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Confusion to Conviction:
The Representative, Multilingual Religious Journey of
Takakura Tokutarō (1885 1934)
J. Nelson JENNINGS*

Takakura Tokutarō (1885 1934) was a second-generation Protestant
Christian theologian in modern Japan.1 Born into a merchant family of True
Pure Land Buddhist religious heritage, Takakura was formally educated in
Meiji Japan’s still-new national school system. As a university student heembraced Christianity under the preaching of perhaps Meiji Japan’s mostinfluential Protestant church leader, Uemura Masahisa (1857 1925). Takakura
then vociferously read English- and German-language theology in coming tohis own particular Christian convictions.
Takakura Tokutarō’s religious experience, as well as the development of
his thought, exemplify the confluence of many streams of the dizzying
social-political and religio-philosophical changes flowing through Meiji (18681912), Taishō (1912 1926), and early Shōwa (1926 1989) Japan. This study
seeks to examine this important leader’s experience and thinking, particularly
as he formulated his convictions through the interaction of multiple
languages. This analysis of Takakura should cast fresh light on the dynamism
inherent to modern Japan’s rapid and multifaceted transformation through thefascinating years of the Meiji, Taishō, and early Shōwa Eras.

InputsJapan’s late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century modernization was
spurred along by a proactive reception of various sectors of western societal
life. Japanese leaders and the general populace deeply incorporated modern
western engineering, education, military, health care, arts and entertainment,* Rev. J. Nelson Jennings, PhD Mission Pastor and Consultant Onnuri Community
Church Seoul, Republic of Korea.
1 The definitive English-language analysis of Takakura’s life and thought is J. Nelson
Jennings, Theology in Japan: Takakura Tokutaro (1885 1934) (Lanham, Maryland:
University Press of America, 2005). Note that birth and death dates will be given
only for Japanese figures.

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food, philosophy, clothing, manufacturing, and other areas of life. Meiji
Japanese people absorbed these elements into their own lives nationally,
locally, and individually.
One area that bled across several others was that of language: English,
Dutch, French, Russian, and German studies joined Chinese and Korean (andsixteenth-century, Jesuit-imported Latin and Portuguese) as linguistic conduits
for international influences coming into Japanese life and society. Thesevarious languages played varying roles related to various fields. Thus, forexample, Dutch and German had strong influences in medical terminology, as
will be further noted below.
Before proceeding to the roles of western languages for Japanese Christiantheology, the often subtle but constantly formative role of Chinese – linguistically and conceptually – needs to be acknowledged. First, Japan developed
its writing system by using Chinese characters while adaptively changing thecharacters’ order, syntax, and pronunciation. Second, over the following
centuries Chinese terminology and concepts infiltrated various areas of theJapanese language, for example in connection with the influx of certain
Buddhist traditions. (Various Chinese importations into Korean and
Vietnamese also took place over the centuries, and the ongoing presence ofsignificant Sino-linguistic elements in Japanese, Korean, and Vietnamese mustnot be forgotten.) Third, several modern western terms and concepts entered
Meiji Japanese discourse after first being forged into Chinese characters ineighteenth- and early-nineteenth-century China. Worked out in China first,
many key western terms entered Japan in Chinese garb, well-suited or not.
With respect to the development of Japanese Christian theology, all of thewestern languages listed above – quite often via Chinese after having been
adapted into Chinese characters – played important roles. French and Latin
fed Japanese Catholic thought, as did Russian for Orthodoxy. With regard toProtestant Christian thought, English, Dutch, and German were particularly
vital. These three languages’ respective roles, as well as the timing of whenthose roles were played, corresponded with missionaries’ countries of origin
and the related destination countries of certain Japanese Christian leaders’studies that they conducted abroad. The timing both of western missionaries’
arrivals in Japan and of Japanese Christians studying abroad was directly
related to the modernization, industrialization, and international spread of therelated western countries.2 The timing of Japanese political, intellectual, and2 Other areas of the world were not as neatly coordinated in terms of missionary
reception in relation to country-of-horizon modernization, e.g., in the eighteenth
century, before modern Germany was formed in 1871, German-speaking Pietists
came to India under the Danish-Halle Mission, plus German-speaking Moravians
were serving in the Western Hemisphere.

