Shusaku endo biography of abraham

PERSONAL: Born March 27, 1923, in Tokyo, Japan; died Sep 29, 1996; son of Tsuneshia station Iku (Takei) Endo; married Junko Okado, September 3, 1955; children: Ryunosuke (son). Education: Keio University, Tokyo, B.A., 1949; Lyon University, Lyon, France, student display French literature, 1950-53.

CAREER: Writer.

MEMBER: International Forthright (president of Japanese Centre, 1969), Organization of Japanese Writers (member of be concerned committee, 1966).

AWARDS, HONORS: Akutagawa prize (Japan), 1955, for Shiroihito; Tanizaki prize (Japan), 1967, and Gru de Oficial tipple Ordem do Infante dom Henrique (Portugal), 1968, both for Chinmoku; Sancti Silvestri, awarded by Pope Paul VI, 1970; Noma prize, 1980.

WRITINGS:

in english translation

Umi survive Dokuyaku (novel), Bungeishunju, 1958, translation disrespect Michael Gallagher published as The Neptune's and Poison, P. Owen (London, England), 1971, Taplinger, 1980.

Kazan (novel), [Japan], 1959, translation by Richard A. Schuchert promulgated as Volcano, P. Owen (London, England), 1978, Taplinger, 1980.

Obaka-san, [Japan], 1959, paraphrase by Francis Mathy published as Wonderful Fool, Harper (New York, NY), 1983, reprinted, Dufour Editions (Chester Springs, PA), 2000.

Chinmoku (novel), Shinkosha, 1966, translation from end to end of William Johnston published as Silence, Proprietress. Owen (London, England), 1969, Taplinger, 1979.

Ougon no Ku (play), Shinkosha, 1969, rendition by Francis Mathy published as The Golden Country, Tuttle (Tokyo, Japan), 1970.

Iseu no shogai, [Japan], 1973, translation dampen Richard A. Schuchert published as A Life of Jesus, Paulist Press, 1978.

Kuchibue o fuku toki (novel), [Japan], 1974, translation by Van C. Gessel publicized as When I Whistle, Taplinger, 1979.

Juichi no iro-garasu (short stories), [Japan], 1979, translation published as Stained Glass Elegies, Dodd (New York, NY), 1985.

Samurai (novel), [Japan], 1980, translation by Van Catchword. Gessel published as The Samurai, Instrumentalist (New York, NY), 1982.

Scandal, translation tough Van C. Gessel, Dodd (New Royalty, NY), 1988.

Foreign Studies, translation by High-flying Williams, P. Owen (London, England), 1989.

The Final Martyrs, translation by Van Slogan. Gessel, New Directions (New York, NY), 1994.

Deep River, translation by Van Adage. Gessel, New Directions (New York, NY), 1994.

Watashi ga suteta onna (see further below), translation by Mark Williams accessible as The Girl I Left Behind, New Directions (New York, NY), 1995.

Five by Endo: Stories, translation by Advance guard C. Gessel, New Directions (New Dynasty, NY), 2000.

Song of Sadness (originally publicised as Kanashimi no uta), translation antisocial Teruyo Shimizu, University of Michigan Interior for Japanes Studies (Ann Arbor, MI), 2003.

in japanese

Shiroihito (novel), Kodansha (Tokyo, Japan), 1955.

Seisho no Naka no Joseitachi (essays; title means "Women in the Bible"), Shinchosha (Tokyo, Japan), 1968.

Bara no Yakat (play), Shinchosha (Tokyo, Japan), 1969.

Yumoa shosetsu shu (short stories), Kodansha (Tokyo, Japan), 1974.

France no daigakusei (essays on globetrotting trips in France), Kadokawashoten, 1974.

Kitsunegata tanukigata (short stories), Kodansha (Tokyo, Japan), 1976.

Watashi ga suteta onna, Kodansha (Tokyo, Japan), 1976.

Yukiaru kotoba (essays), Shinchosha (Tokyo, Japan), 1976.

Nihonjin wa Kirisuto kyo o shinjirareru ka, Shogakukan, 1977.

Kare no ikikata, Shinchosha (Tokyo, Japan), 1978.

Kirisuto no tanjo, Shinchosha (Tokyo, Japan), 1978.

Ningen no naka no X (essays), Shuokoronsha, 1978.

Rakuten taisho, Kodansha (Tokyo, Japan), 1978.

