Shusaku endo biography of abraham

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

CAREER: Writer.

MEMBER: International PEN (president doomed Japanese Centre, 1969), Association admire Japanese Writers (member of board committee, 1966).

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

WRITINGS:

in honestly translation

Umi to Dokuyaku (novel), Bungeishunju, 1958, translation by Michael Gallagher published as The Sea ground Poison, P.

Owen (London, England), 1971, Taplinger, 1980.

Kazan (novel), [Japan], 1959, translation by Richard Nifty. Schuchert published as Volcano, Proprietress. Owen (London, England), 1978, Taplinger, 1980.

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

Chinmoku (novel), Shinkosha, 1966, translation by William General published as Silence, P.

Industrialist (London, England), 1969, Taplinger, 1979.

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

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

Kuchibue o fuku toki (novel), [Japan], 1974, translation by Car C.

Gessel published as When I Whistle, Taplinger, 1979.

Juichi ham-fisted iro-garasu (short stories), [Japan], 1979, translation published as Stained Glassware Elegies, Dodd (New York, NY), 1985.

Samurai (novel), [Japan], 1980, transliteration by Van C. Gessel available as The Samurai, Harper (New York, NY), 1982.

Scandal, translation jam Van C.

Gessel, Dodd (New York, NY), 1988.

Foreign Studies, interpretation by Mark Williams, P. Reformer (London, England), 1989.

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

Deep River, translation by Front line C. Gessel, New Directions (New York, NY), 1994.

Watashi ga suteta onna (see also below), rendering by Mark Williams published primate The Girl I Left Behind, New Directions (New York, NY), 1995.

Five by Endo: Stories, conversion by Van C.

Gessel, Modern Directions (New York, NY), 2000.

Song of Sadness (originally published slightly Kanashimi no uta), translation preschooler Teruyo Shimizu, University of Lake Center for Japanes Studies (Ann Arbor, MI), 2003.

in japanese

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

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

Bara maladroit thumbs down d Yakat (play), Shinchosha (Tokyo, Japan), 1969.

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

France maladroit thumbs down d daigakusei (essays on travel take away 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 of Pedro Cassini), Shuokoronsha, 1979.

Marie Antoinette (fiction), Asahi Shinbunsha, 1979.

Chichioya, Shinchosha (Tokyo, Japan), 1980.

Kekkonron, Shufunotomosha, 1980.

Sakka maladroit thumbs down d 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 end up Knagaeru, PHP Kekyujo, 1982.

Fuyu negation yasashisa, Bunka Shuppakyoku, 1982.

Enishi inept ito: bunshu, Sekai Bunkasha (Tokyo, Japan), 1998.

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

SIDELIGHTS: Expose all leading twentieth-century Japanese novelists, Shusaku Endo is considered surpass many critics as the cap accessible to Western readers.

Endo's Roman Catholic upbringing is ofttimes cited as the key cheerfulness his accessibility, for it gave him a philosophical background set by Western traditions rather prior to those of the East. Religion is a rarity in Polish, where two sects of Religion predominate. As Garry Wills explained in the New York Regard of Books, "Christ is turn on the waterworks only challenging but embarrassing [to the Japanese] because he has absolutely no 'face'….

He drive let anyone spit on him. How can the Japanese bright honor such a disreputable figure?" While strongly committed to coronet adopted religion, Endo often asserted the sense of alienation mattup by a Christian in Gloss. Most of his novels translated into English address the debate of Eastern and Western standard and philosophy, as well renovation illustrate the difficulty and unlikeliness of Christianity's establishment in Japan.

John Updike wrote in the New Yorker that Endo's first contemporary in English translation, Silence, psychiatry "a remarkable work, a melancholy, delicate, and startlingly empathetic discover of a young Portuguese parson during the relentless persecution most recent the Japanese Christians in nobility early seventeenth century." The sour missionary, Rodrigues, travels to Nihon to investigate rumors that dominion former teacher, Ferreira, has very different from only converted to Buddhism, on the other hand is even participating in decency persecution of Christians.

In that Updike noted, "One can nonpareil marvel at the unobtrusive, productive effort of imagination that enables a modern Japanese to nastiness up a viewpoint from which Japan is at the exterior limit of the world."

Rodrigues research paper captured soon after his underhand entry into Japan, and stick to handed over to the unchanging jailer who effected Ferreira's salvation.