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economic leaders’ selection of sectors of western societal life in order tosupport Japan’s modernization also was a factor.
That meant that English and Dutch came to Japan first (in the 1850s), due
to both the long-time international spread of British and Dutch economic (andpolitical) interests plus the newer spread of similar interests of the growing
United States of America. German speech and print came a generation later,
since the modern nation-state of Germany (and ensuing international influence) did not take shape until 1871 (also the year that the oft-mentioned
Iwakura Mission group made its two-year tour of the U.S. and European
countries). Hence Japanese Protestant Christian theological development firstimbibed English and Dutch theological articulations, then added German
theological sources to its menu of intake. Once again, Christian terminology
previously translated into or otherwise articulated in Chinese often provided
frameworks, patterns, or examples for Japanese use.
It is important to remind ourselves that, while external inputs from China
and the West were essential to the process of Japanese Christian formulations,Japanese-language religio-philosophical heritages have been primary forJapanese Christian theological developments. This also holds true – not onlyin Japan but in any other setting as well – when taking into account thefoundational roles for Christian understanding played by the Christian
Scriptures and by tradition (the latter to varying degrees, depending on theparticular Christian tradition being considered). Indeed, basic for all examplesof Christian life, belief, and practice is their rootedness in local contexts,
including language, unspoken assumptions, social realities, and local histories. This reality is intertwined with the translatable character of the Christian
Scriptures and traditions themselves, foundational as they are. In this sense
Christianity’s translatable character resembles Buddhist traditions more thanIslam with its inherently untranslatable Arabic Qur’an.
As for Takakura Tokutarō, then, he was a Japanese man who thought, felt,
prayed, wrestled, believed, preached, wrote, interacted, and came to his religious convictions primarily in Japanese linguistic and religio-philosophicalcategories. Like others within the rapidly modernizing Japan of the Meiji Era
and ensuing years, Takakura absorbed much from outside those categories andwas changed accordingly. Fundamentally, however, Takakura’s (and Japan’s)religio-philosophical substratum continued in ways there were identifiably
Japanese. The multilingual journey involved in that fascinating process iswhat most particularly concerns us here.

Meiji educational developments
As outlined at the outset, Japan selectively incorporated various currentsof western expertise, thought, and culture to advance its own modernization

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project. Pockets of Japanese social and political leaders began to draw onwestern resources in the 1850s and 1860s, when western powers forcibly
knocked on Japan’s closed doors in order to open up trade relations (and toenhance trade with the much bigger prize, China). As such, these earlyJapanese incorporations of western influences were haphazard, reactionary,and necessarily out of self-defense. Japan’s proactive and intentional reception of the modern West accelerated during the 1870s and 1880s, i.e., during
the two decades following the 1868 Meiji Restoration.
Since missionaries from Britain and the United States were the earliest
Protestant emissaries to arrive in Japan (in 1859), English language study
began to take place in the few port areas to which the missionaries and otherforeigners were confined. Interestingly, in Nagasaki the Dutch Reformed
American missionary G. F. Verbeck began teaching English (and othersubjects, including economics and politics) at the invitation of local officials
in 1865,3 then expanded the languages taught to Dutch, Russian, French, andChinese.4 In 1869 Verbeck moved to the new capital of Tokyo at the new
Meiji government’s invitation and, incredibly, became head teacher at thecentrally important Daigaku Nankō, which eventually (in 1877) became
Tokyo University. Under Verbeck’s leadership, the four western-style departments of law, literature, science, and medicine were created. Foreign
language instruction consisted of English, French, and German, in that orderof emphasis. In addition, at the government’s request for his consultation
Verbeck advised that all medical studies be conducted no longer in Dutch but
in German, a vastly influential change that was implemented in 1871.5
General summaries of the development of the Meiji education system notethat Japanese leaders drew on French and German models in designing their
new compulsory, national system.6 Summaries also note that foreign language
instruction shifted from an emphasis in the 1870s on English by American
and British teachers (excepting medical instruction that was uniformly inGerman) to a growing emphasis throughout the 1880s on German by German
instructors. 7 Also relevant for the 1870s were the early proliferation, thenlater reduction (by the financially strapped central government), of both
3 Benjamin Duke, The History of Modern Japanese Education: Constructing the
National School System, 1872 1890 (New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers
University Press, 2009) 43 44.
4 Nobuhiro Miyoshi, Nihon Kyōiku no Kaikoku: Gaikoku Kyōshi to Kindai Nihon (TheNational Opening of Japanese Education: Foreign Teachers and Modern Japan)(Tokyo: Fukumura Shuppan, 1986) 35ff.
5 Duke, 2009, 51 55.
6 Cf., e.g., japan-guide.com, “Meiji Period (1868 1912)” http://www.japan-guide.com/
e/e2130.html (accessed January 19, 2016).
7 Cf. Duke, 2009, 235 236, 307ff.

