In Conversation with Kenneth Lau, Lee Huiwen, and Lee E Mae (Part 1)

Kenneth Lau (b. 1982) and Lee Huiwen (b. 1981) founded Studio Asobi to try and explore a slower and simpler way of life. From their cosy little home in the heartlands of Singapore, they create handmade pottery and share their love of the craft with fellow pilgrims.

They enjoy watching singing competitions, cycling slowly on cloudy days, and laughing about their son’s antics while they are still cute.

Lee E Mae (b. 1996) is a 24-year-old trying to carve out her own path of creative expression after art school. A librarian by day, she steals every other pocket of time to sink her fingers into a good old lump of clay. She believes that we can inhabit our lived realities in new spatial, experiential and poetic ways through art and making.

This conversation on art, inspiration, and beauty was held in response to framing questions provided by Jonathan Chan. It has been edited for length and clarity. 

How did you first begin practising your artistic craft?

Huiwen: It was during our pre-marriage course that I committed my life to Christ. As we started taking our faith seriously,  we grew increasingly dissatisfied with what our lives were at the time. I had my corporate job, he had his, and it felt like we were spending a good part of our time just trying to make more money for our companies and ourselves. I think there was a lot of conflict between what we were reading in the Bible and committing our energy towards. For us one key verse was Ephesians 2:10:

‘For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.’

What is it that God has created, had made us to be, and what are these good works that He has prepared in advance for us to do? 

We started taking pottery classes after the first year of our marriage after realising that we were spending way too much time at work. It was a way to spend intentional quality time together. Kenneth did some ceramics as an O-Level art student, but I was a complete beginner. It surprised me how moved I was to be able to create a beautiful vessel out of the dust of the earth. As we gradually fell in love with the craft, we began to wonder: if a hobby gives us so much joy and meaning, what’s stopping us from finding something similar in our work, something that can help us integrate our faith with the rest of our lives?

We had no intention of becoming potters as pottery was a sunset industry at the time. However, this question led me to leave my job and go on a sabbatical. During that year of rest and exploration, I spent 40 days in Japan, staying in the studio of an old potter and learning from him. It was during the season of Lent and I was on a social media fast, so my mind was clear and free from its usual distractions. As I watched the lives of the local Japanese, I felt like God was telling me, “Look at these people – they may not know Me, but their lives are so simple, joyful and peaceful. What about you, who claim to know Me?”

After returning to Singapore, those reflections eventually gradually grew into a decision to start a pottery practice from our home. I honestly wasn’t thinking much about becoming a professional ceramic artist, but it was more Kenneth and I setting out to answer the question of whether there’s a way to live our lives more aligned to biblical values, even in a place like Singapore. How could we integrate our faith, our marriage, our work, and our ministry in a manner that pleases God and brings us sustainable joy?

Rise (2015) by Studio Asobi

Kenneth: We met Pastor Benny Ho at a church camp, and at that time we were already thinking a little bit about going into pottery. When we told him about some of our ideas, he was actually very excited. I remember him talking about how the creation of beauty is a bit lost in the Christian tradition. While the rest of society is very much focused on expressions of creativity, the Christian world holds back. In that sense, we are not able to engage with people in the way they are engaging with themselves. 

It really struck me because when I told my parents I wanted to be an artist after O-Levels, they were very against it. Now I’ve gone in one big round. I always felt like art was something special but never felt like there could be a use for it. When I looked at beautiful works of art, they would really move me, but I’d always felt like they’re just feelings and those are not important. 

So when I heard Pastor Benny talk about this value of beauty and how that pertains to Christianity, this was something new for me. I think that’s where we wanted to start to explore. We never felt like we were cut out to be ceramic artists…

Huiwen: Yeah, we are extremely unqualified. (laughs

Kenneth: Yeah, it’s an exploration or experimentation. I think because we came from stressful corporate jobs, being able to slow down was also very valuable. Time is a resource that’s lacking in Singapore. I think it was also around this time that I saw a few examples of how life is very transient. We had a friend who passed away at 30 and everybody was shocked. Another friend, 37, who was an ex-colleague had a cancer relapse. Now she’s okay but it suddenly made her feel like, wah, any time I can just be gone. 

