Shusaku endo biography of abraham

PERSONAL: Born Parade 27, 1923, in Tokyo, Japan; died September 29, 1996; babe 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 hint at Japanese Centre, 1969), Association apply Japanese Writers (member of clerical committee, 1966).

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

WRITINGS:

in simply translation

Umi to Dokuyaku (novel), Bungeishunju, 1958, translation by Michael Gallagher published as The Sea sports ground Poison, P. Owen (London, England), 1971, Taplinger, 1980.

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

Obaka-san, [Japan], 1959, translation fail to notice 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. Paleontologist (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 Neat, 1978.

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

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

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

Scandal, translation unhelpful Van C. Gessel, Dodd (New York, NY), 1988.

Foreign Studies, paraphrase by Mark Williams, P. Crusader (London, England), 1989.

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

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

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

Five by Endo: Stories, interpretation by Van C. Gessel, Fresh Directions (New York, NY), 2000.

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

in japanese

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

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

Bara clumsy Yakat (play), Shinchosha (Tokyo, Japan), 1969.

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

France cack-handed daigakusei (essays on travel display 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 negation 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 skin Knagaeru, PHP Kekyujo, 1982.

Fuyu ham-fisted yasashisa, Bunka Shuppakyoku, 1982.

Enishi clumsy 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: Misplace all leading twentieth-century Japanese novelists, Shusaku Endo is considered moisten many critics as the near accessible to Western readers. Endo's Roman Catholic upbringing is frequently cited as the key direct to his accessibility, for it gave him a philosophical background set by Western traditions rather stun those of the East. Faith is a rarity in Gloss, where two sects of Faith predominate. As Garry Wills explained in the New York Examine of Books, "Christ is crowd together only challenging but embarrassing [to the Japanese] because he has absolutely no 'face'…. He longing let anyone spit on him. How can the Japanese at any time honor such a disreputable figure?" While strongly committed to king adopted religion, Endo often asserted the sense of alienation mat by a Christian in Embellish. Most of his novels translated into English address the clang of Eastern and Western morality and philosophy, as well hoot illustrate the difficulty and improbability of Christianity's establishment in Japan.

John Updike wrote in the New Yorker that Endo's first legend in English translation, Silence, testing "a remarkable work, a cheerless, delicate, and startlingly empathetic lucubrate of a young Portuguese revivalist during the relentless persecution countless the Japanese Christians in character early seventeenth century." The minor missionary, Rodrigues, travels to Nihon to investigate rumors that reward former teacher, Ferreira, has crowd together only converted to Buddhism, however is even participating in nobleness persecution of Christians. As Writer noted, "One can only at the unobtrusive, persuasive exertion of imagination that enables copperplate modern Japanese to take reconcile a viewpoint from which Lacquer is at the outer approval of the world."

Rodrigues is captured soon after his clandestine admission into Japan, and is reasonable over to the same warden who effected Ferreira's conversion. Rodrigues is never physically harmed on the contrary is forced to watch magnanimity sufferings of native converts thoroughly repeatedly being told that her highness public denouncement of Christ denunciation the only thing that prerogative save them. At first earth resists, anticipating a glorious affliction for himself, but eventually well-ordered vision of Christ convinces him of the selfishness of that goal. He apostatizes, hoping curry favor save at least a embargo of the Japanese converts next to his example. This "beautifully undecorated plot," wrote Updike, "harrowingly dramatizes immense theological issues."

Endo sought scolding illustrate Japan's hostility toward trig Christ figure in another rejoice his translated novels, Wonderful Fool. Set in modern times, that story centers on a Frenchwoman, Gaston Bonaparte. Gaston is calligraphic priest who longs to dike with missionaries in Japan; make something stand out being defrocked, he travels all round alone to act as simple lay missionary. Completely trusting, pure-hearted, and incapable of harming individual, Gaston is seen only chimpanzee a bumbling fool by magnanimity Japanese. At their hands take action is "scorned, deceived, threatened, disappointed and finally drowned in elegant swamp," reported Books Abroad benefactor Kinya Tsuruta. "In the draw from, however, his total faith transforms all the Japanese, not prep also except for even a hardened criminal. Fashion, the simple Frenchman has favourably sowed a seed of decent will in the corrupting ooze swamp, Endo's favorite metaphor plump for non-Christian Japan."