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senmon gakkou (“specialty schools”) and foreign language schools.8 The
1880s’ increased German emphasis came particularly from the leadership ofPrime Minister Itō Hirobumi (1841 1909) and his confidant and eventual
minister of education, Inoue Kowashi (1843 1895).9
Particularly relevant for what the increased German studies starting in the
1880s meant for Christian thinkers is that German instruction moved beyond
its confined applicability to medical studies. The exclusive use of German in
medicine continued, but such other areas of law and literature also began tobe taught in German.10 Insofar as Christian leaders came from the ranks ofelite students in these other areas and, in correlative fashion, learned German,
the connection between German language capabilities and Christian theological development starts to come into slightly sharper focus.

Meiji Protestant leaders
The first generation of Japanese Protestant Christians slowly began to takeshape during the 1860s and early 1870s, after missionaries’ initial arrival in1859. The first Protestant missionaries, like many that followed them, were
English-speaking Americans (Episcopal, Presbyterian, and Reformed). The
early American as well as British missionaries gathered groups of young men
through teaching them English (and often various branches of westernlearning, particularly science). The young Japanese men who were attracted
to the foreign missionaries and their instruction were of samurai background– but their families had been loyal to the outgoing Tokugawa Shogunate andwere thus socio-politically displaced by the revolutionary 1868 Meiji
Restoration.
There were three well-known Protestant groups or “bands” that formedin the 1870s, all led by former samurai who became Christians under thetutelage of American missionary-educators. Those three groups (named after
their locations) and their most representative leaders were the Sapporo Bandand Uchimura Kanzō (1861 1930), the Yokohama Band and the aforementioned Uemura Masahisa, and the Kumamoto Band and Nishima (sometimes
written as “Neesima”) Jo (1843 1890).11 Uchimura and Nishima went to the
8 Cf. Mori Hideo, Nihon Kyōiku Seidoshi (The History of the Japanese Education
System) (Tokyo: Gakugei Tosho, 1984) 29; Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports,
Science and Technology, “Higher Education in the Early Meiji Era” http://www.
mext.go.jp/b_menu/hakusho/html/others/detail/1317276.htm (accessed January 19,2016).
9 Duke, 2009, 307ff.
10 Duke, 2009, 308.
11 Arguably Ebina Danjō (1856 1937) was the most long-lasting representative leaderof the Kumamoto Band, but the matter relates to timing, especially in relation to
Nishima’s 1875 initiative to form Doshisha University.

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United States for significant periods of study, and their English language
capabilities contributed to their widespread and even international influence.
The first generation of Japanese Protestant leaders were thus linguisticallycapable to incorporate, and otherwise be familiar with, English-language
Christian theology. However, as a whole they were not equipped to deal with
the influx of German theology beginning in the mid 1880s. Winfried Spinnerof the General Evangelical Protestant Missionary Society (AEPMV), soon
joined by Otto Schmiedel, arrived in 1885. After German residents had beengathered into a mission church, a Japanese church and seminary were
founded in Tomisaka (Tokyo) in 1887. “This seminary was, actually, the mostimportant transmitting station of liberal theology to the Japanese churches at
the time.”12

