Study On The Theme Of Love In Akutagawa Ryunosuke’s "Kirisitanmono"

Love is an important theme of Akutagawa Ryunosuke’s discussion in kirisitanmono, andit is one of the questions Akutagawa Ryunosuke congitates through out his life. Also, the theme oflove reflects the change process of Akutagawa Ryunosuke’s cognition on Christian as well aschange of the writer’s own outlook on life and values, which shows special research significance.So，the author put Akutagawa Ryunosuke’s love theme works as a starting point, at the same time,compare it with the traditional Christian thoughts of love concept to probe into the specials ofAkutagawa Ryunosuke’s love concept.Love possesses an important position in ideology history of Christian theology. In thetraditional concept of Christian theology, there are different types of love, mainly, it reflects in twokinds that are different and irreconcilable: agape and eros, the former represents fundamental spiritof Christian faith, and it is the type that embodies Christian special love, the latter represents theancient Greek tradition, which is the embodiment of the people-centered love. In AkutagawaRyunosuke’s kirisitanmono, both of the two types of love are involved. The love theme works canbe divided into three categories: one is the agape theme, in this kind of works, AkutagawaRyunosuke creates a great deal of Christian images who practice love conception, such as Kitisukein Juliano Kitisuke. The second is the mixed theme with agape and eros, this kind of works arecharacterized by mixture of god-centered agape and individual-centered eros, such as The Story ofSt. Christopher、Christ in Nanking. The third is the conflicting theme of agape and eros, this kindof works represent with outstanding confliction between agape and eros, such as Ogin、OgataRyosai Memorandum and so on. Love concept undergoes a develop process in Christian ideology history. In the text ofBible, through explanation of Christian theologian Augustin and Aquinas, love of god and love forgod become a kind of abstract and transcendent concept, they promote the agape concept to thehighest theory of Christian faith and make the agape concept become the core of Christiantheology and culture. In Medieval and Renaissance period, because of the influence of humanism,mundane eros was affirmed. Thus, it affected the Christian religious reform, which madeChristianity pay more attention to human nature and freedom.In the above-mentioned three types of works, Akutagawa’s understanding about agapemainly comes from the Christian tradition and follows the traditional love concept. However,Akutagawa’s understanding of love is not just confined to religious angle, he also thinks from theperspective of relationship between Christian culture and Japanese culture, which is special andcreative. First of all, as a representative writer of New Thought, Akutagawa lays emphasis oninnovation in literary skills. Secondly, in the love theme works, it reflects Akutagawa’s cognitiveprocess on Western Christian culture as well as thought of the foreign culture. Once again,Akutagawa also ponders over traditional culture of Japan. The Japanese culture exhibits a uniqueassimilation to foreign culture, namely, Christian culture, in the confliction between Japaneseculture and Christian culture.In Akutagawa’s love theme works, with the inheritance and innovation of the traditionalChristian conception, it also shows his unique understanding of love. Akutagawa’s unique loveconcept mainly manifest in two aspects: first, the love in his works is a kind of dialectic love, heuses a dialectic way to treat the concept of love. In the performance of love, he shows solicitudefor the opposite side of love and performs conversion and complexity of the love. Second, Akutagawa concerns and expresses pure love. In addition to selfless love manifested for Christianconcept, Akutagawa also gives affirmation to selfless family love of traditional conception.