemanto, ““Pasemon” dalam Sastra Karya Romo Mangun,” in F. T. Indratno, ed. Humanisme Y. B. Mangunwijaya: Menghargai Manusia dan Kemanusiaan, op. cit., 43–52. The main characters of the novel (Teto and Atik) have their own counterparts in Wayang characters. In particular, Teto mirrors Kakrasana, the white-blooded twin who becames King Baladewa. Atik corresponds to Larasati or Rarasati, wife of the hero Arjuna. See Y. B. Mangunwijaya, “Pengakuan Seorang Amatir,” in Sindhunata, ed., Menjadi Generasi Pasca- Indonesia, op. cit., 131 and P. Allen, Membaca dan Membaca: Reintepretasi Fiksi Indonesia, 1980–1995. Trans. S. Bakdi (Yogyakarta: Indonesia Tera), 76–81. 72 | God Between the Lines

above, his protests were also addressed to the Indonesian culture, and in particular to the Javanese culture, which he considered to be the framework of the feudalistic and corrupt culture which still claimed victims among the lower layers of society.

Burung-Burung Manyar Due to the limits of this paper, it is not possible to give a comprehensive portrait of Romo Mangun’s literary work. I will only summarily describe, and then try to highlight some of its contents, especially as it emerges in one of his the major works, that is Burung-burung Manyar (The Weaverbirds).45 Setadewa, nicknamed Teto, the main character of the novel, is a child belonging to a family of noble ancestors who were close to the Dutch before the Independence of the country in 1945. Brajabasuki, Teto’s father, is a lieutenant of the knil, the Royal Army in the Dutch East Indies. He is the commander of the Garrison of the ii Division in Magelang, Central Java. He has aristocratic origins tied to the Mangkunegaran Keraton (the Sultan’s Palace) of Solo. But he does not really enjoy the aristocratic mannerisms of the priayi (Javanese aristocracy) and thus he prefers to keep his distance from the Palace. Teto’s mother, Maurice, is a beautiful woman, an Indo-Dutch descendant. Teto received the white skin of his mother and the free spirit of his father, behaving and thinking outside of the rigid schemes of the aristocracy. Teto experiences a happy childhood, enjoying a comfortable lifestyle. His family is close to both the locals and to the Dutch. Teto is profoundly proud of his father. Everything changes with the Japanese invasion during World War ii. The Dutch Army is defeated and Teto’s life changes radically. He and his family are constrained to leave their house and to move to a simpler place. His father is captured and almost killed by the Japanese. It is because of his wife that his life is spared, but at a very high cost. She is given the opportunity to save her husband’s life only on the condition of becoming the mistress of a Japanese commander. Then, in order to save him, she accepts the condition and becomes a “leisure woman” of the Japanese. Knowing what has happened to his parents is a traumatic experience for Teto. He had already seen his life changing because of the Japanese invasion, and now he has the dramatic experience of seeing his parents treated that way. A strong desire for revenge against everything that reminds him of Japan arises in his heart. Furthermore, he feels deeply confused because of his mother’s choice: was she right or wrong in accepting the conditions of the Japanese? Was she a heroine or a sinner?

45. Y. B. Mangunwijaya, Burung-burung Manyar (Jakarta: Penerbit Buku Kompas. 2014). For a synopsis of the Novel see P. Allen, “Kebangsaan dan Pencitraan dalam Tiga Roman Mangunwijaya,” in Sindhunata, ed., Menjadi Generasi Pasca-Indonesia, op. cit., 164–72, and Cinta, Near Pujangga, “Sinopsis Novel Burung-burung Manyar dan Analisis Intrinsiknya” at . indonesia | 73

Then he decides to join the Army and become a member of knil, just as his father had. His hope is that Holland will regain control of the Archipelago after the withdrawal of the Japanese at the end of Wold War ii. It will be good for everyone, he thinks. Local people are not yet ready to gain and to deal with freedom. As a people of labourers and coolies, they still need a strong power that dominates and guarantees order in the country. His career in the knil is shining. In several months, he becomes a captain. The desire for revenge makes him committed and dedicated to his work. He is not a mercenary, as many of his comrades. Conversely, he has an ideal to fight for, even if this ideal is just the desire for revenge. He is very close to the Dutch Mayor Verbruggen, a disciplined man, loyal to the Dutch Crown, but to a certain extent respectful of local people. In the past, this Dutch man fell in love with Teto’s mother, but she did not reciprocate his feelings. Hence, he never married and kept on feeling attracted to Maurice. Mayor Verbruggen does not hide his feelings from Teto, whom he considers as a child and a friend, and not merely a subordinate soldier. For Maurice, the traumatic experience of having become a slave of the Japanese has a tragic outcome: she loses her mind and spends the rest of her life in a mental hospital. In the end, she is able only to obsessively repeat the words: “I gave them everything I had, but they broke their promise.” On the other hand, the destiny of his father remains unknown. Since his childhood, Teto has had a close friend, a girl called Larasati, nicknamed Atik. She is also of priayi (aristocratic) ancestry, and like Teto she prefers to keep her distance from such a legacy. Teto and Atik’s families know each other very well. Growing up, the two discover that they like each other. Nevertheless, Teto knows that Atik, who has always been fond of freedom, has passed onto the side of the “rebels” against the Dutch. She and her father are working at the service of the Prime Minister of the Republic, Sutan Syahrir. She works as typist at the Minister’s office. Despite the fact that Teto knows that his love is on the other side of the fence, they still love each other. They have the opportunity to meet in her house in Jakarta and then Teto falls into despair. He bursts into tears and asks her to kill him to put an end to this insupportable situation. Eventually he runs away, leaving his weapons behind. The events turn in favour of the Republicans. Foreign countries’ support for the Dutch Crown becomes weaker and weaker. The Republicans gain international support, in particular because of the work of negotiation put into action by Sutan Syahrir, the Prime Minster of the Republic, who can successfully negotiate with international representatives. Mayor Verbruggen had once said to Teto, that the worst enemy of the Dutch was not Sukarno, but in fact this little man, armed with his smile and his diplomatic skills. Verbruggen was right. And now, Atik is one of his collaborators. Feeling ashamed and disappointed by the decision to grant freedom to the rebels, Teto who is on the losing side decides to leave Indonesia. He goes to the United States and begins studying computer sciences at Harvard University until he graduates with a 74 | God Between the Lines

Ph.D. Then, he begins working as computer analyst for an international corporation, the Pacific Oil Wells Company that is collaborating with the Indonesian government. Teto remembers his mother and friends and because of that he longs for a nostalgic visit to his homeland, despite the deep disappointment he underwent during the revolution. In the meantime, he gets married to Barbara, the daughter of one of his company directors. However, he is still in love with Atik. This marriage is destined to fail, and eventually Teto and Barbara get divorced. Teto goes back to Indonesia. He is aware that his company is guilty of fraud due to incorrect calculations about the quantity of oil extracted by the company’s plants. The company has defrauded Indonesia of a fantastic amount of money. Denouncing such a crime means to put at risk his shining career, but Teto is ready to fight for justice, even if this means defending the interests of a Nation that has deeply disappointed him. During his stay in Indonesia, he longs for and at the same time he is afraid of meeting Atik. Finally, he is told that Atik is about to defend her doctoral thesis in biology and he finds a way to attend the event. Atik’s research focuses on the ethology of the weaverbirds, small birds well known among the peasants because of their custom of stealing threshed rice. One of their characteristics is the fact that the male birds build their nests by weaving grass and little pieces of wood. The females passively observe and analyse the shape of the nests and in the end, they chose their partners on the basis of their ability in weaving. As a matter of fact, the female bird does not chose the male partner because of his good looks nor because of his strength. One could say that she does not orient her choice on the basis of self-interest. She selects her partner by looking at the functionality of the shelter that can protect the eggs and later the baby birds that will be hosted in it. Moreover, the rejected males patiently destroy their nests and start again building new ones, till they meet the favour of new partners. Atik is asked to explain if weaverbirds’ ethology has some kind of relevance to human life and the Indonesian Nation’s current needs. She answers with a long clarification. As a matter of fact, the weaverbirds’ particular behaviour can metaphorically apply to human life. Feelings and human desires can be willingly postponed for something more valuable, which in this case is the good of progeny that represent the weakest component of the weaverbirds’ social structure. Furthermore, the behaviour of these little animals is not univocally determined by external conditions. It is true that the environment strongly influences the birds’ behaviour, but there is still a margin for a free choice to be taken. This presentation that encompasses different realms, from ethology to philosophical relevancies to human life, astonishes all in attendance causing them to fall silent. Atik graduates cum laude, whilst Teto runs out of the hall in tears. After the graduation, Teto meets with Atik. In the meantime, Atik has married with an expert in geology, Professor Jana, and has been granted three beautiful children. Meeting her is not an easy thing. It is Atik who takes the initiative for the encounter, and she goes to his place accompanied by her husband Jana. Teto feels happy and at the same time indonesia | 75

is afraid of the meeting. Thus, Teto gets to know Jana. This man, who in the beginning seems to be compliant and dominated by Atik’s strong personality, eventually shows his courage, declaring to be willing to help Teto concretize his plan to denounce his company’s digital fraud, by involving some of his influential acquaintances. Jana is aware that supporting Teto means putting his own career at risk, but he is willing to do it for the good of younger Indonesian generations and for the sake of justice. Therefore, Teto realizes that Jana is in fact an honest man, with a spirit worthy of a knight. Eventually, Teto loses his position in the company but he does not regret it. Jana undergoes the same fate. Then, during a picnic Teto and Atik have the opportunity to talk together. They still love one another, but out of respect for her, for her husband, and their children, Teto does not allow their emotions to push the relationship too far and avoids crossing the boundary of friendship. To please Jana’s father, who is already old and sick, Atik and her husband accept his request to undertake the haji pilgrimage to Mecca, but unfortunately their plane crashes on a mountain in Sri Lanka, on the way to reach the place of God. Both of them tragically die in the accident. Teto had already in some way foreseen Atik’s loss. Finally, he makes another gesture of love towards her, by adopting her children. It is by doing that that he realizes how his life has changed: he, who used to be anak kolong (an Army child), has now become anak Kolong Langit (a child of the Sky).46

Freedom and the Discovery of the True Self Bakdi Soemanto attests that the three Mangunwijaya’s novels, Burung-burung Manyar, Romo Rahadi, and the trilogy of Roro Mendut, correlated with the same theme, that is freedom.47 Freedom is one of the inner needs and desires of every human being. Enslave- ment, co-optation, but also ignorance, and exploitation, besides all other kinds of obstacle that prevent people from being free, are in fact means of dehumanization. No one can become him or herself in plenitude without the exercise of freedom. In this regard, we should keep in mind that to Mangunwijaya the French revolution represents an important turning point in European history because of its struggle for freedom according to the spirit of the revolution (liberté, egalité, fraternité) and also, according to him, it became a providential opportunity for the purification of the Catholic Church, which was constrained to free itself from the temptation of riches and power.48 Nevertheless, the exercise of freedom involves ambiguity. It is true that freedom appertains to the full realization of the individual, but at the same time it is clear that the practice of freedom is not an easy task. It exposes the subject to the possibility of failing,

46. Y. B. Mangunwijaya, Burung-burung Manyar, op. cit. 404. 47. B. Soemanto, “‘Pasemon’ dalam Sastra Karya Romo Mangun,” in F. T. Indratno, ed. Humanisme Y. B. Mangunwijaya: Menghargai Manusia dan Kemanusiaan, op. cit., 47. 48. Y. B. Mangunwijaya, Gereja Diaspora, op. cit., 191–92. 76 | God Between the Lines

of doing wrong, and of facing uncertainty. Being free, means being given the chance to express courage and creativity, but it also exposes the individual to fear, doubt and the concrete possibility of making a mistake. This existential struggle is well expressed by the novel Romo Rahadi, the story of a priest who practices his ministry in Papua, and who has doubts about his vocation and eventually leaves the priesthood. It is the drama of a person who withdraws from his former decision and radically reorients his own life towards a new direction. When asked if Romo Rahadi should be read as an autobiographical book, Mangunwijaya himself explained that the novel does not speak about his own spiritual experience nor about his vocational struggle. Moreover, he says that the novel should be interpreted not only within the narrow cliché of the spiritual struggle of a priest, but that its meaning goes far beyond it. It encompasses the experience of doubt, frustration, and failure that can affects everybody’s life. Thus, the novel is more about humanity than priesthood. The ambiguity of freedom is well portrayed in the novel Burung-burung Manyar too. Teto’s choice is a free decision that goes against the stream of everybody’s way of thinking. He is not on the right side. He chooses to side with the enemy; he takes the wrong stance for the sake of helping his people. It is a matter of honesty and responsibility towards the truth, or, at least, towards what one perceives to be true. Teto himself says: “There’s no doubt now that I was mistaken in my choice of targets, but the motivation behind my actions was not wrong.”49 Apart from Teto, Mangunwijaya presents other positive characters who are positioned on both sides of the fence. On the side of the Republicans, Atik is presented as the model of the modern Indonesian woman. She is talented, intelligent, free (like Teto), ready to fight and to postpone self-interest for the good of others. She is, as opposed to Teto, on the “right” side, with the Republicans. Her death is not the last word in her life, because her ideal of maternity is perpetuated in her children’s life, according to the ideal of Ibu Pertiwi, Mother Earth.50 Furthermore, Mangunwijaya highlights the major contribution made by the first Prime Minister of the new Republic, Sutan Syahrir, to the success of the Indonesian struggle. Atik’s husband too, Jana, is acknowledged by Teto as a great man who at the time of revolution was helping people by serving in the Red Cross, although he was on the side of the guerrillas. On the other hand, Mayor Verbruggen (brug, in Dutch, means “bridge”), is also an interesting character, because he fights with the Dutch army, but to a certain extent, he feels empathy for the Indonesians. Finally, Maurice, Teto’s mother, embodies the ambiguity of good and evil. Is she a sinner or a hero, an evil person or a victim? Eventually Teto understands the meaning of her sacrifice for her husband. Mangunwijaya’s choice of illustrating Teto, the main character of his novel, as a man

49. Y. B. Mangunwijaya, The Weaverbirds. Trans. T. M. Hunter (Jakarta: Lontar Foundation 2015), 311; see Y. B. Mangunwijaya, Burung-burung Manyar, op. cit., 378. 50. Y. B. Mangunwijaya, “Pengakuan Seorang Amatir,” in Sindhunata, ed., Menjadi Generasi Pasca- Indonesia, op. cit., 129–30. indonesia | 77

supporting the Dutch and fighting within the knil may probably sound odd and unexpected to the ears of Indonesian readers. In fact, understandably, it is a common understanding that colonial power should be considered bad on the whole, whilst resistance and guerrilla activities are commonly perceived to be on the side of the heroes. In this regard, governmental propaganda has so far played an important role in shaping public conscience, making people think according to this simplistic “black and white” cliché: the Dutch were the cruel oppressors, whilst the fighters for independence were immaculate knights struggling for the good of the Indonesian people. This vision is too romantic to be true.51 In the Javanese tradition, a similar way of thinking is presented by the Wayang (traditional Javanese shadow play) in which two opposite groups embody, with a clear divide between the two, the reality of good and evil: the Pandawa (good ones) and the Kurawa (the evil ones).52 As a matter of fact, reality is much more complex and Mangunwijaya has the courage to undermine such a simplistic way of thinking. The questions arising from the novel are: “Is it true that good and evil are so easily identified with the two groups in conflict?” “Does one of the two sides embody the good in the whole, whilst the other one only the evil?” “Who are Pandawa and who are Kurawa in real life, and also in time of war?” Teto sides with the Dutch, but in fact he sacrifices himself for the truth and the good of his own people. Despite his discrepancies, weaknesses, and mistakes, his honesty and dedication to mankind make of him a true hero, unlike those Republican soldiers who were fighting for self-interest and harassing their own people.53 Mangunwijaya endeavours to draw a realistic picture of human existence, showing that in reality good and evil often go together and even dwell in the soul of the same individual. Like the priest in Romo Rahadi, Teto experiences doubt, and eventually acknowledges his failure: he has been fighting against a Nation that in fact he loves. Nevertheless, it is just this awareness that makes him understand that his life has changed, that he has become more human, that his ideal of vendetta cannot become the primary aim of his existence. He realizes that he can do something good for his people, by denouncing the fraud perpetrated by his corporation; and that he can do something good for the next generations, by adopting Atik’s children. Thus, his life depicts the human pilgrimage of a free man who steps forward in the quest for a new self-awareness. This path towards inner freedom makes of him a person more human: eventually he realizes that although he used to be a child of the military, he has now become a son of the sky, a child of God.54 In this sense, Teto makes the same choice as the female weaverbirds in selecting their

51. Y. B. Mangunwijaya, Tumbal, op. cit., 322. 52. One explanation of the Pandawa and Kurawa characters in the Wayang can be find in C. Geertz, Kebudayaan dan Agama. Trans. F. B. Hardiman (Yogyakarta: Penerbit Kanisius, 1992), 59–67. Pandawa and Kurawa were two rival clans fighting each other in the Indian epic narrative Mahabharata. 53. Y. B. Mangunwijaya, “Pengakuan Seorang Amatir,” in Sindhunata, ed., Menjadi Generasi Pasca- Indonesia, op. cit. 134. 54. Y. B. Mangunwijaya, Burung-burung Manyar, op. cit., 404. 78 | God Between the Lines

partners on the basis of the functionality of nests for the sake of their offspring. And at the same time, Teto acts like the male birds which are able to start again after destroying their own work, in order to build new nests. Freedom calls for postponing one’s personal interests for the achievement of more valuable ideals. And it does this by asking the individual to struggle and dare to face doubt and discomfort, and also asks him or her to start again in a new creative effort, overcoming the sense of frustration. Walking on this path transforms the individual who eventually finds him or herself renewed as a person more human. It is the journey for the quest of existential meaning, that in Javanese tradition is called sangkan paran (the origin and the final aim), namely the path of the discovery of the true self. It is a long journey that must be accomplished by facing contradictions, inner conflicts, incertitude, frustrations, and mistakes, but that eventually allows the individual to find the true meaning of his or her existence.55

Open Nationalism Burung-burung Manyar is a novel whose first part refers to facts that happened at the time of the Indonesian struggle against the Dutch aggression in 1945. Freedom does not only belong to the single individual, but is a gift that should characterize an entire Nation. It is beyond doubt that Mangunwijaya sides with independence and freedom, since he personally took part in the resistance against the Dutch. But the struggle for freedom cannot stop at the moment of achieving independence. The struggle for freedom must be continued up to the point of guaranteeing the enjoyment of this right to the entire Nation. As long as there is still marginalization, exploitation, and slavery, the path to freedom must be considered to be not yet accomplished. To a certain extent, we can observe that, apart from its main characters, the novel presents a collective subject, namely the Nation which in fact, according to Mangunwi- jaya himself, represents the primary character of the novel. 56 To Mangunwijaya, Nation is not an abstract romantic concept, but concrete people. Therefore, Burung-burung Manyar

55. Mangunwijaya explains that the sangkan paran journey is well portrayed in the epics of Barathayuda Jayabinangun. Kakrasana (in the novel he corresponds to Teto) is white, both in his blood and in his flesh. He is the son of the dragon Basuki. His brother Narayana is the son of Wishnu and his body is completely black. They were born from the same mother,Dewi Rohini. In the Hindu-Buddhist tradition of Java the symbols “white and black” are not put in opposition as in some other cultural contexts. On the contrary, they are seen as the starting and the final points of a journey aiming at achieving self-awareness. White means the beginning and neutrality. Black means completion and the perfection of Nirwana. Existence goes form the former condition to the later in a process that begins from the kamadatu, which is a condition without shape, then goes through the stage of rupadatu, a condition with shape, and eventually results in the a-rupadatu, that is the manunggaling sawarnaning rupa (disappearance of any shape), namely the final condition of Nirwana. See Y. B. Mangunwijaya, “Pengakuan Seorang Amatir,” in Sindhunata, ed., Menjadi Generasi Pasca- Indonesia, op. cit., 131–33. 56. P. Allen, Membaca dan Membaca: Reintepretasi Fiksi Indonesia, 1980–1995, op. cit., 71. indonesia | 79

speaks about the struggle of the entire Indonesian People who were still striving for true freedom in post-colonial times. Speaking about the motivation behind the novel Burung-burung Manyar, Mangunwi- jaya explains that in the beginning the novel was meant as thanksgiving to his parents, who gave him an enjoyable childhood in the city of Magelang, in Central Java. As he worked on it, the novel took on an increasingly political motivation. The main question became: “After thirty years of independence, is this Nation truly free?” Starting from this question, the novel expresses disappointment on the partial outcome of the 1945 struggle for independence, but also blames the Orde Baru tyranny which the author considered to be fascist and Machiavellian. In fact, according to the author, the Orde Baru was a dictatorship that completely transformed or even cancelled the principles that were behind the struggle for independence in 1945.57 In the novel, the need for freedom and peace is wisely and simply expressed, especially by poor people. The Javanese villagers cannot tolerate any longer the atmosphere of anarchy and violence created both by the Dutch and the Indonesian Republicans. Among those who will be given the appellation “heroes” just because they are members of the guerrilla movement, are Samsu and his soldiers. Their specialities are killing, rap- ing, harassing. They are fighting against the oppressors, and so they are on the right side, but, as a matter of fact, they vex their own people.58 People like them are fighting to build a country. However, what is a country? Teto is told by a Dutch soldier, who in reality is a farmer forcibly enrolled in the military and sent to war in the Dutch East Indies, that “one’s country is the place where people do not do cruelty against each other.”59 It is beyond doubt that Mangunwijaya is an authentic nationalist. He acknowledges the right of sovereignty for his people. Nevertheless, Romo Mangun is aware that it is imperative to go beyond a kind of blind nationalism that merely strives for liberation from foreign domination but at the same time does not provide freedom to all components of society. Such a nationalism just hands over the sovereignty of the Nation to a new priayi (aristocratic) class in a novel feudal society, which only perpetuates the past and enslaves its own people. This kind of nationalism does not represent a real change for the weak and the poor. That concern is expressed by Teto in these words:

Did you seriously think that the villagers and the bumpkins of this country would be freer under the Republic’s red and white flag than under the Dutch crown? You tell me which kind of freedom would have been real: freedom under

57. Y. B. Mangunwijaya, “Novel Saya dan Lakon Wayang,” in Sindhunata, ed., Menjadi Generasi Pasca- Indonesia, op. cit., 115. 58. Y. B. Mangunwijaya, Burung-burung Manyar, op. cit., 160–70. 59. Ibid., 200. My translation. 80 | God Between the Lines

the Dutch East Indies Civil Administration or freedom under their own feudal Javanese overlords?60

The real transformation will happen when the Nation will be finally founded on the ideal of justice. Therefore, according to Mangunwijaya, what is needed is a new open vision that goes beyond the narrow scheme of 1945 independence and this new vision must be sought in the spirit of the 1928 generation. The struggle for independence in 1945 was led by pragmatic people educated according to the military style of the Japanese. They won the war with their muscles and weapons. Conversely, the 1928 generation was able to think critically and courageously, with a comprehensive vision of the future Nation.61 According to Mangunwijaya, going back to the 1928 generation means to long for a “Post-Indonesia” (Pasca-Indonesia). This vision of going beyond mere independence to step forward into true freedom needs a post-independence project that stems from the concrete implementation of the Pancasila principles. And as he upholds this Pasca-Indo- nesia vision, Mangunwijaya wants to indirectly criticize the involution of democracy that he feels happened under Suharto’s rule since 1966 giving place to his new tyrannical and oppressive rule.62 A character who embodies the vision of this Open Nationalism is the first Prime Min- ister Sutan Syahrir, a man who greatly contributed to the end of Dutch aggression with his diplomatic efforts. Thus Mayor Verbruggen says to Teto:

That little man Syahrir is our most dangerous enemy… “The life or death of the Dutch East Indies depends on what we do about him. His smile and refined intellect give him immense powers of attraction.”63

Mangunwijaya does not conceal his esteem for this personage here and also in other writings. According to him, Syahrir defended his own Nation not primarily because of his Indonesian blood, but because his people, in this concrete situation, were the oppressed. Definitely he would even stand with the Dutch or the Japanese if they were dominated by the Indonesians, because Syahrir sides with the “underdogs”.64 A post-national vision must also overcome any xenophobic and racist closure, so that any contribution, coming from foreign cultures can be adopted if useful for building the Nation. The sense of revenge against the Dutch is deconstructed in the novel. Mangunwi- jaya is able to describe the Dutch as soldiers fighting for the Dutch Crown, (and so they are depicted as oppressors), but at the same time, he is able to portray positive aspects of

60. Y. B. Mangunwijaya, The Weaverbirds, op. cit., 66; Y. B. Mangunwijaya, Burung-burung Manyar, op. cit., 70. 61. Sudiarja, Antonius, “Humanisme Religius dan Nasionalism yang Terbuka,” in F. T. Indratno, ed. Humanisme Y. B. Mangunwijaya: Menghargai Manusia dan Kemanusiaan, op. cit., 2–17. 62. See Y. B. Mangunwijaya, “Novel Saya dan Lakon Wayang,” op. cit., 115. 63. Y. B. Mangunwijaya, The Weaverbirds, op. cit., 88; Y. B. Mangunwijaya, Burung-burung Manyar, op. cit., 96. 64. Y. B. Mangunwijaya, Tumbal, op. cit., 314. indonesia | 81

their western cultural background. A villager can express his apparently odd appreciation for those who were fighting against his own country in these words:

Pak Trunya was one person who, if the truth be told, didn’t care all that much whether or not the Dutch came back to replace the Japanese… If Indonesia got its freedom that would be fine, but to himself Pak Trunya thought that the Dutch were the better choice. The Dutch were intelligent and reliable, even if they were coarse and lacked good manners. Under the Dutch if your rice stores began to mysteriously disappear, or your water buffalo failed to return home one evening, you could be sure the thieving bastard who was responsible would get caught.65

But of course, the novel is not lacking in appreciation for the Indonesian people and the magnificence of the natural ambience too. Teto highlights the beauty of local women:

Mama was really beautiful. Usually real Dutch matrons aren’t all that pretty. Well, over there in the Netherlands, by the standards of that land of windmills, they might be considered pretty. But here, in the land of the coconut palms, where even the rear end of the bottle fly has lovely aquamarine and gold mark- ings, I am sorry to say they don’t measure up.66

And at the same time, Mangunwijaya does not excessively idealize his own culture. Teto understands why his father was not close to the Javanese aristocracy:

Papa had… consciously distanced himself from the palace because he had no taste for the refined Javanese basa-basi [way of saying things that tends not to disappoint the interlocutor], which in fact is full of untruthfulness.67

Mangunwijaya’s vision must have been influenced by his studies abroad and by his vast knowledge of Western authors and scientists. The positive experience of education at an elementary school run by Dutch friars, perhaps also contributed to it. For him, Indone- sian people deserve to enjoy the legacy of traditional cultures, which he acknowledges to be rich in positive values, but he is also aware that relying only on this legacy is not enough in the present day. Being proud of one’s own culture does not mean necessarily to neglect whatever good that comes from outside. The vision of nationalism proposed by Mangunwijaya is the idea of a post-national Indonesia (Pasca-Indonesia), namely a Nation able to generate individuals who are at the same time world and Indonesian citi-

65. Y. B. Mangunwijaya, The Weaverbirds, op. cit., 117; Y. B. Mangunwijaya, Burung-burung Manyar, op. cit., 131. 66. Y. B. Mangunwijaya, The Weaverbirds, op. cit., 15; Y. B. Mangunwijaya, Burung-burung Manyar, op. cit., 6. 67. Y. B. Mangunwijaya, Burung-burung Manyar, op. cit., 40. My translation. 82 | God Between the Lines

zens.68 Mangunwijaya says about himself: “I… was born Javanese,… but I wish to die as an Indonesian and as a citizen of the world.”69

Siding with the Weak and the Loser The Novel Burung-burung Manyar is rooted in the same spirit that inspired Mangun- wijaya to side with the poor and the loser in his concrete life. Burung-burung Manyar presents two different stories that go together but do not coincide. First, the story of the Nation, the great scenario of the struggle for independence, where countries in conflict, politicians, military forces, governments, corporations etc. are its players. Then, the story of the ordinary life of those who can only be subjected to the events that cannot be changed and who become victims of overwhelming powers. It is the story of the life of villagers, children, and women who strive to survive as decently as they can in time of turmoil. The ordinary life of the villagers in central Java is portrayed as peaceful, despite the dramatic events that cannot be changed and so they have to be fatalistically accepted. “When will this time of freedom finally come to an end?”70 asks a villager, who does not care about politics, and only longs for peace. It is the wise desire of simple people, who know how to distinguish the illusive dream of independence from true peace.