Sorting Through German Theology
Age and circumstances contributed significantly to producing those Meiji
Christian leaders who were German-language capable and who embraced
Spinner’s (and his German colleagues’) teachings. For example, Maruyama
Michikazu was born in 1869 – about a decade later than the earliest Christianleaders listed above – and his father was the clan physician. In 1883
Maruyama went to Tokyo and for four years learned German and went
through pre-medical studies. Having drifted from aspirations for medical
practice but taken up by German studies, Maruyama and fellow students suchas Minami Hajime were thus primed for meeting Spinner in 1868. Maruyama
became enamored with the German shin shingaku (“new theology”) that helearned through Spinner et al, thus furthering his ensuing dual ministerial andGerman instruction career.13
To more conservative and English-aware Japanese church leaders such as
Uemura Masahisa, the spread of more liberal German theological ideas wasboth disconcerting and linguistically impenetrable. Uemura thus took issue inthe early 1890s with Kanamori Michitomo (1857 1945), a leading exponentof the new, liberal theology imported via German channels. In 1891
Kanamori produced his book The Present and Future of Christianity in

12 Spinner’s 1885 arrival is universally noted in surveys of Japanese Christian history.
Here I have cited Mira Sonntag, “The ‘German East Asia Mission’ in Japan — Past
and Present” Kyodan Newsletter, December 1, 2009, http://uccj.org/knl/4396.html(accessed January 19, 2016).
13 Kamimura Naoki, Kindai Nihon no Doitsugo Gakusha (German Scholars in Modern
Japan) (Nagano-ken, Suwa-shi: Chōeisha, 2008) 381 387. (Thanks to Haruko
Nakamura for referring me to this book, located in the stacks of Yale’s Sterling
Memorial Library.)Confusion to Conviction

89

Japan.14 The next year he published his free translation of Otto Pfleiderer’s
1878 Religionsphilosophie auf geschichtlichter Grundlage.15 Kanamori
advocated a religion of truth and life achieved through harmonious union
between God and human beings, associated with a discarding of the primitive
teachings of the Bible as well as such traditional Christian theological claimsas the divinity of Christ. Hence “From Uemura’s point of view, Kanamori
appeared to be a man who had adopted strange ideas imported from foreign
theology.”16 (Interestingly, however, such linguistic-theological differences
did not prevent some Christian leaders from offering unified political supportof Uchimura Kanzō after the famous 1891 lesé majesté incident, when
Uchimura did not bow before a public display of the newly promulgatedRescript on Education.17)
One of Uemura’s challenges, however, was that he and other like-minded
Japanese Christian acquaintances were incapable of understanding theGerman expression of theology upon which Kanamori was drawing. After
forming a new seminary in 1904, Uemura had assembled at least two
Japanese colleagues familiar with German thought, the philosopher Hatano
Seiichi (1877 1950) and historian Ishihara Ken (1882 1976). Even so,
imagine Uemura’s delight and relief when a young German-capable student
named Takakura Tokutarō entered the small seminary in 1908. Takakura hadlearned German in high school in the early 1900s, which he continued to use
in his legal studies at the Tokyo Imperial University before leaving after two
years to pursue theological studies under Uemura, through whose preaching
Takakura had believed in Jesus and been baptized in December, 1906. So as
to explore the German background of what had become Japanese liberaltheology, Uemura had Takakura launch into reading Friedrich Schleiermacher,
14 Nihon genkon no Kirisutokyō narabini shōrai no Kirisutokyō (Tokyo: Keiseisha)
1891.
15 Summaries of Meiji Christianity and theology note the “free” nature of Kanamori’s
translation, thus indicating a lack of German-language fluency. How Kanamoriacquired his German-language familiarity that he had is unclear, although his relatively early birth in 1857 (in comparison to Maruyama, for example, who was bornin 1869) no doubt is relevant to the greater hurdles he had to overcome in learning
German.
16 Akio Dohi, “The First Generation: Christian Leaders in the First Period,” in Yasuo
Furuya, ed. and trans., A History of Japanese Theology (Grand Rapids, Michigan:
William B. Eerdmans Co., 1997) 22 24.
17 Cf. Yoshiya Abe, “Religious Freedom under the Meiji Constitution,” Contemporary
Religions in Japan Vol. 9, No. 4 (Dec., 1968), pp. 268 338. I accessed the section“III. Religious Freedom and the Imperial Rescript on Education” at http://nirc.
nanzan-u.ac.jp/nfile/3222 (accessed January 19, 2016); note particularly pp. 195 196(where Maruyama’s first name is incorrectly, I believe, listed as “Tsūichi,” although
the Chinese characters could be read that way). Cf. as well Kamimura, 385 386.

