Johnston later recalled that many of his Jesuit colleagues in Tokyo and abroad were less than pleased that of all of Endo’s works, he chose to translate Silence-the story of a Jesuit missionary in Japan who apostasizes. Many of Endo's protagonists grapple with the challenges of Christian faith in Japan, "portrayed as a swampland in which everything foreign, including Christianity, is swallowed up or transformed."Įnglish speakers were largely introduced to Endo’s work upon the 1969 publication of Silence, a translation of his novel 1966 Chinmoku, by Johnston, an Irish Jesuit who had ministered in Japan since 1951 and later became an internationally known speaker on the relationship between Christianity and Zen Buddhism, contemplation and mysticism. Many of his protagonists are Christian believers who grapple intensely with the challenges of faith, particularly a faith that feels transplanted into a culture that has its own deep spiritual roots and practices, “where Japan is portrayed as a swampland in which everything foreign, including Christianity, is swallowed up or transformed,” in the words of Francis Mathy, S.J., in America in 1992.
They would be followed almost yearly by other novels, including Silence, Samurai and Scandal and collections of short stories, biographies, essays and plays. Endo himself was baptized a Catholic in 1934 after a brief period of catechesis, a process a biographer later quoted him as saying was akin to “being outfitted in an ill-fitting suit of Western clothes.” During literature studies at Keio University in Japan, he became interested in the works of French novelists like François Mauriac and George Bernanos, and in 1950 he moved to France to study French Catholic writers.Īfter a bout with tuberculosis forced him to return to Japan, he embarked on a remarkably prolific career: His first novel, published in English as White Man, won the prestigious Akutagawa Prize for promising new writers in 1955 in the next five years, he released Yellow Man, The Sea and Poison (winner of Japan’s Shincho Literary Award and Mainichi Cultural Award), Wonderful Fool, Stained Glass Elegies and Volcano. His parents divorced when he was 10, and he went to live with an aunt in Kobe who had converted to Catholicism (his mother would also later convert). Shusaku Endo was born in Tokyo in 1923 and spent his early years in Manchuria.
When America honored Endo with the Campion Award in 1990, given out periodically since 1955 to “a noted Christian person of letters,” the editors were careful to avoid the normal labels attached to Endo outside his home country, noting instead that “his Roman Catholic heritage has charged his artistic sensibilities with a vision and power rarely seen in contemporary writers of whatever nationality.” How can a rejection of God lead to love of God? Anyone who has read Shusaku Endo’s novel Silence (or seen Martin Scorsese’s 2016 film adaptation) might recognize the sentiment expressed in the quote, however-and with good reason: They are Endo’s own words, spoken to William Johnston, S.J., in a 1994 conversation published in America.Īmerica's editors in 1990: Shusaku Endo's "Roman Catholic heritage has charged his artistic sensibilities with a vision and power rarely seen in contemporary writers of whatever nationality.”Įndo, described on occasion as “the Japanese Graham Greene,” is also routinely called the greatest Japanese Catholic novelist, an appellation of which he did not approve, because of his many novels with deeply Catholic themes-all set in a culture which he himself described as deeply alien to Christianity in most respects. These words might seem counterintuitive to many believers, even blasphemous. When one can say to God, ‘I hate you,’ it is like saying, ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’ With these words authentic prayer begins.”
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