The teachings of Christ are like a flame. 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. He often likened Japan to a swamp or fen. a 'Japanese Catholic author' struggling to 'plant the seeds of his adopted religion' in the 'mudswamp' of Japan". Others have said that he is "almost by default . Endō has been called "a novelist whose work has been dominated by a single theme . While Endō wrote in several genres, his oeuvre is strongly tied to Christianity if not Catholicism. Endō died shortly thereafter from complications of hepatitis at Keio University Hospital in Tokyo on September 29, 1996. While he lost the 1994 Nobel Prize in Literature to Kenzaburō Ōe, he received the Order of Culture the subsequent year. Among other health problems, he contracted tuberculosis, underwent thoracoplasty, and had a lung removed. A return visit in 1960 prompted another case of the same disease, and he stayed in hospital (in France and Japan) for the greater part of three years. In 1952, while studying in France, he came down with pleurisy in Paris. Throughout his life bouts of disease plagued him, and he spent two years in hospital at one point. He was considered a novelist not a university professor, however. 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. They had one son, Ryūnosuke, born in 1956.Įndō lectured at at least two Tokyo universities. In 1954, a year after completing his studies in France, he won the Akutagawa Prize for Shiroi Hito (White Men). Upon his return to Japan, his success as a writer was almost immediate. His studies at the University of Lyon over the 1950–1953 period deepened his interest in and knowledge of modern French Catholic authors, who were to become a major influence on his own writing. Įndō was among the first Japanese university students to study in France. In 1968, he would later become chief editor of one of these, the prestigious Mita Bungaku. His studies were interrupted by the war, during which he worked in a munitions factory and also contributed to literary journals. Įndō first attended Waseda University for the stated purpose of studying medicine, but later decided to switch to the literature programme at Keio University. 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 was baptized as a Catholic at the age of 11 or 12 in the year 1934. When his parents divorced in 1933, Endō's mother brought him back to Japan to live with an aunt in Kobe. Soon after Endō was born in Tokyo in 1923, his family moved to Dairen, then part of the Kwantung Leased Territory in Manchuria. Together with Junnosuke Yoshiyuki, Shōtarō Yasuoka, Junzo Shono, Hiroyuki Agawa, Ayako Sono (also Catholic), and Shumon Miura, Endō is categorized as part of the " Third Generation" (that is, the third major group of Japanese writers who appeared after World War II). He was the laureate of several prestigious literary accolades, including the Akutagawa Prize and the Order of Culture, and was inducted into the Roman Catholic Order of St. Internationally, he is known for his 1966 historical fiction novel Silence, which was adapted into a 2016 film of the same name by director Martin Scorsese. Shūsaku Endō ( 遠藤 周作, Endō Shūsaku, March 27, 1923 – September 29, 1996) was a Japanese author who wrote from the rare perspective of a Japanese Catholic.
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