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Albrecht Ritschl, and other influential nineteenth-century German theologians.18
By his own testimony, Takakura was at first enamored with Schleiermacher
and then Ritschl. However, as he progressed in his own thinking while
pastoring and then studying in Britain (1921 1924), Takakura came to his
own strong conviction of Fukuinteki Kirisutokyō (“Evangelical Christianity”).
Takakura firmly believed in the centrality of the Bible, the Cross of Jesus
Christ, and European Reformers such as John Calvin and Martin Luther. As
such he stridently criticized both the “liberal theology” and “social
Christianity” that had spread widely in Japanese Christian circles by the timeof Takakura’s widest influence in the late 1920s.19
As a student of Uemura but also as a unique Japanese theologian, Takakuradigested both Anglo-Saxon and German theology in such a way that resulted
in an understanding that was vastly different from that of Kanamori
Michitomo. Takakura’s German-language ability was stronger than
Kanamori’s, and presumably Takakura had more concentrated opportunities toread and study German theology. Due to these and many other factors,
Takakura and Kanamori represent two different ways in which early JapaneseProtestant leaders absorbed German-language theology and then reproduced
that theology as Japanese Christian thinkers.20

Takakura’s Fukuinteki Kirisutokyō
The journey that Takakura took to arrive at his convictions about
Fukuinteki Kirisutokyō (“Evangelical Christianity”) was – like for many of his
Japanese contemporaries – a multilingual one. As noted earlier, the thoroughly Japanese-speaking Takakura began to learn German in high school. It
was as a university student that Takakura heard the Christian message
preached through Uemura Masahisa. Takakura believed, per his own testimony, in order to solve the “problem of the self.” Working through thatexistential angst was deeply personal for Takakura as well as indicative ofother younger Japanese intellectuals of his day.21
Soon after his conversion to Christianity, Takakura left his university legal
studies to study theology in Uemura’s new and small seminary in Tokyo. Partof what Takakura was requested to study was German theological works,
especially since they were largely undecipherable to Uemura and other
18 Jennings, 2005, 10 14, 157 158.
19 Cf. Jennings, 2005.
20 It was in the mid 1920s, then especially in the early 1930s, that German dialecticaltheology, especially in its Barthian form, swept through much of the JapaneseProtestant theological world.
21 Cf., for example, Jennings, 2005, 263 265.

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mentors of Uemura’s generation. That taste of German theology piqued
Takakura’s quest for wider study, so even during a decade of pastoring andotherwise living outside of academic life (and functioning primarily inJapanese) Takakura read and wrote about several western theological works
and biographies.22 In 1921, at the age of 36, Takakura embarked on almost
three years of theological study in Britain.
Takakura’s time in Edinburgh, Oxford, and Cambridge was focused oncourse work but most especially on reading. Correspondence from Japan
maintained his attention on people’s concerns back home. Primarily, however,
Takakura gave himself to living abroad, to learning English, and particularly
to reading a wide range of English- and German-language theologicalworks.23 Takakura was all the while processing what he was learning inJapanese, facing the daunting challenge of translating concepts and emphases
shaped in Western intellectual worlds that did not lend themselves well tosmooth transition into alien settings.
Not long after returning to Japan in 1924, Takakura faced the sorrow ofthe death of Uemura Masahisa, Takakura’s and many others’ mentor andinspirational model. Takakura also then faced the challenge of assuming theimposing mantle of Uemura’s far-reaching ecclesiastical and theologicalleadership. It was in the midst of such stretching circumstances that Takakuracame to a place of clearly and boldly articulating his convictions about
Fukuinteki Kirisutokyo, culminating in his 1927 book of that title. Takakuracontinued to express those same convictions until the deterioration of hishealth and untimely death in 1934. Takakura’s published writings, especially
Fukuinteki Kirisutokyo, carried his influence widely to Japanese church
leaders and theological students well into the 1950s.
The process of how Takakura came to his convictions included theinteraction of a number of elements and forces. Overall, that process canperhaps best be described as Takakura’s particular translation of the expressions of Christianity that he received through both Uemura Masahisa (plusother Meiji Christian conduits) and western thinkers. These expressions cameinto both his dynamic setting of a modernizing Japan and his own life that
had grown out of his family’s non-samurai (social) and True Pure Land
Buddhist (religious) heritages. The remainder of this study will example thevarious components of Takakura’s translation process as just listed.
First, the manner in which Takakura Tokutaro came to his convictions
was his unique process. To be sure, he shared (and in identifiable ways
represented) many of the same traits and challenges of his Japanese contem22 Ibid., 157 158.
23 Ibid., 159 187.