So we just felt we needed to look at time in a different way. In this period of our lives when we have energy, we have resources, we have intellect, we are educated… This is the best time for us to use our time wisely, rather than wait for when we are weaker, a bit older, and a lot more burdened. If we want to go and tire ourselves at an older age… it’s a risky move. Some people can contribute a lot at that age, but you never know how it might be like for yourself. 

See You Latte (2020) by Studio Asobi

Huiwen: Actually, what I discovered in that sabbatical year is that time is a non-renewable resource. Money is a renewable resource, but time is not. And because we are also quite involved in the Young Adults ministry in our church, when we see a lot of people feeling very trapped by work, we’ll try and help them ponder: what are you trapped by? Sometimes we’ll ask them, if you’re 50, how much would you pay to get back one year of your youth? I think when you think about that, and then you think about how much you are sacrificing now just to earn that extra amount of money a month… To start like that… are you going to regret it? But not everyone takes our advice la (laughs

So for us, this foray into arts is not really like “arts” per se… but actually more about life and relationships. I think that’s more core to our identity as artisans. Even in the workshops we run, oftentimes the pottery is just a means to spend time asking our participants about their lives. I think this path into the arts is like a third space between the secular world and the church where people are a bit more willing to talk about deeper things. 

And the name “Asobi” actually means “play” in Japanese, and the kanji word is 遊 (you), which means “journey” in Mandarin. To me, pottery is not the end goal. I always felt that way even when we started. It is just a means – who knows what we’ll do 10, 20 years down the road? I see the importance of art, as it has the power to transcend time and space and it also gets people more in touch with their inner thoughts. It’s now our seventh year so we’re actually doing a lot of reflection. What is it that God wants us to do for the next seven years? 

I Am Open (2019) by Studio Asobi

Take this jar of clay
And place me where the rain falls
Till I overflow

***

Do you have any reflections about the weaving of faith and art?  

E Mae: I did Art and Art History in joint majors at the University of Reading, but the art there was not traditional at all, so we didn’t specialise at all. It’s very theory-based, very critical, contemporary art-focused… and I enjoyed it la, I thrived. But after four years I was just pretty exhausted. I was just very sceptical and apprehensive about the art that I saw there.

Huiwen: Like the typical cynical art student.

E Mae: Yes! Everyone who graduates from art school is like, “This is not all I thought it would be”. I think from there I’m still finding my way. In art school I was very process- and medium-driven, always working with clay, but there’s also that weird segregation between art and craft. At first, I was trying to wrap my head around it. I was like, “Is there some kind of colonial undertone to this…” Like, who was the one who separated fine art and craft? 

Even in art school when I was pinching pots on my table, just having a good time while my other friends were wracking their brains on their computers, they would stop by and be like, “Oh, that’s so cute! I wish I worked with clay.” And then I’m like, “Excuse me?” (laughter) I was just very tired of that. I came back to Singapore and went to a pottery studio to continue throwing, and then I felt, wah, this release. I didn’t have to think about anything. I could just think about improving my pottery skills and enjoying the process and that was very freeing for me. So I’m still honing my craft in that sense. 

Part of Leaky Vessels (2019) by Lee E Mae
Ceramic, paper, graphite, ink, plywood, mild steel

But also, in uni, not many people knew I was a Christian. I was a bit scared la. I mean the environment there was quite hostile… 

Huiwen: Art school especially it’s like when you say you’re religious… and they’re like, “Oh my goodness.”

E Mae: Yeah! I was like, “What does that even mean?” If I believe in God? Does that make me religious? I didn’t really understand that concept either. It was quite hard for me to find community there as well. It was very small, liberal, and I was the only Singaporean in my department, one of very few Asians. It was tough as I felt like I was going against the current.

