Shusaku Endo, Japanese Catholic Novelist

Today marks the birthday of Shusaku Endo (1923-1996), one of the leading Japanese novelists of the twentieth century. Born in Tokyo, he specialized in French literature at Keio University and studied for several years in France. A convert to Catholicism, his writings often deal with the conflict between Christianity and Japanese culture. The Samurai (1980) deals with the journey of a Japanese diplomat-warrior to the papal court in the 1600’s. His most famous novel, Silence (1969), tells the story of a Portugese Jesuit caught up in the government-sponsored persecution of Christianity. But one critic points out that Endo doesn’t despair for the future of Christianity in Japan, because he sees it as having an infinite capacity for adaptation. Endo himself writes:

But after all it seems to me that Catholicism is not a solo, but a symphony… If I have trust in Catholicism, it is because I find in it much more possibility than in any other religion for representing the full symphony of humanity. The other religions have almost no fullness; they have but solo parts. Only Catholicism can present the full symphony.

Martin Scorsese is presently working on a production of Silence, due for release in 2010.