HOLY ANIME

Christianity has been in Japan for five centuries but embraced by less than one percent of the population It39s a complicated relationship given the sudden appearance in Japan of Renaissance Catholicism which was utterly unlike the historic faiths of Shinto and Buddhism Japan had to invent a word for religion since Japan did not share the west39s reliance on faith in a personal God Japan39s views of this outsider religion resemble America39s view of the outsider Islamic faith Understanding this through the book Orientalism by Edward Said Patrick Drazen samples depictions of Christianity in the popular Japanese media of comics and cartoons The book begins with the work of postwar comics master Tezuka Osamu with results that range from the comic to the revisionist to the blasphemous and obscene