In the village of Jurang Gede, things remained much the same, especially for the womenfolk: finding enough food for their families to eat, preparing meals, doing the laundry in the river. And then there were births and suckling infants to attend to. These were the perpetual elements of their routine, revolution or no revolution, age of freedom or age of colonial administration. And the hope foremost in their minds was that this age of freedom would get itself over quickly and be followed by an age of peace.71

One interesting category of people described by Mangunwijaya are the women, often bestowed with particular wisdom and dignity.72 Besides the main characters of Atik or Ibu Antana, women of the countryside are portrayed as wise, and with a strong sense of

68. P. Allen, “Kebangsaan dan Pencitraan dalam Tiga Roman Mangunwijaya,” in Sindhunata, ed., Menjadi Generasi Pasca-Indonesia, op. cit., 164–65. 69. Y. B. Mangunwijaya, Tumbal, 432. My translation. 70. Y. B. Mangunwijaya, Burung-burung Manyar, op. cit., 133. 71. Y. B. Mangunwijaya, The Weaverbirds, op. cit., 127; Y. B. Mangunwijaya, Burung-burung Manyar, op. cit., 142. 72. By his own admission, Mangunwijaya sides with the women in his novels, since often they are a category discriminated against in society. Moreover, woman better embodies the concept of Nation, which is a feminine figure in the traditional concept of Ibu Pertiwi (Mother Earth). See Y. B. Mangunwijaya, Saya Ingin Membayar Utang Kepada Rakyat, op. cit., 43, 76. indonesia | 83

responsibility. It is the women, who, more than men, take care of their families. They are more concerned with how to give food to their children and husbands than with political matters. As children were watching a number of planes flying over their heads, they were shouting “Merdeka!” (freedom). But the reaction of the women was not as enthusiastic as theirs:

It wasn’t every day that the children were treated to a spectacle of such propor- tions! It was only the girls who displayed a lack of interest in the air show, but that was because they knew that before the sun went down the last harvest of the year had to be securely stored inside the rice barns. The first rain announcing the wet season had already fallen, signalling that the paddy fields must soon be ploughed. And while the larger plots were being harrowed and prepared the water that ran through the irrigation canal would be directed into the seed- beds.73

The weaverbirds’ behaviour of choosing the male partner on the basis of his ability to prepare a nest suitable for the offspring is a metaphorical portrait of the need to side with the weakest. The baby birds are the weakest elements in the bird society. They need protection and care, and therefore it is their necessities that determines their mothers’ choices. By use of this metaphor, Mangunwijaya stresses that human beings too find their own realization as persons when they dedicate themselves to care for the weak and become “men for others.”74 Human society needs to learn from the weaverbirds’ conduct as Teto does at the end of the novel, when he adopts Atik’s children. Among the weak, there is the category of the loser, which is particularly embodied by Teto himself. He fights on the side of the enemy of his own people. He loves a girl who works closely with the Prime Minister of the government that Teto is fighting against. He has lost his father and his mother because of the war and the cruelty perpetrated by the Japanese. He does not know how to consider his mother’s choice to become a leisure woman of the enemy: is she a sinner or a wife that sacrifices her own life for her husband? The Dutch, eventually, hand over the power to the Republicans who are supported by international diplomacy, and this deeply disappoints Teto who makes up his mind to leave his land, feeling a confused mixture of love and hatred. Eventually he works for a

73. Y. B. Mangunwijaya, The Weaverbirds, op. cit, 121; Y. B. Mangunwijaya, Burung-burung Manyar, op. cit., 135. 74. Speaking about the function of a writer—but these words can be referred to the final meaning of everybody’s life—Mangunwijaya says: “What we need to search for is our inner self, the real essence of ourselves, and the true aim that, with God’s grace, and through great struggle, we have to pursue until perhaps, one day, we will find several pearls of truth, like the courage to start again, leaving behind what has crumbled down and our scattered ideals, or understanding the beauty and the joy of becoming a man for others, especially for the blossoming of future generations,” in Y. B. Mangunwijaya, “Sastrawan Religius,” in Sindhunata, ed., Menjadi Generasi Pasca-Indonesia, op. cit., 159. 84 | God Between the Lines

corporation that damages Indonesia. But the fact that Teto is on the wrong side of the fence, does not mean that he loses his dignity. According to governmental propaganda and rhetoric, Teto is a traitor and an oppressor. But Mangunwijaya is able to depict him as a positive character, showing that one who makes the wrong choice is not always animated by bad motivations. As a matter of fact, noble ideals can come to realization in a wrong way. This means that judging a person only on the basis of his or her external behaviour can give only a superficial and mistaken judgement that does not encompass the entire richness of the individual. Moreover, Mangunwijaya is showing that the wrongdoer or even the sinner is given the chance for redemption, as Teto was when he finally decided to sacrifice himself for the good of his own people. It is what Atik describes in the presentation of her thesis. Circumstances and external situations can strongly influence the behaviour of living beings, but even animals have the possibility to make free choices that sometimes go against those external conditions. The dignity of mankind is expressed by the sacrifice of one’s life for an ideal which is felt to be more valuable than mere self-interest. Once again, siding with the weak means opposing tyranny and oppression by foreign or domestic rulers, but it also means being ready to criticize one’s cultural background. This means being ready to analyse and evaluate one’s customs and way of thinking, willing to discard whatever cultural elements contradicting human dignity. It is the inner drama that plays within Teto’s heart. His heart is divided between the love for his country and people, and the rejection of its weaknesses. This makes Teto feel a deep sense of alienation:

Had I put too much distance between myself and my own people? Had I based my life’s decisions on my true feelings or had I used my feelings simply as an excuse to distance myself from a people who lived close to nature, still within the ancient order of agrarian life, a primitive people yet one who could live in intimacy with the flora and fauna of the vast tropical rain forests? That was the struggle going on within me.75

During her dissertation for her doctorate, Atik asserts that the creativity of the individual challenges the conditioning imposed by the socio-cultural environment in which we are immersed. Creativity is the courage to shape the future. This means to dare to go against the status quo and overcome the resignation that appertains to the fatalism proposed by Javanese philosophy:

From another angle, how do we account for the feelings of sadness, disappoint-

75. Y. B. Mangunwijaya, The Weaverbirds, op. cit., 249; Y. B. Mangunwijaya, Burung-burung Manyar, op. cit., 299. indonesia | 85

ment, and frustration that provoke the males of the weaverbird species to attack and tear apart their own nests? And what is the source of their resolve to create again? For their resolve suggests a spirit cognizant of hope, one that does not give in to the drift of events, but is active in a new creation. By understanding the reasons behind these phenomena, by gaining a deeper knowledge of the relationship between the decision-making process and the submission to the blind necessity of instinct in the behavior that is seen in avian species like Ploceus Manyar [the weaverbird], we can better understand the dialectic in human life between the collective—laws, traditions, customs, and social mores that for us constitute the instinctual side of life—and all that is creative and specific to the individual.76

Finally, Burung-burung Manyar offers a strong message of peace and solidarity for any victim of violence. Rooted in the experience of listening to Major Isman’s speech which changed his life, Mangunwijaya refuses the rhetoric of the “heroic knight” and the idea of the “just war.” War is only violence, and its main effect is to make people suffer. More- over, it hurts particularly those who cannot defend themselves. War is also blind violence that threatens everybody’s life, on both sides, and finally it is a loss for all. Mangunwijaya refuses the naive logic that speaks of the good hero and the evil enemy. Moreover, killing is never justified, even if it is clothed in the good motivation of fighting for one’s own country. Teto reflects on the absurdity of war by saying:

A man who kills a girl he raped, people say, is a real killer. But to fight on the battlefield in uniformed divisions under a general and the banners of the Nation? That is not murder. That is service to one’s people and nation. And what had I been doing since joining the Royal Colonial Army? Had I worked to set up a system of law and order recognized by international law and civilized nations? Had I taken revenge on those who indirectly or otherwise had helped to make my mother a whore, a receptacle for men’s most base desires? Had I raised the level of respect I felt for myself and my belief in myself? Self, belief, Nation, mother… You tell me the meaning of such abstractions. And what’s the difference between an army and a band of outlaws, between the warrior’s art and the killer’s passion? Between the hero who falls in the name of freedom and the colonial soldier whose life is smudged out in the course of a battle? I am talking about the dead. For them, what is the difference? What is the meaning of a good name or a stain on one’s record? Victorious generals are heroes while those who lose are war criminals. To whom are a good name and the laurels of victory really important? Is it the one who dies who reaps

76. Y. B. Mangunwijaya, The Weaverbirds, op. cit., 261; Y. B. Mangunwijaya, Burung-burung Manyar, op. cit., 314. 86 | God Between the Lines

the benefit, or is it those who inherit his name or a political faction seeking to prove its legitimacy? Abstractions whose merit depends on their usefulness in strengthening ideology…77

“The Glory of God is Man Fully Alive”

Looking at the title of this monography, “God Between the Lines”, one can rightly expect this paper to explain how Romo Mangun speaks about God and religion in Burung-burung Manyar. As a matter of fact, however, Mangunwijaya does not say much about religious matters in his novels, not only in Burung-burung Manyar, but also in Durga Umayi and in other works. The novel Romo Rahadi has a religious context but, as we have seen above, even if the main character is a Catholic priest experiencing a vocation crisis, the main theme, is the experience of doubt that appertains to human condition in general. For this reason Romo Rahadi cannot be strictly considered a religious novel.78 Regarding Burung-burung Manyar, the reader could not guess that the novel was written by a priest. The word “God” is rarely mentioned in the writing, and when it is, it is always in contexts that are far from being theological or spiritual reflections. Sometimes the word “God” is put in the mouth of simple people who pronounce a prayer or just ask God the reason for their miserable conditions. But these instances are more spontaneous utterances of disappointment or despair than expressions of faith. Moreover, references to religion in the novel are mainly related to Islam. The main characters are in fact Muslim. Atik and her husband die travelling during the pilgrimage to Mecca. Explicit references to Christianity are very few. There is a priest who keeps the documentation needed by Teto for denouncing his company’s violations.79 Furthermore, while talking with the ambassador of the us about his plan, Teto is told that he should have chosen to become a protestant pastor (pendeta), instead of becoming an expert in computing.80 But allusions to Christianity do not go far beyond that. In the novel, one can find existential questions that to a certain extent refer to the problem of the existence of evil in the world. “Why do people kill each other?” “Why do good and evil go together in the same human reality?” “Where is God in human disappointment and frustration?” Teto feels questioned by these matters. He reflects on the ambiguity of the presence of good and evil in human reality, by making a peculiar comparison: “If the union of man and woman is supposed to be sublime and the source of all blessing, why then did God place the organs of love so close to, even overlapping

77. Y. B. Mangunwijaya, The Weaverbirds, op. cit., 131–32; Y. B. Mangunwijaya, Burung-burung Manyar, op. cit., 148. 78. Y. B. Mangunwijaya, Saya Ingin Membayar Utang Kepada Rakyat, op. cit., 31–2. 79. Y. B. Mangunwijaya, Burung-burung Manyar, op. cit., 305. 80. Ibid., 270. indonesia | 87

the organs of excretion?”81 Then, thinking about his mother’s tragic destiny, he draws a conclusion full of disillusionment: “I couldn’t bring myself to believe in any God at all, let alone one who is all-merciful and all-loving.”82 All these reflections and questions are mainly left unanswered by Mangunwijaya who apparently does not want to offer solutions, nor to deliver a sermon to convince the reader. Mangunwijaya is aware that putting forward the right questions means beginning a process of awareness in which the reader can find answers by him or herself. The real matter is not to ask “what is the truth?” as Pontius Pilate did, but to purify one’s mind and heart from whatever obstacles prevent the individual from reaching the truth.83 Mangunwijaya also refers to popular religiosity, especially regarding moral matters. It is interesting to see how ironically he observes the popular perception of sin. An immoral behaviour, such as marital infidelity, becomes unacceptable to society only if it is discovered and known by other people. Insofar as one can keep it secret, it is not a good thing to do, but it nevertheless becomes tolerable. So the conclusion is “to behave wisely;” that is, if one wants to have an affair, the most important thing is to hide it and to keep it away from people’s sight.84 It is a matter of shame more than a moral question. Evidently, being ashamed before others is perceived to be much worse than God’s judgment.85 One could ask why Mangunwijaya, a priest novelist, avoids—deliberately, we guess— to talk explicitly about God and religion? We should ask him in person in order to get the right answer, but that is impossible, since Romo Mangun has already died. But we can try to find the answer anyway, especially by looking at Romo Mangun’s way of living. Man- gunwijaya was a person holding to strong principles that can be summed up in his deep concern for the dignity of every person, especially those more in need. Romo Mangun wanted to serve everybody, without preferences. To him it was important to build relationships with everyone, both Christian and non-Christian people. Actually, as he was committed to the defence of the rights of marginalized people, Mangunwijaya was more in contact with Muslim people than with Catholics. When he moved to Gunung Kidul, he was in a 100% Muslim environment, except for the Catholic teacher of the village. Being for the poor of any religious affiliation, perhaps Mangunwijaya took the option of writing a novel with no explicit references to his own religion, so as to be able to speak to both Catholics and non-Catholics. Moreover, one must be aware that, according to Romo Mangun, there is a very clear difference between religiosity and religion, where the former is the inner and personal

81. Y. B. Mangunwijaya, The Weaverbirds, op. cit., 69–70; Y. B. Mangunwijaya, Burung-burung Manyar, op. cit., 75. 82. Y. B. Mangunwijaya, The Weaverbirds, op. cit., 70; Y. B. Mangunwijaya, Burung-burung Manyar, op. cit., 75. 83. Y. B. Mangunwijaya, “Sastrawan Hati Nurani,” in Sindhunata, ed., Menjadi Generasi Pasca-Indonesia, op. cit., 43–5. 84. Y. B. Mangunwijaya, Burung-burung Manyar, op. cit., 142–43. 85. Ibid., 237. 88 | God Between the Lines

experience of unity with God, which in fact is an universal spiritual experience, whilst the latter is an external and ritual way of expressing one’s spirituality. Religiosity is shared by every religious experience. It represents a meeting point of people with different religious affiliations and at the same time is the aim of any religious path. In this sense, we can say that religiosity is inclusive. Conversely, religion is a tool to reach union with God and, in attempting to do so, it acquires different expressions, according to every religious affiliation; therefore it has an exclusive character. One cannot be a worshipper of two religions (exclusivity), but two believers of different affiliations can have the same sense of religiosity (inclusivity). To a certain extent, religion should be considered relative and not absolute. Religion is important, even essential to one’s spiritual journey, but it is still a tool that cannot be confused with its real aim which is religiosity, the relationship with God.86 In the novel, Mangunwijaya puts forward some universal and existential questions which in fact appertain to the realm of religiosity. Hence speaking about Mangunwijaya’s literary works, Bakdi Soemando stresses that: “When a literary work acknowledges man as a being with dignity and worthiness, in that very moment that work touches the deepest dimension of human experience, that is religiosity.”87 As his narratives focus on religiosity and not religion, Mangunwijaya hopes that his novels can speak to everyone’s heart about the experience of God, without the need to mention God. Following these premises, we can understand why Romo Mangun deliberately avoids writing an explicitly religiously oriented novel, and if he speaks of God, he does it in a neutral way, without explicitly expressing his particular affiliation to the Catholic Church. Mangunwijaya wants to speak to everyone, with no exclusion. He wants to tell them about the human and religious values he believes in, but in an inclusive way, so that every person, Catholic or not, can accept and take advantage of those values. In this sense, we can consider Burung-burung Manyar to have a deeply religious dimension. It is Romo Mangun himself who says:

I do hope that the readers can catch the religious vibration in the novel Burung-burung Manyar. Religiosity is not identical with religion, but conversely, religiosity, as an inner desire of every human being, has to do with the deepest problems like sangkan paran and the human… struggle in the quest of self-identity that goes through existential conflicts, often difficult to overcome and full of disappointment.88

Another important thing to keep in mind is the fact that the Wayang represent the real

86. See Y. B. Mangunwijaya, Saya Ingin Membayar Utang kepada Rakyat, op. cit., 249–50. 87. B. Soemanto, “‘Pasemon’ dalam Sastra Karya Romo Mangun,” in F. T. Indratno, ed. Humanisme Y. B. Mangunwijaya: Menghargai Manusia dan Kemanusiaan, op. cit., 50. My translation. 88. Y. B., Mangunwijaya, “Pengakuan Seorang Amatir,” in Sindhunata, ed., Menjadi Generasi Pasca- Indonesia, op. cit., 131. indonesia | 89

framework of the novel. Mangunwijaya states that the novel should be read as a modern version of the traditional Wayang epics, which have an important liturgical and mystical function in Javanese spirituality.89 Javanese philosophy, with its principles and values, is transmitted to the audience through the narration and the characters or the shadow play. Many references to Hindu-Buddhist traditions present in the Mahabarata epics become part of the Wayang shadow plays too. As a modern Wayang play, Burung-burung Manyar can be considered a novel of religious content. In particular, the novel borrows from the Wayang the idea of the inner journey for the pursuit of self-awareness. As we have seen above, Teto discovers who he is in reality through the complex and uneasy path of his life. It is the journey that brings Teto from its origin to its final aim, the path of sangkan paran. According to his own admission, however, Romo Mangun tries to introduce new insights to the traditional content of Wayang, especially by introducing the Christian interpretation of the sense of failure and forgiveness experienced by Teto in his journey. Hence, Mangunwijaya is able to overcome the strict binary logic which makes a clear divide between good and evil. The story of Teto shows that it is not possible to divide the world in two, Kurawa and Pandawa, and that what is needed is a new vision of dichotomy between good and evil, a dichotomy which in fact can lead to an existential infighting that often finds its battlefield in the heart of every individual.90 Finally, perhaps there is another important reason why Romo Mangun prefers to be silent about God in his novels. The reason is that he is convinced—and he has proven through his own life—that the real praise of God happens when the dignity of humanity is defended and elevated. Thus, Mangunwijaya does not explicitly talk about God in his novel, but by presenting the inner beauty of humanity, in fact he gives the most magnificent praise to his Lord. Romo Mangun’s idea is grounded in the Church’s tradition expressed by Irenaeus of Lyon’s words: Gloria Dei vivens homo—“The glory of God is man fully alive.” It implies the spirit to struggle to give everyone the opportunity to become a fully alive human being. In this sense, we can consider Burung-burung Manyar a novel that, despite the absence of a clear religious framework, indirectly represents a diffuse praise of the Lord. Offering virtues like justice, honesty, the quest for inner freedom, sacrifice, or postponing self-interest, means giving praise to the Lord according to Mangunwijaya. Proclaiming the dignity of the poor, their struggle for survival, their sufferance in war time, their need for protection (the nests of the weaverbirds), means to give glory to God. Finally, narrating Teto’s path towards his new awareness, moving from the desire for vengeance to unconditional love for his people that makes of this loser a victorious hero, means acknowledging the dignity of the human being, who is possibly mistaken, but

89. P. Allen, Membaca, Membaca: (Re)interpretasi Fiksi Indonesia, 1980–1995, op. cit., 68–70, 90. Y. B. Mangunwijaya, “Sastrawan Religius,” in Sindhunata, ed., Menjadi Generasi Pasca-Indonesia, op. cit., 158–59. 90 | God Between the Lines

whose dignity as image of his or her Creator never fades. Furthermore, acknowledging the possibility for every man and woman to grow and change through a path of inner transformation, is to glorify the Lord, Who is full of mercy. In this sense, Burung-burung Manyar is a novel that offers to its readers reflections and values that appertain to a deep and true spirituality. As with all the other expressions of the multifaceted Mangunwijaya’s personality, his literary work must be approached within the framework of his concern for elevating the dignity of humanity, which in fact he always considered to be his own way of worshiping God:

The praise of the Almighty Lord finds its expression in bringing the most humble people up to a level of dignified humanity, as was the Lord’s plan at the beginning of creation, a plan that was damaged by the appearance of the law of the jungle, created by men.91

Conclusion

At the end of this paper we can ask what is the relevance of Mangunwijaya’s life and literary work for us today. Mangunwijaya died in 1999, and his work, both literary and social, was done under the Orde Baru rule. Now Indonesia has changed. The Nation has turned to democracy. The country has witnessed progress in many fields. The educational system has probably improved during the last decades. Furthermore, the post-colonial framework of the novel Burung-burung Manyar is not the framework of today. Indonesia is already a sovereign Nation. So, are there some elements of Mangunwijaya’s life and work that are timeless and are proven to be relevant and useful for contemporary Indonesian society? In my opinion, there are several aspects of his multifaceted personality that are still important for today. First of all, Mangunwijaya’s concern for the exploited. Indonesia has seen significant development during recent years, but poverty and discrimination are still miserable realities far from having been solved. The economy grows remarkably every year, but society is more and more divided, so that there are those who enjoy wealth, health care, good education, money, and opportunities, while there are others who still struggle to survive, just as their predecessors did in colonial times. The pyramidal society that is grounded in the priayi (aristocratic) feudal culture still influences today’s Indo- nesian culture. Therefore, even if democracy has been formally instituted in the country, corruption, nepotism, and impunity are still unsolved problems among politicians and

91. Y. B. Mangunwijaya, Manusia Pascamodern, Semesta dan Tuhan (Yogyakarta: Penerbit Kanisius, 1999), 6. My translation. indonesia | 91

the elite in power, whilst a large portion of society is still facing indigence. For these reasons, Mangunwijaya’s outspoken criticism against culture and politics, also seen through his novels, are still relevant to present day Indonesia. In this sense, Burung-burung Man- yar, as well as Durga Umayi and other novels, is an important literary work for current Indonesian society. The educational system has improved during recent years. Its methodology, however, is still based on memorization and an unsatisfactory pedagogy. Investment in education is still insufficient, and so are facilities and quality control of teaching, especially in remote areas. There is still a huge gap between the elite’s educational services provided to wealthy children and the standard ones available to the poor. Moreover, Mangunwijaya’s suggestion to give more attention to elementary education still represents something to be reflected upon and needs concrete implementation. Indonesia needs a cultural revolution for the purpose of harmonizing positive traditional values with justice, opposing feudalism, fairness, defence of human rights, and care for the weakest layers of society. But such a revolution, as Romo Mangun says, needs to begin with the reformation of the educational system. Finally, another valuable contribution of Romo Mangun to modern society is the affirmation of the dignity of every human being. The novel Burung-burung Manyar clearly presents this message of hope. In his narration, Mangunwijaya portrays in a beautiful way the dignity of those who do not have an important role in society. The poor, the villagers, women, children, all those ordinary people, receive from him a gaze full of respect and admiration. Despite their simplicity and human fragility, they are considered as they are in reality, namely images of their Creator. Furthermore, Mangunwijaya helps the reader to realize and reflect upon the possibility of redemption and change offered to everyone. Teto is a symbolic pilgrim who walks on an insecure path toward the discovery of the self. This is a message of mercy, a message which tells us that life does not stop when we are faced with the walls of mistake, sin, and frustration. There is always the opportunity to start again, the chance to re-weave one’s nest. This is still a very important message for us today. Like Teto, contemporary men and women, despite their shortcomings and inconsistencies, need the experience of mercy in order to arrive at a new awareness of their true dignity, the dignity of having become “children of Heaven.” 92 | God Between the Lines

References

Allen, Pamela 2004 Membaca, dan Membaca Lagi: (Re)interpretasi Fiksi Indonesia, 1980–1995. Trans. by B. Soemanto, Yogyakarta: Indonesia Tera. Bodden, H. Michael “Woman as Nation in Manguwijaya’s Durga Umayi.” At Cinta, Near Pujangga “Sinopsis Novel Burung-burung Manyar dan Analisis Intrinsiknya.” At . Geertz, Clifford 1992 Kebudayaan dan Agama. Trans. by F. B. Hardiman.Yogyakarta, Penerbit Kanisius. Indratno, Ferry T., ed. 2015 Humanisme Y. B. Mangunwijaya: Menghargai Manusia dan Kemanusiaan. Jakarta: Kompas Media Nusantara. Kurniawan, ed. 2013 Pengakuan Algojo 1965. Jakarta: Tempo Publishing. Mangunwijaya, Yusuf Bilyarta 1991 Durga Umayi. Jakarta: Pustaka Utama Grafiti. 1994 Tumbal. Yogyakarta: Yayasan Bentang Budaya. 1999 Gereja Diaspora. Yogyakarta: Penerbit Kanisius. 1999 Manusia Pascamodern, Semesta dan Tuhan. Yogyakarta: Penerbit Kanisius. 1999 Saya Ingin Membayar Utang Kepada Rakyat. Yogyakarta: Penerbit Kanisius. 2014 Burung-burung Manyar. Jakarta: Penerbit Buku Kompas. 2015 The Weaverbirds. Trans. Hunter, Thomas M. Jakarta, Lontar Foundation 2015, electron- ically published by Hong Kong: Typhoon Media 2015. Roosa, John 2006 Pretext of Mass Murder: The September 30th Movement and Suharto’s Coup d’État in Indonesia. Madison, Wisconsin: The University of Wisconsin Press. Sindhunata, ed. 1999 Menjadi Generasi Pasca-Indonesia. Yogyakarta: Penerbit Kanisius.

Websites

Romo Mangun’s Biodata

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Kali Code Revitalization

. . Japan

Tiziano Tosolini

“You look upon missionary work as the forcing of love upon someone?”. “Yes, that’s what it is—from our standpoint.”

Endō Shūsaku, Silence

xactly fifty years after its publication, Endō Shū- saku’s novel, Silence (1966), is widely considered one of the literary masterpieces of our time: a skillfullyE narrated and movingly dramatic novel, deeply spiritual and inspiring.1 Without a doubt, with Silence Endō reached a very

1. Silence (chinmoku 沈黙) was published in Japanese by Shinchōsha; the Jesuit W. Johnston translated it into English for Sophia University & Tuttle in 1969, while an Italian translation by Bonaventura G. Tonutti was published for the first time in 1982 by Nippon Printing. In 1966 (the year of its publication) the novel received the Tanizaki Prize, which together with the Akutagawa Prize, is considered one of Jaåpan’s major literary recognitions. In 1971 director Masashiro Shinoda made a movie adaptation of the novel, and in 2007 director Martin Scorsese announced that he intended to produce a film based on Endō’s work. The film is expected to be released in 2016. For Scorsese’s comments on the upcoming film see M. Scorsese, “Afterword” in M. W. Dennis and D. J. N. Middleton, Approaching Silence. New Perspectives on Shusaku Endo’s Classic Novel (New York and London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2015), 397–98. 96 | God Between the Lines

high level of comprehension of Christianity and of the trasformation it should undergo in order to make it relevant in a context like Japan, whose traditions, culture, and religions are so different from it. This is because Endō Shūsaku was a Catholic writer who, from the beginning of his career, chose the relationship between the message of the Gospel and the Japanese context in which it had to be inculturated as the principal theme of his literary production.2 For Endō this relationship was always a restless and unstable one (initially antagonistic, then increasingly reflective and accommodating), for he did not experience it merely as a literary theme, but first-hand. It was an experience which led him to dig deep into his soul and into the heart of Japan to try to justify his adherence to a foreign religion, to find a way to harmonize his polytheistic background with a faith that required unconditional acceptance, and to discover an escape route between his Japanese worldview and the distant and unfamiliar interpretations to which he was exposed as he came in contact with Europe’s political, social, and religious traditions. The Endō literary event is thus a valuable case study for those who intend to reflect on the ever fragile and complex phenomenon of the inculturation of the Christian message. But this event is even more valuable because it helps us to see how a Catholic author speaks, communicates, writes—in a word, conveys—to his Japanese audience the idea of God that had matured in him through the years. The inspiration, the plots, the language, the dialogues, the descriptions of places and characters, the feelings, the encounters, whispered and mumbled words… all in Endō’s writings contributes to the communication of that which escapes not only all definitions, but also all translations: God and the mysterious relationship between Him and the individual human being. What Endō left us in his literary works, particularly in Silence, is therefore the description of the particular way the Japanese would like to get to know God and encounter Christ. This desire and mode of encounter are often different from the way in which God and Christ were presented by many missionaries who worked in Japan in different historical periods. But for this reason, they are a desire and a mode of encounter which constantly teach us a balanced sense of respect and an ever fruitful listening attitude. The present study will focus on the relationship between Japanese culture and Christi-

2. For this fundamental feature of Endō’s works, see R. E. Durfee, “Portrait of an Unknowingly Ordinary Man. Endo Shusaku, Christianity and Japanese Historical Consciousness” in Japanese Journal of Religious Studies, 1989, 16/1: 40–61; M. Inoue, “Reclaiming the Universal Intercultural Subjectivity in the Life and Work of Endo Shusaku” in Southeast Review of Asian Studies, 2012, 34: 153–70; C. Ninomiya, “Endō Shūsaku: Bridg- ing the Gap between Christianity and Japanese Culture” in Japan Christian Quarterly, 1990, 56/4: 227–36; M. Tokunaga, “A Japanese Transformation of Christianity: Rambling Notes on Reading Shusaku Endo’s Silence” in Japanese Religions, 1989, 15/3: 45–54; J. Endō, “Reflections on Shusaku Endo andSilence ” in Christianity and Literature, 1999, 48/2: 145–48; C. Van Gessel, “Hearing God in Silence. The Fiction of Endo Shusaku” in Christianity and Literature, 1999, 48/2: 149–64; R. Grigore, “Shusaku Endo: From the Silence of the East to the Silence of God” in Theory in Action, 2010, 3/1: 7–23. For a more general study of images of Jesus in Japa- nese literature, see P. Williams, “Images of Jesus in Japanese Fiction” in Japan Christian Quarterly, 1983, 49/1: 12–22. For an overview of Japanese Catholic authors, see C. Van Gessel, “Voices in the Wilderness: Japanese Christian Authors” in Monumenta Nipponica, 1982, 37/4: 437–57. japan | 97 anity in Endō’s historical novel, Silence. I will preface the analysis of the work with a brief account of Endō’s life and cultural itinerary (so as to trace the development and growth of his thought throughout his literary production) and with a reconstruction of the novel and of its historical setting (so as to help the reader to contextualize its plot and have a better grasp of its main themes). I will end this study with some critical remarks which should help us reflect on Endō’s suggestions, and further evaluate the Christian faith in its encounter with the otherness of every culture and, within each culture, of each individual.