It’s quite a pity that I wasn’t able to integrate more of my faith into what I studied, into my uni life, but it’s still something I’m trying to reconcile now. I never thought it would clash so much until I went to uni. 

Huiwen: Was it because of the ideas? 

E Mae: Yeah! In art history, a lot of thought that goes into it is already very post-Enlightenment, post-religious, post-living with God, post-Jesus… it was quite a cynical place. It might come as a surprise to my course mates now actually that I’m a Christian. But if they ask I’ll be like, yeah la I am la, I pray la (laughter) I love Jesus. Do you? (laughter) Then they’re like, “I do yoga”. (laughter

Space (2017) by Lee E Mae
Hessian, plaster, clay

Kenneth: In a way, it’s good that it clashed. For me, the fact that it didn’t clash actually speaks a lot about my faith back then. When I was there, I could on one hand go for Christian Fellowship, then, on the other hand, my architecture faculty’s culture was very… carnal. (laughter) Looking back at my life then, I could feel very spiritual on Sunday, and it didn’t matter to me on all the other days. 

Whereas now there’s a lot more tension because we really want to see what the rest of our lives will look like since we’ve decided to be more integrated. When COVID happened, it made me realise that going to church doesn’t really mean that I’m a disciple of Christ. I remember listening to various sermons before COVID that talked about how the first century Christians showed examples of what Christianity really is during the plague. They were out in the streets sacrificing themselves and loving each other and people saw that this is very different from seeing everybody fighting for their own lives. I’m sure every church has probably preached about being salt and light, but the church in Singapore has still pretty much stuck to the status quo in this period. There are definitely responses in parts of the church that say, “I’m going to stand up and be counted”, but the same is happening in other religions. Everybody in Singapore has naturally become a bit more attentive to various social issues. I think we are still constantly trying to get a grip on what discipleship really means. 

And that’s why we come back to art. Recently I’ve been reflecting: do I call myself an artist? Or do I call myself more of an artisan or craftsman, just like how you were thinking about that dichotomy? I find it hard to call myself an artist because of the way I approach my craft… I don’t try to make a statement. Rather, I really treasure the connections that we can make with the people who commission us to do something or the people who come to our classes. And on our Instagram page, we make something and then just reflect about it and our lives and the process of making it. It’s because we want to connect with people, to feel like we all share some stories, some common narratives. 

Huiwen: I guess one of the struggles that we also had is that we don’t want to add on to this culture of consumerism. I think how we manage that is that we actually don’t create collections to sell. Rather it’s more of when people approach us to make something, we make la. We try not to encourage a desire to consume. But it’s still a journey of figuring out how to properly live out our faith in our work.

Kenneth: Yeah, so, what’s an artist? I also don’t really know. But for us, even the act of making something to sell, as long as it’s meaningful to the person, that feels very nice. 

Making Our Mark (2015) by Studio Asobi
Made out of 2500 pieces of handmade ceramic tiles, this was a community art project co-created with the people of Hougang.

***

A Mirror Darkly
Kenneth Lau

There’s a fog in my eyes and I can’t see
Where the earth ends and begins the sea
When the dusk gives up its light
When the shore fades out of sight
Am I alone or are You with me

There’s a weight on my chest and I can’t breathe
As I follow Your voice in the wind
Will my world be left behind
Or is there life for me to find
Am I in chains or am I set free

Though now I peer, into a mirror darkly
Oh that one day, Your face I will see
Though now I know, in broken pieces
Oh to behold You, like You’ve always known me

There’s a limp in my stride and I can’t run
Long is this race I have barely begun
Will I stumble round the bend
Or will I make it to the end
To be called a son, a friend

Though now I peer, into a mirror darkly
Oh that one day, Your face I will see
Though now I know, in broken pieces
Oh to behold You, like You’ve always known me


Cover image: Slippage (2018) by Lee Emae.
Terracotta, paper, ink, acrylic, fluorescent lights.