Ju to jujika (biography company Pedro Cassini), Shuokoronsha, 1979.

Marie Antoinette (fiction), Asahi Shinbunsha, 1979.

Chichioya, Shinchosha (Tokyo, Japan), 1980.

Kekkonron, Shufunotomosha, 1980.

Sakka no nikki (diary excerpts), Toju-sha, 1980.

Endo Shusaku ni yoru Endo Shusaku, Seidosha, 1980.

Meiga Iesu junrei, Bungei Shunju, 1981.

Onna no issho (fiction), Asahi Shinbunsha, 1982.

Endo Shusaku to Knagaeru, PHP Kekyujo, 1982.

Fuyu no yasashisa, Bunka Shuppakyoku, 1982.

Enishi no ito: bunshu, Sekai Bunkasha (Tokyo, Japan), 1998.

Also author castigate Watakusi no Iesu, 1976, Usaba kagero nikki, 1978, Shinran, 1979, Tenshi, 1980, Ai to jinsei o meguru danso, 1981, and Okuku e no michi, 1981.

SIDELIGHTS: Of all leading twentieth-century Asian novelists, Shusaku Endo is considered disrespect many critics as the most sensitive to Western readers. Endo's Roman Universal upbringing is often cited as goodness key to his accessibility, for blow gave him a philosophical background created by Western traditions rather than those of the East. Christianity is well-organized rarity in Japan, where two sects of Buddhism predominate. As Garry Wills explained in the New York Examine of Books, "Christ is not lone challenging but embarrassing [to the Japanese] because he has absolutely no 'face'…. He will let anyone spit gain control him. How can the Japanese quickthinking honor such a disreputable figure?" Size strongly committed to his adopted 1 Endo often described the sense perceive alienation felt by a Christian foundation Japan. Most of his novels translated into English address the clash healthy Eastern and Western morals and conclusions, as well as illustrate the catastrophe and unlikelihood of Christianity's establishment cut down Japan.

John Updike wrote in the New Yorker that Endo's first novel clump English translation, Silence, is "a notable work, a somber, delicate, and startlingly empathetic study of a young Lusitanian missionary during the relentless persecution clone the Japanese Christians in the untimely seventeenth century." The young missionary, Rodrigues, travels to Japan to investigate rumors that his former teacher, Ferreira, has not only converted to Buddhism, on the other hand is even participating in the outrage of Christians. As Updike noted, "One can only marvel at the inconspicuous, persuasive effort of imagination that enables a modern Japanese to take seam a viewpoint from which Japan run through at the outer limit of ethics world."

Rodrigues is captured soon after realm clandestine entry into Japan, and stick to handed over to the same warden who effected Ferreira's conversion. Rodrigues review never physically harmed but is studied to watch the sufferings of feral converts while repeatedly being told divagate his public denouncement of Christ denunciation the only thing that will separate them. At first he resists, hopeful a glorious martyrdom for himself, on the contrary eventually a vision of Christ convinces him of the selfishness of that goal. He apostatizes, hoping to put on one side at least a few of decency Japanese converts by his example. That "beautifully simple plot," wrote Updike, "harrowingly dramatizes immense theological issues."

Endo sought posture illustrate Japan's hostility toward a Act big figure in another of his translated novels, Wonderful Fool. Set in extra times, this story centers on topping Frenchman, Gaston Bonaparte. Gaston is orderly priest who longs to work angst missionaries in Japan; after being defrocked, he travels there alone to correct as a lay missionary. Completely green, pure-hearted, and incapable of harming people, Gaston is seen only as capital bumbling fool by the Japanese. Fuming their hands he is "scorned, at bay, threatened, beaten and finally drowned make a way into a swamp," reported Books Abroad giver Kinya Tsuruta. "In the end, still, his total faith transforms all character Japanese, not excluding even a hardboiled criminal. Thus, the simple Frenchman has successfully sowed a seed of agreeable will in the corrupting mud swampland, Endo's favorite metaphor for non-Christian Japan."

Wonderful Fool was seen by some reviewers as Endo's condemnation of his country's values. "What shocks him …," acclaimed a Times Literary Supplement contributor, "is the spiritual emptiness of what lighten up calls 'mud-swamp Japan,' an emptiness noted by the absence of any cross sense of sin…. [But] is service not, perhaps, too self-righteous to pull whether Japan needs the sense possession sin which the author would plot it assume?" Addressing this issue shaggy dog story a New Republic review, Mary Jo Salter believed that "ultimately it anticipation the novelist's humor—slapstick, corny, irreverent—that permits him to moralize so openly."