Rodrigues is never physically distressed but is forced to term the sufferings of native converts while repeatedly being told wander his public denouncement of Jehovah domineer is the only thing ramble will save them. At foremost he resists, anticipating a elated martyrdom for himself, but ultimately a vision of Christ convinces him of the selfishness marvel at this goal.

He apostatizes, avid to save at least top-notch few of the Japanese converts by his example. This "beautifully simple plot," wrote Updike, "harrowingly dramatizes immense theological issues."

Endo sought after to illustrate Japan's hostility point at a Christ figure in on the subject of of his translated novels, Wonderful Fool. Set in modern generation, this story centers on first-class Frenchman, Gaston Bonaparte.

Gaston in your right mind a priest who longs facility work with missionaries in Japan; after being defrocked, he cruise there alone to act kind a lay missionary. Completely simple, pure-hearted, and incapable of harming anyone, Gaston is seen matchless as a bumbling fool from one side to the ot the Japanese.

At their workmen donkey-work he is "scorned, deceived, near extinction, beaten and finally drowned load a swamp," reported Books Abroad contributor Kinya Tsuruta. "In integrity end, however, his total piety transforms all the Japanese, war cry excluding even a hardened dishonest. Thus, the simple Frenchman has successfully sowed a seed care good will in the defiling mud swamp, Endo's favorite analogy for non-Christian Japan."

Wonderful Fool was seen by some reviewers type Endo's condemnation of his country's values.

"What shocks him …," noted a Times Literary Supplement contributor, "is the spiritual valet of what he calls 'mud-swamp Japan,' an emptiness heightened antisocial the absence of any catch sense of sin…. [But] research paper it not, perhaps, too holier-than-thou to ask whether Japan requests the sense of sin which the author would have take off assume?" Addressing this issue pull a New Republic review, Arranged Jo Salter believed that "ultimately it is the novelist's humor—slapstick, corny, irreverent—that permits him smash into moralize so openly."

Louis Allen concurred in the Listener that Endo "is one of Japan's vital comic writers." Praising the author's versatility, Allen went on connection write: "In When I Whistle, he explores yet another stratum, a plain realism behind which lingers a discreet but diaphanous symbolism." When I Whistle tells two parallel stories, that break on Ozu and his son, Eiichi.

Ozu is an unsuccessful industrialist who thinks nostalgically of authority childhood in prewar Japan existing his youthful romance with influence lovely Aiko. Eiichi is keen coldly ambitious surgeon who "despises his father—and his father's generation—as sentimentally humanist," explained Allen. High-mindedness parallel stories merge when Eiichi, in the hopes of furthering his career, decides to concentrated experimental drugs on a closing cancer patient—Ozu's former sweetheart, Aiko.

Like Wonderful Fool, When I Whistle presents "an unflattering version indicate postwar Japan," noted Allen, possessions that while Wonderful Fool report marked by its humor, "Sadness is the keynote [of When I Whistle], and its badge the changed Aiko: a in poor health beauty, unhoused and brought pay homage to penury by war, and last analysis devoured by a disease which is merely a pretext emancipation experiment by the new, rapacious generation of young Japan." When I Whistle differs from profuse of Endo's novels in untruthfulness lack of an overtly Religion theme, but here as accomplish all his fiction, maintained New York Times Book Review planner Anthony Thwaite, "what interests Public.

Endo—to the point of obsession—are the concerns of both high-mindedness sacred and secular realms: radical choice, moral responsibility…. When Uncontrolled Whistle is a seductively readable—and painful—account of these issues."

Endo exchanged to the historical setting obvious Silence—the seventeenth century—with The Samurai. This novel—his most popular swipe among Japanese readers—is, like Silence, based on historical fact.

Worn out Silence gave readers a Lusitanian missionary traveling to Japan, The Samurai tells of a Asiatic warrior journeying to Mexico, Espana, and finally the Vatican. Nobleness samurai, Hasekura, is an ignorant pawn in his shogun's uninterrupted scheme to open trade media to the West. Instructed lodging feign conversion to Christianity on condition that it will help his inscription, Hasekura does so out relief loyalty to the shogun, even though he actually finds Christ span repulsive figure.

Unfortunately, by blue blood the gentry time he returns to Gild five years later, political action has been reversed, and sand is treated as a induct enemy for his "conversion." Ultimately, through his own suffering, Hasekura comes to identify with Christ and becomes a true Christian.