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poraries. Also, insofar as Takakura’s convictions were specifically Christian,his conversion and development resembled those of others who convert anddevelop in their beliefs and lives in relationship to the same ChristianCreator-Redeemer. Even so, this man worked through his life uniquely, andthe manner in which he did so demonstrates creativity, ingenuity, courage,
and resolve.
Takakura’s uniqueness is important to emphasize in light of the ways hehas commonly been portrayed. Many have seen his thought as passively
developing along a line of influences that came to him, in particular a seriesof Western thinkers beginning at Friedrich Schleiermacher and ending at P.T.
Forsyth and Emil Brunner. As such, Takakura’s dual role in ProtestantJapanese theological development has been seen merely to have faithfully
conveyed Uemura Masahisa’s theology to the next generation and the justlisted western theologians’ emphases to Japanese theological students in a
way that prepared the way for the overwhelming influence that Karl Barth’s
theology had in Japan beginning in the 1930s. Contrary to those common
analyses, however, is this study’s understanding, and forthcoming demonstration, that Takakura was much more creative and unique than simply aconveyer of other Christian thinkers’ emphases.
With respect to Uemura, on the one hand Takakura did in fact pass on
his mentor’s Bible-based and Christocentric teaching to the next generation.
He did this through succeeding his mentor in leading the seminary that
Uemura had founded, as well as through his many writings and perhaps mostprominently through his preaching, media similarly used by Uemura. On theother hand, contrary to common expectations Takakura did not succeed
Uemura in pastoring the Fujimicho Church in Tokyo, since there wereenough church members who saw Takakura as different from Uemura. In
particular, Takakura exhibited more spiritually interior concerns than had theinstitution-building Uemura. Takakura’s message was also even more Crosscentered than Uemura’s overriding stress on Jesus’s divinity; one could saythat Takakura focused more on Christ’s atoning work and Uemura more on
Christ’s position as the divine Son of God.
Takakura’s distinctive differences from Uemura can of course be attributed
to the generational gap between the two. Not unrelated is how Uemura, likeother first-generation Meiji Protestant leaders, came not only from samurai
lineage but from samurai families that had been loyal to the Tokugawa
Shogunate overthrown by the new Meiji oligarchy from southwest Japan.
Uemura and other Meiji Christian leaders, e.g., Uchimura Kanzo and Ebina
Danjo, thus envisioned a rebuilt Japan that was to be renewed through thepurifying and uplifting influence of Christianity. Takakura, however, did nothave that same instinctive sense of public, national responsibility, since hisConfusion to Conviction

