Osaka Motokichiro (1880-1945): Rediscovering the Incarnate Christ

In the late 1920s and early 1930s, while pastoring a church in Tokyo and editing the religion column for a major Japanese newspaper, Osaka Motokichiro found himself caught up in a debate about a law that eventually granted the imperial government strict oversight of religious groups, including Christian and Buddhist groups; the law also made State Shinto the de facto religion of the empire. When his critical writings drew the ire of the rightist Ise Shrine Service Organization, the organization's leader tried to force Osaka to recant. When he refused, the leader had him beaten within an inch of his life. It took nine surgeries and three years to recover, and while reading the ancient church fathers during that horrific ordeal, Osaka experienced an intimate, body and soul connection to the Incarnate Christ centered on the sacrament of Holy Communion. This mystical experience led to a complete transformation of his theological views, which find their clearest expression in his 1939 magnum opus, On Holy Communion: Witness of the Incarnate Christ. Until the 2021 publication of this ground-breaking book by Professor Unuma Hiroko, Osaka's dramatic story and unique theological perspective have been largely overlooked in histories of the Japanese church.