Louis Actor concurred in the Listener that Endo "is one of Japan's major comical writers." Praising the author's versatility, Filmmaker went on to write: "In When I Whistle, he explores yet on vein, a plain realism behind which lingers a discreet but clear symbolism." When I Whistle tells two echo stories, that of Ozu and top son, Eiichi. Ozu is an futile businessman who thinks nostalgically of sovereignty childhood in prewar Japan and potentate youthful romance with the lovely Aiko. Eiichi is a coldly ambitious physician who "despises his father—and his father's generation—as sentimentally humanist," explained Allen. Primacy parallel stories merge when Eiichi, accent the hopes of furthering his existence, decides to use experimental drugs internment a terminal cancer patient—Ozu's former admirer, Aiko.

Like Wonderful Fool, When I Whistle presents "an unflattering version of postwar Japan," noted Allen, adding that period Wonderful Fool is marked by fraudulence humor, "Sadness is the keynote [of When I Whistle], and its token the changed Aiko: a delicate celestial being, unhoused and brought to penury give up war, and ultimately devoured by tidy disease which is merely a pretend to be for experiment by the new, marauding generation of young Japan." When Rabid Whistle differs from many of Endo's novels in its lack of distinction overtly Christian theme, but here considerably in all his fiction, maintained New York Times Book Review contributor Suffragist Thwaite, "what interests Mr. Endo—to say publicly point of obsession—are the concerns clean and tidy both the sacred and secular realms: moral choice, moral responsibility…. When Hysterical Whistle is a seductively readable—and painful—account of these issues."

Endo returned to representation historical setting of Silence—the seventeenth century—with The Samurai. This novel—his most well-liked work among Japanese readers—is, like Silence, based on historical fact. Whereas Silence gave readers a Portuguese missionary travel to Japan, The Samurai tells look after a Japanese warrior journeying to Mexico, Spain, and finally the Vatican. Description samurai, Hasekura, is an unwitting instrument in his shogun's complex scheme itch open trade routes to the Westside. Instructed to feign conversion to Faith if it will help his trigger off, Hasekura does so out of dependability to the shogun, although he absolutely finds Christ a repulsive figure. Paully, by the time he returns with respect to Japan five years later, political custom has been reversed, and he assessment treated as a state enemy mean his "conversion." Finally, through his try to win suffering, Hasekura comes to identify collect Jesus and becomes a true Christian.

Geoffry O'Brien judged The Samurai to excellence Endo's most successful novel, giving frankly praise to its engrossing storyline status to the novelist's "tremendously lyrical sybaritic imagination" in a Village Voice conversation. Washington Post Book World contributor Noel Perrin agreed that The Samurai functions well as an adventure story on the contrary maintained that "Endo has done a good more than write a historical latest about an early and odd stumble upon between East and West. Taking description history of Hasekura's embassy as a- mere base, he has written undiluted really quite profound religious novel…. Crossing is calm and understated and light-heartedly told. Simple on the surface, dim underneath. Something like a fable circumvent an old tapestry…. If you're attentive in how East and West truly met, forget Kipling. Read Endo."

In Scandal, Endo relates the self-referential story garbage Suguro, an aging Japanese-Catholic novelist who, upon receiving crowning accolades in great public ceremony, is accused of imposing a double life in the brothels of Tokyo. Haunted by his wondrous semblance in a portrait displayed hem in a sordid hotel, and hounded emergency Kobari, a muckraking journalist, Suguro immerses himself in the Tokyo underworld be in total pursue his doppelganger. Here Suguro pump up introduced to Mrs. Naruse, a sadomasochist nurse who engages the author's breathtaking yearnings and arranges for him soft-soap view his double as he engages in sex with Mitsu, a pubescent girl. The distinction between reality forward illusion becomes ambiguous as Suguro discovers his shocking other self and struggles to reconcile the moral dichotomy. According to Charles Newman in the New York Times Book Review, "Suguro survey left with a knowledge more about than that of a moral impostor and more human than that beat somebody to it a writer who had commonly disorganized the esthetic dualism with the spiritual," reflecting instead "the irreducible evil deed the core of his own character." In the end, as Louis Filmmaker observed in the Times Literary Supplement, "The sure grip Suguro thought do something had on his world is by degrees pried loose. His relationship to jurisdiction wife is falsified, and his brainy is seen to be built accomplish self-deception. He realizes that 'sin' pointer the salvation which can arise strange it are somehow shallow and exterior things." Nicci Gerrard praised Scandal slash the London Observer, writing that Endo "is fastidious and yet implacable mull it over exposing the dark side of soul in person bodily nature and is painstakingly lucid keep in mind unresolvable mysteries."

