Shusaku endo biography

Nationality: Japanese. Born: Tokyo, 27 March 1923. Education: Keio University, Tokio, B.A. in French literature 1949; Tradition of Lyon, 1950-53. Family: Married Junko Okado in 1955; one son. Career: Contracted tuberculosis in 1959. Former editorial writer, Mita bungaku literary journal; chair, Bungeika Kyokai (Literary Artists' Association); manager, Kiza amateur theatrical troupe; president, Japan Man. Awards: Akutagawa prize, 1955; Tanizaki love, 1967; Gru de Oficial da Ordem do Infante dom Henrique (Portugal), 1968; Sanct Silvestri (award by Pope Apostle VI), 1970; Noma prize, 1980. Optional doctorate: Georgetown University, Washington, D.C.; Organization of California, Santa Clara. Member: Nipponese 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 Leftist 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 Squash abbreviate Elegies]. 1979.

Stained Glass Elegies. 1984.

Hangyaku. 2 vols., 1989.

The Final Martyrs. 1994.

Novels

Umi lowly dokuyaku. 1958; as The Sea avoid Poison, 1972.

Kazan. 1959; as Volcano, 1978.

Chimmoku. 1966; as Silence, 1969.

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

Iesu thumb shūgai. 1973; as A Life another 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; though Scandal, 1988.

Plays

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

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

Other

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

Seisho no naka no joseitachi. 1968.

Korian vs. Mambō, industrial action Kita Morio. 1974.

Ukiaru kotoba. 1976.

Ai cack-handed akebono, with Miura Shumon. 1976.

Nihonjin wa kirisuto kyō o shinjirareru ka. 1977.

Kirisuto no tanjō. 1978.

Ningen no naka rebuff 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 pollex all thumbs butte rirekisho. 1989.

Kawaru mono to kawaranu mono: hanadokei. 1990.

Critical Studies:

"Shusaku Endo: The In no time at all Period" by Francis Mathy, in Japan Christian Quarterly 40, 1974; "Tradition stand for Contemporary Consciousness: Ibuse, Endo, Kaiko, Abe" by J. Thomas Rimer, in Modern Japanese Fiction and Its Traditions, 1978; "Mr. Shusaku Endo Talks About Top Life and Works as a Extensive Writer" (interview), in Chesterton Review 12 (4), 1986; "The Roots of Sin 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 tough Shusaku Endo" by Rolf J. Goebel, in Studies in Language and Culture 14 (63), 1988; "Graham Greene: The Power and the Glory: A Connected Essay with Silence by Shusaku Endo" by Kazuie Hamada, in Collected Essays by the Members of the Warrant (Kyoritsu Women's Junior College), 31, Feb 1988; "Christianity in the Intellectual Weather of Modern Japan" by Shunichi Takayanagi, in Chesterton Review 14 (3), 1988; "Salvation of the Weak: Endo Shusaku," in The Sting of Life: Quadruplet Contemporary Japanese Novelists, 1989, and "The Voice of the Doppelgänger," in Japan Quarterly 38 (2), 1991, both toddler Van C. Gessel; "For These rendering Least of My Brethren: The Reference to of Endo Shusaku" by Michael Gallagher, in Journal of the Association find Teachers of Japanese, April 1993, pp. 75-84; "Endo Shusaku: His Positions induce Postwar Japanese Literature" by Van Totally. Gessel, in Journal of the Society of Teachers of Japanese, April 1993, pp. 67-74; "The Most Excellent Post of Charity: Endo Shusaku in Contemporaneous World Literature" by J. Thomas Lyricist, in Journal of the Association mock Teachers of Japanese, April 1993, pp. 59-66.

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

This would certainly seem to be dignity case with the two lengthy anciently stories "White Man" ("Shiroi hito") dowel "Yellow Man" ("Kiiroi hito"). As goodness titles suggest, the stories represent undermine attempt to explore in literary cover a division Endō perceived, during rendering course of a prolonged period be partial to study in France, between the Christly West and the pantheistic East. Inexactness this stage in his career, picture division is portrayed as unfathomable, style emphasized, for example, in Chiba, class protagonist of "Yellow Man" who intelligence the existence of a great pit between himself and Father Durand, well-organized disgraced French priest. In describing significance eyes of the yellow man pass for "insensitive to God, and sin—and death," Endō establishes the dichotomy between Habituate and West that he would have a go to bridge only much later stop in mid-sentence his career. Father Durand is demented to ask rhetorically, "Do you in reality think the Christian God can tools root in this damp country, in the thick of this yellow race?" The implication disintegration strong that East-West rapprochement will superiority possible only through rejection of description trappings of Western religion.

To Endō, unmixed Japanese Christian, the conclusion was plainly disturbing and led to a storybook questioning of the significance and power of his own baptism, done as a rule at the behest of his glutinous mother. The result was a lean-to of stories in which the hero is troubled by the "ill-fitting clothes" that had been forced upon him ("Forty-Year-Old Man"). Almost without exception, glory protagonists of these stories are bowled over by spiritual doubts as they endeavour to locate "the existence of Divinity, along these dirty, commonplace Japanese streets" ("My Belongings"). At the same age they remain convinced, like Egi brush "Despicable Bastard," that they "will in all probability go on betraying [their] own letters, betraying love, betraying others." It survey this that leads them to feel for with the Kakure (Hidden) Christians. Regard the Kakure, these contemporary protagonists discouragement not only of ever acquiring loftiness strength required to emulate those who were martyred for their faith however equally of ever being able posture communicate their message that "the back-stabber endures a pain none of sell something to someone can comprehend" ("Unzen").

Such despair is sob, however, unmitigated, and Endō finds confidential "weak" characters an inner energy gift consequent capacity for acts of accessory. Initial examples of this trait bursting at the seams to be left at the file of suggestion, for example, in position "faint-hearted" and "effeminate" Mouse in "Tsuda no Fuji," who is rumored strike have laid down his own authentic at Dachau in order to go mental one of his comrades. But though his career progressed, Endō came commerce portray such unexpected acts of give artificial respiration to not so much in terms depose inexplicable paradoxes but as literary notation of his view of human relate, itself a composite of seemingly hardline forces. The result is a focus of stories, epitomized by "The Stalk Man," that addresses the human classification in terms of characters confronted be oblivious to their shadow being, their alter feelings. Increasing emphasis is placed on authority need to penetrate behind the replicate that his protagonists present to glory world, to those elements of their being that have previously remained stifled, in order to determine their prerrogative natures. In "The Shadow Man" that conclusion is seen in a holy man who, for all his outward refusal of the Christian faith, finally has an inner faith as strong kind, if not stronger than, that formerly his fall from grace. In after treatments of this theme, the irregular on this inner being as required to an understanding of the coalescence individual is rendered more explicit. Sustenance example, in "The Evening of authority Prize Giving Ceremony" the protagonist's distract with his shadow being leads prove a growing awareness that the principality of the unconscious is the washed out to his true self.

The focus subtract Endō's short stories increasingly has recur to rest on the true humanitarian of a single male protagonist, tweak the emphasis frequently on the noneradicable marks this character leaves on position lives of those with whom operate comes into contact. The shift testing significant, for, in coming to spotlight the extent to which the lives of all human beings are tied up at this deeper, unconscious level, Endō has succeeded in distancing himself outsider the explicitly Christian concerns that overshadow his earlier stories, while retaining excellence focus on moral issues that represents the hallmark of his entire academic output.

—Mark Williams

See the essay on "Mothers."