End Shusaku is a study in contrasts: one of the most influential and popular writers in postwar Japan, but an author whose major works have focused upon Christian themes foreign to most of his readers...
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Critical Essay by John Mellors
By way of demonstrating [the] difficulties of Christianity in Japan, Endo has written a novel [Silence] based on the persecution by the Japanese in the 17th century of m...
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Critical Essay by Louis Allen
Endo is likely to be struggling with ["the Japanese Graham Greene"] label for many years yet.
And, of course, the relation between literature and religion i...
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Critical Essay by Valentine Cunningham
When I Whistle shows how telling a novelist Shusaku Endo can be when he stops straining to live up to his dubious label as 'the Japanese Graham Greene�...
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Critical Essay by Francis King
Of all Japanese novelists, Shusaku Endo is the most accessible to Western readers. This is not merely because he spent many years in France and has obviously been influe...
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Critical Essay by Edward Butscher
Shusaku Endo has wisely set his gripping novel about one man's struggle for belief in early 18th-century Japan when medieval samurai still held sway and the br...
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Critical Essay by Ivan Gold
The final chapter of this profoundly moving, profoundly disturbing book [Silence] consists of excerpts from the diary of a Dutch clerk in Nagasaki in which the drama that w...
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Critical Essay by Paul Wilkes
[Shusaku Endo's Jesus in A Life of Christ] is approached carefully, quietly, as if his story is to be told accompanied by a simple tune on a hand-carved flute ...
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Critical Essay by J. Thomas Rimer
The perhaps too-often discussed "conflict of East and West" that began in Japan in the nineteenth century, and to which the atomic bomb made the most ho...
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Critical Essay by Anthony Thwaite
What distinguishes [Endo from the modern Japanese masters is his] deceptively simple blend of unimpeded narrative and matter-of-fact style with fidelity to Japanese b...
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Critical Essay by John Updike
["Silence"] is a remarkable work, a sombre, delicate, and startlingly empathetic study of a young Portuguese missionary during the relentless persecution of...
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Critical Essay by Anthony Thwaite
["Volcano" is a] detailed, matter-of-fact confrontation with matters of ethics and guilt….
Akadake, the volcano of the title, is sited in Kyushu,...
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Critical Essay by Thomas M. Curran
[Volcano] is a Japanese novel, and a good one, but it has strong echoes from the West. At first there are echoes of Ibsen: the classic dilemma of Dr. Stockmann, �...
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Critical Essay by Tom Kemme
Six months before atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, a vivisection was performed on an American prisoner at Fukuoka University Medical School. The Sea and...
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In the following review, Breslin discusses religious themes in Endo's Stained Glass Elegies.
God and death, the ineffable and the irrevocable, haunt these stories as they do the more well-known...
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In the review below, Binding explores Endo's attraction to Catholicism and the autobiographical elements in the collection The Final Martyrs.
“Dogs and little birds still appear frequent...
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In the following review, Schoenberger discusses moral struggle and Christian charity in Endo's The Final Martyrs.
In a country where the conservative Establishment remains unapologetic about th...
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In the below review, Bosha discusses Endo's attempts to reconcile his Japanese and Catholic identities in The Final Martyrs.
The Final Martyrs is Shusaku Endo's second collection of stor...
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In the following review, Mathy describes Endo's short stories in The Final Martyrs as preliminary sketches for his novels.
The Final Martyrs is a collection of 11 stories written by the Japanes...
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In the following excerpt, O'Connell describes Endo's short fiction as either “intriguing or exasperating.”
In two newly translated volumes, a novel and a story collection, ...
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In the following review, Williamson focuses on the theme of Japanese Christianity in Endo's Stained Glass Elegies.
This is one of those rare instances when a book's title is perfectly ap...
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In the following review, Brown considers the theme of heroism in Endo's Stained Glass Elegies.
That fiction is principally autobiography in the hands of modern Japanese writers becomes evident ...
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In the following excerpt, Gessel—who has translated many of Endo's novels and story collections into English—discusses the “moral idealism” of Endo's fiction,...
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In the following review, Ryan discusses Endo's treatment of the experiences of Japanese in Europe as a means of expressing broader concerns about the human condition.
In three tragic stories of...
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In the following review of Endo's Foreign Studies, Breslin discusses the theme of culture clash between Japan and the West.
I had just finished teaching Shusaku Endo's novel Silence in a...
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In the following review of Foreign Studies, Baldauf discusses Endo's focus on the persecution of Christians in Japan.
When Portuguese missionaries landed in Japan in 1549, they proclaimed the J...
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In the following review of Foreign Studies, Allen discusses the alienation felt by Japanese intellectuals in the West, concluding that Endo's “true subject” is “the mystery...
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In the following review, Beverly discusses the theme of moral struggle in Endo's Foreign Studies.
Consider this book [Foreign Studies]. The author calls it a novel even though it consists of on...
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In the following interview, Endō and Yamagata discuss Endō's Japanese-Christian upbringing and the unique perspective it gives his writing.
Shusaku Endo (1923-) is one of the fore...
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In the following essay, originally published in The Month in 1987, Mathy discusses Endō's Catholicism and surveys his writing career.
Shusaku Endo's latest novel Scandal (1986) be...
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In the following essay, Cavanaugh discusses Endō's handling of “the paradox of a crucified God” in his novel Silence.
A tree which flourishes in one kind of soil may wither...
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In the following essay, Netland examines the ways Endō addresses the clash of Western ideology and Japanese culture in his historical novels.
The history of Christianity in Japan offers an inst...
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In the following essay, Williams explores Endō's use of character and technique in what Williams maintains is “a consistent search for reconciliation of the self.”
What a p...
