I'm not normally much of a fiction fan, but the other year I had the good fortune of reading two remarkable historical novels by the late Japanese Catholic writer, Shusaku Endo. Having tackled subject matter that is often ambiguous and unsettling, he is often referred to as the Japanese counterpart to Graham Greene. He is even sometimes hailed as the greatest of all Japan's 20th century novelists. Well, as I'm not extensively well read in fiction, I can't make dramatic statements about the man, saying he is the Japanese equivalent to so and so, or the greatest such and such.

Allow me, then, a simple appreciation. The two books I read, "The Samurai", and "Silence", were vivid and sensitive portrayals of Japan as it stood on the verge of closing itself off to the West for several hundred years. This was a time during which Christian missionaries and converts came to be perceived as hostile cultural outsiders, and were subjected to a thorough persecution, often involving hideous methods of torture. Through the eyes of Endo's characters we come to perceive with ever greater awe the beauty, the mystery, but also the terror, the scandal, and the affront to practical sense which is the Christian cross. Whether one breaks down under torture, committing apostasy, or whether one becomes subject to the final horrors of death by martyrdom, one thing is made clear: all believers, weak or apparently strong, stand in need of the forgiving grace and comfort of Jesus Christ. One can tell that Shusaku Endo thought long and hard about what he committed to writing. If you are up for a compelling read, and some serious reflection on Christianity, you might want to give his books a try.


Japan's Faithful Judas

Confessions of a True Believer

Suffering the Patient Victory of God

Endo's Borrowed Faith

EDICT PROHIBITING CHRISTIANITY IN JAPAN