Website

Studio Asobi: studioasobi.com

Lee E Mae: emaelee.com

Tragedy, Christianity, and Holy Saturday: Looking toward Easter

The term ‘Christian tragedy’ has often been described as a paradox, in part because the Christian system of belief insists on the persistence of hope. A Christian framework ascribes meaning to suffering: in his epistle, James writes:

Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing. [1]

Suffering begins to inhere in a broader purpose rather than in the interminable knot of stasis or in the perpetuity of physical anguish. If the promise of a living hope, one that is revitalised each day, invigorates the narrative sensibility of the believer, and the figure of Jesus Christ symbolises a conquering of the forces of death, it is difficult to hold to the apathetic determinism that has coloured many tragic narratives.

One way to carve out dimensions of the tragic within the Christian worldview may be expressed in the perceived absence, or silence, of God. If Good Friday represents the death of Christ for the salvation of all mankind, and Easter Sunday represents the resurrection that seals the new life that believers have in Christ, it is in the agonising experience of the Saturday between where the locus of tragedy remains. One must cling to the assurance that ‘all things work together for good’, [2] that Christ will return, and that justice will be restored, despite the immediacy of suffering or persecution. It is in the faltering of this promise where tragedy emerges, particularly for the believing subject who must suffer emotional, psychological, and physical violence.

Shūsaku Endō and Danai Gurira explore the psychological and physical anguish of religious persecution in their respective works Silence (1966) and The Convert (2012). The site of interior contest is found in 17th-century Japan and 19th-century Zimbabwe (then Rhodesia), in wars raging between Christian piety and indigenous belief, foreign influence and tribal obligation. Jesuit priest Sebastião Rodrigues rails against a God who does not intervene in the slaughter of Japanese Christians; Catholic priest Chilford must witness his protégé Jekesai succumb to violence as she witnesses the Christian British kill her fellow Shona.

Endō’s novel and Gurira’s play variously question the indigenisation of Christianity, of the possibility of integrating local belief systems and languages under a Christian framework, but also the notion that a benevolent God demands the martyrdom of His followers. There can be no glory in the sacrifices that Endō and Gurira depict, not least when God seems distant, absent, and insistently apophatic – the assurance of a benevolent divinity evaporates in the midst of unceasing anguish.

Central to the tragedy of Silence is the campaign of extermination waged by the Tokugawa Shogunate upon Japan’s Christian population. Noting the unquestioning obedience of his subjects to foreign priests, Emperor Hideyoshi issued an edict of expulsion in 1587. In it, he declares that Christianity is ‘longing to disseminate an evil law, to overthrow true doctrine, so that they may change the government of the country, and obtain possession of the land’. [3] Recognising that the killing of Christians was not serving its purpose, the Shogunate developed modes of torture to force martyrs to apostatise. This reckoning with Japan’s persecution of Christians was central to Endō’s ambivalence toward his Catholicism. He writes:

There were many times when I felt I wanted to get rid of my Catholicism, but I was finally unable to do so. […] Still, there was always that feeling in my heart that it was something borrowed, and I began to wonder what my real self was like. This I think is the ‘mud swamp’ Japanese in me. [4]

This lack of a coterminous Japanese Christian identity beleaguered Endō, traced to the violence wrought upon those who first sought to propagate the faith. After witnessing the martyrdoms of Mokichi and Ichizo, Rodrigues is brought to meet Ferreira, his former mentor and subsequent Christian apostate. Ferreira inveighs against the possibility of Christianity taking root in Japan, declaring,

This country is a more terrible swamp than you can imagine. Whenever you plant a sapling in this swamp the roots begin to rot; the leaves grow yellow and wither. And we have planted the sapling of Christianity in this swamp. […] In Japan our God is just like that butterfly caught in the spider’s web: only the exterior form of God remains, but it has already become a skeleton.’ [5]

There can be no Christian hope if the Japanese can have no conception of the Christian God, twisted beyond recognition, unable to reconcile with the strictures of a fundamentally distinct episteme. The substance of Christian doctrine is hollowed in Ferreira’s conception, God expressed only in the ‘exterior form’ of liturgy, an allegation that the Japanese form of Christian belief abides ritual and nothing else.

