Shūsaku Endō


Shūsaku Endō was a Japanese author who wrote from the rare perspective of a Japanese Roman Catholic. Together with Junnosuke Yoshiyuki, Shōtarō Yasuoka, Junzo Shono, Hiroyuki Agawa, Ayako Sono, and Shumon Miura, Endō is categorized as part of the "Third Generation".
The 2016 film Silence, directed by Martin Scorsese, is an adaptation of Endō's 1966 historical novel of the same name.

Biography

Soon after Endō was born in Tokyo in 1923, his family moved to Dalian, part of the Kwantung Leased Territory in Manchuria. When his parents divorced in 1933, Endō's mother brought him back to Japan to live with an aunt in Kobe. Endō was baptized as a Catholic at the age of 11 or 12 in the year 1934. Some say this was brought on by his mother, who had converted to Catholicism after her divorce, while others state the aunt instigated the initiation.
Endō began studying at Keio University in 1943, but his studies were interrupted by the war; he worked in a munitions factory. Nonetheless, he contributed to literary journals during this period. In 1968, he would become chief editor of one of these, the prestigious Mita Bungaku.
His alma mater is not the only university Endō is associated with. He first attended Waseda University for the stated purpose of studying medicine. An interest in French Catholic authors precipitated a visit to the University of Lyon beginning in 1950, and he lectured at at least two Tokyo universities. In 1956, he was hired as an instructor at Sophia University, and Seijo University assigned him the role of "Lecturer on the Theory of the Novel" in 1967. He was considered a novelist not a university professor, however.
In 1954, a year after completing his studies in France, he won the Akutagawa Prize for Shiroi Hito. Endō married Okada Junko, a year later. They had one son, Ryūnosuke, born in 1956.
Throughout his life bouts of disease plagued him, and he spent two years in hospital at one point. In 1952, while studying in France, he came down with pleurisy in Paris. A return visit in 1960 prompted another case of the same disease, and he stayed in hospital for the greater part of three years. It is possible that he may have contracted tuberculosis, underwent thoracoplasty, and had a lung removed.
While Endō wrote in several genres, his oeuvre is strongly tied to Christianity if not Catholicism. Endō has been called "a novelist whose work has been dominated by a single theme ... belief in Christianity". Others have said that he is "almost by default ... a 'Japanese Catholic author' struggling to 'plant the seeds of his adopted religion' in the 'mudswamp' of Japan". He often likened Japan to a swamp or fen. In the novel Silence, an official tells a priest who has apostatized, "Father, it was not by us that you were defeated, but by this mudswamp, Japan." In Endō's stage version of this story, The Golden Country, this official also says: "But the mudswamp too has its good points, if you will but give yourself up to its comfortable warmth. The teachings of Christ are like a flame. Like a flame they set a man on fire. But the tepid warmth of Japan will eventually nurture sleep." Thus, many of Endō's characters are allegories.
He may not be embraced by fellow Christians—Catholics, in particular. Some of his characters may reference non-Western religions. While not the main focus of his works, a few of Endō's books mention Kakure Kirishitans. Incidentally, he used the term "かくれ切支丹" instead of the more common "かくれキリシタン".
His books reflect many of his childhood experiences, including the stigma of being an outsider, the experience of being a foreigner, the life of a hospital patient, and the struggle with tuberculosis. However, his books mainly deal with the moral fabric of life.
His Catholic faith can be seen at some level in all of his books and it is often a central feature. Most of his characters struggle with complex moral dilemmas, and their choices often produce mixed or tragic results.
His work may often be compared to that of Graham Greene, with whom he shared a mutual admiration: Greene himself labeled Endō one of the finest writers alive, while it is reported that Endo would re-read Greene's novel The End of the Affair before beginning a new work of his own.
While he lost out to Kenzaburō Ōe the 1994 Nobel prize for literature, he received the Order of Culture the subsequent year. Endō died shortly thereafter from complications of hepatitis at Keio University Hospital in Tokyo on September 29, 1996.

Partial list of works

The Syusaku Endo Literature Museum, in Sotome, Nagasaki, is devoted to the writer's life and works.