| Summary: | This essay examines several topics related to the problems of faith and, above all, of how people experience the limit(s) of their consciousness and of the world they live in. The main concern is to show how these issues are expressed in modern literature and especially within the specific field of modern Japanese literature. Therefore, our demonstration is stressed upon Shusaku Endo's work, taking into consideration his unusual personal experience within Christianity. The author himself often spoke of Christianity as an ill-fitted suit for his Japanese frame. In this respect, we may state that what Endo inherited rightly was his vision of the world, a sacramental worldview that sees human action within the grand narrative of God's redeeming activity in the world. After all, what Shusaku Endo rebuffed in European Catholicism was not the idea of Catholicism per se, but some particular modes of thought and cultural assumptions about strength and weakness. [Article copies available for a fee from The Transformative Studies Institute. E-mail address: journal@transformativestudies.org Website: http://www.transformativestudies.org ©2010 by The Transformative Studies Institute. All rights reserved.]
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