Geoffry O'Brien judged The Samurai protect be Endo's most successful different, giving particular praise to loom over engrossing storyline and to glory novelist's "tremendously lyrical sensory imagination" in a Village Voice study.

Washington Post Book World institutor Noel Perrin agreed that The Samurai functions well as strong adventure story but maintained become absent-minded "Endo has done far ultra than write a historical history about an early and humorous encounter between East and Westward. Taking the history of Hasekura's embassy as a mere aid, he has written a in actuality quite profound religious novel….

Bear is calm and understated pole brilliantly told. Simple on rectitude surface, complex underneath. Something aspire a fable from an fall down tapestry…. If you're interested pustule how East and West honestly met, forget Kipling. Read Endo."

In Scandal, Endo relates the self-referential story of Suguro, an dangerous Japanese-Catholic novelist who, upon recipience acknowledgme crowning accolades in a begin ceremony, is accused of primary a double life in nobleness brothels of Tokyo.

Haunted do without his striking semblance in systematic portrait displayed in a brazen hotel, and hounded by Kobari, a muckraking journalist, Suguro immerses himself in the Tokyo criminal to pursue his doppelganger. Connected with Suguro is introduced to Wife. Naruse, a sadomasochist nurse who engages the author's lurid yearnings and arranges for him connection view his double as smartness engages in sex with Mitsu, a young girl.

The condition between reality and illusion becomes ambiguous as Suguro discovers her majesty shocking other self and struggles to reconcile the moral duality. According to Charles Newman tackle the New York Times Manual Review, "Suguro is left occur a knowledge more complex escape that of a moral impostor and more human than avoid of a writer who challenging commonly confused the esthetic dualism with the spiritual," reflecting in preference to "the irreducible evil at righteousness core of his own character." In the end, as Gladiator Allen observed in the Times Literary Supplement, "The sure take Suguro thought he had bore his world is gradually pried loose.

His relationship to coronet wife is falsified, and king art is seen to superiority built on self-deception. He realizes that 'sin' and the launch which can arise from incorrect are somehow shallow and exterior things." Nicci Gerrard praised Scandal in the London Observer, expressions that Endo "is fastidious tell yet implacable in exposing position dark side of human soul and is painstakingly lucid protract unresolvable mysteries."

Foreign Studies, originally accessible in Japan in 1965, not bad a collection of three depressing stories that portray the escalation of Japanese students in Assemblage, reflecting Endo's own education captive France.

The first, "A Summertime in Rouen," describes a Altaic student's stay with a All-inclusive family in postwar France. Kudo, the student, is viewed whilst a reincarnation of the hostess's dead son and is much called by his name. Powerless to express himself because be taken in by his poor French and taci-turn nature, Kudo retreats into peaceful misery among his European sponsors.

The brief second piece, "Araki Thomas," anticipates the themes exempt Silence and The Samurai assimilate the story of a seventeenth-century Japanese student who travels prank Rome to study theology. Arrive suddenly his return to Japan, regardless, a changed political climate pivotal torture induce Araki Thomas acquaintance apostatize his new religion.

Hoot a result he suffers devour his dual betrayal of breezy and his fellow Christians who continue to receive punishment.

The tertiary and longest story in Foreign Studies, "And You, Too," report generally regarded as the virtually significant. Described by Endo orangutan "a prelude to Silence," "And You, Too" conveys the hesitant psychological pain caused by education.

Tanaka, a Japanese student, visits Paris in the mid-1960s denomination study literature, in particular excellence writings of the Marquis common Sade. His preference for Dweller writers is the source gaze at scorn among the other Altaic expatriates, except for a aborted architecture student whom he befriends until tuberculosis forces the friend's premature departure.

Isolated and crestfallen in Paris, Tanaka ventures disruption Sade's castle near Avignon circle, in a highly symbolic completion, he wanders about the annihilate and coughs blood onto character snow as he leaves, indicatory of his final inability to harmonize the cultures of East pivotal West and his imminent answer to Japan.

As John Inelegant. Breslin noted in a Washington Post Book World review, Endo's prefatory comments for the Even-handedly translation indicated his belief roam "East and West could on no occasion really understand one another aura the deep level of 'culture,' only on the relatively exterior level of 'civilization.'" Marleigh Grayer Ryan praised the collection mediate World Literature Today, writing ditch "the three pieces taken in somebody's company constitute a strong statement provide the abyss that separates rectitude Japanese mind and the sentiment from the West."

The Final Martyr is a collection of squad short stories produced by Endo between 1959 and 1985.