Life and Career

Endō Shūsaku (遠藤周作) was born in Sugamo, Tokyo, on March 23, 1923, the year of the great Kantō earthquake. His father, Tsunehisa, worked as a bank clerk, while his mother, Ikuko, was a violinist and a graduate of Ueno Music School (now the Tokyo University of Art). When he was three years old, Endō moved with his parents to Dailan, which was then part of Japanese-occupied Manchuria, where his father had been sent for work and where Endō was to spend most of his childhood. In 1933, after his parents’ divorce, he returned to Japan with his mother and his older brother. He lived first in Kobe, then in Nishinomiya, in the vicinity of the Catholic church of Shukugawa. His mother, influenced by the devotion of her sister, who had hosted her and her sons in Kobe, converted to Catholicism. Endō himself was baptized when he was eleven with the name of Paul. This experience deeply influenced his intellectual career and became the central idea of his entire literary production. He often recalled that he became a Christian without fully understanding why, and even against his own will. The words he uses to describe the inner struggle he had to face as he tried to accept a religion which not only “did not fit him”, but which during the pre-war period was even branded as “the religion of the enemy,” are well known. In his own words:

I received baptism when I was a child. In other words, my Catholicism was a kind of ready-made suit… I had to decide either to make this ready-made suit fit my body or get rid of it and find another suit that fits… There were many times when I felt I wanted to get rid of my Catholicism, but I was finally unable to do so. It is not just that I did not throw it off, but that I was unable to throw it off. The reason for this must be that it had become a part of me after all. The fact that it had penetrated me so deeply in my youth was a sign, I thought, that it had, in part at least, become coextensive with me. Still, there was always a feeling in my heart that it was something borrowed, and I began to wonder what my real self was like… Since then I have, up until now, continued to strive 98 | God Between the Lines

in every one of my works towards the day when I would see my own baptism as freely willed.3

Once he finished high school, and after a brief spell at Sophia University in Tokyo, in April 1943 Endō joined the Department of Literature at Keio University, a private university which specialized in Western studies and was founded in 1858 by the scholar and intellectual, Fukuzawa Yukichi (福澤諭吉 1835–1901). He briefly interrupted his studies to carry out military service in a munitions factory in Kawasaki; he then resumed his schol- arly activity in 1947, when he published his first articles of some literary merit. Among these articles are Kamigami to kami to (神々と神と“ Gods and God”) e Katorikku sakka no mondai (カトリック作家の問題“ The Problems Confronting the Catholic Author”). In these first two works, Endō embarks on a tentative investigation of the difference he perceives between the Western and Eastern concepts of the divine. In particular, he emphasizes that, whereas Western writers are so steeped in a monotheistic worldview that they paradoxically end up affirming God’s existence even as they try to deny it, this paradox (or drama) is completely foreign to the Eastern polytheistic tradition, where the notion that there may be only one God is absent. Moreover, precisely because Western writers are rooted in the religious terrain of Christianity, they seem inclined to endorse more definite positions in their literary works, whereas Japanese writers, insofar as they are outsiders in this religious milieu, seem to adapt, receive or even passively subject themselves to Chris- tian themes in their reflections. This contrast between a “strong” and “active” Western tradition and an Eastern tradition, which is perceived as “weak” and “receptive”, became one of the recurring themes of Endō’s literary production. In 1948 Endō graduated in French Literature with a thesis on The Poetic Theory of Neothomism. In 1950, thanks to a government funded program, he sailed for Lyon on a French ship, the Marseillaise. There he enrolled in the local university and began to familiarize himself with the themes and writings of Catholic novelists, such as François Mauriac (1885–1970) and Georges Bernanos (1888–1948). However, his experience as a

3. F. Mathy, “Shusaku Endo: Japanese Catholic Novelist” in Thought, Winter, 1967: 592. Elsewhere Endō claims that the decision to remain a Christian was due to the fact that his mother had become a Christian: “If I cannot leave Christianity, then fifty percent of the reason would come from the affection towards my mother. She died as a Christian,” cited in E. Mase-Hasegawa, Christ in Japanese Culture: Theological Themes in Shusaku Endo’s Literary Works. Leiden: Brill Academic Publishing, 2008, 79. However, the event of his Bap- tism must have left a deep mark on Endō’s life, given that he often speaks of it. For example, in an interview he said: “I was baptized along with several other children from the neighborhood on Easter Sunday. Or more precisely, since this was not an act taken of my free will, perhaps I should say that I was forced into baptism. At the urging of my aunt and my mother, I went along with the other children and, despite my predilection for disturbing the class, eventually succeeded in memorizing the catechism… When the French priest came to that part of the baptism service in which he asked, ‘Do you believe in God?’, I felt no compunction in following the lead set by the other boys and replied, ‘I do’. It was as though we were engaged in conversation in a foreign language in which my reply to the question, ‘Do you want to eat this sweet?’ was ‘I do’. I had no idea of the enormity of the decision I had just taken. And I did not stop to think of the consequences on my entire life of these two simple words,” cited in M. B. Williams, Endō Shūsaku. A Literature of Reconciliation (London and New York: Routledge, 1999), 31. japan | 99

Japanese living overseas, the daily contact with a spirituality and a Christian social context which he still perceived as foreign, and his difficulty in assimilating French culture, eventually led to exhaustion and his hospitalization for long periods of time. In 1954 he was appointed professor at Bunka Gakuin and published his first literary composition, Aden made (アデンまで “Till Aden”), in which the main character (Endō’s double) finds himself living in a town near the Red Sea—a place or environment which is actually neither Eastern nor Western. The ambiguity of this geographic location is mirrored by the dilemma of the main character, who seems incapable of deciding whether to abandon the roots of an Asian spirituality, which he feels connatural, and embrace a different form of spirituality (the European and Christian one), which he perceives as foreign and distant. In 1955 Endō married Junko, a French literature student at Keio University. In July of the same year he published Shiroi hito (白い人 “White Man”)—which later won the 33rd Akutagawa Prize for literature—and in November he wrote Kiiroi hito (黄色い人 “Yellow Man”). These two texts, which were subsequently republished in a single volume by Kōdan Publishing Company, marked the beginning of Endō’s literary career and introduced new subjects and themes that he rehashed, expanded, and developed further in his later production. The common thread of these two works is the perception of an unbridgeable gap between the Japanese religious sensitivity, which begins and develops in a context populated by innumerable gods (Shintō as well as Buddhist), and the Western religious feeling, which hinges on the transcendence and uniqueness of God, which by its very nature condemns or rejects the possibility of other divinities. In his acceptance speech for the prestigious Akutagawa Prize, Endō stated: “Even after reaching the stage when I could enjoy foreign literature, I was constantly torn between the world of the ‘white man’ with its long tradition of God and the world of the ‘yellow man’ in which it made little difference whether God existed or not.”4 This unresolved tension between the “Western God,” who punishes every single error, and the Japanese “Eight Million Gods,”5 for whom there is impurity but not sin (and thus no need of forgiveness) is the central theme of the two novels. The first novel (White Man) takes place in France during the war. The main character is the son of a Puritan mother and a dissolute father. The protagonist becomes acquainted with Jacques, a seminarian from Lyon who tries to introduce him to religion by lending him some Christian books in which he has already highlighted several passages. From these underlined passages one can see that Jacques is particularly attracted by the pain Jesus felt for Judas’ behavior, which leads the main character to reflect deeply on the concept of “betrayal.” Eventually, the Nazis enter Lyons and arbitrarily arrest five local people to avenge a murdered colleague. The main character wonders why these people deserved that treatment and con-

4. Cited in M. B. Williams, Endō Shūsaku. A Literature of Reconciliation, op. cit., 60. 5. The Shintō pantheon is traditionally referred to with the phraseyaoyorozu no kami (八百万の神): “eight million gods.” This number is not meant to indicate the sum total of sacred beings, but the universal presence of the divine, later said to be presided over by the goddess Ama-terasu ō mi kami. 100 | God Between the Lines

cludes that their lives, as well as their deaths, are not part of a divine plan, but are merely the product of fate. Working as a translator for the Gestapo, one day he comes across his old acquaintance, Jacques. Despite the torture he has endured, Jacques perseveres in bearing witness to the truth he believes in, refusing to become a traitor. The protagonist recognizes his friend who, unlike Judas, will not betray his Lord. Nevertheless, he openly declares that he despises this act of heroism, just as he admits that he abhors those who face death for a noble cause, since evil is nothing but an abyss into which all people fall without distinction, an emotion or a violent, unconscious, and unjustified impulse that has nothing to do with God. For this reason, despite his dismay at the news of Jacques’ suicide in prison, he maintains that Jacques’ death was pointless: evil will relentlessly carry on its devastating work, regardless of Jacques’ attempts to live according to the dictates of his faith. The idea that sin and evil are rendered meaningless if separated from an understanding of God is taken up again in Yellow Man, a novel in which Endō further emphasizes the dichotomy between the Japanese and the European religious sensitivities. Chiba is a young medical student who exchanges letters with Father Brou, a Catholic priest held prisoner in a Japanese concentration camp during World War ii. The young man perceives an unbridgeable gap between the Europeans and Japanese, and wonders if the latter will ever be capable of believing in the “European God.” He maintains that the Japanese differ from Europeans, not only physically, but also in their way of thinking for they lack an awareness of sin and the uniqueness of God. Chiba recalls that the priest tried to convince him that God transcends all races and colors, and how he tried in vain to get him to memorize the Ten Commandments. At the same time, the young man is in a relationship with his cousin, indifferent to the fact that she is already engaged to another man. And as he reflects on this “sin,” he remembers a certain Father Durand, who was excommunicated for having a romantic affair with Kimiko, one of his parishioners. Chiba writes a letter to Father Brou to inform him of the sudden death of Father Durand, but suddenly the narration turns to Durand’s diary, highlighting the passages where he describes his secret visits to the church after he was excommunicated and the regret he feels for his betrayal, which reminds him of Judas. The diary tells us that Durand came to Japan to dedicate his life to the preaching of the Gospel, and that after his “fall” he contemplated suicide. Chiba, on his part, sympathizes with the pain Durand feels for his betrayal, and recalls that he too is guilty of something unforgivable in the medical profession: he failed to push the alarm bell when he came across a dying patient. But although both Chiba and Durand experience “feelings of guilt,” there is a profound difference between the two (a difference symbolized by the respective color of their skin), for while the priest is tormented by the prospect of divine punishment, the young Japanese is simply resigned to his fate, experiencing no distress for his guilt, but only a deep sense of fatigue, as well as a feeling of exhaustion, the same feeling which prevented him from pressing the alarm button. Moreover, for Durand and for the European reli- japan | 101

gious worldview in general, the spiritual dilemma hinges on the acceptance or rejection of God rather than on the question about God’s existence. Urged by Kimiko to “forget about both God and the Church,” Durand must admit to himself: “During the eight years since I rejected God and left the Church, I have been plagued by thoughts of divine retribution as though living in a nightmare. I tried to hate, even to deny the Church that excommunicated me. But I was totally unable to forget God, even for one minute.” Chiba, by contrast, perseveres in his conviction that “to us, ‘yellow people’, there is no distinction between light and dark… Nothing could be further divorced from us ‘yellow people’ than the pure white world of those like Father Brou.”6 Here, for the first time in Endō’s writings, we find the inner struggle that leads the missionary (Father Durand) to question his traditional European spiritual formation and wonder whether this formation should be radically revised, or even rejected, in a Japa- nese context. Thus, one day Durand visits Father Brau and tells him:

Aren’t you looking on the Church in Europe with all its tradition and the Church in Japan with none of that in the same light?… Your methods are too uniform, concerned only with the end result. Just think for a moment of your average Japanese: Does he need God? Can he really visualize Christ?… Do you really think that your God can plant shoots in this swamp, among this “yellow” race? You have failed to notice that the look in the eyes of the “yellow” people is the same as that you have seen in Chiba and Kimiko. Your ignorance is due to the fact that you have not been tainted by their sin, that you have never sullied your white hands. But, in violating Kimiko, I stumbled across the secrets of their soul.7

In considering Japan as a land where it will be hard for Christianity to take root, Endō tries to show that the Japanese world absorbs and renders void every attempt at trans- planting an alien way of thinking (or spirituality). At the same time, he hints at the idea that, in Father Durand’s religious despair, it is not so much the priest who has abandoned God, but God who has abandoned the priest—an idea which Endō develops further in his later works. However, while in these first two novels Endō tries to find a balance between a Christi- anity based on Western culture and Japanese religious sensitivities, ironically he remains trapped in the same dichotomy he wished to solve. In fact, in sketching such a stark

6. S. Endō, Shiroi hito, Kiiroi hito (Tokyo: Shinchosha Bunko, 1983), 130; 154. Later, Father Durand will declare: “Whilst rejecting God, I cannot deny His existence. He has penetrated to the very core of my being. And yet… all the Japanese coped quite well without God. They could live in a carefree manner, unconcerned by, and insensitive to, the Church, the pain of sin and the hope of salvation—everything that we ‘white people’ see as fundamental to the human condition,” Ibid., 148. 7. Ibid., 145–46. 102 | God Between the Lines

contrast between Western and Eastern worldviews, Endō seems to use (and thus repli- cate) that Western kind of dialectic which he initially indicated as the main obstacle to a positive intercultural and interreligious approach between the two worlds. We will have to wait until the next development in his production to see some reconciliation between the “Western God” and the Japanese worldview, and a more constructive way of trying to inculturate the Christian message.8 The popularity Endō gained with the prestigious Akutagawa Prize opened the doors for him to some important Japanese literary circles. He was asked to write articles, essays, and short stories, which he developed from the themes already broached in White Man and Yellow Man. At the same time, his position as professor of literature at Sophia Uni- versity in Tokyo provided him with the financial resources to maintain his family and consider the possibility of dedicating himself completely to writing. Two novels are worth mentioning from this period: Umi to dokuyaku (海と毒薬“ The Sea and Poison”) of 1957 and Obaka-san (おバカさん“ Wonderful Fool”—or “The Idiot,” “The simpleton”) of 1959. These novels increased his popularity in Japan and introduced him to an international audience. The excessive workload, however, soon affected his weak constitution. In 1960 he was hospitalized (first, in the Department of Infectious Diseases at Tokyo University and, subsequently, in Keio University Hospital) due to a recurrence of tuberculosis, the same illness that had forced him to leave France seven years earlier and return to Japan. During his stay at the hospital he read several books about the so-called “hidden Christians” and saw some illustrations of the fumie.9 Early in his hospitalization he even managed to have a humorous short story, Hechima-kun (ヘチマくん“ Sponge Gourd Boy”), published in installments in a local newspaper. Three years later, Endō recovered from three major operations, but the disease had taken its toll and he was still unable to resume his activity as a writer. In July 1962 he decided to spend his summer in Kuruizawa. His literary comeback occured in January of the following year with the long novel わたしが棄てた女 (Watashi ga suteta onna “The Girl I Left Behind”), one of the texts which are most appreciated by his Japanese readers and critics. In the spring of 1964 he went to Nagasaki, where he personally observed a fumie with a footprint still visible on it. This fact reminded him of the period he spent in the hospital and inspired him to write the story Manchō no jikoku (満潮の時刻“ The Time of

8. Emi Mase-Hasegawa distinguishes three stages in Endō’s production: the first stage (1947–1965): conflicts; the second stage (1966–1980): reconciliation; the third stage (1981–1993): mutual integration. Cf. E. Mase-Hasegawa, Christ in Japanese Culture: Theological Themes in Shusaku Endo’s Literary Works, op. cit., 63–73. 9. The phrase “hidden Christians” (kakure kirishitan 隠れキリシタン ) refers to those Japanese Christians who, from the beginning of the xvii century through the first half of the xix century, practiced their faith in secret to avoid persecution. As for the term fumie (踏み絵), it designates the act of trampling a crucifix, or an image of the Virgin Mary, to demonstrate both one’s lack of involvement in Christian worship and one’s loyalty to the political government. japan | 103

High Tide”), published in 1965. In the summer of the same year he began to write the first draft of Chinmoku (沈黙 “Silence”), to which I will turn shortly.10 The long years of suffering and therapy undoubtedly contributed to make Endō’s literary growth a strenuous one. Through the themes of his novels he reveals a series of protagonists who gradually come to recognize a greater complexity to their being than they had initially been ready to acknowledge. In these works Endō employs the technique of the “watching eye:” a gaze (coming from a dog or a bird, a mother figure, and, in some rare cases, even from Christ himself) which observes the situation of the protagonists from the outside, guiding them to recognize, not only a deeper level of human existence, but also, through the awareness of this “eye”, also to acknowledge that they may aspire to their own salvation. In this way, the characters begin to pay closer attention to the voice of their unconscious, which gradually leads them from an initial condition of darkness and sin to a process of liberation and spiritual redemption. The most explicit example of this kind of awakening is represented by Suguro, one of the characters in the novel The Sea and Poison. Suguro is a young doctor who, during the war, worked in a hospital where American war prisoners were subjected to vivisection experiments. At the beginning of the story, the main narrator visits Suguro for a pneumo- thorax and is impressed by the dexterity with which this now old doctor, with a pale and listless face, carries out the required medical procedure on him. Curious as to why such a competent doctor should have his practice in an unknown hospital on the outskirts of Tokyo, the narrator starts digging into Suguro’s past and finds out that he worked at the Fukuoka School of Medicine (where the vivisection experiments on soldiers were pre- sumably carried out). The focus of the narration now shifts to Suguro. Unlike doctor Asai and other interns, for whom the prisoners were mere test subjects, Suguro is presented as someone who has a sense of attachment to his patients and always considers them as individuals. Irritated by the less than deontological conduct of his colleagues, he becomes aware that he is just a cog in a much larger mechanism whose dynamics escape his comprehension. From that moment, he decides to adopt an indifferent attitude toward reality and its anonymous and absurd course. But Suguro is soon faced by a pressing ethical problem as he is asked to participate in a vivisection experiment on an American war prisoner, who will die during the procedure. As he talks to a colleague about the experiment, Suguro reveals his conviction that one day all those who took part in those experiments will have to pay for their crimes. The sudden awareness of the reality of evil awakens in Suguro the consciousness of the gravity of the sin he has committed, as well as of the punishment he will face. Some of his

10. Endō says that Silence aims at answering questions that pursued him upon seeing a fumie in a Naga- saki museum: “1) If I had lived in that period of history, would I have stepped on the fumie? 2) What did those who stepped on the fumie feel? 3) What kind of people trod on the fumie?,” in M. B. Williams, Endō Shūsaku. A Literature of Reconciliation, op. cit., 106. 104 | God Between the Lines

colleagues try to minimize their responsibility in carrying out such medical procedures by claiming that no one will ever really judge them, since these self-appointed judges, if faced with the same situation, would behave exactly as they did. But the problem of evil starts creeping into the souls of some of Suguro’s colleagues, such as Toda. At the beginning, Toda is convinced that medical progress requires these experiments and that those who will die in a hospital could have died in an air raid. But, as the narration unfolds, Toda begins to recognize the implications of the evil we commit; he says: “I don’t know why. I thought at that moment that one day I would be punished. I felt with a sharp insistence that one day I would have to undergo retribution for what I have done so far in my life.”11 Through the description of this slow ethical metamorphosis that takes place in the souls of his protagonists, Endō succeeds in the attempt to present characters who recognize the complexity of human nature and come to realize the existence of evil and their sin—even if all of them, despite having been able to detect this negative dimension of existence, still appear too weak and confused to discern a way of redemption from evil. It is in the subsequent novel, Wonderful Fool, that Endō’s interest begins to shift from the awareness of sin and weakness experienced so far by his characters to that of a possibility and potentiality for salvation, which will include both the protagonists and the people they come in contact with. This is the case of Gaston Bonaparte, the awkward horse-faced protagonist of Wonderful Fool. Gaston drops in unannounced, and initially unwelcome, at Takamori and Tomoe’s house (brother and sister), upsetting the insipid and selfish routine of their lives. Driven by his personality, his love of neighbor, as well as

11. S. Endō, The Sea and Poison. Trans. M. Gallagher (Tokyo: Tuttle, 1973), 125. Here it is worth recalling the distinction that exists in Japanese between the words tsumi (罪, sin, crime) and aku (悪, evil) as it is explained by psychologist Kawai Hayao, who influenced Endō’s research on this topic. Kawai writes: “Sin has its limits and leads on to redemption. But Evil is limitless and allows for no salvation. Sin is necessary for the establishment of our own individual identity. (The story of the Fall is the ultimate expression of this). In contrast to this, it is Evil that comes into play in the process of soul-making… In the process of redemption from sin, there are always certain generally-accepted techniques, and group religions come to exert their influence. But in the case of Evil, each individual has no choice but to seek for himself a life-style with which to oppose (the Evil). Or perhaps, one should say that the ‘power’ of the individual becomes virtually meaningless,” cited in M. B. Williams, Endō Shūsaku. A Literature of Reconciliation, op. cit., 78. From a religious point of view, E. Mase-Hasegawa claims that “in Christianity, sin is held to be thought or behavior opposed to God’s will. It represents separation from God, who will judge everything at the end. The Japanese lack the concept of a transcendent God who saves. Therefore, sin needs to transcend legalistic offences in a different context, because the Japanese appreciate aesthetics more than ethics and the consciousness of sin and evil is not easily comprehended within this reality. Endo considers there to be two kinds of sin. One relates to the despair over one’s salvation. This is clearly articulated in Japanese protagonists such as Chiba in Yellow Man or Suguro in The Sea and Poison. The other sin is to hurt another person, to ignore or be unconcerned about others… Moreover, even for those who do not have a concept of God, evil does exist, and it is produced by humans. Evil does not presuppose the idea of a transcendent God. It occurs when people stop thinking, become mindless, distracted by pride, or even fooled by false humility. Then people forget things, forget themselves, and forget others,” in E. Mase-Hasegawa, Christ in Japanese Culture: Theological Themes in Shu- saku Endo’s Literary Works, op. cit., 68. japan | 105

his naivety and simplemindedness (“Gaston was constitutionally incapable of harboring resentment or hatred towards anyone… Instead, he was quickly moved to trust in the goodwill and friendship of others, or at least to want to trust in them”12), he becomes involved in the most bizarre and incredible situations. But the reason for his actions is to be attributed to the boundless love for one’s neighbor that he sees at work, both in human beings and in animals, and which he practices towards several minor characters he meets in Tokyo — prostitutes, thieves, rascals, small vendors, fortune-tellers, pimps, charlatans, and idlers. Through his candor and altruism, Gaston begins to find a way into the siblings’ hearts, and Takamori is forced to admit to himself that “not all men are handsome and strong. There are some who are cowards from birth… But for such a man, a man both weak and cowardly, to bear the burden of his weakness and struggle valiantly to live a beautiful life—that’s what I call great… I feel more drawn to Gaston than I would to a splendid saint or hero.”13 His sister Tomoe is likewise impressed by the power of the good ema- nating from Gaston—as evidenced in the following passage shortly after Gaston’s arrival: “He may be a coward and lacking self-respect, but he certainly has a good heart.”14 When Gaston’s actions, occasionally irresponsible, and therefore incomprehensible for the two siblings, slowly make their way into their hearts, the reaction of Tomoe, a shrewd opportunist, is one of baffled admiration: “He is not a fool. He is not a fool. Or, if he is, he’s a wonderful fool… a wonderful fool who will never allow the little light which he sheds along man’s way to go out.”15 Gaston’s purpose is thus reached: from that moment on the two siblings will look at the world differently; he has taught them that only the invincible power of love for one’s neighbor provides a way out of the “swamp” of immorality, wick- edness, and indifference in which Japanese society seems to be drowning without hope. In the next novel, The Girl I Left Behind, Endō tells the story of two individuals who try to shake off the monotony of their existence. Yoshioka, a Tokyo student whose only purpose in life is to make a career out of his studies, casually meets and seduces an ordinary and generous girl, Mitsu. The next day, Yoshioka and Mitsu go their separate ways to continue their humdrum lives, but both are aware that their casual encounter has marked their lives deeply. Yoshioka is particularly struck by the spontaneity with which the girl helps those who need her spiritual comfort, and the narrator tells us more than once that Mitsu’s personality is characterized by an inexplicable goodness of heart.16 After he

12. S. Endō, Wonderful Fool. Trans. F. Mathy (Tokyo: Tuttle, 1974), 83. 13. Ibid., 187–88. 14. Ibid., 67. 15. Ibid., 180. 16. The narrator writes about Mitsu’s personality: “For some reason, ever since childhood Mitsu had been unable to endure the sight of someone looking sad. And such feelings were accentuated when such sadness was on her account,” in S. Endō, The Girl I Left Behind. Trans. M. Williams (London: Peter Owen, 1994), 61. And concerning Mitsu’s inner voice as she ponders whether to donate the money she had saved to buy a sweater (with which she wanted to impress Yoshioka) to Mrs. Taguchi, who needs the money to raise her 106 | God Between the Lines

graduates, Yoshioka is hired to work for a company; there he begins to climb the career ladder, thanks also to his relation with Mariko Miura, the director’s niece (and, ironically, a former friend of Mitsu). Meanwhile, we are told that the mysterious spot on Mitsu’s wrist (which Yoshioka had noticed during their love encounter) is diagnosed as a symp- tom of leprosy, so the girl is forced to check herself into the Gotenba leprosarium. Mitsu (as well as Yoshioka) is deeply shaken by the news; she does not understand the reasons for such an event, especially as she has been brought up with the conviction that leprosy was a disease that afflicted only those with an evil karma. At the leprosarium the girl is positively impressed by the atmosphere of the place and the optimism displayed by the patients, despite the fact they have severed almost all ties with the outside world. While Mitsu tries to get used to her new life, a nurse informs her that the diagnosis of her illness has turned out to be incorrect. She is therefore free to go back to Tokyo. Mitsu’s initial euphoria is dampened by her awareness that to leave the hospital would mean to turn her back to her new friends. So she decides to stay at the hospital as a volunteer worker. One day Yoshioka, now happily married to Mariko, decides to send Mitsu a New Year’s greeting card. A few weeks later he receives a letter from Sister Yamagata, who informs him that Mitsu died in an accident while on her way to the market to sell eggs to raise funds for the hospital patients. A lorry backing up was about to run her over, but instead of jumping out of the way, Mitsu selflessly tried to protect the eggs that had been entrusted to her, and the truck reversed into her. As a result, she fell into an irreversible coma and died soon after. Although Yoshioka tries to convince himself that what happened to Mitsu has no bearing on his own life, gradually he comes to realize that he is unable to deny Mitsu’s presence in his life, and that if the God of whom Sister Yamagata spoke in her letter truly exists, perhaps He spoke to His creatures also through such incidents. Thus, Mitsu’s figure (as well as Gaston’s) symbolizes the image of Christ who becomes our companion, who approaches us as a friend and who, by discreetly standing close to us in our suffering, shows us a way to salvation and redemption. Endō makes this parallel between the characters of his narratives and Christ even more explicit in his afterword to the English translation of the novel: “Through the medium of this novel, I sought to portray the drama of ‘the Jesus I left behind’. Mitsu can be seen as modelled on Jesus, abandoned by his own disciples; she is modelled on the Jesus whom all Christians are guilty of abandoning on a daily basis in their everyday lives.”17 Silence was published in March 1966 and became an instant best-seller, not only because its subject matter (i.e., human weakness and Jesus as a maternal figure sharing

children, the narrator writes: “I know just how much you want that cardigan and how hard you’ve worked for it. And that is way I’m asking you. I’m asking you to use that thousand yen for that mother and her children instead of that sweater… There is something more important than responsibility. The important thing in life is to link your sadness to the sadness of others. That is the significance of my cross,” in Ibid., 70. 17. “Author’s Afterword,” in Ibid., 196. japan | 107

in our suffering) strongly appealed to its readers, but also due to certain criticisms from some Catholic quarters, where the suggestion to perform the fumie made to persecuted missionaries and Christians was read as a kind of “apology of apostasy.” After the publication of Silence, Endō was occupied with several activities: he organized a theatrical company named Kiza, became chief editor of the literary review Mita Bungaku, began to study the Bible seriously, and took several trips abroad (two of these trips were to Israel, in order to obtain first-hand knowledge of the places of the New Testament in preparation of some new novels). Before travelling to the Holy Land for a third time, in 1972 he met Paul vi in Rome, where the Pope exhorted him to dialogue and cooperate with the other religions present in Japan. This gradual study of spiritual themes led him to focus his attention on the person and role of Jesus, and was followed by the publication of a few religiously inspired works such as Iesu no shōgai (イエスの生涯“ A Life of Jesus”)— the winner, in 1978, of the international Dag Hammarskjöol Prize—and Kirisuto no tanjō (キリストの誕生 “The Birth of Christ”)— the winner, in 1979, of the Yomiuri Prize for Literature. In these two works Endō provides an even deeper articulation of his personal theology, in which the figure of Christ is presented as “powerless,” or “weak,” and nevertheless completely involved in the life events of individuals, and in which God is a God of love who, in Jesus, becomes the “companion of humanity” (dōhansha Iesu 同伴者イエス)—an idea which, though not new to the West- ern world, had a significant impact on Japan and Japanese spirituality. Approaching this theme from a uniquely Christian perspective, and focusing in particular on the question of how the Jesus of the New Testament became the Messiah, these two works develop the idea that each individual is involved in a deep and intense relationship with Christ. This idea brings the author to conclude:

What is indisputable is that Christ left an indelible mark on those whose lives crossed His path… Those who despair of love, seek an existence who will not betray their love, those who have abandoned all hope of being understood in their sorrow seek a true understander in the recesses of their hearts. This is not sentimentality or over-dependence: merely a necessary precondition for individuals in their interactions with others.18

This paradox of a Christ who is totally powerless and, at the same time, an inseparable companion of humanity is masterfully described by Endō in The Samurai (侍), published in 1980. The story shares some features of the previous novel, Silence: both are set in the so called “Christian Century” (from 1549, the year in which Saint Francis Xavier reached Kagoshima, until 1638, the year of the suppression of the Christian uprising in Shimabara, near Nagasaki, and the beginning of Japan’s isolationism). Both novels deal

