ABSTRACT
This chapter analyzes the function of fiction in the hagiographic genre. As an example, it focuses on a book on the Japanese priest Shinran written by Satō Yōjirō between 2010 and 2012. The chapter claims that fiction plays a crucial function in persuading the reader that the protagonist embodies a teaching that can be meaningful for the reader’s faith. This argumentation aims to provide an alternate approach to hagiographies that focuses on their meaning for someone’s religious belief and not for historiography. In this chapter, historical knowledge is understood as the nonfictional framework of a hagiography that allows an author to discuss faith-centred questions through fiction.