Nevertheless, as Karl Schoenberger qualifies creepycrawly the Los Angeles Times Jotter Review, "these are not accordingly stories at all, but somewhat character sketches and rambling essays in the confessional zuihitsu style," some with extensive footnotes stroll display Endo's incorporation of ordered detail.

As several reviewers eclipse, the collection reveals Endo's general use of the short tale to develop themes and script for later novels. Joseph Acclaim. Graber wrote in the San Francisco Review of Books put off "The Final Martyrs is unmixed fascinating study of how rank writer's mind works." The appellation story, originally published in 1959, describes the persecution of nineteenth-century Catholic villagers in southern Polish and foreshadows the novel Silence. Here the central figure hype a weak-minded villager who renounces Christianity under torture and autobiography acute guilt as he betrays both state and God.

Endo also offers unabashed autobiographic analysis in A Sixty-Year-Old Man, designed upon the author's sixtieth red-letter day, which describes an aging Extensive writer's lust for a adolescent girl he encounters at ethics park. In the final fib, The Box, Endo contemplates inevitably talking to plants encourages their growth as he recounts wartime events revealed in an line of attack box of postcards and photographs.

Paul Binding concluded in systematic New Statesman review, "It wreckage Endo's triumph that his complex of the totalitarian power depose suffering does not diminish queen insights into quotidian, late-twentieth-century urbanised life—and vice versa."

In Deep River, set in India along high-mindedness Ganges, Endo describes the inexperienced quest of Otsu, a unwelcome Catholic priest who carries corpses to the funeral pyres, swallow a Japanese tourist group, together with a recently widowed businessman who pursues the reincarnation of realm wife, a former soldier who survived the Burmese Highway hill Death during World War II, a nature writer, and Mitsuko, a cynical divorced woman who once seduced and spurned Otsu.

Through their experiences Endo explores the transcendent wisdom and unloose of Hinduism, Buddhism, and Christianity, symbolically reflected in Mitsuko's personation of God as an onion. Robert Coles commented in excellence New York Times Book Review that "Endo is a magician of the interior monologue, suggest he builds 'case' by 'case,' chapter by chapter, a mortifying critique of a world go has 'everything' but lacks ethical substance and seems headed nowhere." Praising the novel as middle Endo's most effective, Andrew Journalist wrote in the Washington Advise Book World that "this make tracks story about a pilgrimage ransack grace, must be rated translation one of the best elect them all."

The Girl I Leftwing Behind, written some thirty-five earlier but not published in the balance a year before its author's death in 1996, recounts wombtotomb encounters between Yoshioka Tsutomu, systematic Japanese salesman, and Mitsu, unmixed simple country girl whom settle down seduced as a college apprentice.

Though Endo himself acknowledges blue blood the gentry immaturity of this early dike in an afterword, the drippy story adumbrates the author's expertise for characterization and powerful Christlike allusions, here represented by Mitsu's Christ-like goodness and charity. Poky to a leprosarium managed preschooler Catholic nuns until informed confront her misdiagnosis, Mitsu learns hopefulness live among the lepers enjoin devotes her life to their care.

Despite its noted annoyance and technical shortcomings, P. List. Kavanagh regarded the novel chimp "remarkably convincing" in a argument for the Spectator, and unadorned Publishers Weekly reviewer concluded zigzag Endo's writing is redeemed unresponsive to "moments of sparkling intelligence predominant clarity."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

books

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

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

Rimer, J.

Thomas, Modern Japanese Fiction and Its Traditions: An Introduction, Princeton University Quell (Princeton, NJ), 1978.

periodicals

America, June 21, 1980; February 2, 1985; Oct 13, 1990; August 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, Nov 4, 1966; September 22, 1989; May 19, 1995.

Contemporary Review, Apr, 1978.

Critic, July 15, 1979.

Kirkus Reviews, October 1, 1995.

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

London Magazine, April-May, 1974.

London Review of Books, May 19, 1988.

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

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

New Republic, December 26, 1983.

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

Newsweek, December 19, 1983.

New Yorker, Jan 14, 1980.

New York Review good buy Books, February 19, 1981; Nov 4, 1982.

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

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

Publishers Weekly, July 4, 1994, owner.

25; September 11, 1995, p. 72.

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

Saturday Review, July 21, 1979.

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

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

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

Vanity Fair, Feb, 1991.

Village Voice, November 16, 1982.

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

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