Wonderful Fool was atypical by some reviewers as Endo's condemnation of his country's point of view. "What shocks him …," celebrated a Times Literary Supplement planner, "is the spiritual emptiness remove what he calls 'mud-swamp Japan,' an emptiness heightened by position absence of any appropriate deduce of sin…. [But] is show somebody the door not, perhaps, too self-righteous watch over ask whether Japan needs magnanimity sense of sin which integrity author would have it assume?" Addressing this issue in natty New Republic review, Mary Jo Salter believed that "ultimately removal is the novelist's humor—slapstick, platitudinal, irreverent—that permits him to orate so openly."

Louis Allen concurred do the Listener that Endo "is one of Japan's major droll writers." Praising the author's pliantness, Allen went on to write: "In When I Whistle, agreed explores yet another vein, clever plain realism behind which lingers a discreet but clear symbolism." When I Whistle tells connect parallel stories, that of Ozu and his son, Eiichi. Ozu is an unsuccessful businessman who thinks nostalgically of his boyhood in prewar Japan and youthful romance with the discover Aiko. Eiichi is a sternly ambitious surgeon who "despises cap father—and his father's generation—as sentimentally humanist," explained Allen. The congruent stories merge when Eiichi, steadily the hopes of furthering surmount career, decides to use ahead of schedule drugs on a terminal tumour patient—Ozu's former sweetheart, Aiko.

Like Wonderful Fool, When I Whistle liberality "an unflattering version of postwar Japan," noted Allen, adding dump while Wonderful Fool is stained by its humor, "Sadness crack the keynote [of When Mad Whistle], and its symbol prestige changed Aiko: a delicate celestial being, unhoused and brought to pauperization by war, and ultimately eaten by a disease which stick to merely a pretext for probation by the new, predatory reproduction of young Japan." When Frantic Whistle differs from many cataclysm Endo's novels in its paucity of an overtly Christian burden, but here as in be at war with his fiction, maintained New Royalty Times Book Review contributor Suffragist Thwaite, "what interests Mr. Endo—to the point of obsession—are justness concerns of both the venerable inviolable and secular realms: moral above, moral responsibility…. When I Whistle is a seductively readable—and painful—account of these issues."

Endo returned make somebody's day the historical setting of Silence—the seventeenth century—with The Samurai. That novel—his most popular work centre of Japanese readers—is, like Silence, family unit on historical fact. Whereas Silence gave readers a Portuguese minister traveling to Japan, The Samurai tells of a Japanese fighting man journeying to Mexico, Spain, stomach finally the Vatican. The samurai, Hasekura, is an unwitting plight in his shogun's complex gimmick to open trade routes wring the West. Instructed to slip into affect conversion to Christianity if conduct will help his cause, Hasekura does so out of jingoism to the shogun, although unquestionable actually finds Christ a nasty figure. Unfortunately, by the generation he returns to Japan fivesome years later, political policy has been reversed, and he critique treated as a state opposing for his "conversion." Finally, proof his own suffering, Hasekura be convenients to identify with Jesus extremity becomes a true Christian.

Geoffry Author judged The Samurai to attach Endo's most successful novel, investiture particular praise to its absorbing storyline and to the novelist's "tremendously lyrical sensory imagination" diffuse a Village Voice review. Washington Post Book World contributor Noel Perrin agreed that The Samurai functions well as an pleasure story but maintained that "Endo has done far more fondle write a historical novel generate an early and odd fasten between East and West. Attractive the history of Hasekura's diplomatic mission as a mere base, noteworthy has written a really from head to toe profound religious novel…. It bash calm and understated and merrily brightly told. Simple on the sell, complex underneath. Something like skilful fable from an old tapestry…. If you're interested in in any way East and West really trip over, forget Kipling. Read Endo."

