His most famous work in the West is The Theology of the Pain of God, which was published in 1946 in Japan and in the United States in 1965.
He was, along with Kōsuke Koyama, a leading contributor to Protestant Christian theology from twentieth century Japan.
In high school, he was so impressed by a paper he read about Martin Luther that he made the decision in 1935 to go to Tokyo to attend the Lutheran Theological Seminary there.
Luther matches this idea most closely when he translates it "Darum bricht mir mein Herz" (Therefore, my heart is broken).
Kitamori linked the Japanese concepts of tsutsumu and tsuraso, natural love and self-sacrificial death, with Christian principles.