This irreconcilability is taken as justification for the violence that Rodrigues must bear witness to.  Japanese converts are beheaded, immolated, and drowned by rising tides in his presence. In his letters, he writes:

the black soil of Japan has been filled with the lament of so many Christians; the red blood of priests has flowed profusely; the walls of the churches have fallen down; and in the face of this terrible and merciless sacrifice offered up to Him, God has remained silent. [6]

The silence of God is what tars the violence against the Japanese Christians with senselessness, one in which there can be no assurance of glorious deliverance. The Christian God is not understood to be retributive, but this intensifies the psychic fissures of Japan’s persecuted church, of the struggle to find meaning amidst the campaign of annihilation they face.

As with Ferreira, the seeming silence of God erodes Rodrigues’ faith. His reverence is put under strain when he is forced to a position of apostasy. Trapped in a cage, Rodrigues is forced to bear witness to Christians whose bodies are subject to the same physical torture that Ferreira experienced:

Behind their ears a small incision has been made; the blood drips slowly through this incision and through the nose and mouth. I know it well, because I have experienced that same suffering in my own body. Prayer does nothing to alleviate suffering.

So long as Rodrigues does not recant his faith, they will continue to be tortured. The Shogunate’s shrewd assessment of Christian ethics has enabled them to craft a form of torture that problematises its imperatives. The meaning of suffering is displaced onto Rodrigues, who must weigh the costs of his own personal tragedy – apostasy – against the atrocity he faces. The novel reaches its climax as Rodrigues can bear this burden no more:

He will now trample on what he has considered the most beautiful thing in his life, on what he has believed most pure, on what is filled with the ideals and the dreams of man. How his foot aches! And then the Christ in bronze speaks to the priest: ‘Trample! Trample! I more than anyone know of the pain in your foot. Trample ! It was to be trampled on by men that I was born into this world. It was to share men’s pain that I carried my cross.’

The priest placed his foot on the fumie
[7]. Dawn broke. And far in the distance the cock crew. [8]

The connection Endō draws between Rodrigues and Saint Peter is damning. Peter, infamously, disavowed Christ thrice after promising he would not, a prophecy signified by the sound of a rooster crowing. Such a parallel illustrates the pressures that turned Rodrigues into that which he feared most – a traitor, an apostate, a hypocrite.

The tragedy of Rodrigues lies in the irreconcilability of the conflict he faces, a Christian paradox in its own right. Which is to be privileged: the outward declaration of faith in Christ, or the imperative toward laying down one’s life for one’s neighbor? The meaning of suffering is manipulated to enact the greatest amount of pain upon Rodrigues as a priest. The greatest irony, then, is that the moment of Rodrigues’ apostasy is when God breaks his silence. Somehow, providential sovereignty reasserts itself at the point where it seems most likely to disappear.

Pappa Essiedu and Letitia Wright as Chilford and Ester, The Convert. All photos © Marc Brenner

Gurira’s dramatisation of the encounter between Christianity and a non-Christian episteme is just as fraught as Endō’s, albeit exacerbated by the violence of British colonialism. The native Rhodesians regard Christianity as a symbol of betrayal, seeing converts as abandoning their heritage and mimicking European habits to acquire their discursive and economic power. This is captured in the epithet ‘Bafu, a lover to the white man.’ [9] The eponymous Convert is Ester, formerly Jekesai, who flees to Catholic priest Chilford’s home under the auspices of her aunt Mai Tamba who works as his housekeeper.

