Thread on Ryonsuke Akutagawa and his relationship with Christianity

For many Japanese, Christianity was immensely attractive in the years immediately after the Meiji Restoration, especially among the samurai class, but it wasn’t able to root itself and was unable to maintain its popularity among the Japanese establishment.

Akutagawa had positive assessments of Christianity, but he also had stark criticisms of Christianity as incompatible with Japan as well as seeing Christianity as an exotic barbarian religion filled with primitive magic. This is important for Akutagawa’s final relationship with it

Akutagawa was also a critic of modernity as well as traditional Japan’s ability to deal with modernity too, which further explains his complex relationship with Christianity

Akutagawa’s main praises of Christianity come from the martyr’s ability to challenge the failing rational world of secular modernity and successfully overcome it. He wrote other stories about other religious members doing this, but this theme was mainly expressed via Christianity