ENDŌ Shūsaku

Nationality: Japanese. Born: Tokyo, 27 March 1923. Education: Keio University, Tokyo, B.A. in French literature 1949; University of Lyon, 1950-53. Family: Married Junko Okado in 1955; one son. Career: Contracted tuberculosis in 1959. Former editor, Mita bungaku literary journal; chair, Bungeika Kyokai (Literary Artists' Association); manager, Kiza amateur theatrical troupe; president, Japan PEN. Awards: Akutagawa prize, 1955; Tanizaki prize, 1967; Gru de Oficial da Ordem do Infante dom Henrique (Portugal), 1968; Sanct Silvestri (award by Pope Paul VI), 1970; Noma prize, 1980. Honorary doctorate: Georgetown University, Washington, D.C.; University of California, Santa Clara. Member: Japanese Arts Academy, 1981. Died: 1996.

Publications

Short Stories

Shiroi hito [White Man]. 1955.

Kiiroi hito [Yellow Man]. 1955.

Obakasan. In Asahi shinbun, April-August 1959; as Wonderful Fool, 1974.

Watashi ga suteta onna [The Girl I Left Behind]. 1963; as "Mine," in Japan Christian Quarterly vol. 40, no. 4, 1974.

Aika [Elegies]. 1965.

Ryū gaku. In Gunzō, March 1965; as Foreign Studies, 1989.

Taihen daa [Good Grief!]. 1969.

Endō Shūsaku bungaku zenshū [Collected Works]. 11 vols., 1975.

Jūichi no iro garasu [11 Stained Glass Elegies]. 1979.

Stained Glass Elegies. 1984.

Hangyaku. 2 vols., 1989.

The Final Martyrs. 1994.

Novels

Umi to dokuyaku. 1958; as The Sea and Poison, 1972.

Kazan. 1959; as Volcano, 1978.

Chimmoku. 1966; as Silence, 1969.

Shikai no hotori [By the Dead Sea]. 1973.

Iesu no shūgai. 1973; as A Life of Jesus, 1978.

Yumoa shūsetsu shū. 1973.

Waga seishun ni kui ari. 1974.

Kuchibue o fuku toki. 1974; as When I Whistle, 1979.

Sekai kikō. 1975.

Hechimakun. 1975.

Kitsunegata tanukigata. 1976.

Gū tara mandanshū. 1978.

Marie Antoinette. 1979.

Samurai. 1980; as The Samurai, 1982.

Onna no isshō. 1982.

Jū no gogo. 1983.

Sukyandaru. 1986; as Scandal, 1988.

Plays

Akuryō gon no kuni (produced 1966). 1969; as The Golden Country, 1970.

Bara no yakata [A House Surrounded by Roses]. 1969.

Other

Furansu no daigakusei [Students in France, 1951-52]. 1953.

Seisho no naka no joseitachi. 1968.

Korian vs. Mambō, with Kita Morio. 1974.

Ukiaru kotoba. 1976.

Ai no akebono, with Miura Shumon. 1976.

Nihonjin wa kirisuto kyō o shinjirareru ka. 1977.

Kirisuto no tanjō. 1978.

Ningen no naka no X. 1978.

Rakuten taishō. 1978.

Kare no ikikata. 1978.

Jū to jūjika (biography of Pedro Cassini). 1979.

Shinran, with Masutani Fumio. 1979.

Sakka no nikki. 1980.

Chichioya. 1980.

Kekkonron. 1980.

Endō Shūsaku ni yoru Endō Shūsaku. 1980.

Meiga Iesu junrei. 1981.

Ai to jinsei o meguru dansō. 1981.

Okuku e no michi. 1981.

Fuyu no yasashisa. 1982.

Watakushi ni totte kami to wa. 1983.

Kokoro. 1984.

Ikuru gakkō. 1984.

Watakushi no aishita shōsetsu. 1985.

Rakudai bōzu no rirekisho. 1989.

Kawaru mono to kawaranu mono: hanadokei. 1990.

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Critical Studies:

"Shusaku Endo: The Second Period" by Francis Mathy, in Japan Christian Quarterly 40, 1974; "Tradition and Contemporary Consciousness: Ibuse, Endo, Kaiko, Abe" by J. Thomas Rimer, in Modern Japanese Fiction and Its Traditions, 1978; "Mr. Shusaku Endo Talks About His Life and Works as a Catholic Writer" (interview), in Chesterton Review 12 (4), 1986; "The Roots of Guilt and Responsibility in Shusaku Endo's The Sea and Poison " by Hans-Peter Breuer, in Literature and Medicine 7, 1988; "Rediscovering Japan's Christian Tradition: Text-Immanent Hermeneutics in Two Short Stories by Shusaku Endo" by Rolf J. Goebel, in Studies in Language and Culture 14 (63), 1988; "Graham Greene: The Power and the Glory: A Comparative Essay with Silence by Shusaku Endo" by Kazuie Hamada, in Collected Essays by the Members of the Faculty (Kyoritsu Women's Junior College), 31, February 1988; "Christianity in the Intellectual Climate of Modern Japan" by Shunichi Takayanagi, in Chesterton Review 14 (3), 1988; "Salvation of the Weak: Endo Shusaku," in The Sting of Life: Four Contemporary Japanese Novelists, 1989, and "The Voice of the Doppelgänger," in Japan Quarterly 38 (2), 1991, both by Van C. Gessel; "For These the Least of My Brethren: The Concern of Endo Shusaku" by Michael Gallagher, in Journal of the Association of Teachers of Japanese, April 1993, pp. 75-84; "Endo Shusaku: His Positions in Postwar Japanese Literature" by Van V. Gessel, in Journal of the Association of Teachers of Japanese, April 1993, pp. 67-74; "The Most Excellent Gift of Charity: Endo Shusaku in Contemporary World Literature" by J. Thomas Rimer, in Journal of the Association of Teachers of Japanese, April 1993, pp. 59-66.

