SOURCE: "Shusaku Endo: Japanese Catholic Novelist," in America, Vol. 167, No. 3, August 8, 1992, pp. 66-71.

[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 distinguished Christian person of letters by the editors of the Catholic Book Club, a subsidiary of America Press, is duly recognized both in Japan and abroad as a "Catholic novelist." The award citation carefully avoided this phrase and stated merely that "his Roman Catholic heritage has charged his artistic sensibilities with a vision and power rarely seen in contemporary writers of whatever nationality." Born in Tokyo in 1923, Endo subsequently lived with his Catholic aunt in Kobe after his parents divorced when he was 10. Under his aunt's influence, young Shusaku was enrolled in a children's catechism class. With little preparation, he was eventually baptized. In later years...