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.”

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, as exemplified in the stories: “Despicable Bastard,” “My Belongings,” “The Day Before,” and “Mothers.”

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 paradox in his writing.

In the following essay, Burkman addresses Endō's artistic handling of the incompatibility of Western religion with Japanese culture.

In the following essay, Netland examines the ways Endō addresses the clash of Western ideology and Japanese culture in his historical novels.

In the following essay, Wills explores the role of Christ and the theme of suffering in Endō's works.

In the following interview, Endō and Yamagata discuss Endō's Japanese-Christian upbringing and the unique perspective it gives his writing.

In the following essay, originally published in The Month in 1987, Mathy discusses Endō's Catholicism and surveys his writing career.

In the following essay, Gallagher discusses Endō's honorary degree from John Caroll University.

In the following essay, Gessel attempts to expand Endō's literary significance beyond his reputation as a Japanese Catholic writer.

In the following essay, Beverly provides an overview of Catholicism in Endō's life and works.

In the following essay, Rimer discusses Endō's meaning for a largely Western reading audience.

[In the following essay, Mathy traces the relationship between Christianity and Endo's work throughout his career.]

[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 fiction.]

In the following essay, Cavanaugh discusses Endō's handling of “the paradox of a crucified God” in his novel Silence.

[In the following interview Endo and Johnston discuss the relationship between Buddhism and Christianity.]

[In the following review, Coles discusses the psychological aspects of Endo's Deep River.]

[In the following review, Tuohy recommends reading Endo's The Girl I Left Behind, but asserts that Deep River will disappoint Endo's devotees.]

[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 reach to each other as well as ourselves.]

In the following review, Beverly discusses the theme of moral struggle in Endo's Foreign Studies.

[In the following review, Eder discusses how the stories of Endo's Foreign Studies dramatize the painful relationship between the East and West.]

In the following essay, Coles eulogizes Endō.

[In the following review, Breslin discusses the relationship between East and West as seen in Endo's Silence and Foreign Studies.]

In the following review of Endo's Foreign Studies, Breslin discusses the theme of culture clash between Japan and the West.

[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 to fuse Christianity and Eastern culture.]

In the below review, Bosha discusses Endo's attempts to reconcile his Japanese and Catholic identities in The Final Martyrs.

[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 works."]

[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 stories from Endo's collection The Final Martyrs to illustrate his point.]

In the following review, Breslin discusses religious themes in Endo's Stained Glass Elegies.

[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.]

[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."]

In the following review, Mathy describes Endo's short stories in The Final Martyrs as preliminary sketches for his novels.

In the following review, Schoenberger discusses moral struggle and Christian charity in Endo's The Final Martyrs.

[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 people and packs it densely with drama, challenge and finally faith."]

[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 the powerful images at the end of the novel redeem it.]

[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.]

In the following review of Foreign Studies, Baldauf discusses Endo's focus on the persecution of Christians in Japan.

[In the following essay, Efron gives a brief overview of Endo's life and career.]

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 horrendous of contributions, finds a strong reflection in Endō's personal life. He was brought up a Catholic, an Easterner with a Western faith. Such a dual heritage troubles him…. (p. 252) The confrontation he feels between these two ways of life and thought have naturally found their way into his fiction, notably in Chinmok...

[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.]

In the review below, Binding explores Endo's attraction to Catholicism and the autobiographical elements in the collection The Final Martyrs.

In the following review, Brown considers the theme of heroism in Endo's Stained Glass Elegies.

[In the following essay, Page gives a brief overview of Endo's career and the themes that consumed his work.]

[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."]

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.

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 is one of his main themes….

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 of identity.”

In the following review, Williamson focuses on the theme of Japanese Christianity in Endo's Stained Glass Elegies.

[In the following review, Allen asserts that Endo's true subject in Foreign Studies is the mystery of identity.]

In the following excerpt, O'Connell describes Endo's short fiction as either “intriguing or exasperating.”

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 influenced by a variety of European writers, but because he is also a Roman Catholic…. Whether we are Christians or not, a heritage of Christianity permeates all our thinking; but that heritage is wholly alien to all but a small section of the Japanese population.

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 behavior and psychology. It would be easy to attribute Mr. Endo's accessibility to the fact that he is a Roman Catholic and therefore himself an "exotic" in Japan. He has been called "the Japanese Graham Greene."… [But] the label is unhelpful. What interests Mr. Endo—to the point of obsession ...

[In the following review, the critic praises the strong and original characters in Endo's Deep River.]

[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.]

[In the following review, the critic points out the autobiographical nature of the stories in Endo's The Final Martyrs.]

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' and settles more for being Japanese. This latest of his works to be translated into American ('Gee, teacher') rises powerfully above the limitation of its awkwardly dubbed sound to examine modern Japan—worldly, wealthy and riddled with cancer patients—in relation to the Second World War. It does so by having its narr...

["Volcano" is a] detailed, matter-of-fact confrontation with matters of ethics and guilt…. Akadake, the volcano of the title, is sited in Kyushu, one of Japan's two large southern islands. Is it dormant, dying or about to erupt? (p. 15)

[In the following review, the critic discusses the universal truth in Endo's Foreign Studies.]

[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, "Enemy of the People." Jinpei Suda, a volcanologist has spent his life studying Akadake, the long extinct volcano which dominates the city. Suddenly, the volcano rumbles and gives evidence of life. Jinpei's whole life and his reputation rest on his expert prediction of what the volcano will do…. But just as we are settlin...

["Silence"] is a remarkable work, a sombre, delicate, and startlingly empathetic study of a young Portuguese missionary during the relentless persecution of the Japanese Christians in the early seventeenth century. (p. 94) One can only marvel at the unobtrusive, persuasive effort of imagination that enables a modern Japanese to take up a viewpoint from which Japan is at the outer limit of the world. (p. 97)

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 brutal process of expelling Christianity (and other Western influences) was in full flower…. At the heart of Silence, whose title refers to God's muteness in the face of evil's savage triumph, throbs the sensitive, if vain, awareness of Sebastian Rodrigues, a young Portuguese Jesuit who has slipped into Japan with a fellow mi...

[In the following review, the critic discusses the different topics covered in Endo's short story collection The Final Martyrs.]

[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.]

[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…. [The pace is] slow, the history interesting, the tone reverent, as would befit a man who is trying to tell his people, the Japanese, of a man they know as little about as we do of Buddha. I quickly flagged. Good intentions, my friend, but….

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 we have been so intimately exposed to is seen from the remote perspective of a man concerned with commercial matters. The feeling is similar to viewing the action off in a corner of a Brueghel painting, or to watching a figure almost lost in the mists of a Japanese scroll…. Shusaku Endo … is described on the dust jacket as &#...

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 missionaries from Italy and Portugal, and of their native converts. The apostate Ferreira maintains that Christianity is wholly alien to the Japanese mind, and unable to grow there to maturity. 'The sapling I brought quickly decayed to its roots in this swamp,' he says. But there is an underlying theme that is even more importan...

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 Poison is a fictionalized account of this operation and its effect upon two young interns…. (p. 269) The sea is a powerful, expanding metaphor which subtly permeates the novel and suggests a power that is beyond man's control, and, simultaneously, a power that must be resisted if man hopes to have peace within himself and t...