Chilford is presented as the ideal colonised subject when he ostentatiously defends his decision to ‘civilise’ Ester by steeping her in ‘the most potent margination of biblical and academic studies’. [10] The tropes of African barbarism and paganism are fully imbibed by Chilford, for whom Catholicism, the English language, and European thought represent a pathway out. Ester’s adoption of Christianity is swift, as she sees the Christian God as delivering her from a forced marriage to a distant uncle. Yet, her mimicry earns her the scorn of her cousin Tamba, who laments:

You are a muzeuru of the first and the foremost. The daughter of many lines of vazezuru, but you want to sit in this BAFU idiot’s home acting rike you ara a white [11]

The irreconcilability herein is between their Shona lineage and Ester’s adoption of the Christian faith. If Endō was haunted by the impossibility of Christianity thriving in the mud swamp of Japan, Gurira is haunted by the epistemic and cultural violence of exchanging one belief system for another. Tamba persists in his hatred for the British:

Now we do what they say because we need these monies they bring to GIVE BEK TO THEM in the hut tex to live in a smar hut and they ara riving in the BIIIIG houses they mek US build. Then they say – ‘Oh – here is this God who is coming from they sky to mek you crean from a sin – you love on him end be heppy. […] (Picks up Bible and throws it to the ground.) It is the poison of the white man. It kill the spirit of your forefather inside you. [12]

Tamba’s creolised monologue alludes to the fundamental transformation wrought upon Zimbabwe by the imposition of British economic systems, one driven by an obsession with material extraction and accumulation. Tamba notes the injustices of taxation, of which the benefits are not equitably distributed amongst the indigenous. This spirit of capitalism that has infested Rhodesia is what he conflates with Christianity, as he identifies the hypocrisy of the colonialists who claim to abide by its tenets.

Ester, Tamba, and Mai Tamba © Young Vic

This hypocrisy is what breaks Ester’s faith in the God of the British, resulting in an eruption of violence. Like Rodrigues, she cannot help but question the presence of a God who allows for senseless atrocity to take place. She returns to Chilford after attempting to advocate on Tamba’s behalf during a trial for his murder of a British national. Abandoning the name Ester and reclaiming the name Jekesai, she confesses:

The whites don’t do what their book it is saying. I thought they would be like Jesus, show his love, love their enemy, I thought – (Beat.) I wanted to not care and spill their blood like they were not caring and spilling mine. They killed him like a chicken, Master. A chicken. (Beat.)

[…]

I knew how to cut quick, how to life the knife just like so and drop it heavy. I just lift the knife like I do with the chicken and drop it through Mrs. Coltern she her neck. [13]

[…]

(Dawn begins to break.) Master, can you be absolving me?’ [14]

Jekesai’s monologue comes at the play’s conclusion, at the height of her disillusionment toward the benevolence of British rule and its supposed Christian scaffolding. Her belief in British piety is torn asunder by the merciless murder of Tamba, dehumanised like ‘a chicken’. The words of Ester’s father lead her to succumb to the tribalistic pressures of the blood feud, as she claims the life of a British national in exchange. The visceral violence she enacts on her kindly benefactors is couched in the similar lexis of animal slaughter, as if to enact the same dehumanisation upon ‘the whites’.

Herein the tension is between two compelling systems of belief, of the impossibility of acceding to Christian mercy when it seems absent in those who enact violence. Yet, Jekesai is firmly convinced of her Christianity, declaring:

I am already making my peace on this one. This I was doing for my blood, but I am knowing there is a price I must be paying. […] Don’t be fearing for me Master, the Lord he is with me. [15]

Jekesai is able to reconcile these imperatives in a way that Rodrigues cannot. For her, revenge is a satisfactory resolution to the silence of God amidst atrocity. If we are to take a Hegelian formulation of tragedy, it is out of these two clashing paradigms that something new is born, that the Geist of history proceeds. In Gurira’s formulation, it is the promise of a fully Shona Christianity. The play concludes with a composition by Jekesai:

I am making this song as I was walking just now. It is to the Lord my God in the tongue of my ancestors. You, Father Ndlovu, you can be singing it in you your new church. (Starts to sing.)