18. S. Endō, Kirisuto no tanjō (Tokyo: Shinchosha, 1978), 250. 108 | God Between the Lines

with the challenges of the foreign missionaries who came to Japan to preach the Gospel, as well as those of the Japanese, to whom the new religion appeared “alien” and foreign; both describe a God who does not remain distant from human events, but rather suffers with humanity. However, while Silence was an attempt to analyze and answer a purely contextual question (namely whether the Japanese are capable of making room for the figure of Christ within their culture), The Samurai universalizes this problem by asking about the identity and the role of Christ for humanity in general.19 The story is inspired by a historical event: in October 1613,daimyō Date Masamune (1567–1636) ordered four samurais to embark on the galleon San Juan Bautista in the direction of New Spain (Mexico) in order to establish commercial ties with that country (which would also allow them to avoid the mediation of Spanish merchants in the Philippines) and to visit the Catholic king Philip iii and Pope Paul v in Rome. The main characters of the novel are the Franciscan Friar Luis Sotelo (1574–1624), who in the story will assume the name of Velasco, and Hasekura Rokuemon Tsunenaga (1571–1622), a samurai of inferior rank who, contingent on the success of the expedition, hopes to regain the land he lost from the daimyō. Soon the focus of the novel is directed on the respective worldviews of the two protagonists. Velasco’s worldview is aggressive and he is ablaze with missionary zeal as he tries to convince the four samurais to receive baptism in order to impress the Mexican authorities. By contrast, Hasekura’s worldview is passive and apa- thetic: he finds himself thrown into an alien world, facing a reality that exceeds his grasp; he reluctantly accepts baptism, but in his heart he finds it difficult to believe in the power of the scrawny-faced Man whose hands are nailed to a cross. He says: “I… have no desire to worship you… I can’t even understand why the foreigners respect you. They say you died bearing the sins of humankind, but I can’t see that our lives have become any easier as a result. I know what wretched lives the peasants lead in the marshland. Nothing has changed because you died.”20 Nevertheless, a thought slowly makes its way into Hasekura’s heart, the thought that that powerless but compassionate Man is accompanying him in his despair, and that the true King he is meeting in his journey is not one of the lords of this world (whether Philip iii or Paul v), but rather the King of love, who listens, consoles, and soothes the agony of his soul, the soul of a warrior defeated by destiny. “Again the samurai closed his eyes and pictured the man who had peered down at him each night from the walls of his rooms in Nueva España and España. For some reason he did not feel the same contempt for him he had felt before. In fact it seemed as though that wretched man was much like himself.”21 After this encounter with Christ, a disastrous journey to the West becomes a victorious path to self-discovery, though it is a journey which will end tragically, since his daimyō

19. See M. Williams, “Inner Horizons. Towards Reconciliation in Endō Shūsaku’s The Samurai,” in Japan Christian Review, 1996/62: 74–96. 20. S. Endō, The Samurai. Trans. V. Gessel (New York: Aventura, 1984), 173. 21. Ibid., 242. japan | 109

will order him and the other envoys to commit suicide in order to prove to the central authority that Christianity had not taken root in his domains. In the meantime, Velasco, who on his return route had stopped in Manila, decides to hold fast to the principles of his faith and continues his journey to Japan, where he will be immediately arrested and suffer the same fate of the other members of the delegation. The Samurai is followed by the publication of Sukyandaru (スキャンダル“ Scandal”) in 1986, a work which many greeted as a turning point in Endō’s career because of its meticulous analysis of the human psyche. In Japan it won the prestigious Noma Prize for Literature, the last recognition that was missing among Endō’s literary successes. In this novel Endō examines the conflicts in the human soul (conscious-unconscious, good-evil, awareness of sin-indifference to sin, etc.). Scandal was preceded by two novels published in 1985—Watashi no aishita shōsetsu (私の愛した小説“ A Novel I Have Loved”) and Honto no watashi o motomete (ほんとうの私を求めて “In Search of the Real Me”)—in which the author claims that he followed Carl Jung’s theories on the dualism of the unconscious. This remark by Endō is very much in line with the development of his literary production, in which all his characters end up establishing a sort of reconciliation of opposites. However, while the narrative framework of The Samurai still refers to a world alien to Japan and deals with the clash between two opposed cultures and mentalities, the story of Scandal is set in Tokyo and involves characters with whom the Japanese reader can sympathize (as well as easily recognizable places). The novel, filled with dramatic turns of events, introduces Suguro, a Catholic writer at the end of a brilliant career entirely dedicated to exploring the depths of the dark side of the human heart. While giving his acceptance speech for a literary award, Suguro is disturbed by the appearance of a man seemingly identical in every physical detail to himself who looks at him from the back of the auditorium. From that moment, Suguro tries to find a way to expose that person, who he thinks is a double (dopplegänger, bunshin 分身, literally: “divided body”), an optical illusion, or a shadow.22 This investigation brings Suguro to wander around the disrepu- table districts of Kabukichō, where his alleged double spends his time, and the more he tries to discover the truth about the impostor, the more he feels that their destinies are indissolubly tied. Some women he meets during his quest introduce him to “an aesthetics of ugliness.” Among them stands out Madame Naruse, a caring and loving hospital volunteer whose good reputation contradicts her open fascination with sadomasochism. At the same time Suguro is being chased by Kobari, a journalist who is accusing him

22. Endō remarked about the Jungian concept of “Shadow”: “Just as we all have a ‘kageboshi’, so we all have a self which we don’t show to anyone, whether we are conscious of this or not. This other self is our Shadow. In public, we cover ourselves up. It is normal that, when dealing with others, we exercise the necessary social morality and common sense in order not to offend… But inside this self which we consciously create lurks another self. This is the suppressed self of which Freud speaks. But Jung thinks of the self as a work of reparation. In other words, it is an additional self quietly seeking to provide support to those areas lacking in our conscious being. It is this that Jung labeled the Shadow,” in M. B. Williams, Endō Shūsaku. A Literature of Reconciliation, op. cit., 166. In 1968 Endō had written a short story titled Kageboshi (影法師“ Shadows”). 110 | God Between the Lines

of hypocrisy and corruption and has been trying to pull off the mask of moral integrity which the writer has tailored for himself. However, every attempt Suguro makes to find the “impostor” seems doomed to failure and he is forced to admit that the relationship between him and his double is more intimate and complex than he had anticipated. In fact, the sole function of this “shadow-man” is to reveal Suguro’s alter ego, unmask the hidden recesses of his unconscious, and bring him to accept them, thus leading him to face reality with the power gained through this new awareness. After having tried to fight off this awareness, and having gone through some humiliating personal experiences (experiences which are now lived and no longer purely imagined), in the end Suguro is ready to recognize his “totality” and admit that in order to speak of sin, one must have known it first-hand.23 Unsurprisingly, Scandal elicited different reactions among its critics. Some hailed it positively as the author’s further investigation into the world of the unconscious, while others were rather skeptical about the results of this new literary adventure. In the meantime, Endō continued to receive recognitions from all quarters: in 1985 he was elected president of the p.e.n. (Poets, Essayists and Novelists) Club of Japan (which he left in 1989) and received an honorary doctorate from the University of California at Santa Clara, followed by other honorary degrees from Georgetown University in 1987, and from John Carroll University (Cleveland) and Fu Jen University (Taipei) in 1991. During the years following the publication of Scandal, Endō delivered to the press the so-called “Civil War’s Trilogy,” which includes Hangyaku (反逆“ The Treason”),Kessen no toki ( 決戦の時“ Time for a Decisive Battle”), and Otoko no isshō (男の一生“ Man’s Life”). He travelled intensively for conferences (worthy of note is his chance encounter with the author Graham Greene in 1985, at the Ritz Hotel in London, where the two spent some time in conversation) and for the opening of plays and films based on his novels (among the films, The Girl I Left Behind in 1968, Silence in 1971, and The Sea and Poison in 1986). Between the end of the 1980’s and the beginning of the 1990’s, Endō also travelled to India several times, especially to the city of Varanasi, to prepare for the writing of what was to be his last novel, Fukai kawa (深い河“ Deep River”), which he finished in 1992 and which was published by Kōdansha in 1993. In Varanasi, at the confluence of the two rivers (Ganges and Yamuna), Endō saw a place rich with symbols, divining an echo of that collective unconscious in which the life of all humanity, regardless of one’s cultural or religious heritage, comes together in the single, peaceful flow of the great river. Moreover, the Indian setting of the novel enabled him to tackle the subject of religious syncretism (among others), a subject that shows how far Endō has come from his initial position on the topic. In fact, with this last novel Endō overcomes the contrast between Western monotheism (with its absolute distinction between God and humanity) and Eastern

23. I owe this interesting critical interpretation of the novel to A. Boscaro, “‘Una letteratura compagna dell’uomo per l’eternità’. Ricordo di Endō Shūsaku,” in Asiatica Venetiana, 1997/2: 3–17. japan | 111

polytheism (for which everything represents an extension of the individual). What interests him now is a kind of synthesis between the Buddhist concern for the “self” and the focus of the Christian message on “redemption,” a synthesis which brings him to look for a “third type of religion,” a “great vital force” that transcends all sectarianism and all forms of institutionalized religion (whether Christianity, Buddhism, or Islam). What is essential to Endō’s point is a concept which he again explores with the help of Jungian theory: the concept of “rebirth,” “transformation,” constant “passage” from life to death, and from death to life, in an unceasing and eternal movement. The novel opens with Isobe losing his wife to an incurable disease and resigned to spending the rest of his life in utter solitude. But prior to her death, the wife expresses the conviction that she would be reborn in another body and asks her husband to look for her in this world. American scholars investigating cases of metempsychosis inform him that a girl from Northern India claims to have been a Japanese woman in her previous existence. Isobe therefore joins a group of tourists, who are visiting India’s sacred sites, with the intention of travelling to Kamloji, the village where the girl lives. The group is composed of several people, each with his or her own reasons for being on that journey. Numada wishes to acquire a myna bird, which he will then release as a sign of gratitude for another bird which died “in his place” when he came close to dying during surgery. Kikuchi would like to offer prayers for his fellow soldiers on the banks of the Ganges, especially for Tsukuda, who saved his life on the famous Burma Road by getting him some food (which, it turned out, was the flesh of their dead comrades). Sanjo, the husband in a newly-wed couple on their honeymoon, wants to use the trip to take pictures for some photo contests. Finally, Mitsuko, a young woman who has become aware of the pain she has caused others, desires to make a less selfish future for herself. She also wishes to track down Ōtsu, a shy and devout young man she met during her time at the university. As a result of the considerable psychological distress he suffered at her hands, Ōtsu leaves the country and joins the seminary in Lyon. But Mitsuko still feels drawn to him, and as someone told her that he is now living near the sacred city of Varanasi, she decides to look for him there. Once in India, all the members of the group become immersed in their own agendas. Isobe goes to the village and locates the girl, but all attempts to find out whether she is the reincarnation of his wife fail. Numada releases the myna bird and Kikuchi prays for his fellow soldiers on the banks of the Ganges. At this point, the focus of the novel shifts to the relationship between Mitsuko and Ōtsu. Ōtsu has joined a group of Hindu ascetics and seeks to provide a semblance of dignity for the thousands of people who travel to Varanasi to die on the banks of the Ganges. Despite her attempt to deny that she still has feelings for Ōtsu, Mitsuko begins to search for him among the dying on the banks of the river. When she finally finds him, Ōtsu tells her that he has discovered his true vocation: to care for the dead of Varanasi, adding that nothing could persuade him to change his mind and leave the ashram where he now lives. 112 | God Between the Lines

Ōtsu’s spiritual awakening concerns a wholly new and unprecedented view of the divine: God is now identified with an élan vital, which includes not only the individual but also the entire natural world; it is an “activity” rather than mere existence, a force on which we “depend” and which we can “trust”, rather than a being in whom we “believe”. Thus, what really matters for Ōtsu is not so much the name we use to identify God (in fact, He can be expressed with any name: “God,” “Tomato,” or even “Onion”…), but the fact that He is constantly present to us: “Just as my Onion is always beside me, he is always within you and beside you, too. He is the only one who can understand your pain and your loneliness.”24 The features that Ōtsu attributes to the divine in his new vision correspond to those of the “companion” (dōhansha) who shares the destiny of people despite their betrayal and repudiation. For Ōtsu, God is no longer an entity, but has finally become a “form of life.”

If the Onion came to this city, he of all people would carry the fallen on his back and take them to the cremation grounds. Just as he bore the cross on his back while he was alive… In the end, I’ve decided that my Onion doesn’t live only within European Christianity. He can be found in Hinduism and in Buddhism as well. This is no longer just an idea in my head, it’s a way of life I’ve chosen for myself… When the Onion was killed… the disciples who remained finally understood his love and what it meant. Every one of them had stayed alive by abandoning him and running away. He continued to love them even though they had betrayed him. As a result, he was etched into each of their guilty hearts, and they were never able to forget him. The disciples set out for distant lands to tell others the story of his life… After that, he continued to live in the hearts of his disciples. He died, but he was restored to life in their hearts.25 The narration ends with Sanjo hiding in order to take a photo during a Hindu funeral, despite the repeated warnings of the tour guide to be mindful of the sensitivity of the local people. Ōtsu intervenes to avoid the people pouncing on Sanjo, thus allowing him to escape. But Ōtsu is seriously injured during the scuffle and is immediately taken to a hospital. As the tourists are about to board their plane, a phone call made by the tour guide Enami to the hospital to inquire about Ōtsu, reveals that his condition has worsened…26 Deep River is Endō’s last great novel. Prior to its publication, the author was diagnosed with a kidney disease which led to long and repeated hospitalizations and several operations. In September 1995 Endō was taken to Juntendō University Hospital in Tokyo

24. S. Endo, Deep River. Trans. Van C. Gessel (London: Peter Owen, 1994), 120. 25. Ibid., 184–85. 26. Notice that Endō blends the figure of Ōtsu with that of Christ, just as he did with Mitsu inThe Girl I Left Behind. In his own words: “Christ Himself takes the form of Ōtsu in this novel. Perhaps I should call it an imitation of Christ, but I have tried to juxtapose the life of Ōtsu on to that of Christ, the failure,” in M. B. Williams, Endō Shūsaku. A Literature of Reconciliation, op. cit., 205. japan | 113

following a brain hemorrhage. He died on September 29 of the following year, at the age of 73, after having been hospitalized again due to breathing difficulties that were caused by pneumonia. Some 4,000 people attended his funeral Mass in the Church of Saint Igna- tius at Kōjimachi. After the Mass, Endō was buried next to his mother and brother in the Catholic cemetery of Fuchu. In 1999 editor Shinchōsha began the publication of the 15 volumes of The Complete Series of Endō Shūsaku’s Literary Works (Endō Shūsaku Bungaku Zenshū 遠藤周作文学全集), which were completed one year later.

Historical Setting and Plot of the Novel Silence As I mentioned earlier, the events covered in the novel Silence take place during the period of Japanese history that is referred to as the “Christian Century.” In order to have a better grasp of the plot of the novel, I offer here a brief account of the main events and figures of that period.27 Saint Francis Xavier landed in Kagoshima in 1549 with Cosme de Torres and Juan Fernández. Since the merchant ship on which they were travelling reached Japan from the South, they (and later all Westerners) were called nanban jin (南蛮人“ Southern barbarians”). Many people rushed with curiosity to listen to these foreigners from “native Śākya” (the Buddha’s native city). The notion that the missionaries came from India to preach a particular Buddhist doctrine partially owed its origin to Yajiro, Francis Xavier’s Japanese guide, who, when asked to translate the word “Deus” in Japanese, chose the term “Dainichi (Nyorai)” (大日如来, that is, Māhāvairocana Buddha, or “Buddha of Infinite Light”), which in the exoteric school of Shingon Buddhism is identified with the foundation of all phenomena and is present in all of them. It was only in 1551, in Yamaguchi, that Francis Xavier realized this fatal translation mistake and sent Fernández to the streets to warn the people that Dainichi did not correspond to the Christian God but was a ruse of the “evil one.” Despite these initial difficulties and misunderstandings, the activity of the missionaries was soon met by increasing success, thanks in particular to the conversions of the daimyōs in the regions of Ōmura, Bungo, and Arima, which in turn led to mass conversions among their subjects. This explains why, in 1553, there were 4,000 baptisms, although at the time the missionaries in Japan were only five, and why, in 1579, the baptisms reached the number of 100,000, even though there were just 55 missionaries in the entire country.28 Oda Nobunaga (織田信長 1534–1582), although not a particularly religious person, shrewdly supported the Jesuit missionaries in Japan to contrast the excessive power of

27. For a detailed analysis of this historical period, see (among others): C. R. Boxer, The Christian Cen- tury in Japan. 1549–1650 (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1967); N. S. Fugita, Japan’s Encounter with Christianity: The Catholic Mission in Pre-Modern Japan (New York: Paulist Press, 1991); M. R. Mullins, ed., Handbook of Christianity in Japan (Brill Academic Publishers, 2003). 28. With the letter Ex Pastoralis Officio (1584), Pope Gregory XIII granted the mission of Japan exclusively to the Jesuits. The first Franciscans came to Japan in 1593, followed by the Dominicans and Augustinians in 1602. 114 | God Between the Lines

the Buddhist monks during that time. But his successor, Toyotomi Hideyoshi (豊臣秀吉 1536–1598), striving to unify the country, promulgated, in 1587, the first edict against Christianity, by which he notified all Christian missionaries that they were to leave Japan within twenty days. This ban, however, was not enforced strictly in Kyūshū and the missionaries were able to continue carrying out their activities, albeit with some discretion. In 1596 the Spanish galleon San Felipe, while sailing from Manila in the direction of Acapulco, was rerouted by a typhoon toward the Shikoku coast, forcing the captain and the crew to dock near the port of Urado. Their cargo was confiscated and the presence of weapons on board confirmed Hideyoshi’s fears about the real danger of having missionaries in his territory. His retaliation against the Christians was swift and ruthless: 26 Japanese protomartyrs were crucified on February 5, 1597 near Nagasaki. Hideyoshi died and was succeeded by Tokugawa Ieyasu (徳川家康 1542–1616), who, after the Sekigahara victory of 1600 (in which he defeated his rival and the leader of Toty- otomi’s allies, Ishida Mitsunari) became the sole ruler of Japan. In an edict against Chris- tianity, promulgated in 1614, Ieyasu defined Japan as “the country of the kamis (Shintō divinities) and of the buddhas” and banned the Christian religion from his territories because it opposed Confucian morals, the Buddhist Law and the Shintō Way. Moreover, he ordered that all foreign missionaries be sent back to their countries and all churches be destroyed. Japanese Christians were ordered to abjure their faith and the most prominent Christian leaders were sent into exile in Manila or Macao. While many Christians chose martyrdom over apostasy, others (roughly 150,000 people) decided to hide their religious affiliation and continued to practice their faith in secret, thus giving rise to the tradition of clandestine Christianity in Japan. These Christians were given the name of kakure kirishitan (隠れキリシタン“ hidden Christians”),29 not only because they had to administer the sacraments in hidden rooms of their private homes, but also because they disguised Christian symbols and prayers by adapting them to Buddhist iconography

29. Scholars have given a variety of definitions of these hidden Christian, but usually the phrase senpuku kirishitan (潜伏キリシタン ) designates people who went into hiding out of necessity, while the phrase kakure kirishitan (隠れキリシタン ) refers to those who remained hidden even after the end of the persecutions. The phrase hanare kirishitan (離れキリシタン ) was used by the missionaries during the Meiji period (1868–1912) to indicate the old Christians who refused to reconcile with the Catholic Church, while the phrase karobi kirishitan (転びキリシタン ) is generally used to designate those who abjured the Catholic faith under torture. More- over, it is worth noting that in 1680, when Tokugawa Tsunayoshi (徳川綱吉 1646–1709) became shogun, the persecution against the Christians also took on a linguistic component. The term for “Christian” was kirishitan and was derived etymologically from the Portuguese word “Cristão.” According to the Nihon Kirisutokyō Rekishi Daijiten (“Great Historical Dictionary of the Japanese Church”), the kanjis used to render that word were吉利支丹, which, although not employed in their literal meaning, conveyed the idea of happiness and prosperity. However, because one of these characters appeared in Tsunayoshi’s name, he decided to change the characters used to refer to the Christians with 切支丹, which literally means “to cut the limbs until they bleed.” Another phrase used to refer to Christian was 鬼理死丹 (“a demon’s ideology hungry for the dead”). Further material on the description of the term “Christian” in Japan can be found in C. Whelan, The Beginning of Heaven and Earth: The Sacred Book of Japan’s Hidden Christians (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1996), 9–12, and “Loss of the Signified among the Kakure Krishitan,” in Japanese Religions, 1993, 19/1–2: 82–105. japan | 115

and chants.30 Thus, they lived in the constant fear of being discovered and tortured. Torture was considered efficacious only if it led the subject to recantation and apostasy. Forms of torture expressly devised for this purpose included dismemberment, drowning, immersion in the sulphurous and scalding springs of Unzen, and anatsurushi—or headfirst suspension in a pit of excrement until the victim either recanted or died. One of the most psychologically and emotionally trying practices inflicted on Chris- tians to induce them to abjure their faith was that of fumie (踏み絵), which began around 1629 and was systematically enforced after the institution of the Office of Religious Inqui- sition (Shūmon aratame yaku 宗門改役) in 1640, when the practice became part of the new year celebration rituals in the whole of Kyūshū.31 In order to uproot the danger of Christianity, not only did the shogunate establish the practice of “mutual surveillance” called gonin gumi (五人組み or “five-family group,” according to which, if a Christian was found to have been hiding in one of the five house- holds, the entire association would be punished), it also appointed the Buddhist monks to promote the eradication of all manifestations of the Christian faith through the so-called “temple certificate system” (terauke seido 檀家制度), a sort of “course” one had to attend at the Buddhist temple; upon completion of this course, a certificate was issued attesting one’s religious orthodoxy, social acceptability and loyalty to the shogunate. The Shimabara Rebellion (Shimabara no ran 島原の乱) also took place during this period. In the rebellion, Japanese Catholics, mostly peasants, rose up against the Tokugawa government. In order to suppress the insurrection, in 1637 the shogunate sent over 125,000 troops from all over the country. After a long and fierce siege at Hara Castle, the rebellion was finally

30. In spite of persecutions and obstacles to religious freedom, hidden Christians established their own religious hierarchy, consisting of a chōkata (帳方), who was in charge of the observance of holy days of obligation, and a mizukata (水方), in charge of administering baptisms. For an in-depth study of the rituals, teachings, and internal organization of the kakure kirishitan, see I. Higashibaba, Christianity in Early Modern Japan: Kirishitan Belief and Practice (Leiden, Boston, Köln: Brill, 2001); S. Turnbull, The Kakure Kirishitan of Japan: A Study of Their Development, Beliefs and Rituals to the Present Day (London: Routledge, 1998); D. Burger, “Kirishitan—Early Christianity in Japan,” in Japanese Religions, 2000. 25/1–2: 162–64. 31. In the third part of Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels (1726), the protagonist stays briefly in Japan but manages to avoid being subjected to the fumie practice. “I therefore most humbly entreated his Royal Favour to give order, that I should be conducted in safety to Nangasac. To this I added another petition, that for the sake of my patron the King of Luggnagg, his Majesty would condescend to excuse my performing the ceremony imposed on my countrymen, of trampling upon the Crucifix; because I had been thrown into his Kingdom by my misfortunes, without any intention of trading. When this latter petition was interpreted to the Emperor, he seemed a little surprised; and said, he believed I was the first of my countrymen who ever made any scruple in this point; and that he began to doubt whether I was a real Hollander or no; but rather suspected I must be a Christian,” in J. Swift, Gulliver’s Travels (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 202. This practice is mentioned also in Chapter V of Voltaire’s Candide, or Optimism: “I’m a sailor and I come from Batavia. Four times I’ve trampled on the crucifix, on four separate voyages to Japan. You’ve picked the wrong man, you and your universal reason!” in Voltaire, Candid and Other Stories. Trans. R. Pearson (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), 13. 116 | God Between the Lines

crushed, most of the insurgents were killed and the Christian leader Amakusa Shirō (天草四郎1621/3?–1638) was beheaded.32 To prevent all foreign influence, in the following centuries Japan adopted an isolation- ist policy called sakoku (鎖国“ Closed Country”),33 which lasted until July 14, 1853, when the Black ships (kurofune 黒船) led by Commodore Matthew Perry reached the Uraga Harbor. With the Treaty of Amity and Commerce (Nichibei shūkō tsūshō jōyaku 日米修好通商条約) of July 29, 1858, the ports of Kanagawa and four other Japanese cities reopened to trade with the United States, extraterritoriality was granted to foreigners and Ameri- cans were allowed to practice their religion. Similar treatises were stipulated with other countries, thus encouraging the missionaries to return to Japan. The Catholic Church, wishing to avoid the rivalry among the various religious orders which had characterized its previous activities in the country, decided to entrust the exclusive rights for the conversion of Japan and Korea to the Société des Missions-Étrangères de Paris (Paris Foreign Mission Society). In 1859, despite the fact that anti-Christian edicts were still in force, two French missionaries were admitted to Japan and were allowed to build churches in Hakodote, Yokohama, Edo, and Nagasaki, on the condition that their activity would be limited to the pastoral care of foreign residents. Thekakure kirishitan were discovered on March 17, 1865 (Good Fri- day) by Father Bernard Petitjean (1829–1884), who, in the newly built church of Ōura in Nagasaki, was approached by a group of people inquiring whether he was the successor of the bateren (the term used to refer to the Jesuits who evangelized Japan in the previous centuries). According to Father Petitjean’s estimates, the number of kakure kirishitan was about 10,000, although this was later considered incorrect (the actual number of hidden Christian was about 50,000, only half of whom chose to rejoin the Catholic Church).34 The novel Silence is set during the dreadful period of the Christian persecution in the xvii century, when the Tokugawa shogunate, increasingly active and confident of its power, begins to outlaw the work of proselytism carried out by the missionaries. News

32. During this time of persecution and isolation, the Christian faith was also kept alive thanks to some tertiary orders founded by the Franciscans (Confraternity of the Cord), the Dominicans (Confraternity of the Rosary), and the Jesuits (Sodality of the Blessed Virgin). 33. Literally the term means “closed country” but it indicates a “period of national isolation.” 34.The phenomenon of kakure kirishitan was recently mentioned by Pope Francis during his speech to the Japanese bishops in Visita ad Limina on March 20, 2015: “This year you celebrate another facet of this rich heritage—the emergence of the ‘hidden Christians’. Even when all lay missionaries and priests had been expelled from the country, the faith of the Christian community did not grow cold. Rather, the embers of faith which the Holy Spirit ignited through the preaching of these evangelizers and sustained by the witness of the martyrs were kept safe, through the care of the lay faithful who maintained the Catholic community’s life of prayer and catechesis in the midst of great danger and persecution. These two pillars of Catholic history in Japan, missionary activity and the ‘hidden Christians’, continue to support the life of the Church today, and offer a guide to living the faith,” at . japan | 117

reaches Europe that Father Christovão Ferreira35 (a former provincial superior of Portu- gal and the undisputed leader of the mission in Japan) has recanted after only six hours of agony in the pit. Three of his former students decide to undertake the dangerous journey to Japan in the hope of finding him and convincing him to rejoin the Christian faith. Only two of the three missionaries, Father Sebastian Rodrigues and Father Francisco Garrpe, actually reach Japan and immediately have to hide due to the edict that prohibited foreign missionaries from entering the country. At the beginning of their stay, they are sheltered by the local Christians, who provide for their necessities under the constant fear of being discovered, tortured or killed. After some time, however, their presence inevitably arouses suspicion, and the two missionaries agree to part ways to minimize their chances of getting caught. But the ploy proves to be ineffective and the inevitable soon happens: both Father Rodrigues (who is betrayed by his Japanese interpreter, Kichijiro, who they met in Macao and who has been a precious source of information on Japan) and Father Garrpe are arrested and brought before the authorities. From this moment, the focus of the novel shifts to the psychological agony of Father Rodrigues. He witnesses from afar the death of Father Garrpe, who chooses to cast himself into the sea rather than obey the shogunate and apostatize. He also witnesses the deaths of Ichizo and Mokichi, two Christians from the village of Tomogi who harbored the missionaries. They are tied to two cross-shaped poles and placed at the water’s edge: at night, the tide submerges them up to their necks, and although they do not die immediately, they succumb after three days of physical and mental exhaustion. The authorities intended to make a spectacle of their prolonged suffering to the people of the village and to the other farmers so as to discourage them from embracing the Christian faith. During his imprisonment Father Rodrigues is repeatedly informed that all they ask of him is a formal apostasy, a simple exterior gesture: if he chooses to place his foot on the sacred image and renounce his God, he will save not only his life, but also the lives of all the Japanese Christians who are now being tortured. It is at this point that Father Ferreira enters the scene. He confirms the rumors about his apostasy and tries to convince Father Rodrigues that Christianity will never take root in the “swamp” of Japan.36 To resist the