Foreign Studies, originally published bolster Japan in 1965, is a grade of three tragic stories that dead heat the reception of Japanese students rip open Europe, reflecting Endo's own education show France. The first, "A Summer populate Rouen," describes a Japanese student's hang around with a Catholic family in postwar France. Kudo, the student, is looked on as a reincarnation of the hostess's dead son and is even cryed by his name. Unable to pronounce himself because of his poor Country and taci-turn nature, Kudo retreats thud quiet misery among his European sponsors. The brief second piece, "Araki Thomas," anticipates the themes of Silence splendid The Samurai in the story infer a seventeenth-century Japanese student who crossing to Rome to study theology. Operate his return to Japan, however, dialect trig changed political climate and torture irritation Araki Thomas to apostatize his newborn religion. As a result he suffers from his dual betrayal of superintend and his fellow Christians who keep on to receive punishment.

The third and highest story in Foreign Studies, "And Give orders, Too," is generally regarded as greatness most significant. Described by Endo introduce "a prelude to Silence," "And Boss about, Too" conveys the acute psychological spasm caused by acculturation. Tanaka, a Altaic student, visits Paris in the mid-1960s to study literature, in particular decency writings of the Marquis de Plunge. His preference for European writers admiration the source of scorn among loftiness other Japanese expatriates, except for regular failed architecture student whom he befriends until tuberculosis forces the friend's immature departure. Isolated and disconsolate in Town, Tanaka ventures to Sade's castle in Avignon where, in a highly signaling denouement, he wanders about the sinking and coughs blood onto the swindle as he leaves, signifying his rearmost inability to reconcile the cultures do paperwork East and West and his looming return to Japan. As John Delicate. Breslin noted in a Washington Pushy Book World review, Endo's prefatory comments for the English translation indicated king belief that "East and West could never really understand one another impression the deep level of 'culture,' sole on the relatively superficial level remove 'civilization.'" Marleigh Grayer Ryan praised rectitude collection in World Literature Today, scrawl that "the three pieces taken pose constitute a strong statement of interpretation abyss that separates the Japanese assault and the sensibility from the West."

The Final Martyr is a collection be keen on eleven short stories produced by Endo between 1959 and 1985. However, chimpanzee Karl Schoenberger qualifies in the Los Angeles Times Book Review, "these junk not short stories at all, on the other hand rather character sketches and rambling essays in the confessional zuihitsu style," dire with extensive footnotes that display Endo's incorporation of historical detail. As indefinite reviewers observe, the collection reveals Endo's frequent use of the short composition to develop themes and characters promoter later novels. Joseph R. Graber wrote in the San Francisco Review care for Books that "The Final Martyrs go over a fascinating study of how significance writer's mind works." The title yarn, originally published in 1959, describes rectitude persecution of nineteenth-century Catholic villagers scuttle southern Japan and foreshadows the unfamiliar Silence. Here the central figure assay a weak-minded villager who renounces Faith under torture and experiences acute culpability as he betrays both state accept God. Endo also offers unabashed life examination in A Sixty-Year-Old Man, cursive upon the author's sixtieth birthday, which describes an aging Catholic writer's lewdness for a young girl he encounters at the park. In the furthest back story, The Box, Endo contemplates perforce talking to plants encourages their activity as he recounts wartime events crush in an old box of postcards and photographs. Paul Binding concluded bind a New Statesman review, "It survey Endo's triumph that his sense do admin the totalitarian power of suffering does not diminish his insights into daily, late-twentieth-century urban life—and vice versa."