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background was not samurai but of the merchant class. Furthermore,
Takakura’s ingrained Jodo Shinshu religious instincts would have pulled him
to more spiritually interior matters than to Uemura’s public focus. How
Takakura’s religious heritage shaped his translation of the forms ofChristianity that came to him will be further examined below.
The plethora of western thinkers that Takakura encountered is difficult tosummarize in this relatively brief study. As noted earlier, throughout his adultlife Takakura voraciously read a wide spectrum of English-language (mostly
Scottish and English) and German-language theologians. The depth of
Takakura’s appreciation for the Western authors he read is clear simply fromthe bibliography of Fukuinteki Kirisutokyo, consisting almost exclusively of
English and German references. That book, as well as other writings, isliberally sprinkled with phoneticized Western terms, demonstrating how
Takakura was constantly importing English and German concepts and words
he had encountered into his explanations to Japanese readers.
It is important to note that Takakura did not simply passively receive
whatever western thinkers were presented to him. This is especially clear
during the year Takakura spent in Oxford, which was his middle period in the
United Kingdom.24 Per his own description, Takakura eschewed attendingclasses at Mansfield College where he was enrolled, but instead gave himself
to “only reading, while surrounded by the books I had bought.”25 He selectedwhich books he read, guided by concerns he had personally for Christianity’sroles in Japan. He could thus use several Anglican thinkers, Ernst Troeltsch,
Baron Friedrich von Hugel, and most especially P. T. Forsyth for moving
toward what for him was the deepest need he had, namely for kakushin or“certainty” of faith.
There was no more basic or important theme for Takakura, both personally and as a theologian, as kakushin. The concern for certainty arises
throughout his writings. As Takakura himself put it, “Faith is most sensitive
to the certainty of its object.”26 Also, “The most important thing for religious
consciousness is God’s objective certainty.” The importance for Takakura of
kakushin can be seen in the manner in which he discusses and argues for any
number of points because they contribute to having kakushin:• Why the objective revelation and “Word” of the Bible is to be enbraced;• Why God is the Creator;
24 For a more detailed account of what is summarized here, see Jennings, 2005, 164
177.
25 Jennings, 2005, 164.
26 Original references for this section can be found at Jennings, 2005, 351. All emphases
are original.

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• Why the Cross is the final eschatological solution to sin;
• Why God’s faithfulness to forgive and purify sin is to be seen in the Christ’s
Cross and shed blood;• Why grace alone gives salvation;• Why the “faith of election” should be believed;• Why faith is God’s work;• Why God’s “eternal administration” is to be trusted;• Why spectulative reason is inadequate;• Why the “inner necessity” of Jesus and Paul is to be treaured;• Why prayer is important;• Why prayer is to be done in faith alone;• Why prayer is to be done with the help of the Holy Spirit.
More than to rational argument or authoritative support from Scripture
and recognized authors, Takakura appeals to the giving of certainty andconviction as the single most decisive factor for accepting most any point hecommends to others.
Furthermore for Takakura, Reformation, evangelical, biblical Christianity
was fundamentally different from rationalistic, pietistic, and Roman Catholic
Christianity in leading to “eschatological certainty,” in having “conviction.”
Takakura appeals to “eternal” reality because that is unmovable, “certain”
reality. Even though Takakura’s understanding of the “most certain reality”
shifts within his developing thought from the “self” to “God,” the very phrase“certain reality” indicates the union for Takakura of the “certain” and the“real.” The conviction-experience of the awareness of God’s grace in the
Cross is the true and real certainty.
Why kakushin was so decisive and important for Takakura is difficult if
not impossible to know. One central explanation comes out of his Jodo
Shinshu religious heritage.27 That heritage was Takakura’s “ontological past”
that demanded his attention as a Christian convert. A Jodo Shinshu mindset
cultivated in Takakura at his grandmother’s knee would have included a
posture of introverted focus on direct, immediate experience. It would havealso included a pietistic bent toward trusting in an “Other power” versus “selfpower,” or one’s own ability to achieve salvation. Encounters with Nishida
Kitaro and other Mahayana thinkers would have cultivated in Takakura a“subjectivity-only” mindset that is not entrapped within a “subject-object”
dichotomy. It is thus only to be expected that Takakura would later stress theimportance of becoming “self-aware,” or to jikaku matters of faith and ultimate commitment.
27 Jennings, 2005, 299 305.