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Ever since the publication of his award-winning novel Silence (Chimmoku) in 1966, Endō Shūsaku's international reputation as a writer of full-length fiction has remained secure. Less well documented outside Japan and yet equally important are his achievements in the short story, although publication of two collections of his stories in English (Stained Glass Elegies and The Final Martyrs) has gone some way toward decreasing this gap. Not only do the short stories add to our understanding of Endō's literary art, but they also succeed in focusing on specific themes that all too often are subsumed into the more ambitious overall framework of the author's full-length novels.

This would certainly seem to be the case with the two lengthy early stories "White Man" ("Shiroi hito") and "Yellow Man" ("Kiiroi hito"). As the titles suggest, the stories represent an attempt to explore in literary form a division Endō perceived, during the course of a prolonged period of study in France, between the Christian West and the pantheistic East. At this stage in his career, the division is portrayed as unfathomable, as emphasized, for example, in Chiba, the protagonist of "Yellow Man" who senses the existence of a great chasm between himself and Father Durand, a disgraced French priest. In describing the eyes of the yellow man as "insensitive to God, and sin—and death," Endō establishes the dichotomy between East and West that he would seek to bridge only much later in his career. Father Durand is driven to ask rhetorically, "Do you really think the Christian God can take root in this damp country, amongst this yellow race?" The implication is strong that East-West rapprochement will be possible only through rejection of the trappings of Western religion.

To Endō, a Japanese Christian, the conclusion was clearly disturbing and led to a literary questioning of the significance and validity of his own baptism, done largely at the behest of his pious mother. The result was a series of stories in which the protagonist is troubled by the "ill-fitting clothes" that had been forced upon him ("Forty-Year-Old Man"). Almost without exception, the protagonists of these stories are plagued by spiritual doubts as they struggle to locate "the existence of God, along these dirty, commonplace Japanese streets" ("My Belongings"). At the same time they remain convinced, like Egi in "Despicable Bastard," that they "will probably go on betraying [their] own soul, betraying love, betraying others." It is this that leads them to empathize with the Kakure (Hidden) Christians. Like the Kakure, these contemporary protagonists despair not only of ever acquiring the strength required to emulate those who were martyred for their faith but equally of ever being able to communicate their message that "the apostate endures a pain none of you can comprehend" ("Unzen").

Such despair is not, however, unmitigated, and Endō finds within "weak" characters an inner energy and consequent capacity for acts of strength. Initial examples of this trait tend to be left at the level of suggestion, for example, in the "faint-hearted" and "effeminate" Mouse in "Tsuda no Fuji," who is rumored to have laid down his own life at Dachau in order to spare one of his comrades. But as his career progressed, Endō came to portray such unexpected acts of strength not so much in terms of inexplicable paradoxes but as literary symbols of his view of human nature, itself a composite of seemingly irreconcilable forces. The result is a series of stories, epitomized by "The Shadow Man," that addresses the human duality in terms of characters confronted by their shadow being, their alter ego. Increasing emphasis is placed on the need to penetrate behind the image that his protagonists present to the world, to those elements of their being that have previously remained suppressed, in order to determine their true natures. In "The Shadow Man" this conclusion is seen in a priest who, for all his outward rejection of the Christian faith, finally has an inner faith as strong as, if not stronger than, that before his fall from grace. In later treatments of this theme, the focus on this inner being as essential to an understanding of the composite individual is rendered more explicit. For example, in "The Evening of the Prize Giving Ceremony" the protagonist's concern with his shadow being leads to a growing awareness that the realm of the unconscious is the key to his true self.

The focus in Endō's short stories increasingly has come to rest on the true nature of a single male protagonist, with the emphasis frequently on the indelible marks this character leaves on the lives of those with whom he comes into contact. The shift is significant, for, in coming to highlight the extent to which the lives of all human beings are linked at this deeper, unconscious level, Endō has succeeded in distancing himself from the explicitly Christian concerns that dominate his earlier stories, while retaining the focus on moral issues that represents the hallmark of his entire literary output.

—Mark Williams

See the essay on "Mothers."