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In the following essay, Durfee addresses the question of whether or not it is possible to be both fully Japanese and fully Christian, and examines the ways in which Endō handles the seeming par...
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In the following essay, Beverly provides an overview of Catholicism in Endō's life and works.
There was a time when one of our daughters loved a book that scared her. She was only four, ...
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In the following essay, Wills explores the role of Christ and the theme of suffering in Endō's works.
In his book A Life of Jesus Shusaku Endo talks of Jesus' compassion for those...
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In the following essay, Rimer discusses Endō's meaning for a largely Western reading audience.
There is no question but that, in the United States at least, Endô Shûsaku ha...
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In the following essay, Gessel attempts to expand Endō's literary significance beyond his reputation as a Japanese Catholic writer.
It is no simple matter to define the position which En...
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In the following essay, Gallagher discusses Endō's honorary degree from John Caroll University.
About thirty years ago, it was very popular in American Catholic literary circles, such as...
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In the following essay, Burkman addresses Endō's artistic handling of the incompatibility of Western religion with Japanese culture.
The National Christian Council of Japan in 1991 publi...
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In the following essay, Coles eulogizes Endō.
With the recent death of Shusaku Endo, in Tokyo, at seventy-three, after a long struggle with hepatitis, Japan lost one of its foremost novelists, ...
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[In the following interview Endo and Johnston discuss the relationship between Buddhism and Christianity.]
[Shusaku Endo:] Are you still interested in Buddhism, Father?
[William Johnston, S.J.:] Yes, ...
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[In the following essay, Efron gives a brief overview of Endo's life and career.]
Shusaku Endo, the Roman Catholic novelist who has been called the Japanese Graham Greene, died Sunday after a l...
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[In the following essay, Page gives a brief overview of Endo's career and the themes that consumed his work.]
Shusaku Endo, a leading Japanese novelist who wrote about faith and faithlessness, ...
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[In the following essay, Mathy traces the relationship between Christianity and Endo's work throughout his career.]
Shusako Endo, the 1989 winner of the Champion Award, conferred each year on a...
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[In the following review, Garber discusses how Endo works out his themes of sinners struggling with morality in the form of a short story before developing them into a novel. Garber uses the short sto...
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[In the following review, the critic asserts that Endo's stories of isolation in Foreign Studies are universal to the problems of communication between different cultures.]
An accomplished piec...
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[In the following review, the critic discusses the universal truth in Endo's Foreign Studies.]
Elegantly divided into three sections, this 1965 novel by the celebrated Japanese author of Scanda...
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[In the following review, Billington states that Endo's "Foreign Studies does not show Mr. Endo at his most intricate and brilliant, but it adds a further dimension to his later great wo...
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[In the following review, Breslin discusses the relationship between East and West as seen in Endo's Silence and Foreign Studies.]
I had just finished teaching Shusaku Endo's novel Silen...
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[In the following review, Eder discusses how the stories of Endo's Foreign Studies dramatize the painful relationship between the East and West.]
Who is this Japanese traveler, wearing a beret ...
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[In the following review, Baldauf discusses how Endo's Foreign Studies makes valid points about the tension between two cultures in its three stories of Japanese Christians.]
When Portuguese mi...
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[In the following review, Allen asserts that Endo's true subject in Foreign Studies is the mystery of identity.]
The clash of cultures is an old theme of universal relevance. Shusaku Endo is a ...
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[In the following review, Beverly asserts that Endo's Foreign Studies is about what she calls "the tyranny of our incarnation" in which we are born into one existence and yearn to...
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[In the following review, Binding discusses the stories in Endo's The Final Martyrs and asserts that Endo gives a view of the power of suffering and insight into late 20th-century urban life.]
...
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[In the following review, the critic points out the autobiographical nature of the stories in Endo's The Final Martyrs.]
Somber, haunting stories that resonate with compassion, eloquence, and m...
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[In the following review, Hodson points out that Endo writes about heavy themes in his novel Deep River, but that he "explores them with a lightness of touch that avoids sensationalism."...
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[In the following review, the critic discusses the different topics covered in Endo's short story collection The Final Martyrs.]
In a calm, delicate, unobtrusive manner, several of these 11 dec...
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[In the following review, Schoenberger discusses how Endo guides his characters in a search for the moral truth without sounding pompous or preachy in his collection of short stories The Final Martyrs...
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[In the following review, Tuohy recommends reading Endo's The Girl I Left Behind, but asserts that Deep River will disappoint Endo's devotees.]
With a dozen or so of his books translated...
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[In the following review, the critic praises the strong and original characters in Endo's Deep River.]
Japanese writer Endo (The Final Martyrs, 1994, etc.) continues his exploration of faith an...
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[In the following review, O'Connell asserts that in Endo's Deep River and his The Final Martyrs the author is reiterating, although sometimes expanding on his major theme: the struggle t...
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[In the following review, Harris complains that two of the main characters of Endo's Deep River "are the sort of people we bump into only in religious novels," but he asserts that...
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[In the following review, Coles discusses the psychological aspects of Endo's Deep River.]
With the epigraph to his latest novel the Japanese writer Shusaku Endo not only signals his story�...
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[In the following review, Greeley asserts that "Endo is one of the world's greatest novelists, a wizard with plot and character and description, who writes a simple story about simple pe...
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[In the following review, the critic asserts that while Endo's The Girl I Left Behind is a "simplistic apprentice work," there are some redeeming qualities to the novel.]
In a fra...
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[In the following review, Swain discusses Endo's Deep River and The Final Martyrs, paying particular attention to Endo's confessional style of exploring his doubts and his faith in his f...
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[In the following review, Schenk admits that there are some fascinating aspects to Endo's Deep River, but complains that "a faint air of absurdity hovers over the entire enterprise.�...
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Shusaku Endo
