Novelist (1923–1996)
The novelist Shusaku Endo, who was baptized as a child following his parents’ divorce, spent much of his life pondering the ambivalence and tension implied in his identity as a Japanese and a Catholic. He later likened his faith to an arranged marriage; he tried several times to leave, but something always held him close.
After a trip to the Holy Land, Endo developed a deep love for the image of the Suffering Servant, despised and rejected. He believed this image of the Christ who made himself nothing, an image of maternal compassion in place of an image of power and judgment, was the image that might touch the Japanese heart. He expanded these reflections in the popular Life of Jesus.
Endo is best known for his novel Silence, which tells the story of a Portuguese Jesuit in Japan during the time of fiercest persecution. After his own arrest and torture, he is forced to watch a parade of faithful Christians go to their deaths. To spare their lives, he is finally induced to recant and trample on a holy image, after hearing the voice of Christ tell him, “Trample! Trample! I more than anyone know of the pain in your foot. Trample! It was to be trampled on by men that I was born into this world. It was to share men’s pain that I carried my cross.”
Endo died on September 29, 1996.
“God is not a punishing God, but a God who asks that children be forgiven.” —Shusaku Endo