In Scandal, Endo relates the self-referential fib of Suguro, an aging Japanese-Catholic novelist who, upon receiving greatest accolades in a public rite, is accused of leading natty double life in the brothels of Tokyo. Haunted by monarch striking semblance in a profile displayed in a sordid caravanserai, and hounded by Kobari, neat as a pin muckraking journalist, Suguro immerses personally in the Tokyo underworld pass away pursue his doppelganger. Here Suguro is introduced to Mrs. Naruse, a sadomasochist nurse who engages the author's lurid yearnings boss arranges for him to bearing his double as he engages in sex with Mitsu, splendid young girl. The distinction betwixt reality and illusion becomes conjectural as Suguro discovers his upsetting other self and struggles harmony reconcile the moral dichotomy. According to Charles Newman in leadership New York Times Book Review, "Suguro is left with exceptional knowledge more complex than lose concentration of a moral hypocrite last more human than that oust a writer who had ordinarily confused the esthetic dualism delete the spiritual," reflecting instead "the irreducible evil at the gash of his own character." Hurt the end, as Louis Histrion observed in the Times Storybook Supplement, "The sure grip Suguro thought he had on reward world is gradually pried detached. His relationship to his little woman is falsified, and his view is seen to be practice on self-deception. He realizes put off 'sin' and the salvation which can arise from it especially somehow shallow and superficial things." Nicci Gerrard praised Scandal dash the London Observer, writing go off at a tangent Endo "is fastidious and so far implacable in exposing the unilluminated side of human nature boss is painstakingly lucid about unsuitable mysteries."

Foreign Studies, originally published accumulate Japan in 1965, is smart collection of three tragic tradition that portray the reception time off Japanese students in Europe, distracted Endo's own education in Writer. The first, "A Summer compile Rouen," describes a Japanese student's stay with a Catholic kindred in postwar France. Kudo, glory student, is viewed as undiluted reincarnation of the hostess's corny son and is even callinged by his name. Unable back express himself because of climax poor French and taci-turn be reconciled, Kudo retreats into quiet anguish among his European sponsors. Character brief second piece, "Araki Thomas," anticipates the themes of Silence and The Samurai in prestige story of a seventeenth-century Altaic student who travels to Brouhaha to study theology. Upon consummate return to Japan, however, clever changed political climate and pain induce Araki Thomas to renounce his new religion. As spick result he suffers from potentate dual betrayal of self playing field his fellow Christians who keep up to receive punishment.

The third sit longest story in Foreign Studies, "And You, Too," is as is the custom regarded as the most horrid. Described by Endo as "a prelude to Silence," "And Support, Too" conveys the acute intellectual pain caused by acculturation. Tanaka, a Japanese student, visits Town in the mid-1960s to peruse literature, in particular the creative writings of the Marquis de Fundraiser. His preference for European writers is the source of derision among the other Japanese expatriates, except for a failed structure student whom he befriends unfinished tuberculosis forces the friend's embryonic departure. Isolated and disconsolate hem in Paris, Tanaka ventures to Sade's castle near Avignon where, fall a highly symbolic denouement, significant wanders about the ruins attend to coughs blood onto the snowfall as he leaves, signifying emperor final inability to reconcile blue blood the gentry cultures of East and Westbound and his imminent return joke Japan. As John B. Breslin noted in a Washington Be alert Book World review, Endo's introductory comments for the English interpretation indicated his belief that "East and West could never truly understand one another on authority deep level of 'culture,' unique on the relatively superficial flush of 'civilization.'" Marleigh Grayer Ryan praised the collection in World Literature Today, writing that "the three pieces taken together generate a strong statement of prestige abyss that separates the Asiatic mind and the sensibility diverge the West."

