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Since I first read his masterpiece Cat’s Cradle (1963) in 1968, the author Kurt Vonnegut (1922-2007) has been my hero. Although this post-apocalyptic science fiction allegedly fascinated North American college students, an innocent seventh grader in Tokyo had no idea what American way of life is at that point. Thus, I started reading Vonnegut’s works. FYI, my favorite novels are: The Sirens of Titan (1959), Mother Night (1962), Cat’s Cradle, Slaughterhouse-Five (1969), and Galapagos (1985)

Of course, historically speaking, Cat’s Cradle featuring the doomsday weapon “Ice Nine,” an alternative structure of water, precisely mirrors the political atmosphere of the early 1960s, when the brinkmanship of the Cuban Missile Crisis terrified Americans and highlighted the potential for nuclear catastrophe. During the thirteen days of the crisis between October 14 and 28, 1962, President John F. Kennedy made every effort to negotiate with General Secretary Khrushchev and finally succeeded in avoiding a total nuclear war that could have exterminated everyone on the planet. 

In this context, it is reasonable that the end of the world as described in Cat’s Cradle coincided with the total apocalypse represented in Stanley Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb completed and scheduled for release in 1963, whose road show was suspended until 1964 by the Kennedy assassination. We cannot forget that the year of 1964 also saw the publication of Sakyo Komatsu’s The Day of Resurrection (originally published in 1964), which paved the way for Michael Crichton’s bestseller The Andromeda Strain published in 1969. These post-apocalyptic works are all deeply conscious of ARS (Automatic Revenge System) as part of MAD (Mutual Assured Destruction) capable of causing a full-scale nuclear war and the end of the world. The 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine is a global nightmare, for it reminds us of a number of horrific nuclear narratives inspired by the Cuban Missile Crisis in the 1960s.

However, I was intrigued not only by Vonnegut’s story-telling but also by translator ITOH Norio’s revolutionary style, which ended up by giving impacts upon MURAKAMI Haruki, TAKAHASHI Gen’Ichiro and other postmodern writers in Japan. Without Itoh’s experimental translation we could not have witnessed today’s global literary recycle in the wake of Cool Japan between contemporary Japanese literature and World literature. Therefore, I was very pleased to be able to see Vonnegut in person, together with TSUTSUI Yasutaka, the Japanese guru of metafiction,  whose early  slapstick short stories were comparable with Vonnegut’s, at the International PEN conference held in Tokyo in May 1984. What is more, during my Cornell days in the mid-1980s, I had another opportunity to see him at the International PEN conference held in New York City in January 1986.

What I would like to emphasize now is the blind spot of Vonnegut’s literature.  While his invented Caribbean religion “Bokononism,” which gives priority to lies or harmless untruths over fact or truth, Vonnegut inherited the tradition of Unitarianism. Note that the All Souls Unitarian Church on Alabama Street in Indianapolis was designed by his father Kurt Sr, who defined himself as a Freethinker.  Yes, the Vonneguts shared a religious tendency with our founder FUKUZAWA Yukichi.

Following in the footsteps of all-American writer Mark Twain and Kurt Sr, our hero has ironically given a twist to the tenets of Christianity from a unique perspective.  In his autobiographical collage Palm Sunday (1981) Vonnegut recollects the day he was invited to preach on Palm Sunday in 1980 at St. Clement’s Episcopal Church located 423 West 46^th Street, New York; “It is the custom of that church, which is also a theater, to have a stranger preach just once a year” (Chapter 19, “In the Capital of the World”). Take a glance at the church’s website, you’ll quickly notice that now it celebrates the ministry of women, of gay and lesbian, and those of all walks of life (http://www.stclementsnyc.org). The more liberal the Christian church gets, the more entertaining the sermons become.  For instance, during this year’s lent I was amused by Rev. Thomas Collins’s sermon revealing a Catholic kid’s decision to abstain from TikTok at Our Lady of Sorrows Church on Mamaroneck Avenue. 

Vonnegut’s Palm Sunday preach focuses on the first eight verses of John twelve which deals with Palm Sunday Eve , when Mary of Bethany anointed the feet of Jesus and wiped his feet with her hair. What matters here is the conversation between the master and the disciple:

“ But Judas Iscariot, one of his disciples (he who was to betray him), said, ‘Why was this ointment not sold for three hundred denarii and given to the poor?’  This he said, not that he cared for the poor but because he was a thief, and as he had the money box he used to take what was put into it. Jesus said, ‘Let her alone, let her keep it for the day of my burial.  The poor you always have with you, but you do not always have me’” (John 12: 3-8).

Vonnegut attempts to paraphrase this conversation in current postmodern English as follows:

“This is too much for that envious hypocrite Judas, who says, trying to be more catholic than the Pope: ‘Hey---this is very un-Christian. Instead of wasting that stuff on your feet, we should have sold it and given the money to the poor people.’

“To which Jesus replies in Aramaic: ‘Judas, don’t worry about it. There will still be plenty of poor people left long after I’m gone’.”

“This is about what Mark Twain or Abraham Lincoln would have said under similar circumstances”（Palm Sunday, p.299）

Recalling how some eminently respectable Hoosier interpreted this verse many years ago, Vonnegut asserts that Jesus himself had given up on doing much about the poor; “Jesus himself occasionally got sick and tired of people who needed mercy all the time;” Thus, he modifies John twelve, Verse eight as follows: “The poor people are hopeless. We’ll always be stuck with them” (Palm Sunday, p.298). 

Indeed, this re-interpretation is a kind of blasphemous black joke. Nonetheless, it is also true that the Bible is full of the moments of black humor. For instance, take an example of “Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani” usually translated as “My god, my god, why hast thou forsaken me?” Since Jesus had already known what would happen to him after Palm Sunday, keenly aware of the sacramental destiny of his death and resurrection, we cannot take this statement seriously. Just as he debunked Judas’ hypocrisy by saying “The poor you always have with you, but you do not always have me” (“Judas, don’t worry about it. There will still be plenty of poor people left long after I’m gone” as Vonnegut paraphrased it), here Jesus disguised himself as plain human, spoke what the ordinary people would have wanted to hear, and uncovered their hypocritical unconsciousness by shouting “Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani!” Certainly, pious Christians might get angry about this kind of reading. However, it is also undeniable that there are truths of life we can grasp only through black humor.

What interests me most is that being neither Christian nor Jewish nor Buddhist but a humanist, who actually hated hardcore science fiction as represented by Arthur C. Clarke and R. A. Heinlein, Vonnegut has long been enchanted by the Sermon on the Mount, without whose first Beatitude it is difficult to understand why the author showed deep interest in Palm Sunday Eve: “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven” (Matthew 5:3). 

Of course, the idea of “the poor in spirit” has long mystified the readers. And yet, recent scholars defined “the poor in spirit” as the humble people who are deeply conscious of their sins and utter spiritual bankruptcy before God. Postmodern as he seems, Kurt Vonnegut undoubtedly constructed his humanist philosophy nurtured in the main currents of American intellectual history ranging from Cotton Mather, the author of Humiliations, follow’d with deliverances (1967) through Benjamin Franklin, whose autobiography (1771-90) underscored the thirteen names of virtues including “Humility.” It is his comprehension of the poor in spirit that has made Vonnegut’s writings decent, humane and everlasting.

Happy Easter!