35. On the biography and experiences of Father Christovão Ferreira in Japan, see H. Cieslik, “The Case of Christovão Ferreira,” in Monumenta Nipponica, 1974, 29/1: 1–54. The text is also available at the following website: . The article also mentions the events concerning Father Giuseppe Chiara (1602–1685), who in the novel takes the name of Father Sebastian Rodrigues. 36. H. Cieslik tells us that in 1636, three years after his recantation, Father Ferreira wrote a treatise titled Kengi roku (顯僞録“ A Disclosure of Falsehoods”), in which he explained the reasons for his apostasy. Con- temporary critics doubt that Father Ferreira is the author of this text, which is rather considered a collection of “confessions” extorted from the missionaries during the interrogations. The work begins with the following affirmation: “Having been born in the Land of the Southern Barbarians, I was ever immersed in evil paths and remained ignorant of the right way. Since my youth I have devoted myself to the teachings of the Kirishi- tan, and having become a shukke (religieux) came to the Land of Sunrise, crossing thousands and myriads of leagues on the sea, with the ardent desire of propagating that teaching in Japan. Years and years I have worked 118 | God Between the Lines

authorities, continues Father Ferreira, is a completely futile and illusory exercise, which is why he tries to convince Father Rodrigues to apostatize, if only to save the lives of those Christians whose cries and moans can be heard from the pits in which they are hanging upside down—cries and moans that reach Father Rodrigues day and night, continually reminding him of the price he has to pay to stay true to his mission. The emotions that seize Father Rodrigues range from despair (as he becomes aware of the “silence of God” who tolerates that His creatures should suffer in such a horrible way) to the determination to stay true to the dictates of his faith, if necessary even unto death. The moment of truth comes when he is taken out of his prison and a fumie is placed before his feet. While he hesitates about what he should do, he hears the voice of Christ, who is represented on the sacred image, urging the priest to trample him: “Trample! Trample! I more than anyone know of the pain in your foot. Trample! It was to be trampled on by men that I was born into this world. It was to share men’s pain that I carried my cross”37. When the missionary places his foot on the fumie, dawn breaks and a rooster is heard crowing in the distance.38 After the apostasy, as promised, the authorities free Father Rodrigues and give him a home, a new job, and a new name; they even provide him with a Japanese wife, as they had already done with Father Ferreira. The closing scenes of the novel show that Father Rodrigues, far from convincing his teacher and mentor, Father Ferreira, to rejoin the faith, has himself followed him in his apostasy and in that sort of anonymous existence imposed on them by the Japanese authorities. In the Diary of an Officer at the Christian Residence,39 which appears as an appendix to the novel, we discover that, by order of

on the propaganda in going and wandering east and west, enduring the hardships of hunger and thirst and other perils, hiding myself among the mountains and in the forests, at the risk of life and daring to evade the interdiction. But, having seen the life of the Japanese and learned the teachings of Confucianism, Buddhism and Taoism (Shinto?), and having gradually grasped a small fraction of this truth, I have repented my errors and given up my illusions. I have finally abandoned the Kirishitan faith and adopted Buddha’s doctrine. Thus, not for vindicating the deeper teachings of the Kirishitan religion but for exposing its falsehood, I write down this for the purpose of awakening those who are ensnared by the evil teachings of the Kirishitan,” cited in M. Anesaki, “Japanese Criticisms and Refutations of Christianity in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries,” in Transactions of the Asiatic Society of Japan, 1930/7: 12. For the concept of “swamp” see note 56. 37. S. Endō, Silence. Trans. W. Johnston (New York: Taplinger Publishing Company, 1980), 259. 38. In an interview, Endō remarked that as a Catholic writer in a non-Catholic country like Japan, he sometimes felt isolated and misunderstood, citing the image of the rooster crowing in the novel as an example of this. “I like to use double-layered, even triple layered images… When Rodrigues is forced to trample on the fumie, dawn breaks. After passing through a torturous night the dawn comes as he steps on the fumie, and a cock crows. Nearly every Japanese reader took that to mean nothing more than: ‘A rooster crowed.’ But when you write that a cock crows just as a painful night comes to an end, in foreign lands virtually everyone would recognize in that scene a reference to the episode in the Bible where Peter betrays Christ… It’s humiliating for me as a writer to complain that I’m not understood, but the fact is that it’s been a real uphill battle for me,” cited in C. Van Gessel, “Silence in the Opposite Shores: Critical Reactions to the Novel in Japan and the West,” in M. W. Dennis and D. J. N. Middleton, Approaching Silence. New Perspectives on Shusaku Endo’s Classic Novel, op. cit., 30–1. 39. For an analysis of the differences between the original Diary and the version produced by Endō in japan | 119

Tōtōminokami, Father Rodrigues now spends much of his time drafting a text in which he disavows his former religion. TheDiary also tells us that Father Rodrigues, now going by the name of Okada San’emon, not only does not speak “about” and “with” God anymore, but from the exact moment of his death has also been “silenced” as regards his previous Christian identity: “Okada San’emon died of illness at 2–3 past the hour of the Monkey… The same San’emon was sixty-four of age… The posthumous Buddhist name of San’emon is Myūsen Joshin Shinshi.”40

Beyond the “Silence of God” In a long 1992 essay titled Chinmoku no koe (沈黙の声“ Voice of Silence”), Endō tells his readers how he had to yield to the pressure of his editor, who suggested that he change the title of the novel from Hinata no nioi (日向の匂い “The Scent of a Sunny Place”) to Silence, which led to a long series of misunderstandings. In fact, the original title of the work intended to emphasize the solitude of a spiritually weary man like Father Rodrigues, who stands tall meditating about his past under the fierce rays of the Japanese sun. By contrast, with the title Silence, Endō was convinced that he would be urging his readers to interpret the novel as a work about the silence of God, a silence which would justify the missionary’s decision to trample God’s image, precisely because He stood aloof in the face of the suffering of those who believed in Him, refusing to act and to speak.41 As Endō remarked on a different occasion:

Because I titled the novel Silence, both readers and critics in Japan have got- ten the mistaken idea that I was writing about God’s silence. And though I’ve written that, no, God does speak, there are still many people who misread the novel as treating the silence of God. As a result, they overlook the portion of the novel where God does speak, the part that is most significant to me… What

his novel, see M. Williams, “The ‘Formality’ of the Fumie?: A Re-consideration of the Role of Fumie Scene in Silence,” in M. W. Dennis and D. J. N. Middleton, Approaching Silence. New Perspectives on Shusaku Endo’s Classic Novel, op. cit., 51–7. 40. Ibid., 293–94. 41. This “almost atheistic” reading of the novel (expressed in the conviction that if God remains silent, it is because, after all, He does not exist) was bitterly criticized in Catholic circles, where the reading of the novel was initially prohibited because it seemed to encourage apostasy (according to Father Kasuya Kōichi, Silence appears to “not only acknowledge apostasy, but even praise it,” cited in M. Inoue, “Reclaiming the Universal Intercultural Subjectivity in the Life and Work of Endo Shusaku,” in Southeast Review of Asian Studies, 2012/34: 158). Yet, ironically, the same reading found numerous supporters among readers from the Left. These readers saw in the novel an allegorical version of the story of those who introduced the Marxist ideology to Japan in the 1930’s, many of whom were wanted, interrogated, beaten, and some-times even brutally killed by the Japanese police. Thus, the missionaries of Endō’s story were soon identified with the martyrs of the incipient Japanese Marxist movement. 120 | God Between the Lines

I ultimately wanted to write was that within the silence there comes a voice… that a voice emerges through the silence.42

However, the impression that Endō, by frequently returning to the topic of the “silence of God” in the novel, makes it one of the fundamental themes of Silence (even though not the principal one), cannot be entirely ascribed to a distorted interpretation on the part of his readers and critics. To see this, one need only follow the train of Father Rodrigues’ thoughts while he witnesses the dreadful tortures of the Christians. From the time of Saint Francis Xavier, the Christian seed “had been sown, it sprouted forth with vigor,” and Father Rodrigues came to Japan hoping “to tend it lest it wither and die.”43 But immediately after his arrival, after observing the listless faces of some of the Christians who welcomed him, he must confess to himself that “the long years of secrecy have made the faces of these Christians like masks. This is indeed bitter and sad. Why has God given to our Christians such a burden? This is something I fail to understand.”44 Nevertheless, at the beginning of the novel Father Rodrigues still displays a semblance of optimism, both to avoid discouraging the Christians (who are risking their own lives by hiding him and protecting him from the authorities) and to reassure his superiors in Macao of the absolute necessity and goodness of his mission (initially Valignano was opposed to his departure, fearing that he would be captured and killed by Inoue, the governor of Chikugo and “a person who is indeed a terror for the Christians”).45 As for the numerous doubts that besiege and consume him, he silences them by telling himself: “The conviction grows deeper and deeper in my heart that all is well and God will protect u s .” 46 However, this basic inner composure of the missionary is soon put to the test as he is forced to witness the frightful death of the two local Christians, Mokichi and Ichizo, who, bound to stakes on the water’s edge during the low tide, are left to their inexorable destiny. Once again, Father Rodrigues’ reaction in the face of their martyrdom seems to be coherent with his faith:

However, this candid declaration of absolute trust in the Lord is called into doubt in

42. Cited in C. Van Gessel, “Silence in the Opposite Shores: Critical Reactions to the Novel in Japan and the West,” op. cit., n. 9, 37–8. 43. S. Endō, Silence, op. cit., 43. 44. Ibid., 52. 45. Ibid., 23. 46. Ibid., 56. 47. Ibid., 84. japan | 121

the lines that immediately follow, where Father Rodrigues raises some questions which imperceptibly shake his certainty about God’s mysterious plans:

I do not believe that God has given us this trial to no purpose. I know that the day will come when we will clearly understand why this persecution with all its sufferings has been bestowed upon us—for everything that Our Lord does is for our good. And yet, even as I write these words I feel the oppressive weight in my heart of those last stammering words of Kichijiro on the morning of his departure: “Why has Deus Sama imposed this suffering upon us?” And then the resentment in those eyes that he turned upon me. “Father”, he had said, “what evil have we done?” I suppose I should simply cast from my mind these meaningless words of the coward; yet why does his plaintive voice pierce my breast with all the pain of a sharp needle? Why has Our Lord imposed this torture and this persecution on poor Japanese peasants? No, Kichijiro was trying to express something different, something even more sickening. The silence of God. Already twenty years have passed since the persecution broke out; the black soil of Japan has been filled with the lament of so many Christians; the red blood of priests has flowed profusely; the walls of the churches have fallen down; and in the face of this terrible and merciless sacrifice offered up to Him, God has remained silent.48

Initially these thoughts seem to be only the instinctive reaction of a man bewildered by the death of two innocent people; but soon they become an immense wave that crushes and drowns the convictions and the faith that determined Father Rodrigues’ religious worldview and idea of God.

I know what you will say: “Their death was not meaningless. It was a stone which in time will be the foundation of the Church; and the Lord never gives us a trial which we cannot overcome. Mokichi and Ichizo are with the Lord. Like the numerous Japanese martyrs who have gone before, they now enjoy ever- lasting happiness.” I also, of course, am convinced of all this. And yet, why does this feeling of grief remain in my heart? Why does the song of the exhausted Mokichi, bound to the stake, gnaw constantly at my heart: “We’re on our way, we’re on our way, / We’re on our way to the temple of Paradise, / To the temple of Paradise… / To the great Temple…” What do I want to say? I myself do not quite understand. Only that today, when for the glory of God Mokichi and Ichizo moaned, suffered and died, I cannot bear the monotonous sound of the dark sea gnawing at the shore. Behind the depressing silence of this sea, the silence

48. Ibid., 84–5. 122 | God Between the Lines

of God… the feeling that while men raise their voices in anguish God remains with folded arms, silent.49

Worried more about the suffering of the Japanese peasants entrusted to his pastoral care than about the danger of being captured and tortured himself, Father Rodrigues finds it more and more difficult to ignore the doubts about God’s real involvement in the painful events and the persecution unjustly suffered by the Christians, as well as about God’s very existence. God’s apparent lack of concern for the physical and psychological distress of the Japanese converts, for whom Father Rodrigues feels increasingly responsible, almost becomes a certainty that he can no longer oppose or ignore: “No, no! I shook my head. If God does not exist, how can man endure the monotony of the sea and its cruel lack of emotion? (But supposing… of course, supposing, I mean.) From the deepest core of my being yet another voice made itself heard in a whisper. Supposing God does not exist…”50 At a rational level, Father Rodrigues still seems capable of expressing his conviction: “If I consented to this thought, then my whole past to this very day was washed away in silence.”51 But at an emotional level, an inner voice echoes “from the depths of his being,” suggesting a different thought, an idea which challenges and calls into question the very nature of the mission he has enthusiastically undertaken in Japan. From this perspective, the inevitable capture of Father Rodrigues by the authorities after Kichijiro’s betrayal represents only another step on his inner path, a path that will lead him to recognize that voice as a necessary partner in his dialogue about his identity as a missionary and the real meaning of his relationship with God. But this process of spiritual discovery is still in its early stages, as confirmed by the frequent prayers with which Father Rodrigues tries to soothe his growing despair. “Lord, why are you silent, why are you always silent?”52 cries the missionary while the inner voice keeps besieging, incessantly and excruciatingly, his now all too fragile certainties. “‘What is happening to you?,’ he asked himself. ‘Are you beginning to lose your faith?,’ said the voice from the depths of his being. Yet, this voice filled him with disgust.”53 The profound aversion he feels because of that inner voice is rather justified: the thought of giving up his trust in God, who constantly supported him in his decisions and life of faith, remains well hidden under the ashes of the unconscious and, at least publicly, Father Rodrigues manages to project an appearance of spiritual confidence. It is this confidence that brings him to administer the sacrament of Reconciliation to his inmates and to exhort them with hopeful words: “The Lord will not abandon you forever. He it is who washes our wounds; his is the hand that wipes away our blood. The Lord will

49. Ibid., 92–3. 50. Ibid., 105. 51. Ibid., 106. 52. Ibid., 141. 53. Ibid., 145. japan | 123

not be silent forever.”54 However, his inner struggle to suppress and silence those feelings (which, based on the bleak outlook of the situation in which he and his Christian inmates find themselves, invite him to doubt his own words) seems destined to end with the unconditional surrender of all his previous convictions. After having witnessed the tragic choice that was forced upon his companion Father Garrpe—the choice between apostasy (leading to the release of the Christians who were sentenced to death with him) and martyrdom (leading to the inevitable execution of his fellow inmates)—Father Rodrigues draws the ultimate conclusions from the inner dialogue that took place in the recesses of his soul: “Did God really exist? If not, how ludicrous was half of his life spent traversing the limitless seas to come and plant the tiny seed in this barren island!… How ludicrous was the life of Garrpe, swimming in pursuit of the Christians in that little boat! Facing the wall, the priest laughed aloud.”55 It was necessary to look back at the psychological and spiritual distance covered by Father Rodrigues after his arrival in Japan in order to have a full grasp of the growing insecurity he experiences, both in his outward behavior and in his inner awareness, increasingly amplified by that voice which resurfaces every time the events surrounding the persecution of the Christians calls his faith into question. Without an overview of the troubled human itinerary undertaken by Father Rodrigues, both as a human being and as a person of faith, it would be difficult to understand not only his decision to abjure his faith and trample the fumie, but also the submissiveness and compliance with which, despite some forceful initial resistance, he seems to accept Father Ferreira’s motivations for considering their mission to Japan a failure, namely that the seed of Christianity cannot take root in the swamp of Japan, and that the Japanese believe in a God who has nothing to do with the Christian God.56 In fact, this reasoning is introduced just when Father Rodrigues seems to recognize for the first time the sense of the words uttered by that inner voice. Thus, Father Ferreira’s argumentative logic is now in perfect agreement with Father Rodrigues’ existential and spiritual situation:

“The reason I apostatized… are you ready? Listen! I was put in here and heard the voices of those people for whom God did nothing. God did not do a single

54. Ibid., 161. 55. Ibid., 211. 56. Ibid., 229–32: “‘The Japanese till this day have never had the concept of God; and they never will… The Japanese are not able to think of God completely divorced from man; the Japanese cannot think of an existence that transcends the human… The Japanese imagine a beautiful, exalted man—and this they call God. They call by the name of God something which has the same kind of existence as man. But that is not the Church’s God.’ ‘Is that the only thing you have learnt from your twenty years in this country?’ ‘Only that.’ Ferreira nodded in a lonely way. ‘And so the mission lost its meaning for me. The sapling I brought quickly decayed to its roots in this swamp. For a long time I neither knew nor noticed this… It’s not because of any prohibition nor because of persecution that Christianity has perished. There’s something in this country that completely stifles the growth of Christianity… The Christianity they believe in is like the skeleton of a butter- fly caught in a spider’s web: it contains only the external form; the blood and the flesh are gone’.” 124 | God Between the Lines

thing. I prayed with all my strength; but God did nothing… And while this [suffering] goes on, you do nothing for them. And God—he does nothing either.” The priest shook his head wildly, putting both fingers into his ears. But the voice of Ferreira together with the groaning of the Christians broke mercilessly in. “Stop! Stop! Lord, it is now that you should break the silence. You must not remain silent. Prove that you are justice, that you are goodness, that you are love. You must say something to show the world that you are the august one.”57

But God, despite the missionary’s repeated pleas, does not break His silence and makes no display of any transcendent power or miracle which might change the mind of His detractors and prove them wrong. It will be only in the closing pages of the novel, just before the Appendix, that Father Rodrigues, reflecting on his apostasy, will address Christ and say: “Lord, I resented your silence.” And a voice will answer: “I was not silent. I suffered beside you.’” Thus, the missionary will admit: “Our Lord was not silent. Even if he had been silent, my life until this day would have spoken of him.”58

in search of the japanese face of christ The theme of the “silence of God”, as we have presented it here, represents an important element in the novel and helps us to throw some light on the drama that is taking place in Father Rodrigues’ (as well as Father Ferreira’s) soul. However, as Endō warns us, and as the closing lines of the novel explicitly state, God did not remain silent before the terrible events of the persecution, but expressed Himself in ways that differ from those by which Father Rodrigues used to identify and interpret Him. In fact, as Endō says, “to me the most meaningful thing in the novel (Silence) is the change in the hero’s image of Christ.”59 And as J. Keuss comments, “the image of Jesus that had appeared to Rodrigues numerous times is that of a transcendent, static, and stoic Jesus; however, as Rodrigues resolves to

57. Ibid., 253–54. 58. Ibid., 285–86. 59. S. Endō, “Anguish of an Alien,” in The Japanese Christian Quarterly, 1974, 40/4: 181. Endō continues: “The hero, a foreigner, believed in a Jesus of majesty and power, an orderly Jesus who was even governed by order. This was the image conceived by Western artists. The novel’s hero brought this image with him to Japan, and from the strong face of Christ has gained courage to evangelize. After suffering many trials and frustrations, however, he was caught at last and brought before the Fumie. Standing there he saw an image of Christ he had never seen before, an image shaped by Japanese hands. It was not the orderly, European, but the worn out face of a Christ suffering as we suffer.” Some studies on Endō’s Christology: J. Netland, “Encountering Christ in Shusaku Endo’s Mudswamp of Japan,” in J. Hawley, Christian Encounters with the Other (New York: new York University Press, 1998), 166–81; A. Hoekema, “The ‘Christology’ of the Japanese Novelist Shusaku Endo,” in Exchange, 2000, 29/3: 230–48; J. Keuss, “The Lenten Face of Christ in Shusaku Endo’s Silence and Life of Jesus,” in The Expository Times, 2007, 118/6: 273–79; D. Hall, “Rethinking Christ: Theological Reflections on Shusaku Endo’s Silence,” in Interpretation, 1979, 33: 254–67. japan | 125

maintain this image of Christ, causing the death of many Japanese as a result, the face of Jesus begins to change into one marked by human suffering.”60 As I pointed out earlier, Father Rodrigues comes to Japan not only convinced of the appropriateness of the image of a powerful and victorious Christ that had been passed down to him through years of study in the seminary, but also determined to convey this sense of majesty and sacredness to the Japanese people. His soul brims with the vision of “a face of Christ resplendent with the authority of a king… [which] bears the expression of encouragement… a face filled with vigor and strength” that fascinates him “just like a man fascinated by the face of his beloved.”61 Initially, despite all the difficulties and uncertainties of his mission, Father Rodriegues’ attitude toward the future is one of trust and resoluteness. But soon the story records the subtle change which the image of Christ undergoes in the soul of the protagonist as he is first pursued and then captured by the shōgun’s men. At the beginning of his imprisonment, he retains a certain tranquility and serenity as he recalls some scenes from the life of Christ during his long hours of solitude:

From childhood the face of Christ had been for him the fulfillment of his every dream and ideal. The face of Christ as he preached to the crowd the Sermon on the Mount. The face of Christ as he passed over the Lake of Galilee at dusk. Even in its moments of terrible torture this face had never lost its beauty. Those soft, clear eyes which pierced to the very core of a man’s being were now fixed upon him. The face that could do no wrong, utter no word of insult. When the vision of this face came before him, fear and trembling seemed to vanish like the tiny ripples that are quietly sucked up by the sand of the sea-shore.62

But soon, as he is left to languish in his cell, he begins to identify his destiny with that of the suffering Christ of the passion, and that of a dejected and sorrowful Christ after he was betrayed by Judas.

This case was just like his own. He had been sold by Kichijiro as Christ had been sold by Judas; and like Christ he was now being judged by the powerful ones of this world. Yes, his fate and that of Christ were quite alike; and at this thought on that rainy night a tingling sensation of joy welled up within his breast. This was the joy of the Christian who relishes the truth that he is united to the Son of God. On the other hand, he had tasted none of the physical suffering that Christ had known; and this thought made him uneasy.63

60. J. Keuss, “Literature as Dōhansha in Silence,” in M. W. Dennis and D. J. N. Middleton, Approaching Silence. New Perspectives on Shusaku Endo’s Classic Novel, op. cit., 191. 61. S. Endō, Silence, op. cit., 35. 62. Ibid., 158. 63. Ibid., 191. 126 | God Between the Lines

We have already encountered such an expression of disappointment in the text, especially when Father Rodrigues examines the features of his own “tired, hollow face” reflected in a pool, reminding him of the face of “yet another man… the face of a crucified man.”64 And while he is unfamiliar with the physical sufferings of Christ, gradually his destiny begins to be juxtaposed to that of Christ, thus bringing him to a revaluation of the relationship between Christ and humanity. The image of Christ’s splendor and majesty is not completely blotted out in the mind of the protagonist. However, as he stands in front of the fumie, Father Rodrigues sees all signs of omnipotence and authority disappear from the image of Christ.

A simple copper medal is fixed on to a grey plank of dirty wood on which the grains run like little waves. Before him is the ugly face of Christ, crowned with thorns and the thin, outstretched arms. Eyes dimmed and confused the priest silently looks down at the face which he now meets for the first time since coming to this country.65

The face that Father Rodrigues is now contemplating is completely different from those he admired in Portugal, Rome, Goa, and Macao. This change in his look is significant because it is precisely when he observes Jesus’ sunken and exhausted eyes that he perceives how Christ accepted human fragility and took our finitude upon himself, thus coming to share intimately in our suffering. In fact, it is just when Father Rodrigues lifts his foot to trample on the fumie that Christ breaks his “silence” by inviting him to do it: “Trample! Trample! I more than anyone know of the pain in your foot. Trample! It was to be trampled on by men that I was born into this world. It was to share men’s pain that I carried my cross.”66 Suddenly Father Rodrigues discovers the true face of Christ. He discovers it, however, not in the theologia gloriæ which exalted the splendor of the resur- rection to the point of eclipsing the scandal of the crucified Christ, thus popularizing the image of a strong, uncompromising, and stern Church, a judgmental Church which is

64. Ibid., 103. 65. Ibid., 258. 66. Ibid., 259. W. Johnston, who translated the novel into English, renders the expression “踏みがいい” (fumi ga ii) with the imperative (“Trample! Trample!”), while M. B. Williams suggests that a more accurate translation would be “you should trample,” since the original Japanese does not contain an imperative, and the calm prompting expressed by those words seems to cohere better with the well-known image of Jesus as dōhansha, the companion who is close to us in our tribulations (cf. M. B. Williams, Endō Shūsaku. A Litera- ture of Reconciliation, op. cit., n. 15, 251). E. Mase-Hasegawa, on her part, suggests that the expression should be translated thus: “You may trample,” which highlights the tenderness and the “maternal love” of Christ for the missionary (cf. E. Mase-Hasegawa, Christ in Japanese Culture: Theological Themes in Shusaku Endo’s Literary Works op. cit., 99, n. 6). Both suggestions emphasize two important aspects of the new figure of the divine as it developed in Endō’s writings: God’s proximity or companionship, and God’s maternal face—two themes to which we will turn shortly. japan | 127

even intolerant of human weakness.67 Instead, he discovers it in the theologia crucis which contemplates Christ in his kenosis, as he disrobes himself of his divine nature to be close to those who are oppressed, without a voice, and suffering unjustly, thus offering them his compassion, his forgiveness, and his unconditional love. This new theological awareness about the figure of Christ leads Endō to elaborate some fundamental elements which, in his opinion, should characterize the encounter between the Christian faith and the Japanese spiritual worldview. One of the first elements that can be deduced from the text is the notion of Christ as the friend or companion (dōhansha) of humanity, as a God who, far from judging our faults, chooses instead to share in our pain and anguish.68 If God speaks, He does so within the silence of human suffering. Considered from this perspective, the scene in which Father Rodrigues tramples the fumie represents the true watershed in Endō’s entire literary production. Endō does not free the protagonist of his psychological torment (nor of his physical torture, which is not even mentioned in the text), but places near him a Christ who shares in his pain. In doing this, Endō brings about a revision of the Chris- tian faith in which he was raised as a child (a vision rooted in the Old Testament, where God takes delight in such acts as punishing, condemning, accusing, and blaming) and embraces a new vision (one in which Christ dies not only “for us” but also, and especially, “with us”). Instead of a distant, unreachable, and unknowable God, there now appears a Christ who, by sharing in our pain, meets us as a friend, a companion who listens to all our stories of anguish and despair, like a mother who gathers all of her children in her arms, regardless of their obedience or lack thereof. For Endō this discovery represents a true spiritual epiphany, as one might infer from his remarks in an essay he wrote after the novel.

In writing Silence I felt as though I had buried the distance I had formerly sensed between Christianity and myself. In short, that represents a change from Christianity as a paternal religion to Christianity as a maternal religion. The male image of Christ that the hero started out with is transformed into a female image.69

67. For example, Father Rodrigues expressed himself in these terms with regard to the apostate Kichijiro: “Faith could not turn a man into such a coward… Men are born into two categories: the strong and the weak, the saints and the commonplace, the heroes and those who respect them. In time of persecution the strong are burnt in the flames and drowned in the sea; but the weak, like Kichijiro, lead a vagabond life in the mountains.” And Endō writes about Father Rodrigues’ attitude toward his former mentor shortly before they met again: “For a long time he had felt almost no hatred for Ferreira, nothing but the pity a superior person feels for the wretched,” in Ibid., 39; 119; 200. 68. One may recall that Endō already introduced the theme of Christ as the “companion” of humanity in the novel, The Girl I Left Behind. Further analysis of this important concept can be found in E. Wills, “Christ as Eternal Companion: A Study in the Christology of Shusaku Endo,” in Scottish Journal of Theology, 1992, 45: 85–100. 69. Cited in M. B. Williams, Endō Shūsaku. A Literature of Reconciliation, op. cit., 122–23. 128 | God Between the Lines

This unprecedented awareness of the essence of the divine is the second element of Endō’s original view of the Christian faith adapted to a Japanese audience. He will return often, each time with increasing clarity, to this astounding figure of Christ as a mother. He will remark:

The image of Christ carved on the fumie was a maternal image, a woman seeking to suffer with her child and to share the child’s pain. It is not the paternal image to be found in so much Western art, the face of Christ resplendent with majesty and wearing an expression which represents the epitome of order and discipline… I intended this transformation to be the theme of Silence. I began to feel the gulf I had long felt between Christianity and me was due to the European overemphasis on the paternal aspect of religion. Christianity seemed distant to us Japanese because the other aspect, maternal religion, has been grossly neglected from the time of the early Christian missionaries down to the present.70

The difference outlined by Endō between the stern and inflexible paternal God of the Old Testament, and the gentle and compassionate maternal Christ of the New Testament, becomes also an expression of the difference between a Japanese and a European-missionary sensibility. As he remarks in his “American preface” of his A Life of Jesus:

My way of depicting Jesus is rooted in my being a Japanese novelist… The religious mentality of the Japanese is—just as it was at the time when the people accepted Buddhism—responsive to one who suffers with us and who allows for our weakness, but their mentality has little tolerance for one who judges humans harshly, then punishes them. In brief, the Japanese tend to seek in their Gods and Buddhas a warmhearted mother rather than a stern father. With this fact always in mind I tried not so much to depict God in the father image that tends to characterize Christianity, but rather to depict the kind hearted maternal aspect of God revealed to us in the personality of Jesus.71

And again:

A strict “paternal religion” that expresses wrath at human weakness, judges and punishes it, is not suited to the Japanese. The Japanese inevitably seek a gentle

70. S. Endō, “Anguish of an Alien,” op. cit., 181. 71. S. Endō, “A Preface to the American Edition,” in S. Endō, A Life of Jesus. Trans. R. A. Schuchert (New York: Paulist Press, 1978), 1. japan | 129

“maternal religion” that is understanding toward their weakness, that forgives it and on occasion suffers together with them.72

The notion of a maternal Christ, who welcomes and embraces all people regardless of their past and their faith, sits well with two more elements that Endō considers fundamental for the inculturation of Christianity in Japan. Now, we see two dialectics at work in the fabric of the novel: “weakness-strength” and “apostasy-martyrdom.” These dialectics challenge and at the same time overturn the all too Western priorities of Christian doctrine (i.e., strength and martyrdom) in favor of their weaker, yet not less significant, counterparts (i.e., weakness and, in a certain sense, apostasy). Concerning the problem of “human weakness” (or the “logic of the weakling”73), we may refer to a conversation between the magistrate Inoue and another Christian priest which Inoue is now recounting to Father Rodrigues:

72. Cited in D. Hirota, “Discerning the Marshland of this World: Silence from a Japanese Buddhist Per- spective,” in M. W. Dennis and D. J. N. Middleton, Approaching Silence. New Perspectives on Shusaku Endo’s Classic Novel, op. cit., 148. On Christ as a maternal figure see the study by E. Mase-Hasegawa,Christ in Japa- nese Culture: Theological Themes in Shusaku Endo’s Literary Works, op. cit. The author suggests that Endō tried to inculturate the Christian message by drawing from the cultural and religious tradition of the so-called Koshintō (古神道 or “Basic Shintō”), whose main features are: “syncretizing attitude, harmony in diversity, emotional element, loyalty to nature, inclination to amae [indulgent dependency rooted in the mother-child bond], and the feminine dimension of the divine” (op. cit., 28–44). As Mase-Hasegawa writes: “Although Endo in Silence did not explicitly describe Jesus Christ in feminine terms, many Japanese readers perceived his image of Christ as maternal; especially when his face on the fumie cried out in acceptance of people’s renunciation. I see in this feature an infinite embracement of the maternal, provided by koshinto spirituality,” in Ibid., 132–33. And later she continues: “It has been my hypothesis that the essential elements of Shinto have been carried down in the modern analytical concept of koshinto (Basic Shinto). Koshinto is the living root of the Japanese people and it continues to play an important role in their understanding of themselves. Conse- quently, koshinto is an integral part of Endo’s life, although not explicitly alluded to in his literature,” in Ibid., 183. This interpretation seems to be supported by the story of thekakure kirishitan, since the Christianity they preserved during the time of persecution—a kind of Christianity deprived of symbols and influences coming from the outside—developed along the lines of a local tradition, a tradition which Endō himself considers a successful attempt to inculturate Christianity in Japan: “The Japanese kakure, over the space of many years, stripped away all those parts of the religion that they could not embrace, and the teachings of God the Father were gradually replaced by a yearning after the Mother—a yearning which lies at the very heart of Japanese religion,” in S. Endō, “Mothers” in Stained Glass Elegies: Stories by Shusaku Endo. Trans. by Van C. Gessel (New York: New Direction Publishing, 1990), 126. I would like to add the contribution of a more “inclusivist” reading to this “nativist” interpretation. In this reading every human being instinctively desires to come close to the maternal figure of Christ. As L. Morton remarked, “Endō… has repeatedly linked the vision of Christ with images that strike a deep resonance from Japanese tradition… In Endō’s fictions we apprehend a grand dream, a dream of a Japanese Christ, more feminine than masculine, a Christ reminding us more of a Mother than a Father. Such a dream may frighten us or fascinate us, but its source surely derives from the same desire that rests within us, within all people, a desire profoundly spiritual that looks to the divine, to the good,” in L. Morton, “The Image of Christ in the Fiction of Endō Shūsaku,” in Working Papers in Japanese Studies 8 (Melbourne: Japanese Studies Centre, 1994), 13. On the concept of amae, see D. Cohen, “The God of Amae: Endo’s Silence Reconsidered,” in Japanese Religions, 1993, 19/1–2: 106–21. 73. The expression appears in the title of the publication of a dialogue between E. Shūsaku e Y. Miyoshi:文学—弱者の論理 (Bungaku—Jakusha no ronri, “Literature: Logic of the Weakling”), Kokubunngaku: kaishaku to kyōzai no kenkyū, 1973, 18/2: 22. 130 | God Between the Lines

Previously I have asked the question to other fathers: What is the difference between the mercy of the Christian God and that of the Buddha? For in Japan salvation is from the mercy of the Buddha upon whom people depend out of their hopeless weakness. And one father gave a clear answer: the salvation that Christianity speaks of is different; for Christian salvation is not just a question of relying on God—in addition the believer must retain with all his might a strength of heart. But it is precisely in this point that the teaching has slowly been twisted and changed in this swamp called Japan.74

Christianity seems to ask of its faithful a steadfast spirit, unwavering courage, and that kind of heroism which shines through the first letters that Father Ferreira sent to Europe.75 In Japan, however, Christianity has been transformed into something bizarre and unrecognizable. Inoue himself is forced to admit that the Japanese people are wholly incapable of subscribing to the moral strength and vigor which Christianity seems to require in return for the divine love in which they are made to share. Repeated exhorta- tions to be morally strong may well contribute to the character of the believer, and a genuine faith can make a person stronger and more dynamic. As a matter of fact, the question Kichijiro asks Father Rodrigues early in the novel seems to hide an echo of Job’s questions to God: “Why has Deus Sama given us this trial? We have done no wrong.”76 But can divine compassion require of someone more courage than he can muster? According to Endō, the Japanese inevitably change the perspective of this question and ask: “What of the weakling?” Or better yet, in Kichijiro’s words: “I was born weak. One who is weak at heart cannot die a martyr. Ah, why was I born into the world at all?”77 The initial answer we would expect from Father Rodrigues, namely that the believer (and a fortiori the missionary) is one who bravely bears all adversities for the good of the faith, the salvation of souls, and the spreading of the Gospel, soon becomes doubtful and uncertain. As well as the dreadful martyrdom of Father Garrpe and the two Christians, once again it is Kichijiro’s words that begin to shake Father Rodrigues’ spiritual resolution and determination:

Father! Father!… Won’t you listen to me, Father!… Yes, it is true that I trod on

74. S. Endō, Silence, op. cit., 281. In the novel The Golden Country, Inoue entertains this conversation with Father Ferreira, and the answer he recorded from the priest is even more emphatic: “Christian salvation is not merely relying on the compassionate God. A person must struggle to the end, to the very limits of his powers, so that his strength of spirit and the compassion of God intermingle as one. This is what Christians speak of as salvation,” in S. Endō, The Golden Country. Trans. F. Mathy (Tokyo: Tuttle, 1970), 126. 75. S. Endō, Silence, op. cit., 7: “He [Ferreira] was a theologian, too, of considerable ability, and in the time of persecution he had secretly made his way into the Kamigata region to pursue his apostolic work. From here the letters he sent to Rome overflowed with a spirit of indomitable courage.” 76. Ibid., 83. 77. Ibid., 247. japan | 131

the holy image. Mokichi and Ichizo were strong. I can’t be strong like them… But I have my cause to plead! One who has trod on the sacred image has his say too. Do you think I trampled on it willingly? My feet ached with the pain. God asks me to imitate the strong, even though he made me weak. Isn’t this unrea- sonable?… Father, what can I do, a weak person like me?78

Father Rodrigues’ immediate reaction to Kichijiro’s invocation is to feel sorry for him and turn to God by reciting the Creed. But when, toward the end of the novel Kichijiro returns to visit the missionary, who by now has trampled the fumie, Father Rodrigues refuses to listen to his confession, saying: “I’m no longer ‘Father’… Go away quickly… I’m a fallen priest.’”79 However, upon reflecting on how he “had lowered his foot on to the plaque, sticky with dirt and blood” and “pressed upon the face of one he loved,” the missionary reconsiders the imperceptibly thin line that separates the “weak” from the “strong” and ends up agreeing with Kichijiro that “there are neither the strong nor the weak. Can anyone say that the weak do not suffer more than the strong?… Since in this country there is now no one else to hear your confession, I will do it…”80 For Father Rodrigues the distinction between the “weak” and the “strong” is no longer as sharp and clear-cut as it used to be. The distance that has been established, and which he now perceives between his fellow priests back in Europe (who “no doubt… would condemn his act as sacrilege”81) and his new identity as a “weak and inert missionary”, is somehow compensated by his growing empathy for Kichijiro. And just like the “strength” of those who dedicated their entire lives to the spreading of the Gospel now appears to him less heroic than it used to, so the “weakness” of those who, like Kichijiro (as well as Father Ferreira), “capitulated” in the face of unpredictable and distressing events now appears less blameworthy and shameful than it did before. The radical transformation that took place in Father Rodrigues, urging him to recon- sider the pair “steadfastness-weakness” in the believer’s relationship to his faith, is inevitably reflected in another pair, which, until that point, had been thought to be immune to all reconsideration: “martyrdom” and “apostasy.”82 After his capture, Father Rodrigues is informed that if he decides to stay true to his faith, it is not he who will undergo martyrdom, but the Japanese Christians. A few moments before he witnesses the death of

78. Ibid., 174. For reasons of space I cannot dwell on the important role played by Kichijiro in the economy of the novel. But it is clear that for Endō this character is of the utmost importance, as on several occasions “he responded to protests that the novel glorified the apostate Kichijiro with the simple declaration: ‘Kichijiro is me’,” cited in C. Van Vessel, “Silence in Opposite Shores: Critical Reactions to the Novel in Japan and the West,” in M. W. Dennis and D. J. N. Middleton, Approaching Silence. New Perspectives on Shusaku Endo’s Classic Novel, op. cit., 40, n. 35. 79. S. Endō, Silence, op. cit., 284. 80. Ibid., 285–86. 81. Ibid., 286. 82. The term “apostasy” translates the Japanese word korobu (転ぶ). Etymologically, karobu does not have religious connotations but simply means “to trip and fall”, “to tumble.” The Japanese term for a forced recantation of one’s faith or political creed is tenkō (転向) or “about-face.” 132 | God Between the Lines

his confrere Father Garrpe and other Japanese Christians, the translator informs Father Rodrigues that

“If Father Garrpe apostatizes—well, in a word, all three lives will be spared. In any case, these three have already apostatized. Yesterday, at the magistrate’s office they trampled on the fumie.” “They trampled… and yet this cruelty… even now.” The priest stammered as he spoke, but words did not come… He had come to this country to lay down his life for other men, but instead of that the Japanese were laying down their lives one by one for him. What was he to do? According to the doctrine he learnt until now, it was possible to pass judgment on certain actions distinguishing right from wrong and good from evil. If Garrpe shook his head in refusal, these three Christians would sink like stones in the bay. If he gave in to the solicitations of the officials, this would mean the betrayal of his whole life. What was he to do?83

The dilemma that Endō intends to depict in this scene is therefore twofold. On the one hand, our attention is drawn to a “martyrdom in reverse,” in which it is the Japanese who die for the missionaries, not viceversa. On the other hand, we witness the missionary’s own hidden conflict, in which the choice is not between betraying one’s faith or staying true to it by accepting martyrdom for the sake of the Gospel (Father Garrpe and Father Rodrigues were prepared to accept the latter option), but rather between staying true to one’s faith (thereby sentencing some Japanese believers to death) and recanting it (thereby saving the lives of those Christians who no longer believed, since they had already apostatized—an element which adds further depth to the drama). The same dilemma reappears later in the dialogue between the apostate Father Fer- reira and Father Rodrigues, who is now in prison. After a sleepless night due to what he thought was someone snoring on the other side of the wall of his cell, Father Rodrigues is informed by Father Ferreira, who came to visit him, that the noise he hears are the moans and rasping breaths of the Christians hanging in the pit. Father Ferreira tells his confrere that a few years earlier he had the same experience:

When I spent that night here five people were suspended in the pit. Five voices were carried to my ears on the wind. The official said: “If you apostatize, those people will immediately be taken out of the pit, their bonds will be loosed, and we will put medicine on their wounds.” I answered: “Why do these people not apostatize?” And the official laughed as he answered me: “They have already apostatized many times. But as long as you don’t apostatize these peasants cannot be saved.”84

83. Ibid., 202–3. 84. Ibid., 255. japan | 133

The dramatic choice facing Father Rodrigues is now coldly summarized by his fellow priest: “If you say that you will apostatize, those people will be taken out of the pit. They will be saved from suffering. And you refuse to do so. It’s because you dread to betray the Church. You dread to be the dregs of the Church, like me… A priest ought to live in imitation of Christ. If Christ were here… certainly Christ would have apostatized for them. Even if it meant giving up everything he had.”85 And while the translator places the fumie on the ground for Father Rodrigues to trample it and reminds him that to trample it is a mere formality, an exterior gesture which would not undermine in the least the genuineness of his faith, Father Ferreira speaks these last words to his confrere:

Now you are going to perform the most painful act of love that has ever been performed… Your brethren in the Church will judge you as they have judged me. But there is something more important than the Church, more important than missionary work: what you are now about to do.86

By trampling the fumie, Father Rodrigues becomes aware that through that extreme gesture he is not betraying Jesus Christ and his love, but rather that image of the Church which no longer speaks to his experience of suffering and the dreadful events that befell the Japanese Christians. Further still, Father Rodrigues realizes that Jesus himself was considered an “apostate” by his own people and that ironically, by becoming a traitor, he is following more closely that kenotic Christ, who emptied himself of his divinity and “made his dwelling among us” (Jn 1:14).87 Through his heart-wrenching choice, Father Rodrigues discovers that Christ no longer rules in glory, but has become an inseparable companion of his suffering, as well as of the suffering of all the people who intend to share in His fellowship.88 Therefore, Father Rodrigues’ gesture cannot be interpreted as the act of an apostate, but rather as the very opposite of such an act: a gesture of extreme and ultimate conversion, a gesture which, as Endō seems to suggest, must be performed by all those who, wishing to remain faithful to Christ’s message, intend to preach Him and live Him in these islands so far from Western spirituality and theologies.

85. Ibid., 256–57. 86. Ibid., 257–58. On the issue of apostasy, see D. Washburn, “Is Abjection a Virtue?: Silence and the Trauma of Apostasy,” in M. W. Dennis and D. J. N. Middleton, Approaching Silence. New Perspectives on Shusaku Endo’s Classic Novel, op. cit., 205–21. 87. S. Endō, A Life of Jesus, op. cit., 92: “His enemies considered Jesus not only a false prophet, but also an apostate.” 88. Ibid., 145: “A person begins to be a follower of Jesus only by accepting himself the risk of becoming one of the powerless people in the visible world.” 134 | God Between the Lines

Concluding Remarks Endō remarks: “In Silence, I sought to portray not the silence of God—but the way in which God speaks through man… I wanted to show that God, who appears superficially oblivious to human suffering and misery, actually speaks through a medium other than w ord s .” 89 This observation, along with the fact that Endō frequently felt the need to emphasize the intention of his work, certainly bears witness to the sensitivity and theological implications associated with the novel ever since it was published. We may say that the most important of these implications concerns the spiritual struggle and the final choice made by the main character, Father Rodrigues. In fact, his struggle and choice manifest the difficult transition he underwent from a eurocentric and ecclesiocentric view of the message of the Gospel to one that is more decentralized and suitable to the Japanese context and sensitivity. Jean Higgins describes this transition as a kind of spiritual metamorphosis that transforms the “Western Rodrigues” into a “Rodrigues of the East.” The Western Rodrigues is characterized as

the young missionary who comes to Japan with dedicated aggressiveness, bearing in heart and mind the image of a transcendent God of power and might. The image of Christ constantly before his mind’s eye is that of the risen Christ, serene in conquest; a Christ of glory, whose example calls for heroism in his followers, for fidelity unto death, even martyrdom.

By contrast, what the “Rodrigues of the East” finds in the face of the fumie is

a kenotic God… a weak and powerless Christ who shows himself understanding of the weak, who has compassion with the betrayer, who knows well the pain in the foot of the apostate who tramples upon his face.90

This description may seem excessively “essentialistic,” since it does not take into account the subtleties and shades that characterize Endō’s description of the profound “conversion” of the missionary. Nevertheless, it cannot be denied that the longer Father Rodrigues stays in Japan, the more his view of Christ is transformed. Or rather, the longer Father Rodrigues experiences in himself the life of the Japanese Christians (with its heavy burden of tortures, oppressions, and apostasies), the more Japanese his interpretation of Christianity becomes. Suffice it to think that in order to understand how the face of Christ appears to the Japanese, Father Rodrigues has to experience for himself the pain of apostasy which the Christians must undergo; or the fact that, just like many Japanese

89. Cited in M. B. Williams, Endō Shūsaku. A Literature of Reconciliation, op. cit., 128. 90. J. Higgins, “The Inner Agon of Endo Shusaku,” in Cross Currents, 1984–5/34: 421. On the transformation taking place in Faher Rodrigues, see also H. Sano, “The Transformation of Father Rodrigues in Shusaku Endo’s Silence,” in Christianity and Literature, 1999, 48/2: 165–75. japan | 135

Christians in the novel (who, with the exception of Kichijiro, rarely speak of their faith and are presented rather as silent witnesses of a dangerous and persecuted faith), in the last pages of the book Father Rodrigues completely disappears, having been silenced and forced to experience the kind of existence required by the culture and social condition in which he now participates. In fact, for Endō it is only through this extreme and total participation that the missionary is now able to adapt in a meaningful way the newly discovered face of Christ (i.e., the Christ companion of humanity, the Christ with maternal traits, the weak and kenotic Christ who suffers with those who are tortured and forgives the apostates) to the Japanese context, and finally hear the voice of God who speaks to him beyond the silence.91 The transformation of Father Rodrigues’ faith is thus highly evocative, and the indica- tions for a respectful inculturation of the Christian message in Japan which Endō seems to offer in Silence are certainly noteworthy. However, along with my admiration for the novel, at the end of this study I would also like to voice some perplexities that sponta- neously dawned on me as I was reading it. The first question concerns the contrast between the reasons provided by the magistrate Inoue to consider Christianity unsuitable for Japan and the acceptance of the same faith by many Japanese. In fact, the words that Endō puts in Inoue’s mouth seem very similar to those with which the author describes his own personal relationship to Chris- tianity. As he interrogates Father Rodrigues, Inoue remarks:

“Father, don’t you think it is better for this man called Japan to stop thinking about women from foreign countries and to be united with a woman born in the same country, a woman who has sympathy for his way of thinking… If love of husband and wife were based only on emotion no one would have to suffer from what we call the persistent love of an ugly woman.” “You look upon missionary work as the forcing of love upon someone?” “Yes, that’s what it is—from our standpoint. And if you don’t like the expression, let’s put it this way. We call a woman who cannot bear children barren; and we think that such a woman has not the capacity to be a wife.” “If our doctrine makes no progress here in Japan, this is not the fault of the Church. It is the fault of those who tear the Japanese Christians from the Church like a husband from his wife”… “Father,” said the Lord of Chikugo, “you and the other missionaries do not seem to know Japan.” “And you, honorable magistrate,” answered the priest, “you do not seem to know Christianity.” At this they both laughed… “Father, I want you to think over

91. As A. Ascenso writes: “For Shūsako Endō, the ‘silence’ in his novel Chinmoku is not the absence of words or the lack of a message from God in the face of suffering. The meaning is, rather, that inside of that ‘silence’ there is a hidden voice we have to learn to listen to, hidden signs we have to learn to decipher in order to perceive the whisper of God beyond the silence,” in A. Ascenso, “Theological ‘Burning Points’ in the Novel Chinmoku [Silence],” in Didaskalia xxxix, 1: 210. The author returns to this thesis and adds to it in his Transcultural Theodicy in the Fiction of Shūsaku Endō (Roma: Pontificia Università Gregoriana, 2009). 136 | God Between the Lines

two things this old man has told you. One is that the persistent affection of an ugly woman is an intolerable burden for a man; the other, that a barren woman should not become a wife.’92

Inoue’s words, their rhetorical power notwithstanding, seem to ignore the simple fact that many Japanese did decide to embrace Christianity despite its “ugliness” and “barrenness,” and that—ironically—Inoue had to resort to persecution to uproot this faith (this love) from the heart of the people. In other words, the logic by which Inoue views Christianity as a woman who is too ugly and barren for Japan reveals much of Inoue’s (or Endō’s?) true sentiments rather than what took place historically.93 My second and last observation is of a theological nature and concerns the solutions that Endō wishes to offer us for a respectful inculturation of the message of the Gospel in Japan. As I pointed out several times, Father Rodrigues’ story ends with the recognition that his previous view of God and Christ was too distant from that of the Japanese and incomprehensible to them. After this painful conversion, sealed with the gesture of trampling the fumie, we hear him say: “No doubt his fellow priests would condemn his act as sacrilege; but even if he was betraying them, he was not betraying his Lord. He loved him now in a different way from before. Everything that had taken place until now had been necessary to bring him to this love.”94 Immediately after this, the novel ends with the Appendix, in which we are given an account of the last earthly events in Father Rodrigues’ life as well as the news of his death. Father Rodrigues seems to have disappeared completely in the Japanese community and culture: his name is now Okada San’emon, his job is to draft a disavowal of his former religion, and his presence, if it weren’t for the two guards standing outside his house, would be indistinguishable from that of any other Japanese. Not even once is he allowed to speak during the last years of his life… Thus, in reading these last pages one might ask: Is this perhaps the “last temptation” to which Endō surrenders in his attempt to suggest a respectful inculturation of the Gospel in Japan? His final proposal is certainly mindful of the new face of Christ, but doesn’t it inexorably lead to reducing Christianity to a simple variation or manifestation of culture? This would seem to be the case if one considers how the missionary has now completely disappeared from the narration, definitively drowned in the “swamp” of Japan. But can a Gospel which has been swallowed up by culture still be called “Gospel”? Or isn’t the “Gos- pel” rather that which “resists” every perfect and total inculturation, always maintaining the space where it may exercise its critical and prophetic function on different historical situations? Isn’t the “Gospel” the eternal and ever new vision that God has of humanity,

92. S. Endō, Silence, op. cit., 187–89. 93. It is calculated that “within thirty years, Christians (were) numbering three hundred thousand out of a total population of twenty million,” in M. Hoffmann, In the Land of the Kami. A Journey into the Hearts of Japan (Texas: Virtualbookworm, 2016), 128. 94. S. Endō, Silence, op. cit., 286. japan | 137

a vision which eludes every simplistic notion that humanity has of God?95 Endō was certainly prophetic when he identified the gap that had been opened between a certain idea of God imported from abroad and the particular Japanese interpretation of this idea. Per- haps, the missing step in Endō’s narrative was to present Father Rodrigues as a missionary who is dissatisfied even with his new conversion, a missionary “ever striving for” (and, therefore, “always open to”) new manifestations of the divine, a missionary who is always learning at the school of Christ in spite of his successful inculturation. In any event, although Endō ran the risk of reducing the Gospel to culture, his novel certainly remains a literary masterpiece, a story acutely topical and universal. In a word, and as his friend Graham Greene remarked, Silence remains “one of the finest novels of our time.”96

95. The words that best express what I am trying to say are those of Paul vi, who his Apostolic Exhortation Evangelii Nuntiandi states: “The Gospel, and therefore evangelization, are certainly not identical with culture, and they are independent in regard to all cultures. Nevertheless, the kingdom which the Gospel proclaims is lived by men who are profoundly linked to a culture, and the building up of the kingdom cannot avoid borrowing the elements of human culture or cultures. Though independent of cultures, the Gospel and evangelization are not necessarily incompatible with them; rather they are capable of permeating them all without becoming subject to any one of them. The split between the Gospel and culture is without a doubt the drama of our time, just as it was of other times. Therefore every effort must be made to ensure a full evangelization of culture, or more correctly of cultures. They have to be regenerated by an encounter with the Gospel. But this encounter will not take place if the Gospel is not proclaimed” (n. 20). Endō’s final novel, Deep River, takes his reflections on the “dispersion” or “annihilation” of God in culture to its extreme consequences. Endō writes: “God has many different faces. I do not think God exists exclusively in the churches and chapels of Europe. I think he is also among the Jews and the Buddhists and the Hindus,” in S. Endō, Deep River, op. cit., 121. But in this way, the “God with many faces” ends up having none. The idea of God that survives in Endō is that of the “God-mother,” now presented in the figures of the goddess Chamunda and of the Ganges river. For a discussion of these two maternal figures, see E. Mase-Hasegawa, Christ in Japanese Culture: Theological Themes in Shusaku Endo’s Literary Works, op. cit., 151–53. 96. The citation is from the back cover of the English language edition of the novel. 138 | God Between the Lines

Works of Endō Shūsaku in English

2014 White Man/Yellow Man. Trans. T. Shimitsu. New York: Paulist Press. 2013 Kiku’s Prayer. Trans. Van C. Gessel. New York: Columbia University Press. 2003 Song of Sadness. Trans. T. Shimitsu. Ann Arbor, MI: University pf Michigan Center for Japanese Studies. 1994 The Girl I Left Behind. Trans. Mark Williams. London: Peter Owen. 1994 Deep River. Trans. Van C. Gessel. London: Peter Owen. 1994 The Final Martyrs: Stories by Shūsaku Endō. Trans. Van C. Gessel. London: Peter Owen. 1990 Stained Glass Elegies: Stories by Shūsaku Endō. Trans. Van C. Gessel. New York: New Direction Publishing. 1989 Foreign Studies. Trans. M. Williams. London: Peter Owen. 1988 Scandal. Trans. Van C. Gessel. London: Peter Owen. 1983 Wonderful Fool. Trans. M. Gallagher. London: Peter Owen. 1982 The Samurai. Trans. Van C. Gessel. London: Peter Owen. 1980 Volcano. Trans. R. A. Schuchert. London: Peter Owen. 1979 When I Whistle. Trans. Van C. Gessel. London: Peter Owen. 1978 A Life of Jesus. Trans. R. A. Schuchert. New York: Paulist Press. 1972 The Sea and Poison. Trans. M. Gallagher. London: Peter Owen. 1970 The Golden Country. Trans. F. Mathy. Tokyo: Tuttle. 1969 Silence. Trans. W. Johnston. Tokyo: Sophia University & Tuttle.

References

Anesaki, Masaharu 1930 “Japanese Criticisms and Refutations of Christianity in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries.” In Transactions of the Asiatic Society of Japan, 7: 1–15. Ascenso, Adelino 2009 Transcultural Theodicy in the Fiction of Shūsaku Endō. Roma: Pontificia Università Gre- goriana. 2009 “Theological ‘Burning Points’ in the NovelChinmoku .” In Didaskalia xxxix, 1: 187–210. Boscaro, Adriana 1997 “‘Una letteratura compagna dell’uomo per l’eternità’. Ricordo di Endō Shūsaku.” In Asi- atica Venetiana, 2: 3–17 Boxer, Charles 1967 The Christian Century in Japan 1549–1650. Berkeley: University of California Press. Burger, David 2000 “Kirishitan—Early Christianity in Japan.” In Japanese Religions, 25/1–2: 162–64. Cohen, Doron 1993 “The God of Amae: Endo’s Silence Reconsidered.” In Japanese Religions, 19/1–2: 106–21. japan | 139

Dennis, Mark W. and Middleton Darren J. N. 2015 Approaching Silence: New Perspectives on Shusaku Endo’s Classic Novel. New York and London: Bloomsbury Academic. Durfee, Richard E. 1989 “Portrait of an Unknowingly Ordinary Man. Endo Shusaku, Christianity and Japanese Historical Consciousness.” In Japanese Journal of Religious Studies, 16/1: 40–61. Endō, Junko 1999 “Reflections on Shusaku Endo and Silence.” In Christianity and Literature, 48/2: 145–48. Endō, Shūsaku 1974 “The Anguish of an Alien.” In Japan Christian Quarterly, 40/4: 179–85. 1970 “Concerning the Novel Silence.” In Japan Christian Quarterly, 36/2: 100–3. Fugita, Neil S. 1991 Japan’s Encounter with Christianity: The Catholic Mission in Pre-Modern Japan. New York: Paulist Press. Gessel, Van C. 1999 “Hearing God in Silence. The Fiction of Endo Shusaku.” In Christianity and Literature, 48/2: 149–64. 1982 “Voices in the Wilderness: Japanese Christian Authors.” In Monumenta Nipponica, 37/4: 437–57. Grigore, Rodica 2010 “Shusaku Endo: From the Silence of the East to the Silence of God.” In Theory in Action, 3/1: 7–23. Hall, Douglas 1979 “Rethinking Christ: Theological Reflections on Shusaku Endo’s Silence.” In Interpreta- tion, 33: 254–67. Higashibaba, Ikuo 2001 Christianity in Early Modern Japan: Kirishitan Belief and Practice. Leiden, Boston, Köln: Brill. Higgins, Jean 1984–5 “The Inner Agon of Endo Shusaku.” In Cross Currents, 4: 414–26. Hoekema, Alle 2000 “The ‘Christology’ of the Japanese Novelist Shusaku Endo.” In Exchange, 29/3: 230–48. Keuss, Jeffrey 2007 “The Lenten Face of Christ in Shusaku Endo’s Silence and Life of Jesus.” In The Exposi- tory Times, 118/6: 273–79. Inoue, Masamichi 2012 “Reclaiming the Universal Intercultural Subjectivity in the Life and Work of Endo Shu- saku.” In Southeast Review of Asian Studies, 34: 153–70. Mase-Hasegawa, Emi 2008 Christ in Japanese Culture: Theological Themes in Shusaku Endo’s Literary Works. Leiden: Brill Academic Publishing. 140 | God Between the Lines

2003 “Image of Christ for Japanese: Reflection on Theology Implicit in Shusaku Endo’s Liter- ary Works.” In Inter-religio, 43: 22–33. Mathy, Francis 1967 “Shusaku Endo: Japanese Catholic Novelist.” In Thought, Winter: 585–614. Morton, Leith 1994 “The Image of Christ in the Fiction of Endō Shūsaku.” In Working Papers in Japanese Studies 8. Melbourne: Japanese Studies Centre. Mullins, Mark R. ed. 2003 Handbook of Christianity in Japan. Brill Academic Publishers. Netland, John 1998 “Encountering Christ in Shusaku Endo’s Mudswamp of Japan.” In J. Hawley, Christian Encounters with the Other. New York: new York University Press, 166–81. Ninomiya, Chindy 1990 “Endō Shūsaku: Bridging the Gap between Christianity and Japanese Culture.” In Japan Christian Quarterly, 56/4: 227–36. Sano, Hitoshi 1999 “The Transformation of Father Rodrigues in Shusaku Endo’s Silence.” In Christianity and Literature, 48/2: 165–75. Tokunaga, Michio 1989 “A Japanese Transformation of Christianity: Rambling Notes on Reading Shusaku Endo’s Silence.” In Japanese Religions, 15/3: 45–54. Turnbull, Stephen 1998 The Kakure Kirishitan of Japan: A Study of Their Development, Beliefs and Rituals to the Present Day. London: Routledge. Whelan, Christal 1996 The Beginning of Heaven and Earth: The Sacred Book of Japan’s Hidden Christians. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. 1993 “Loss of the Signified among the Kakure Krishitan.” In Japanese Religions, 19/1–2: 82–105. Williams, Mark B. 1999 Endō Shūsaku. A Literature of Reconciliation. London and New York: Routledge. 1996 “Inner Horizons. Towards Reconciliation in Endō Shūsaku’s The Samurai”. In Japan Christian Review, 62: 74–96. Williams, Philip 1983 “Images of Jesus in Japanese Fiction.” In Japan Christian Quarterly, 49/1: 12–22. Wills, Elisabeth 1992 “Christ as Eternal Companion: A Study in the Christology of Shusaku Endo.” In Scottish Journal of Theology, 45: 85–100. Taiwan

Luigino Marchioron

We all, teachers, principals, pastors, parents, pupils can be signs of a different world where everyone is recognized accepted, included, dignified, and not only for their usefulness but for their intrinsic value, as human beings, as children of God. Francis

The social doctrine of the Catholic Church places the human person at the heart and source of social order. Benedict xvi

Paul vi more than once indicated the “civilization of love” as the goal towards which all efforts in the cultural and social fields as well as in the economic and political fields should tend. St. John Paul ii

The old story of the Samaritan has been the model of the spirituality of the Council. A feeling of boundless sympathy has permeated the whole of it. Blessed Paul vi 142 | God Between the Lines

ector, si monumentum requiris, circumspice. “Reader, if you seek a monument [to this man], look around you!”. Huang Chun Ming 黃春明 (1935–) is a gentle and quiet man. He has never thoughtL to erect for himself any monument; nor does he expect it from his friends. How- ever, his credentials display many literary productions renowned nationally and interna- tionally.1 He has been recognized as a national treasure writer (guo bao ji zuo jia 國寶級作家) and a symbol of Taiwanese literature. Courage is the person who is able to see beyond and passion is love that puts the wings to life. Huang Chun Ming is a courageous and passionate person. He has been committed for many years to harvesting mature “literary sheaves” present in the local culture. On 11 March, 2016, during a rainy and cold afternoon, Huang Chun Ming granted me an interview.2 He welcomed me into a peaceful rustic wooden café where local university students meet. Despite his weakened health condition due to chemotherapy, his genuineness and gentleness accompanied all his hand gestures; his luminous eyes touched by suffering, his words, his sighs, his repeated movement of wiping off the sweat dripping down from his forehead. He introduced himself as a simple farmer (Nong Fu 農夫) and at the end of our conversation, he said goodbye by reminding me once again of his agricultural status: “The art of farming, that is, the art of cultivating the soil (rice crops, dao zi 稻子) helps me write. By farming we help people eat. Literature also has to help people ‘eat’. The Holy Scripture helps people ‘eat’”.3 The purpose of this essay is to investigate, through the eyes of the writer, the commitment of his literature to constantly give testimony of “ordinary” people’s lives by distinguishing between “reality” and “real”. Reality can be the object of a representation; real is what escapes from its representation. Real is able to pierce reality, expanding the space of what is not symbolic or immediately comprehensible. Real is a fundamental dimension of human experience. It makes a person more human. And real is the most important pillar of his short stories. During the interview, the writer, of his own initiative, confidently shared two “real” personal memories that touched him deeply. This unexpected sharing transformed our meeting from a formal interview to a conversation permeated with humanity:

1. Literary production: 112 works in 490 publications in 5 languages and 4,351 library holdings. Genres: Fiction, Juvenile works, Drama, Film adaptations, Criticism, Interpretation, etc., Biography, Picture books. 2. This interview would not have been possible without the providential mediation of three people: the good suggestion of Dr. Zeng Sheng Yi (曾聖益) professor at the Faculty of Literature at Fu Jen Catholic Uni- versity (輔仁大學) in Taipei who kindly introduced me to the literary work of Huang Chun Ming; the maternal attitude of Wang Hui Fang 王蕙芳, a Kindergarten teacher of Fine Arts who is a close friend of the writer and made the encounter possible; and the patience and competence of my student, Yi Wen Qiu 意雯邱, enrolled in the course of Old Testament at the Theological Faculty of St. Robert Bellarmine, in Taipei (輔仁聖博敏神學院). With her perfect knowledge of Min Nan Yu (閩南語), Taiwanese language, or Hokkien, she helped me understand the root and the value of many words used by the writer, his mother tongue. 3. Huang Chun Ming, personal communication, March 11, 2016 in Shi Lin (士林), Taipei. My translation. taiwan | 143

When I was in Kaohsiung (高雄), I received a telephone call saying that a woman in her fifties was being treated for cancer in intensive care at the local hospital. She had expressed the desire to see Huang Chun Ming! There was no more hope for her to survive! The doctor asked whether Huang Chun Ming was one of her relatives. “No,” she answered, “I am just one of his readers.” I went to visit her. As she saw me, she said: “Mr. Huang, it has been a long time since you have written your last short story.” Her surname was Guan (關). She only had graduated from senior high school (高中). She continued: “Mr. Huang…” and she started recalling several leading roles such as “White Rose,” Bai Mei 白玫 or “Silly Qin,” Han Qin Kai 憨欽仔 of my stories (“Days of Watching the Sea,” Kan Hai De Ri Zi 看海的日子) and “Gong”, Luo 鑼). I wiped my tears and answered: “Ok, I will write again, but you have to wait for me!” She replied: “Too late!” After one week she passed away. I went to her burial. She really read all these short stories!