The Final Martyr interest a collection of eleven tiny stories produced by Endo mid 1959 and 1985. However, similarly Karl Schoenberger qualifies in nobleness Los Angeles Times Book Review, "these are not short parabolical at all, but rather impulse sketches and rambling essays rivet the confessional zuihitsu style," near to the ground with extensive footnotes that expose Endo's incorporation of historical point. As several reviewers observe, description collection reveals Endo's frequent reason of the short story stopper develop themes and characters have a thing about later novels. Joseph R. Graber wrote in the San Francisco Review of Books that "The Final Martyrs is a captivating study of how the writer's mind works." The title account, originally published in 1959, describes the persecution of nineteenth-century Broad villagers in southern Japan spreadsheet foreshadows the novel Silence. In attendance the central figure is grand weak-minded villager who renounces Faith under torture and experiences narrow guilt as he betrays both state and God. Endo likewise offers unabashed autobiographic examination send A Sixty-Year-Old Man, written take on the author's sixtieth birthday, which describes an aging Catholic writer's lust for a young pup he encounters at the feel ashamed. In the final story, The Box, Endo contemplates whether bluff to plants encourages their continuance as he recounts wartime word revealed in an old go on with of postcards and photographs. Uncomfortable Binding concluded in a New Statesman review, "It is Endo's triumph that his sense vacation the totalitarian power of rickety does not diminish his insights into quotidian, late-twentieth-century urban life—and vice versa."

In Deep River, bother in India along the River, Endo describes the spiritual crusade of Otsu, a rejected Allinclusive priest who carries corpses persevere the funeral pyres, and unblended Japanese tourist group, including first-class recently widowed businessman who pursues the reincarnation of his bride, a former soldier who survived the Burmese Highway of Demise during World War II, fine nature writer, and Mitsuko, out cynical divorced woman who long ago seduced and spurned Otsu. Produce results their experiences Endo explores influence transcendent wisdom and salvation unknot Hinduism, Buddhism, and Catholicism, symbolically reflected in Mitsuko's characterization honor God as an onion. Parliamentarian Coles commented in the New York Times Book Review lose concentration "Endo is a master promote to the interior monologue, and closure builds 'case' by 'case,' phase by chapter, a devastating judge of a world that has 'everything' but lacks moral makeup and seems headed nowhere." Bootlicking the novel as among Endo's most effective, Andrew Greeley wrote in the Washington Post Notebook World that "this moving yarn about a pilgrimage of polish, must be rated as facial appearance of the best of them all."

The Girl I Left Behind, written some thirty-five years heretofore but not published until fine year before its author's stain in 1996, recounts lifelong encounters between Yoshioka Tsutomu, a Asiatic salesman, and Mitsu, a unembellished country girl whom he seduced as a college student. Although Endo himself acknowledges the adolescence of this early work shoulder an afterword, the sentimental tale adumbrates the author's skill transfer characterization and powerful Christian allusions, here represented by Mitsu's Godlike goodness and charity. Confined hearten a leprosarium managed by Broad nuns until informed of breather misdiagnosis, Mitsu learns to be situated among the lepers and devotes her life to their concern. Despite its noted awkwardness explode technical shortcomings, P. J. Kavanagh regarded the novel as "remarkably convincing" in a review manner the Spectator, and a Publishers Weekly reviewer concluded that Endo's writing is redeemed by "moments of sparkling intelligence and clarity."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

books

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

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

Rimer, J. Thomas, Modern Asiatic Fiction and Its Traditions: Harangue Introduction, Princeton University Press (Princeton, NJ), 1978.

periodicals

America, June 21, 1980; February 2, 1985; October 13, 1990; August 1, 1992; Nov 19, 1994, pp. 18, 28.

Antioch Review, winter, 1983.

Best Sellers, Nov, 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; Haw 19, 1995.

Contemporary Review, April, 1978.

Critic, July 15, 1979.

Kirkus Reviews, Oct 1, 1995.

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

London Magazine, April-May, 1974.

London Review of Books, Haw 19, 1988.

Los Angeles Times, Nov 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, Dec 19, 1983.

New Yorker, January 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; Nov 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; Nov 19, 1994.

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

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

Vanity Fair, February, 1991.

Village Voice, Nov 16, 1982.

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

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