Abstract
During the last three decades, Asian theology shifted its focus from issues of social justice to those of cultural identity. Its underlying assumptions on the marginality of contextual theology also changed in accordance with the rise of postmodern cultural theories. After identifying these changes, this article examines Mark Mullins' recent study on Christianity Made in Japan from the perspective of this redefined contextual theology. His sociological approach toward the indigenous forms of Japanese Christianity is found to focus on inadequate research objects : the groups under investigation are too small and short-lived to constitute the basis for evaluating what is genuinely Japanese about today's Japanese Christianity. More alarming is the fact that Japanese intellectual readers fail to notice this obvious mismatch and anachronism in the study. One suspects the presence of inverted Orientalism setting up an artificial image of the "exotic" East. Any effort to "give voice" to the allegedly silenced marginal subgroups today should also be careful not to invite postcolonial criticisms. In the last section, this article tries to sketch the nature and task of Asian theology as "ablative theology". It is not an attempt to make theology Asian, nor does it make Asia its primary subject matter. It is an attempt to re-examine theology by asking questions that arise from the unique historical settings of Asian Christianity.