Makanaka baba, makanaka,

[…]

Ndinotenda, ndinotenda Jesu, ndinotenda.

[God you are good. I thank you Jesus][16]

The tragedy of Christianity is entwined with the physical and epistemic violence wrought upon Rhodesia: the oppositions of native and coloniser, indigenous belief and Christianity, a reified past and an obscured future. The promise of a Zimbabwean Christianity is enmeshed in a struggle for a new self-definition in the aftermath of British colonialism. As Gurira has written elsewhere, ‘The clash of voice, dream, God and song is destined to be mighty, bloody and age-long.’ [17]

If the Christian framework offers a way of ascribing meaning to suffering, a Christian tragedy functions in such a way that it hollows it of the possibility of this meaning. Endō’s God seems cruelly distant from the suffering of His church in Japan. It is in this silence that Endō’s tragedy unfolds as Rodrigues is forced to apostasise. For Gurira, God is Himself the site of contest – He surely cannot be the God that Jekesai worships if the British are willing to commit egregious violence in His name. Yet, the God that she knows is never distant, but with her even in the midst of her retaliatory murders, even in the enactment of tribal custom.

The despair of the Holy Saturday between the death and resurrection of Christ finds itself elongated, just as Christians anticipate the eventual return of Christ, who will bring an end to all pain and suffering. What Endō and Gurira testify to is the possibility of a Christian tragedy that inheres in its framework, destined to play out in this long period of waiting, eager for the release that arrives with the hope of Easter Sunday.

***

Pietà
R. S. Thomas

Always the same hills
Crowd the horizon,
Remote witnesses
Of the still scene.

And in the foreground
The tall Cross,
Sombre, untenanted,
Aches for the Body
That is back in the cradle
Of a maid’s arms.

***

Bibliography

Primary Works

Endō, Shusaku, Silence, trans. by William Johnston (United States: Taplinger Publishing Company, 1969)

Gurira, Danai, The Convert, (United Kingdom: Oberon Books Ltd, 2017)

Thomas, R. S., ‘Pietà’ in Selected Poems (United Kingdom: Penguin Books, 2003), p. 59

Secondary Works

Boxer, C. R., The Christian Century in Japan (United States: University of California Press, 1951)

ESV Study Bible, English Standard Version, ed. by Crossway (United States: Crossway, 2011)

Mathy, Francis, ‘Shusaku Endō: Japanese Catholic Novelist’, Thought, Winter 1967


***

[1] ESV Study Bible, English Standard Version, ed. by Crossway (United States: Crossway, 2011), James 1:2-8.

[2] ESV Study Bible, English Standard Version, ed. by Crossway (United States: Crossway, 2011), Romans 8:28.

[3] C. R. Boxer, The Christian Century in Japan (United States: University of California Press, 1951), p. 318.

[4] Francis Mathy, ‘Shusaku Endō: Japanese Catholic Novelist’, Thought, Winter 1967.

[5] Shusaku Endō, Silence, trans. by William Johnston (United States: Taplinger Publishing Company, 1969), pp. 225, 228.

[6] Endō, Silence, pp. 84-85.

[7] Japanese flat image of a Christian symbol, usually the crucifixion, designed to be stepped on. Suspected Christians were required to step on the representation to prove that they were not believers.

[8] Endō, Silence, p. 259.

[9] Danai Gurira, The Convert, (United Kingdom: Oberon Books Ltd, 2017), p. 39.

[10] Gurira, The Convert, p. 8.

[11] Gurira, The Convert, p. 39.

[12] Gurira, The Convert, p. 39.

[13] Ester works as the maid of the Colterns in the play.

[14] Gurira, The Convert, pp. 84-85.

[15] Gurira, The Convert, p. 86.

[16] Gurira, The Convert, pp. 86-87.

[17] Gurira, The Convert.