ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses Akutagawa Ryūnosuke’s fascination with Christianity, especially Catholicism, and the salvific discourse that emerged from his entire oeuvre. Texts covered in this section include his kirishitan mono ‘O-Gin’ and ‘Nankin no kirisuto’ (The Christ of Nanking), a set of rarely discussed short pieces such as ‘Rōkyōjin’ (A Crazy Old Man) and Kirisuto ni kansuru danpen (Fragments on Christ) that were written before his literary debut, and his late works Kappa, Haguruma (Spinning Gears) and Seihō no hito (The Man from the West), which revealed Akutagawa’s inability to address the question of faith within the framework of mainstream Protestantism.