Another example is about a senior high school student. I was invited by the principal of a school to give a speech to the students. After the conference, the principal accompanied me to take a cab. While I was about to board the taxi, the girl student rushed towards me shouting: “Master Huang, Master Huang, please, wait a moment. I have a letter for you. Please, read it only when you are at home.” The principal was a bit upset with this! When the taxi driver was driving me home, I opened the letter and read: “Thank you very much, Master Huang, for teaching us. I cut my wrists three times. I wanted to commit suicide. But when I read your short stories and the poems you wrote for children, I cried a lot and turned back to my dad and mum. It has already been six years since my attempts. I stopped attempting suicide. Thank you for saving my life!” I do not know… but I am a simple farmer… I grew rice crops (dao zi 稻子) ! ”. 4 His short stories are full of “faces”, “ordinary dialogues,” “tears,” “neighborhood temples” (si miao 寺廟) and “folk religion” tenets (ming jian zong jiao 民間宗教), “banyan trees,” (rong shu 榕樹), “bonito fish,” (jian yu 鲣鱼), “sparrows,” (ma que 麻雀) and “sweet pota- toes” (di gua 地瓜), “rice” (mi fan 米飯), “salted eggs” (xian dan 鹹蛋), “scarecrows” (dao cao ren 稻草人), “lunchboxes” (bian dang 便當), the intense tropical sun, etc. His characters often show strong and mystical attachment to their natural environment. Most of his characters are undereducated, underprivileged and poor people from the lowest of the social rungs. His stories constantly reveal the gaze of the writer to combat social exclusion and marginalization, to reduce inequality, to promote recognition of diversity, to instigate intercultural and interreligious dialogue, to reveal the challenges posed by the rapid change of pace in urban areas, to defeat anonymity, to facilitate integration, and to educate about respect, solidarity and hospitality.

4. Ibid. 144 | God Between the Lines

To my first question about how he would define literature, he answered:

Language is a living reality. For example, if I use the verb “tao yan 討厭” and I check the meaning of these two characters in the dictionary, I understand that “tao yan 討厭” means “xian qi 嫌棄” or “bu xi huan 不喜歡,” that is, “I dislike,” “I don’t like,” or “I hate (doing something).” However, language is very much alive (sheng dong 生動). It breathes! I can simply say, in a friendly and intimate conversation: “Ni zui tao yan 你最討厭!” that is “Ah, I hate you, my friend!,” but I can use exactly the same verb when I am pretty upset: “I do hate you!,” or even more irritated and angry: “I really do hate you!”. This understanding goes beyond the characters themselves! When we talk about universal values such as the Chinese axiom Zhong Xiao Jie Yi (忠孝節義), that is loyalty, filial piety, personal integrity, and righteousness,5 people, regardless of their literacy or economical condition, comprehend them. Many times we find that these values are lacking in those who have high academic background or hold high governmental positions. The reason is because “language” (yu yan 語言) and “action” (xing dong 行動) are separated: language does not turn into action. The Chinese characters can be memorized; however life has to be fulfilled and realized. When language abandons life, then it becomes void. It loses its authority. Literature is education to life. It is like when the Bible says that: “In the beginning was the Word and the Word became flesh”. If a person is well-learned, but does not have life education, then he or she will not be able to fully join the experience of life of other people. He might be able to write beautiful words, but he will not become a bridge (qiao liang 橋樑) between the narration (xu shu 敘述) and the heart and mind of the reader. When I write short stories, through the letters (characters), my intention is to allow the reader to join, to enter into the “world” of the story: the family of a worker, a mother giving birth to several kids, her little daughter, an elderly person, a young boy who wants to bring a fish home to show his grandfather; a rice cooker salesman; a rainy day, etc. If the reader says: “How pitiful it is,” then it is not me, the writer, who says that, but the reader! It is the reader who, by personally joining this experience of life narrated in the story, expresses his own personal immersion and assimilation. The writer with his narration offers the opportunity to join an experience of love, misery, abandonment, false commiseration, abjection, contempt or disdain, etc. The reader is called to a kind of exercise of assimilation to enter the narrative world of the writer, that is to enter into a painful or joyful experience and “re-live” it. It is not just a matter of an idea to communicate; rather it is offering the reader the possibility of qualita-

5. Through this proverb, the ancients stressed the values of “loyalty to the country, filial piety, personal integrity towards the consort and righteousness towards friends”. It also becomes the personal commitment of loyalty to the country, to the parents, to the consort and to friends (對國家盡忠, 對父母盡孝, 對夫妻盡節, 對朋友盡義). taiwan | 145

tive participation in the narration and the ability to become aware of opposing forces in every human experience. Life is the first classroom where we learn. Literature has the objective of offering the reader the possibility to see, notice, observe, recognize, examine, identify, discern, distinguish, feel and learn from life experience. This process of learning is achieved between heaven and earth (Tian yu Di 天與地), which is our real schoolroom. Without the experience of life, it is impossible to write these short stories. I write my short stories so that everyone can understand: the peasant and the intellectual alike.6

In our investigation, we will provide some biographical data about the author, the historical and literary context in which the author produced his work, and the presentation of one of his numerous short stories. An analysis of several stories would go beyond the purpose of this article with the risk of being superficial. We will therefore focus on only one “literary piece:” The Taste of Apples (ping guo de zi wei 蘋果的滋味). We will also consider concisely the value of “compassio/n” in Huang Chun Ming’s approach to reality. Finally, we will try to recognize in his literary work, the leading motive of the Asian Study Center 2016 monograph: “God between the lines” (tian zhu wu wei que you wei 天主無為卻有為). Huang Chun Ming is not a Christian; however, his short stories reveal a divine force that always establishes “communi/on” 7 and similarities between people, by playing on their differences. Compassion, concern, and empathy are fundamental characteristics of his works. As we have already mentioned above, most of his characters are undereducated, disadvantaged, and underprivileged people from the lowest rungs of the social ladder. They struggle to cope with assaults on their traditional values, hostility or conde- scension on the part of other sectors of the urban society, and, of course, all the debili- tating effects of poverty. The writer manages to give them a powerful form of dignity as they struggle to survive. Huang Chun Ming is first of all a witness. He offers a testimony of the universal values in the daily conditions of life of concrete people. His testimony becomes a “living literary testimony.” The objective of Huang Chun Ming’s short stories is to unite what exists on the personal basis of an individual, a family, a nation with what exists on the universal basis. The reader, in these stories, while reading the story of an “event,” is truly reading the story of the human being.

Some Biographical Data Huang Chun Ming, was born in 1935, in Yilan (宜蘭), a county in northeastern Taiwan, an important settlement of Kavalan and Atayal tribes. Huang Chun Ming began his higher

6. Huang Chun Ming, personal communication, March 11, 2016 in Shi Lin (士林), Taipei. My translation. 7. From Latin: Cum Munis (from “munus:” gift, task, duty). It refers to the one who in the society or community shares (that is, puts in common) his/her gifts and obligations and fulfills his/her responsibilities. 146 | God Between the Lines

education in Taipei, but he graduated from the National Pingtung University of Educa- tion (國立屏東教育大學) in southern Taiwan.8 Afterwards, he went back to his hometown where he set up a workshop called “Good Luck” (ji xiang gong zuo shi 吉祥工作室). Here he engaged in writing and producing creative crafts and indigenous artwork.9 He also participated in his community’s city planning efforts and compiled dialect acquisition materials for Taiwanese and aboriginal children. He has been an active participant in the theater scene in Taiwan since 1970. He contributed as the arts-supervisor of the Lan Yang Theater Troupe 蘭陽劇團( ) and founded Big Fish Huang Children’s Theater Troupe (黃大魚兒童劇團) in the mid-1990s.10 A writer of remarkable versatility, Huang Chun Ming is widely recognized as the best representative of Xiang Tu Wen Xue (鄉土文學), the “nativist literature” or “literature of the native land” movement that focused on the lives of rural Taiwanese people. “Modernization” (xian dai hua 現代化) and its implications is a fundamental theme of Taiwanese Nativist literature. Huang Chun Ming’s short stories reflect the rise of massive population centers (Taipei, Kaohsiung, Taichung, etc.) in which the individual is attacked in his dignity, free will, relationship, identity, traditional values, etc. He sees it both as a cause and result of Taiwan’s “economic miracle” (jing ji qi ji 經濟奇蹟): the modern urban lifestyle radically different from life in traditional Taiwanese rural areas. Huang Chun Ming, through his stories “dramatizes” this cultural, social, and psychological “rupture”. He developed a dialectical narrative style in which Taiwanese language and many elements of traditional everyday life serve as a living context. Since 1962, he has contributed to the popularization of this literary approach during the decades of the island’s industrialization. In Huang Chun Ming’s world of fictional (xu gou 虛構) characters, “readers” have the multifaceted characteristics of Taiwanese people’s lives and the culture of their native land. The success of Huang Chun Ming’s works relies very much on the vivid description of the ordinary people. On the other hand, the success of the description of their daily life relies on their own language, that is Taiwanese Hokkien (Taiwan Min Nan Hua 臺灣閩南話). He writes fictional short stories (duan bian xiao shuo 短篇小說) mainly about the tragic and sometimes humorous lives of ordinary Taiwanese people. His concern,

8. As a pupil, Huang Chun Ming often found himself in all sorts of interpersonal troubles and skirmishing situations with angry classmates while defending abused peers. He was also expelled by his teacher because secretly he used to read books that were banned related to proletariat, bloodshed, abuses and punishment. These personal experiences also played an important role in his impetus to come close to people with similar sentiments. 9. In December 2015, Huang Chun Ming decided to shut down the Red Brick House Cafe and literary salon in Yi Lan (宜蘭) County. In Taipei Times, 30 December 2015, 5. 10. He has written and illustrated five children’s books: “I am a Cat!” (wo shi mao ye 我是貓也); “The Scarecrow and the Sparrows” (xiao ma que dao cao ren 小麻雀．稻草人); “The Emperor who Loved Sweets” (ai chi tang de huang di 愛吃糖的皇帝); “The Elephant with a Short Trunk” (duan bo xiang 短鼻象), and “The Little Hunchback” (xiao tuo bei 小駝背). The illustrations use a unique torn paper collage technique. taiwan | 147

therefore, is for the problems real people are facing in life. His extraordinarily affective memory provides him with the ability to recollect content and themes that interrelate with his realistic style of writing. Huang Chun Ming pointed out that “the key to make a character alive is their language!”11 Dialogue in Huang’s short stories plays a crucial role because dialogue can show the character’s personality, profession, social status, educational background, world view, etc. Therefore, the use of Taiwanese dialects to describe his rural characters is an important feature to understand the author’s weltanschauung. He likes to describe the ordinary people, “nobody” or “insignificant characters” (xiao ren wu, 小人物): farmers, peddlers, fishermen, laborers, street vendors and social peculiarities from the lower rungs of the social ladder—people caught in the struggle of modernity whose lives are inseparable from the Taiwanese countryside. The author himself feels that he is one of these people and knows well how they feel. In the Preface to the English translation of his literary works, The Taste of Apples, Huang Chun Ming wrote:

I’ve come to the conclusion that the style and the tone of my stories are linked to the environment in which I grew up. My hometown and childhood experiences are at the core of my writings. In the sixties and seventies, when the modern world began making inroads into the out-of-the way town of Lang Yang (蘭陽), where I was born, the conflicts between the new and the old created a rich source of powerful and dramatic material. Whenever my antennae detected the new dramas being played out in my old hometown, the desire to write about them raged inside me. The stories in this collection were written during those two decades.12

Several of his short stories have been turned into films, including The Sandwich Man (1983) (er zi de da wan ou 兒子的大玩偶)13 and Sayonara, Zai Jian (1985) (sha yo na la, zai

11. Huang Chun Ming, personal communication, March 11, 2016 in Shi Lin (士林), Taipei. My translation. 12. Huang Chun Ming, The Taste of Apples, translated by Howard Goldblatt, (New York: Colombia University Press, 2001), XV. The Stories and novellas of Huang Chun Ming collected here, are translated by Howard Goldblatt, a capable translator of modern Chinese literature into English. The Taste of Apples contains the following translated short stories: The Fish (yu 鱼), The Drowning of an Old Cat (ni si yi zhi lao mao 溺死一隻老貓), His Son’s Big Doll (er zi de da wan ou 兒子的大玩偶), Gong (luo 鑼), The Ringwormi (xian 癬), The Taste of Apples ( ping guo de zi wei 蘋果的滋味), Xiao Qi’s Cap (Xiao Qi de na ding mao zi 小琪的那頂帽子), The Two Sign Painters (liang ge you qi jiang 兩個油漆匠), and Sayonara, Zai Jian (sa you na la, zai jian 莎喲哪拉, 再見). 13. His Son’s Big Doll (er zi de da wan ou 兒子的大玩偶) is the first movie, released in 1983 and adapted from the 1968 homonymous short story by Huang Chun Ming. This movie, better known in Western countries with its English title The Sandwich Man, is often mentioned in essays and histories of cinema, being the first success of director Hou Xiao Xian 侯孝賢. His Son’s Big Doll is actually composed of three different episodes: the other two being Xiao Qi de na ding mao zi (小琪的那頂帽子), directed by Zeng Zhuang Xiang (曾壯祥) and Ping guo de zi wei (蘋果的滋味), by Wan Ren 萬仁. They also are adapted from the homonymous stories by Huang Chun Ming. In English, they are known as Xiao Qi’s Cap and The Taste of Apples. 148 | God Between the Lines

jian 莎喲哪拉, 再見); while the lyrical Days of Watching the Sea (kan hai de ri zi 看海的日子), also called A Flower in the Rainy Night (yu ye hua 雨夜花), written in 1967, was filmed in 1983. The social concern continued with The Two Sign Painters (liang ge you qi jiang 兩個油漆匠) filmed in 1990. Huang Chun Ming is probably one of the most selected writers in anthologies of Tai- wanese Literature. Five of his works are selected in different anthologies: A Flower in the Rainy Night (yu ye hua 雨夜花) in Lau’s Chinese Stories from Taiwan; His Son’s Big Doll (er zi de da wan ou 兒子的大玩偶) in Chi’s An Anthology of Contemporary Chinese Liter- ature; The Fish (yu 鱼) in Ing’s Winter Plum; I Love Mary (wo ai Ma Li 我愛瑪麗) in Lau’s Unbroken Chain, and The Ringworm (xian 癬) in The Columbia Anthology. In 2010, the Taiwanese government honored him with the National Culture Award (zhong hua guo xing zheng yuan wen hua jiang 中華民國行政院文化獎).14

Historical and Literary Context Xiang Tu Wen Xue (鄉土文學): The “Nativist Literature” or “Literature of the Native Land” Movement.15 China’s May Fourth Movement (wu si yun dong 五四運動) began in Beijing, Peking Uni- versity, in 1919, where thousands of students hit the streets to demonstrate against the Versailles Treaty which would begin the handover of Shang Dong Province (山東省) to Japan. The May Fourth Movement was partly a cultural revolution, and partly a social movement. Students, intellectuals, and writers demanded that the social and political traditional system of China be open to democracy and science, that is, modernity. They attempted to make Chinese culture more accessible to social groups beyond the traditional scholar-officials. To this end, they advocated a Literary Revolution, in which “wen yan” (文言), that is, classical Chinese, was to be replaced by a system based on the vernac- ular, so-called “bai hua” (白話). The authors of “xiang16 tu17 wen18 xue19” (鄉土文學), the “nativist literature” or “literature of the native land” movement strived to explain the chaotic condition of 1920’s China, then experiencing both external forces from the West and Japan while struggling with internal political upheaval.

14. He has won many other awards, including the Wu San Lian Prize for Literature (wu san lian wen xue jiang 吳三連文學獎) in 1980; the National Endowment for Culture and Art Literary Prize (guo jia wen xue yi shu jiang 國家文化藝術獎) in 1998, and the China Times Literary Prize (shi bao wen xue jiang 時報文學獎) in 2000. 15. See on this Chen Jia Du, “Taiwan Xiang Tu Writer Huang Chun Ming: Three Short Stories, With a Critical Introduction,” in Iowa Research Online. The University of Iowa’s Institutional Repository: Theses and Dissertations. 2011. At . 16. Xiang (鄉) means “native place.” 17. Tu (土) means “land, soil.” 18. Wen (文) means “language, culture, writing, formal, literary, etc.” 19. Xue (學) means “to learn, to study;” Wen Xue (文學) means “literature.” taiwan | 149

The subjects of this literature were related to the culture, folklore and economic trouble of farmers and workers in rural parts of China. “Nativist literature” became a kind of fiction about the underprivileged, the neglected, and the poor in the Chinese social classes and rural areas. In Taiwan, “modernization” signified social change such as the replacement of traditional values, the increase of global-mindedness in business and the growth of manufac- turing. During the Japanese colonial rule of Taiwan (1895–1945),20 the mining of natural resources became the source of the island’s economy. The Japanese maintained social and political control through strict measures of regulation, which involved government-sanc- tioned use of force, education oriented to produce manual labor, and measures of indoc- trination to propagate pro-Japanese loyalty. The enactment of an official system of education produced some results that were also beneficial for the people. After its liberation from Japan, the island laid the basis of the Taiwan national identity. Meanwhile, the government of Mainland China had, by 1949, implemented a predom- inantly communist national system. The Chinese Nationalists, a group who had retreated to Taiwan in opposition to the communist program, opted to rule Taiwan (1945–1989) through promoting the idea that they would one day regain the mainland. Nationalists brought with their relocation to Taiwan a sort of “mandate of Heaven,” (tian ming 天命)21 by which the government received “the power” to rule Taiwan with supreme authority. Paradoxically, the aspiration of Chiang Kai Shek (Jiang Zhong Zheng 蔣中正)22 established a structure that enabled Taiwan to move towards a national identity that became increasingly distinguishable from the mainland in succeeding decades. The social infrastructure established during the Japanese rule served as a starting line to Taiwan’s economy. Land reform and farmers were crucial in the island’s economic transition in the decades following World War ii. The pace of Taiwan’s industrialization peaked between 1952 and 1972. More than four million people left their agricultural jobs in the countryside to work in the factories of the island nation’s populated urban areas, most of which were located in the North and the West of Taiwan. This process of industrialization and commercialization was viewed favorably by the majority; economic development, now, could be directed towards a future with local characteristics and potentialities. The rulingKuomintang (Nationalist Party, Guo Min Dang 國民黨) restrictions and declaration of “martial law” for more than

20. Following China’s defeat in the Sino-Japanese War in 1894–95, China and Japan signed the Treaty of Shimonoseki in May 1895. According to the Truce, the Qing (清) government agreed to cede Taiwan to Japan. 21. Or “heavenly decree”. 22. Chiang Kai-shek (1887–1975) was a political and military leader who served as the supreme leader of the Republic of China between 1928 and 1975. He is known by his given name Jiang Zhong Zheng (蔣中正) or his courtesy name Jiang Jie Shi (蔣介石). 150 | God Between the Lines

38 years (1949–1987) had begun deepening the native political resistance toward the regime.23 “Literary Fiction” of the 1950s was influenced by anti-communist sentiments that shaped Nationalist movement ideology. However, the island’s economic rise became a push toward a unified national consciousness, and Taiwanese writers sought a literary work that could reflect the new social, economic and political conditions. Writers of Tai- wan’s emergent “native” (xiang tu 鄉土), middle-class became actively involved in a search for cultural and local “roots.”24 In the decades of the 1950s and 1960s, the new genre, “Taiwan xiang tu literature” (台灣鄉土文學), provided native writers with a realism that corresponded to the need to register the numerous changes accompanying the island’s industrial expansions. Beginning with the arrival of Taiwan’s international exchanges with the United States and Japan, the island’s economic and cultural growth in the 1950s onward marked the “second colonial period” of the island’s national development. Much of the period’s labor force was comprised of children of farmers from Taiwan’s central and southern villages and of fishermen from the island’s coastal villages. The new wave of migrant farmers coming from Taiwan’s central and southern villages and fishermen coming from the island’s coastal villages to metropolitan Taipei included xiang tu writers (鄉土) Huang Chun Ming 黃春明 (1935–), Wang Tuo 王拓 (1944–) and Yang Ching Chu 楊青矗 (1940–). The emergent “worker-writer” (gong ren wen xue 工人文學) genre of Taiwanese writing directed its focus toward the crises of displaced workers and their new urban settings. As an expression of Taiwan consciousness, Huang Chun Ming narrates various aspects of Taiwan’s social structure: migration from rural villages to the cities, poverty, rural values, challenges in the urban areas, etc.

23. On May 19, 1949, the government announced the beginning of Martial Law (jie yan 戒嚴), and aimed to maintain Taiwan as a safe base for the Guo Ming Dang (國民黨) ruling. Under Martial Law, the Secret Police was responsible for arresting and punishing individuals who represented a threat to the state security and public order. Civilians were subject to arrest by military personnel and trial by military courts. 24. Nativist literature emphasis the fact that Taiwanese language, the ultimate root of Taiwanese culture, occupies a position of abjection in comparison with Mandarin and English and all that they represent. The language of Taiwanese, Tai Yu (台語), was marginalized as merely a local dialect. The use of Tai Yu, the local languages on school compounds, was punished by fines. The academic curriculum was China-centric, with little attention paid to Taiwan until the 1990s. Furthermore, writers could not write in Taiwanese or Japanese. This situation created a kind of void of literature writing during the 40s and 50s because the Taiwanese writers were concentrating on learning Chinese language. taiwan | 151

Analysis of the Short Story: The Taste of Apples (ping guo de zi wei 蘋果的滋味)

Premise The Taste of Apples was published in 1972 and represents a shift in Huang Chun Ming’s approach to reality.25 His views moved from a relatively modernist universalism and humanist concern with individual experience (The Drowning of an Old Cat, ni si yi zhi lao mao 溺死一隻老貓, published in 1967) to a concern for issues related to the collective fate of the Taiwanese people.26 The Taste of Apples is a short story27 full of richly sugges- tive images. It describes the challenges in the encounter between traditional Taiwanese culture and international as well as internal forces. The author manifests with subtle irony and satire his doubts on the exclusive “benefits” and opportunities of unbridled modernization, overwhelming globalization (military and economic “aids”) and rampant urbanization.