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Related is Takakura’s long-time struggle of “solving the problem of theself,” which he gave as the primary motivation for his conversion to
Christianity.28 Per his own descriptions, Takakura was looking for answers tosuch questions as “What properly speaking is the ‘self’? What can one do tofree, fulfill, and thoroughly realize it?” As a young adult Takakura “thoughtthat only the self alone had any authority. I came to the desperate state ofdefying and refusing anything and everything that sought to shackle or deny
the self.” After awakening to the self’s condition as thoroughly egostistical,
Paul later “collided” with the Apostle Paul’s words in the book of Romans,
words that “deeply penetrated [his] heart.” Soon thereafter, Takakura experienced an ontological-epistemological merging of his own “self” and the ultimate “Self” or, in biblical language (specifically Paul’s words in Galatians
2:20), Takakura’s self or ego died and Christ lived in Takakura.
Putting the matter in a multilingual framework, Biblical language,
incorporated by the Japanese Takakura directly and through German- andEnglish-speaking Protestant thinkers, led Takakura into becoming self-awareof the epistemological-ontological merging of the self/Self.29
This study’s necessarily abbreviated sketch of how Takakura incorporated
multilingual (and interreligious) inputs would be remiss if it omitted at least
brief descriptions of some of the conceptual pairs that Takakura employed.30
He used “worldview” pairs, both antithetical (e.g., scientific, materialism
versus a view embracing freedom and value; Buddhistic, atheistic, pessimistic
fatalism versus a spirit of responsibility and self-sacrifice) and complementary(e.g., transcendent-immanent, dynamic-static, Hebraic-Hellenistic, visibleinvisible, eternal-historical). Among the several eternal-time pairs Takakura
used was a geometric pair of a point within history and a line throughout
history. In particular, all of linear history is redeemed by Christ, while thepunctiliar act of God in Christ is the “condensation,” the “apex,” the “center”
of history.
Perhaps most puzzling and surprising of Takakura’s conceptual pairs isthat of “objective” and “subjective.” For Takakura, those terms kyakkan(-teki)and shukan(-teki) - both of Chinese derivation - refer primarily to “public” or“corporate” versus “private” or “individual.” The normally expected English
meanings of “exterior” versus “interior” are not totally excluded; it is just that“public-corporate” and “private-individual” are the meanings Takakura
employs with those terms.
There are subtle intricacies involved with discussing here the interrelation28 Jennings, 2005, 305 311.
29 Jennings, 2005, 351 352.
30 Jennings 2005, 340 347.

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ships between the multiple languages involved, adjoining conceptual meanings, and Takakura’s religious heritage. In short, Takakura’s “subjectivityonly” instincts enabled him to stress the importance of kyakkanteki faith aswell as personal experience of the Church’s faith in the atoning Cross ofChrist. For Takakura, his self/Self-awareness or jikaku overcame historical,
ontological, psychological, and gaps between the Cross and his own faith, or
between the religious experience of the Apostle Paul and Takakura’s faith. For
Takakura, kyakkanteki or “public-corporate” faith is what gives kakushin in
one’s soul. That was essentially Takakura’s unique incorporation and translation of multilingual realities into his Jodo Shinshu shaped world.

Conclusion
In all of his unique and particular ways of manifesting what for him wasthe certainty and truth of Fukuinteki Kirisutokyo, Takakura Tokutaro also
exhibited some of the common trends of his historical period. Linguistically,
he flowed in the Meiji stream of shifting from Chinese to European influences.31 In particular, the mainstream Meiji style of kanbun kundoku, whereby
Chinese texts had been rearranged in Japanese syntactical order and withJapanese inflectional suffixes added, gradually gave way to styles that incorporated European-influenced phraseology. Takakura certainly included such
European-influenced style in his writing.
Moreover, Takakura used Chinese terms that had recently been invented,
or at least had been given new meanings, in order to incorporate Westernconcepts and words. Some of the best known new terms were shakai, kojin,kindai, sonzai, kenri, and jiyuu.32 No doubt such important terms for Takakura
as kyakkan and shukan fell among that same category as well.
Takakura also exemplified many of the struggles and challenges of his
contemporaries in Meiji, Taisho, and early Showa Japan. His central wrestlingwith the “problem of the self” was shared by literary and other public figures.
The dizzying speed of Japan’s modernization affected everyone, including ofcourse the Christian theologian and pastor Takakura Tokutaro.
The multiple languages involved in Japan’s modernization, and in
Takakura’s coming to his assured religious convictions, played vitally important roles. Those roles do not provide the sole explanation for his Takakara
and others struggled and changed, but they tell us a great deal of the fascinating process through which the Japanese of Meiji, Taisho, and early Showa
struggled to find their place in the modern world. Studying figures such as
31 Nano Sato-Rossberg and Judy Wakabayashi, eds., Translation and Translation Studies
in the Japanese Context
32 Akira Yanabu, Honyakugo Seiritsu Jijo (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1982) ii.

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Takakura Tokutaro sheds helpful light on a fascinating and clearly vital
period of world history.