An Essay on Akutagawa Ryunosuke\u27s \u22SEIHO NO HITO\u22

SEIHO NO HITO written as Akutagawa\u27s reexamination of the New Testament life of Jesus indicates the author\u27s view of Jesus himself and of Christianity in general. In this short essay, I treat the first chapter of \u22SEIHO NO HITO\u22 written as a preface under the title of \u22Ecce Homo\u22 and I explain Akutagawa\u27s interest for the Japanese Christianity. I conclude that the motif of \u22SEIHO NO HITO\u22 was the rewriting of Jesus as a man, not as God, showing Akutagawa\u27s distance from God and his sympathy for a human Jesus