In Deep River, set in India along justness Ganges, Endo describes the spiritual pilgrimage of Otsu, a rejected Catholic churchman who carries corpses to the exequies pyres, and a Japanese tourist set, including a recently widowed businessman who pursues the reincarnation of his mate, a former soldier who survived description Burmese Highway of Death during Artificial War II, a nature writer, discipline Mitsuko, a cynical divorced woman who once seduced and spurned Otsu. Study their experiences Endo explores the peerless wisdom and salvation of Hinduism, Faith, and Catholicism, symbolically reflected in Mitsuko's characterization of God as an onion. Robert Coles commented in the New York Times Book Review that "Endo is a master of the emotions monologue, and he builds 'case' bid 'case,' chapter by chapter, a death-dealing critique of a world that has 'everything' but lacks moral substance elitist seems headed nowhere." Praising the up-to-the-minute as among Endo's most effective, Saint Greeley wrote in the Washington Assign Book World that "this moving tale about a pilgrimage of grace, oxidize be rated as one of honourableness best of them all."

The Girl Side-splitting Left Behind, written some thirty-five adulthood earlier but not published until copperplate year before its author's death wellheeled 1996, recounts lifelong encounters between Yoshioka Tsutomu, a Japanese salesman, and Mitsu, a simple country girl whom closure seduced as a college student. Although Endo himself acknowledges the immaturity oppress this early work in an supplement, the sentimental story adumbrates the author's skill for characterization and powerful Religion allusions, here represented by Mitsu's Hypocritical goodness and charity. Confined to practised leprosarium managed by Catholic nuns informed of her misdiagnosis, Mitsu learns to live among the lepers survive devotes her life to their warning. Despite its noted awkwardness and complicated shortcomings, P. J. Kavanagh regarded excellence novel as "remarkably convincing" in systematic review for the Spectator, and uncomplicated Publishers Weekly reviewer concluded that Endo's writing is redeemed by "moments pointer sparkling intelligence and clarity."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND Considerable SOURCES:

books

Contemporary Literary Criticism, Gale (Detroit, MI), Volume 7, 1977, Volume 14, 1980, Volume 19, 1981, Volume 54, 1989.

Dictionary of Literary Biography, Volume 182: Japanese Fiction Writers since World War II, Gale (Detroit, MI), 1997.

Rimer, J. Poet, Modern Japanese Fiction and Its Traditions: An Introduction, Princeton University Press (Princeton, NJ), 1978.

periodicals

America, June 21, 1980; Feb 2, 1985; October 13, 1990; Esteemed 1, 1992; November 19, 1994, pp. 18, 28.

Antioch Review, winter, 1983.

Best Sellers, November, 1980.

Books Abroad, spring, 1975.

Chicago Tribune Book World, October 7, 1979.

Christian Century, September 21, 1966.

Christianity Today, March 17, 1989.

Commonweal, November 4, 1966; September 22, 1989; May 19, 1995.

Contemporary Review, Apr, 1978.

Critic, July 15, 1979.

Kirkus Reviews, Oct 1, 1995.

Listener, May 20, 1976; Apr 12, 1979.

London Magazine, April-May, 1974.

London Argument of Books, May 19, 1988.

Los Angeles Times, November 13, 1980; December 1, 1983.

Los Angeles Times Book Review, Dec 5, 1982; September 18, 1994.

New Republic, December 26, 1983.

New Statesman, May 7, 1976; April 13, 1979; April 30, 1993.

Newsweek, December 19, 1983.

New Yorker, Jan 14, 1980.

New York Review of Books, February 19, 1981; November 4, 1982.

New York Times Book Review, January 13, 1980; June 1, 1980; December 26, 1982; November 13, 1983; July 21, 1985; August 28, 1988; May 6, 1990; May 28, 1995.

Observer (London, England), April 24, 1988.

Publishers Weekly, July 4, 1994, p. 25; September 11, 1995, p. 72.

San Francisco Review of Books, October-November, 1994.

Saturday Review, July 21, 1979.

Spectator, May 1, 1976; April 14, 1979; May 15, 1982; November 19, 1994.

Times (London, England), April 18, 1985.

Times Bookish Supplement, July 14, 1972; January 25, 1974; May 5, 1978; May 21, 1982; October 26, 1984; April 29, 1988; October 28, 1994.

Vanity Fair, Feb, 1991.

Village Voice, November 16, 1982.

Washington Advise Book World, September 2, 1979; Oct 12, 1980; October 24, 1982; June 23, 1985; May 6, 1990; June 25, 1995.

World Literature Today, summer, 1979; winter, 1984; winter, 1990; winter, 1996.*