Analysis The story starts with a car “accident” involving a Taiwanese worker called Ah-fa28 and a member of the American military, Colonel Grant.29 The author does not say what job Ah-fa is doing in Taipei, but from the last scenes of the story in which his companions went to visit him at the American hospital, we learn that he is probably a laborer in a construction project related to Taiwan’s “miraculous” economic growth. This “accident,” from the very beginning, guides the reader to sense the idea of “shock,” “challenge,” “change” and “shift” taking place in the lives of people migrating from rural areas to big cities. In fact, Ah-fa’s situation before the accident is that of many other post-war Taiwanese people living in poor conditions. They left their rural homes “to try their luck” in the suburbs of Taipei and other urban areas. This move was clearly reproached by Ah-fa’s wife, Ah-gui,30 when they were at The White House American Hospital:

25. The reader has to bear in mind that in 1971, the United Nation’s decided to replace the Republic of China (Taiwan) with the People’s Republic of China (Mainland China) as China’s legitimate government. This resolution came as a shock to Taiwan leading Guo Ming Dang or Chinese Nationalist Party policy of economic development based on Western-style capitalism, a policy which became the engine of Taiwanese modernization leading to transformation and globalization. 26. See on this J. B. Rollins and B. Ch. Jiang (江寶釵), “Dialectical Narrative Strategy and the ‘Angel of History’ in Two Early Stories by Huang Chun Ming,” in Concentric: Literary and Cultural Studies, 2012, 38/2: 113-37. 27. The story is long only22 pages. 28. The Taiwanese name Ah-fa, interestingly enough is related to the verb “fa” (發): to develop, to prosper, to flourish. It conveys the idea of “wang sheng” (旺盛), that is, to be vigorous, prosperous . 29. The surname of the American colonel refers to the action of “granting,” “giving,” “bestowing.” 30. The Taiwanese name Ah-gui, comes from the adjective “gui” (貴) meaning “valuable,” “precious,” “noble,” “treasure,” “high quality.” 152 | God Between the Lines

“I told you,” she continued with a note of resentment creeping into her voice, “but you wouldn’t listen. I said that if it was the work you wanted, you could find it anywhere. But you didn’t believe me. You said women don’t understand, and that we should try our luck in a big city. Finding work isn’t the same as opening a business—what kind of luck is there to try? No, there’s luck, all right! And we’ve just found our share, haven’t we?…” “You said let’s go up north and try our luck; now just see what you’ve run into!…”31

The sense of despair is also motivated by the possibility that Ah-fa may not be able to work again. He is, in fact, his family’s principal bread-winner: “What’ll we do? Oh, what’ll we do?,”32 repeats his wife Ah-gui. “How are the five children and I going to live? How are we going to live?”33 she bitterly mumbles. Ah-zhu, the eldest daughter, further develops these thoughts of consternation, “If Papa can’t work, there’ll be no money for the family and Mama will have to adopt me out.”34 The accident occurs “at the intersection where the road from the eastern suburbs enters the city.”35 The author depicts the situation with surprising efficacy:

A dark green sedan with a foreigner’s license plate crushed into a rickety old bicycle like a wild animal pouncing on its prey, crushing it on the other side… The contents of a lunch box—mainly rice—that had been tied to the handlebars were scattered all over the street, the solitary salted egg that had accompanied the rice lying smashed…36

On one side the author describes the weak and unprotected conditions of Ah-fa’s economic and social status and on the other side the unhurt passengers in the sedan. The rider and the rickety bicycle ended up “under the car.”37 In the collision, Ah-fa had his legs broken forcing him to undergo surgery, ironically, at The White House, an American hospital in the city.38 In this “crash” and “crush” the reader discovers the cultural shock Ah-fa and his family are going to face. From the very beginning, the author provides the reader with dialectical elements of

31. Huang Chun Ming, The Taste of Apples, trans. by H. Goldblatt, op. cit., 152. 32. Ibid., 138. 33. Ibid., 144. 34. Ibid., 139. 35. Ibid., 155. 36. Ibid., 135. 37. Ivi. 38. The American hospital becomes a sort of “heaven”. White color in Chinese culture is associated with death and is used largely in funerals. Ancient Chinese people wore white clothes and hats only when they mourned for the dead. taiwan | 153

this cultural challenge: country and city, local and foreign, poverty and wealth, weak and powerful, old and new. As a common worker, Ah-fa, made a living just to cover his family’s basic needs before the accident. His wife, Ah-gui, was struggling to provide a decent life for her family. In their discussions, the wife repeatedly reminds her husband of his mistakes because his family was living in one of the illegal squatter areas of the city. The reactions of the wife play an important role of irony in showing the impersonal, provisional, faceless conditions of the modern world and the position of Ah-fa who tries to see the advantages and the opportunities of prosperity modernity offers. The following picturesque scene helps the reader to sense the lack of economic and political status of Ah-fa more clearly. A telephone conversation between two Americans (probably one from Washington and the other from Taipei) discussing the car accident that occurred between Colonel Grant and Ah-fa. One of them says: “Don’t worry about it; a junior secretary like me can easily handle a matter like this.”39 The other replies: “Don’t forget, we are in Asia now! The other fellow is just a laborer.”40 The speaker continues: “He41 can’t afford any trouble” here because “this is the Asian country with which we have the closest ties of friendship. Besides, it is the most secure.”42 The third scene introduces the issue of Taiwan’s linguistic complexity and diversifica- tion of economic and political situations. We have here three distinct groups: the Taiwan- ese-speaking worker (Ah-fa and his family), Mandarin-speaking low-ranking Taiwanese government policeman and English-speaking high-level American military man. The young foreign affairs policeman accompanies Colonel Grant to deal and meet with the victim’s family in the squatter area on the outskirts of Taipei where “tiny illegal shacks made of wooden crates and sheet metal were located.”43 In the story, the young foreign affairs officer has the role to mediate between the American military man and the Taiwanese family; however, culturally, emotionally and linguistically speaking, he is poorly prepared for the task. The author, in fact, subtlety notes: “They made their way through the area for a while as if meandering through a labyrinth.”44 As he walks behind the young foreign affairs policeman, Colonel Grant jokes saying: “Boy, what a great place for a game of hide-and-seek!”45 but the young foreign affairs policeman doubts whether the American is making fun of him because of his inability to find Ah-fa’s house and therefore “questioning his qualifications.” The young policeman

39. Huang Chun Ming, The Taste of Apples, op. cit., 136. 40. Ivi. 41. That is, Coronel Grant. 42. Huang Chun Ming, The Taste of Apples, op. cit., 136. 43. Ivi. 44. Ivi. 45. Ivi. 154 | God Between the Lines

feels “stung by the injustice of it all,”46 because he was “trained only to deal with local incidents involving foreigners,” and now finds himself in the position of having to find his way through all this confusion.”47 The author is able to communicate clearly the worries of the young policeman about losing face.48 In order to relieve his sense of inferiority, “The foreigner was a head taller than any of the shacks in the area,”49 the young policeman tells a lie regarding new accommodations for the squatters: “Their new homes are nearly completed, those apartments by the river. Once they have moved these people out, they are going to put a high-rise up here.”50 The author sharply notes that the young policeman “Felt pleased with himself about his alert reaction but at the same time was uneasy about lying.”51 The policeman finds himself more concerned with determining what was on Colonel Grant’s mind than with finding Ah-fa’s house. The author observes: “If the man hadn’t insisted on coming to pay his respects to Jiang Ah-fa’s family, the policeman would never have brought a foreigner to this kind of place.”52 In his painstaking search for the house numbers, the young foreign affairs policeman continues to walk several paces with the American military officer without exchanging a word until they meet a little girl, Ah-fa’s daughter, carrying a baby on her back. The policeman asks her for directions, but she turns out to be mute. Communication is not possible! Her identity as a mute, female, Taiwanese minor represents an effective element in the hands of the writer to depict the unfortunate younger daughter of Ah-fa within the broken communication between the three above mentioned “groups.” The story helps the reader to realize that the young policeman’s first language is Man- darin, his second apparently English, and his third is basic and elemental Taiwanese. Once inside Ah-fa’s house, in front of Ah-gui, and Ah-Zhu, the young policeman translates what Colonel Grant says, but Ah-gui understands neither Mandarin nor English. She can only see spirited movement of the mouth and the hands of the policeman. The effort to calm Ah-gui down did more harm than good because of his poor Taiwanese. Ironically enough, an American Catholic nun working at The White House American

46. Ivi. 47. Ivi. 48. The concept of “face” (lian 臉) can be described as a combination of social standing, reputation, influence, dignity, and honor. Causing someone to “lose face” (mei mian zi 沒面子) lowers them in the eyes of other people, while “saving face” (gei mian zi 給面子), that is to give face, showing respect for someone’s feelings, raises their self-worth. 49. Huang Chun Ming, The Taste of Apples, op. cit., 136.. 50. Ivi. 51. Ivi. 52. Ivi. taiwan | 155

hospital, with her exceptional command over the local language, could communicate with Ah-gui much more effectively than the Taiwanese policeman.53 The broken communication is even more evident when Colonel Grant and the policeman walked up to Ah-fa: “This is Colonel Grant. It was his car that hit you”,54 states the policeman. Colonel Grant reaches out and grabs Ah-fa’s hand, whispering something. The policeman acts as interpreter:

He said he is terribly, terribly sorry and begs your forgiveness. He said he is prepared to assume all responsibility, and he’d like to become a friend of your whole family.55

Although Ah-fa is unable to understand the foreign affairs policeman’s Mandarin explanation, he senses that it must have been the American military man’s car that hit him:

Aha! So it was you! You ought to be more careful. I saw your car coming a long way away, so I pulled over to let you pass—I never thought you’d come right at me. Aiya! When you smashed into me, you also smashed my family into pieces…56

Colonel Grant wants very much to know what Ah-fa is saying, so he looks over at the policeman to seek help, but the latter could not follow Ah-fa’s statement. So, again it is the Catholic nun who translates, acting as an intermediary between Colonel Grant and Ah-fa. In this way, the policeman becomes a mere spectator among his own people as the American officer takes complete control saying how everything will work: Ah-fa’s family will not suffer financially and the mute daughter will be sent “to a special school in the United States.”57 After Colonel Grant offered an envelope containing 20,000 Taiwan dollars, which was placed on Ah-fa’s chest, the author annotates vividly:

Since the money was right in front of them, something had to be said. But what,

53. In the 60s and 70s, most rural Taiwanese depicted in stories spoke only their local Taiwanese language. The linguistic struggle between the young policeman and Ah-fa demonstrates the social and political reality in Taiwan after fifty years of Japanese colonization followed by the influx and rule of the Chinese Nationalists who fled the Mainland. Taiwanese culture had been weakened to the point of being practically ignored. The policemen has achieved his status by learning Mandarin and English well while knowing little Taiwanese enough to get along with “backward” people such as Ah-fa and his family. In these cases, Mandarin clearly occupies an inferior position in comparison with English but a place still far superior to that of Taiwanese. 54. Huang Chun Ming, The Taste of Apples, op. cit., 153. 55. Ivi. 56. Ivi. 57. Ivi. 156 | God Between the Lines

what should they say? All this indecision gave them the uneasy feeling that they’d done something wrong and offended someone.58

The reader is confronted with another aspect of reality: the first generation of Taiwanese people being educated under the Guo Min Dang language policy explicitly forbidding instruction in any of Taiwan’s native languages. The short story emphasizes the political, economic and cultural reality where “only the sounds of loud, shrill-voiced teachers”59 can be heard. Ah-ji, the son of Ah-fa, a third-grade pupil, during civics class, is standing in the corner as punishment for not paying his school tuition. Ah-fa’s family, caught in this struggling process of transformation and adaptation to the new economic and cultural conditions, has not been able to find the money:

“The semester is almost over and Ah-ji still hasn’t paid… you have to stand there every day during the civics class. Aren’t you ashamed of yourself?” Ah-ji quickly lowered his head… “Ah-ji when are you going to pay?” asked the teacher. “I do not put any stock in what you say anymore.”60

The teacher uses Ah-ji as an example of what happens to those who fail to cooperate:

The teacher returned to the podium and asked the students seated below: “Lit- tle friends, what moral lesson have we learned from this week’s civics class?”… every child raised his hands. “That’s fine. You can put your hands down. Let us say it together.” “Co-op-er-a-tion,” they said in unison.”61

Ah-ji and his family are struggling to catch up with the changes, and they are punished for not being already ahead of the times. In this context, we understand much more clearly how Ah-ji’s mute sister takes on special significance as a living symbol of the voicelessness and progressive loss of identity and subjectivity among Taiwanese people. This dialect goes further with the foreign affairs policeman concerned with losing face in front of Colonel Grant. The young policeman finds the way to reinsert himself into the action: “This has been a stroke of good luck for you… being run down by an American’s c ar…” 62 The writer closes this scene glossing: “Through tears of emotion, Ah-fa said, ‘Thank you! Thank You! I am sorry, I am so sorry…’.”63 The above dialogue clearly conveys the challenges between local tradition and globalization. The apology is seen by the writer as the loss of the last shreds of cultural integ-

58. Ibid., 154. 59. Ibid., 139. 60. Ivi. 61. Ivi. 62. Ibid., 154. 63. Ivi. taiwan | 157

rity. Ah-fa, by making an apology, fully accepts the lowest position, not only socially but spiritually. Some apples, which had been brought to the hospital as a gift for Ah-fa’s family, were placed on a small table in the room. Ah-fa’s children “were looking longingly at the apples…” “Everyone was holding an apple, turning it over, not quite knowing how to eat it .” 64 The final sentence of the short story is another important key to understanding the intention of the author: “Ah-fa who hadn’t wanted one at first, finally succumbed to the temptation.”65 Ah-fa turned his face to his daughter Ah-zhu saying: “Hand me one of t h o s e .” 66 The substantive “temptation” conveys a powerful message. Apples are not “native” to Taiwan and were introduced during the Japanese colonial period.67 In the eyes of the writer, the momentary good fortune, however, comes at a very high price: Ah-fa and his family’s identity and subjectivity, that is, their traditional lifestyle “finally succumbed” to globalization and money culture. “New” needs seem to replace the “real” needs of family unity and cohesion, actions, etc. In the end, Ah-fa comes to himself in a new light, as a man of leisure. His wife finds him far more “attractive” than ever before:

Ah-fa was experiencing an unusual feeling, one devoid of cares or worries. It was written all over his face, and Ah-gui noticed it; she hadn’t dreamed that this man for whom she’d borne five children was capable of such an attractive expression. Seeing that he wasn’t watching her, she moved her head back a little and stared at him. Just look at him! When has he ever looked as dashing as he does today? Today he really looks like a human being.68

Ah-gui does not criticize her husband any more for insisting on moving north “to try their luck”. And yet, despite these seemingly positive developments in her attitude toward Ah-fa, they also indicate a devaluated love. Ah-fa’s construction worker colleagues, Chen and Huotu, taken to the hospital by Colonel Grant to visit their companion Ah-fa, joke about the injured man’s “new” lucky life, while they themselves must continue working like animals:

Wow! What a life, nothing but lying in bed, eating and crapping. As for the rest

64. Ibid., 156. 65. Ivi. 66. Ivi. 67. For even today apples are grown in Taiwan only in small quantities. Ordinarily, apples in Taiwan are imported and that takes money. 68. Huang Chun Ming, The Taste of Apples, op. cit., 154. Emphasis in original. 158 | God Between the Lines

of us, nothing’s changed. We are still working like animals. Who could have it better than you? Ha ha ha!69

They represent the ordinary local workers struggling to face the daily challenges of economic globalization, while Ah-fa, immobile on his “white” bed, at The White House American Hospital is seen, ironically, as the lucky one. Ah-fa’s family enters into their new life by struggling to learn how “to eat the apples,” turning them over, not quite knowing how to eat them. The beautiful and expensive apples, however, cannot entirely obscure the reality of their being not “quite as sweet as they had imagined; rather, they were a little sour and pulpy, and when chewed they were frothy and not quite real.”70

The Value of “Com-passion” The English noun “compassion,” meaning “to suffer together with,” comes from the Latin. Its prefix “com” is an archaic version of the Latin preposition “cum,” meaning “with”. “Passion” is derived from “passus,” past participle of the deponent verb “patior,” meaning “suffering” or “enduring”. “Compassion” is thus related in origin, form, and meaning to the English noun “patient” as one who suffers, from “patiens,” present participle of the same “patior,” and is akin to the Greek πάσχειν (páskein), “to suffer” and to its cognate noun πάθος (páthos). “Compassion,” therefore, from Latin “co-suffering” is a virtue, one in which the emotional capacities of empathy and sympathy (for the suffering of others) are regarded as a part of love itself and a cornerstone of greater social interconnectedness and humanism. It also includes the meaning of the “tragic dealing with fate”, “coping with sufferance”, and more generally, “experiencing”. To my question whether in Huang Chun Ming’s short stories there is a particular or preferred hero, he replied:

My heroes are popular characters. The literature of the Soviet Union deeply influenced me. The importance of “realism” (xue shi zhu yi 寫實主義) and the “sense of humanity,” that is to feel close to the human condition (you ren wei 有人味) shaped my literature. “Where” there is a person who faces adversity or mis- fortune (bu xing 不幸), then I am “there” to narrate. Although the situation of the Aborigines (Yuan Zhu Min 原住民) has improved substantially, they are still mistreated and cheated. I long for the day when we are part of the same family, without discrimination. This is our original sin (yuan zui 原罪)!71

Although in his approach to reality, Huang Chun Ming prefers a materialist emphasis on the loss of land, job, changes in the individual’s ability to make a living in traditional ways,

69. Ibid., 155. 70. Ibid., 156. 71. Huang Chun Ming, personal communication, March 11, 2016 in Shi Lin (士林), Taipei. My translation. taiwan | 159

poverty as a result of losing the material foundation of the lifestyle for which their birth culture has prepared them, etc., his short stories do not inflame any kind of proletarian revolution; rather, they tend to leave the reader with a profound sense of painful loss of values, traditions, styles of life, and a sort of “human impoverishment” (jing shen shang de pin fa 精神上的貧乏). Huang Chun Ming considers “compassion” a fundamental role in literature and life. “Compassion” in his short stories is a civil and social value, but also a sacred one:

In my life there have been several benefactors (good teachers, good principals…) who touched me profoundly. I personally feel indebted to my relatives. All these people helped me find a direction (fang xiang 方向), to arrive where today I am. In the Holy Scripture, you Christians have the story of the prodigal son (lan zi 浪子). He went back to the house of his father. For him, any gold could be exchanged for the house of his father. Every person has the possibility of salvation (mei yi ge ren dou you jiu de 每一個人都有救的). The fact that you are here today talking with me is something mysterious. I do believe that every form of true education has a common strength: love (ai 愛). This strength has to guide the whole person.”72

Huang Chun Ming is convinced that only in “compassion” there is the possibility to continue, despite everything, to practice hope and persevere in those actions oriented to the “other,” to the neighbor, to alleviate his misfortunes: “In our society there is suffering, there is imperfection, there is violence. We are called to do, to act, to offer ourselves.”73 Huang Chun Ming wants to keep together the literary approach and the concrete involvement in the tragedies of history, “because history is made of concrete persons, with whom we meet or clash; with and for whom we move.”74 In Huang Chun Ming’s view:

Tradition and modernity are both in the process of transformation. The- ater (drama) and literature are also continuously changing. Society needs to strengthen education. Education cannot be understood in terms of exams. Today, the strength of education has weakened. Everything is done in order to pass exams.75

Huang Chun Ming stands in favor of the weak, but at the same time has a clear and profound understanding of social structure, how it is formed and how it is held. He digs into

72. Huang Chun Ming, The Taste of Apples, op. cit., 156. 73. Ivi. 74. Ivi. 75. Ivi. 160 | God Between the Lines

the concreteness of what is real, in the economic structures of the society, to understand, explain, and fight against new forms of domination and ideologies. He is close to workers who have to migrate to the big cities although they are unprepared for economies that are demanding professional and precise options. Politics, that is the noble and high perspective of searching for the good applied to public affairs, has to reflect constantly on this principle. Compassion becomes the value that has to be fulfilled in social policy, a dignified job, assistance of the weak, inclusion of those who are excluded, education to public ethic, competence and honesty. Politics has to help bring together the different ways which we human beings have discovered to express the meaning of life. A very important element of Huang Chun Ming’s writings is the attitude of rejection to “aversion” between cultures, intolerance, false commiseration or sufficiency. Without the practice of compassion which intervenes and involves itself in the life of others, real knowledge of and encounters with others will remain superficial and manipulative. His short stories remind us of the ancient motto that he himself strives to honor: “Do what you must, come what may”. In that “must” he includes knowledge without prejudice, testimony and action. The irrepressible desire towards good and truth does not know the limits set by the history of religions. This knowledge has moved Huang Chun Ming to experience the finiteness with the need of the highest, which means also the deepest. The literary work of Huang Chun Ming is a work of education and formation for his people. In his vocabulary, the word “intellectual” does not only refer to those who offer theories on thoughts, but also to those who, day and night, face the problems of his people in their innumerable configurations. His literature manifests that people whom he serves should not feel like a stranger to him, as if the literate would be living in a world inaccessible to them. His short stories show the personal conviction of the author that intellectuals should think, feel, and speak in the same way regular people do. People should feel encouraged by their literary works. Only in this way can an intellectual be of any help to them.

People are much more inclined to accept those who have come out of the same environment and reached higher positions without losing the real and daily contact with those who are in a low position as their “guides.” In this way, people believe that these “guides” still care for them and are concerned for them.76

Huang Chun Ming is very familiar with the burden of everyday life. He believes that

76. Ivi.. taiwan | 161

“Those who speak to people in an eloquent language or fly over the harsh realities of daily struggles in life are no longer credible.”77 The literate is a kind of channel between human and divine. The Divine stands above us, and at the same time dwells within us. Huang Chun Ming has been able to dialogue with the “peripheries” of the human condition and recognize their dignity and value. His stories are a battle against hegemonic models, movements, and markets that want to choke the cultural, social, and religious roots of a people, starting from the language. Huang Chun Ming courageously opposed the form of globalization that wanted the exclusive dominion over some people’s culture. He promoted those who are aware of the fact that modernity does not stem from the betrayal of their own history but can respect their identity: past and future, tradition and modernity, inspiration and profession, reality and fantasy, matter and spirit. In Huang Chun Ming’s experience,

The other has the right to my benevolence, from the very beginning. To have a fruitful encounter, we should abandon any attempt to manipulate or commis- erate in a humiliating manner. The real relationship requires gratuitousness and openness. It entails a positive and constructive attitude towards the other.78

The real identity of a person, according to Huang Chun Ming is not built through “discrimination” but through “accumulation”, which means that if a farmer, a fisherman or young countryside boy/girl migrates to another area, he/she has to be put in the condition to fully join the new culture in which he/she is joining, without repudiating his/her own culture. The identity of a people is based on the plurality of perspectives. It is not the expression of an obsessive and violent unilateral vision of reality. We need wisdom, rationality and humanity to live in peace with one another, despite differences. When existential dialogue is lacking, when we are no longer able to distinguish the manifold nuances of our existence and we do not accept multiple perspectives and experiences, then the “encounter” turns into a collision, it becomes intolerance, division, abjection, and humiliating commiseration.79

During our conversation, I asked Huang Chun Ming whether he would agree to read the parable of the good Samaritan with me and share whether as a writer of Xiang Tu Wen Xue (鄉土文學), that is “literature of the native land”, he feels like a good Samaritan (Lk 10: 25–37). He humbly agreed to the invitation:

I do not dare to say that I am like this good Samaritan. The commitment of a

77. Ivi. 78. Ivi. 79. Ivi. 162 | God Between the Lines

writer is to give the reader “hints” (an shi, 暗示). I use “fiction” (xu gou 虛構) to narrate. However, if the content of the “fiction” is “love” (ai 愛), “sympathy” (tong qing 同情), “compassion” (ci bei 慈悲), action (xing dong, 行動), then fiction becomes “true” (zhen de 真的) and “real” (zhen shi de 真實的); “fiction” becomes reasonable and fair (he qing he li 合情合理). It prompts the reader to react, to respond, to join, and to act. In our existence, there are many people who come into contact with us and vice versa. This Good Samaritan with his “benevolence/kindness” (shan yi 善意), his smile (xiao rong 笑容), his mind (jing shen 精神, zhu yi 注意), approached the wounded person, came into contact with him, and made a decision. It is something mysterious. You see, he did not use language. He probably did not understand one hundred percent the situation of the wounded; however he had the energy (neng liang 能量), the capability to come upon him, to see him, to feel compassion, to be touched by his reality and act upon it. There is a kind of “magnetic field” (ci chang 磁場) that influenced the Good Samaritan. This “energy” and this “magnetic field” nowadays still exists! The only way to approach people is love. The life of the wounded person was fortunately (qia qiao 恰巧) influenced by the Good Samaritan. My life has been influenced also by good people. For this reason, I say that this magnetic field, this energy or battery has to nurture our life. If you do not have battery, you know where to recharge it.80

Conclusion In our introduction, we said that the short stories of Huang Chun Ming reveal a divine presence that creates “com/muni/on” and similarities between people, playing on the differences. If these encounters take place in love, mutual respect, and responsibility, it is not God really present between the lines? (Tian Zhu wu wei que you wei 天主無為卻有為). Taiwan, like many other countries is home to peoples of different cultures. The path of mutual recognition and integration undertaken by the Taiwanese society is also the result of Huang Chun Ming’s literary work conscience. The literary efforts made to recognize the uniqueness and richness of local cultures that have been lost to Sinification and Japanization serve also to tell us that subjugation, false commiseration, denial and disintegration will always turn into human defeat.81 The reader of Huang Chun Ming’s short stories will discover the truth of a famous sentence of Terence: “Homo sum, humani nihil a me alienum puto,”82 that is “I am human, and nothing of that which is human is alien to me.”

80. Ivi. 81. See on this the editorial of The China Post, 5 April 2016. 82. Terence, Heauton Timorumenos, 77. Terence 195/185–159? bc) was a writer of the Roman Republic, of North African descent. A Roman senator brought him to Rome as a slave, educated him, and later on freed him. His comedies were performed for the first time around 170–160 bc. taiwan | 163

The literary work of Huang Chun Ming will remain an invaluable treasure of local social and cultural history for any “reader” who wishes to understand and appreciate Taiwan’s history, its face and heart, its tears and potential.

All utopias include not only a description of an ideal society, but also an analysis of the mechanisms or strategies that could make the utopia possible. We could say that it is a projection into a future that tends to return to the present to take a vividly outlined shape and, then looks for the right mediation to make it a reality.

Francis 164 | God Between the Lines

References

Chen, Jia Du (Willy) 2011 “Taiwan Xiang Tu Writer Huang Chun Ming: “Three Short Stories, With a Critical Introduction.” In Iowa Research Online. The University of Iowa’s Institutional Repository: Theses and Dissertations. At . Faurot, J. L, ed. 1980 Chinese Fiction from Taiwan. Bloomington, in: Indiana University Press. Haddon, R. 1992 Nativist Fiction from China and Taiwan: A Thematic Survey. Ph.D. Diss., University of British Columbia. Huang, Chun Ming 2016 Personal communication with L. Marchioron held in Shi Lin (士林) on March 11. 2001 The Taste of Apples. Trans. by H. Goldblatt, New York: Colombia University Press. Jiang, Bao Chai 江寶釵 and Lin, Zhen Shan 林鎮山, eds 2009 The Taste of Mud: Discussion on Huang Chunming’s Writing 泥土的滋味—黃春明文學論集. Taipei: Lianhe Literature. Liu, Kenneth 2003 “Translation and Cultural Exportation: A Case Study of Huang Chun-Ming’s Short Sto- ries.” In T. Hermans, ed., Translating Others. Manchester: St Jerome Publishing, 2006. vol. 2. Makeham, J. and A-Chin Hsiau, eds 2005 Cultural, Ethnic, and Political Nationalism in Contemporary Taiwan Bentuhua. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Rollins, J.B. and Jiang, Bao Chai 江寶釵 2012 “Dialectical Narrative Strategy and the ‘Angel of History’ in Two Early Stories by Huang Chun Ming.” In Concentric: Literary and Cultural Studies 38.2: 113–37. Conclusion M. Rebecchi, T. Tosolini

peaking and writing about what one has seen, and experienced—what one has been given— can be thoughtful, can be thankful,” Alphonso Lingis“S wrote. “Thoughtfulness begins in opening one’s heart to what is given. It involves vulnerability and risk. Truth means seeing what exceeds the possibility of seen, what is intolerable to see, what exceeds the possibility of thinking… In thoughtful writing one loses sight of oneself, and one writes not for a distinct person, but for anyone. For a reader I am only a self-effaced one who offers what has been given to see and to celebrate or suffer”1. These words seem to describe with unusual precision what Kazi Nazrul Islam, Yusuf Bilayarta Mangunwijaya, Endō Shūsaku and Huang Chun Ming, the authors studied in this book, wanted to achieve and communicate with their literary works. All of them felt almost compelled to reflect on the political, social, religious, and linguistic situation in which they found themselves

1. A. Lingis, Trust. (Minneapolis, London: University of Minneapolis Press, 2004), 195. 168 | God Between the Lines

living. All of them accepted risk and vulnerability in order to evaluate, in a critical manner, the worldviews and the traditions they had received as a gift—or as a burden—from the past. All of them saw and communicated what others were unable to see, felt uneasy to reflect upon and considered impossible to think. The elegies proclaiming a quasi-religious freedom, truth, beauty and love with which the Rebel Poet enchanted the others; the passionate call for solidarity, cooperation and respect of the poor coming from Romo Mangun; the establishment of a new bond with God resulting from the painful experience of persecution narrated by Endō, and the conflict between the new and the old, as well as the deep feeling of compassion that inspired the works of Huan Chun Ming… all of these are just some of the elements through which these authors described a new world. A world yet to come, but certainly not a reality impossible to achieve. In their literary works, we can also find the imperceptible presence of what is par excellence the most difficult thing to describe or share with others: the gift of a vision, the celebration of a religious ideal, the suffering experienced in order to gain a new awareness of the divine. For the presence of God is indeed traceable between the lines of all the poems, novels and books composed by these gifted Asian authors. In Endō and Romo Mangun, this divine presence is apparent or detectable from the outset in their respective works. In Kazi Nazrul Islam and Huan Chun Ming, instead, the traces of God transpire enigmatically from their passionate words, it emerges from their desire to inspire some changes at the social or political level and it surfaces each time they fight to defend the dignity of every human being. The interpretations of reality offered by these authors begin not from above, but from below, from their immediate life experience and from the questions this life necessarily poses to any person. It is from this immanent and concrete realm of life that these writers gained access to the transcendent, to what seems to go beyond or exceed the mere given. In some way, we can say that, for these writers, the idea of God is an idea that has to be gained or fought for, instead of being merely a concept that could be easily superimposed on (or even juxtaposed with) our bare existence. This particular approach to life (which seems very much peculiar to the Asian context) seems to produce several consequences. Firstly, the style with which these writers communicate their visions and ideals has more to do with the narrative than with the theoretic and the speculative. All they really want is to narrate and share a story, not to convince the readers of their theories. This, in turn, means that these writers use their literary skills in order to introduce the readers to an emotional experience; they choose and use words as vehicles in order to bind the reader, not to a concept, but to a feeling, to a mental state of joy or anguish that defines all detachment and indifference. Secondly, these writers never lose sight of that particular humility with which human beings should approach the mystery and sacredness that lies at the heart of creation, humanity and the divine. This wonder and openness must, therefore, be very much part conclusion | 169

of those who come into contact with the same cultures to which these authors belong, if they truly want to catch a glimpse of what these writers would like to convey to them. Thirdly, the immanent approach adopted by these authors leads them to the discovery of a common set of human needs and beliefs (equality, justice, compassion, mutual respect, and the like), a core of values that introduces them to a kind of existential humanism more than to a spiritual or religious dimension. Nevertheless, and beyond the open appreciation for the works of these writers (which we encourage others to read as a precious way to understanding their respective cultures), we would like to conclude our research with some questions concerning the Christian message and its relationship with the religious alterity described by these authors. Does the message of the Gospel still maintain its proper specificity (that of a personal encounter with God), or should it be replaced by a new, more inclusive, holistic and, at times, even impersonal understanding of God—as these writers seem to suggest? What idea of God do these writers propose to all those who have come to share their cultures in order to announce the Gospel? Must God lose entirely the Christian novelty in order to be welcomed by Asian sensitivity and cultures? Or does the God of Christianity still have something to offer to those in search for some answers to the meaning of life, suffering and faith? Are the words of novels and literary stories, even though written with passion and deep understanding of the human predicament, enough to console and accompany the human heart in its search for love and compassion, or do these same words need a supple- ment of meaning, a further interpretation born of a relationship with Someone? Someone who not only talks to us or, paradoxically, even remains silent to our cries, but Someone who, above all, stays with us and accompanies us in our existential journey, Someone who even shares our suffering and death as the extreme expression of his love and solidarity with us? In short, Someone who not only totally shares our reality, but also invites us to read it with him and, even more mysteriously, to write it with him? d Stu y C n en ia t s r e A Xaverian Missionaries – Japan GOD BETWEEN THE LINES GOD BETWEEN God Between the Lines ed. by Tiziano Tosolini

God Between the Lines

Asian Study Centre

d Stu y C n en ia t s r e A Xaverian Missionaries – Japan