Kitamori Kazoh’s Theology of the Pain of God

A Reading from Perspectives of Gender Violence and Japanese Colonial discourse

Abstract

This article examines Kitamori Kazoh’s Theology of the Pain of God within the larger framework of a search for a specifically “Japanese/Asian” theology. I argue that Kitamori’s attention to human and divine pain in Japanese sources, especially Kabuki theater, can be taken to characterize his work as not only Japanese but also colonialist and patriarchal. These aspects of his work raise larger questions about how to distinguish the necessary inculturation of theology from concurrent nationalist and imperialist projects. This article asserts that Kitamori’s crucial problem is that he accepts and then amplifies the demand for a culturally “authentic” voice without a critical examination of his inculturation project. Kitamori’s “Japanese” case thus illuminates a continuing problem of cultural politics in Christian constructive theology.