Japanese Literature discussion

The discussion thread for the works of Endō Shūsaku,
When I Whistle: A Novel was the June 2024 group read. Van C. Gessel is the translator who has also translated a number of Shūsaku Endō works.

The Samurai was the group read for 02/2021.
Silence was the group read for 11/2015.
The links for the previous group reads are below in the book listings.

Basic Bio:
Shūsaku Endō (遠藤 周作, Endō Shūsaku, March 27, 1923 – September 29, 1996) was a Japanese author who wrote from the perspective of a Japanese Catholic. Internationally, he is known for his 1966 historical fiction novel Silence, which was adapted into a 2016 film of the same name by director Martin Scorsese. He was the laureate of several prestigious literary accolades, including the Akutagawa Prize and the Order of Culture, and was inducted into the Roman Catholic Order of St. Sylvester by Pope Paul VI.
(credit Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sh%C5%A...

Biography from the Peter Owen Publishers 2012 paperback edition of "when i whistle":
Ranked among the finest novelists of the twentieth century, Shusaku Endo (1923-96) wrote from the unusual perspective of being Japanese and a practising Catholic. Born in Tokyo, Endo was raised in Kobe by his mother's relatives following the divorce of his parents. When he was twelve years old Endo was baptized as a Catholic at a time when Christians comprised less than one per cent of the Japanese population. While the rest of Japan was at war with the Allied forces, Endo found himself looking toward the west as his spiritual homeland.
After the war he travelled to France to study. There he suffered from anti-Japanese ill-feeling and became the target of racial abuse, even from fellow Christians. He became depressed, contracted tuberculosis, had a lung removed and was forced to spend months in hospital.
Believing that Christianity had precipitated his illness he underwent a crisis of faith. Before going home to Japan he travelled to Palestine to research the life of Jesus Christ. This transformed his perception of Christianity; he came to the idea that Christ , too, had known rejection. On his return to Japan he used these experiences in his writing, dealing with themes such as the stigma of the outsider, the experience of the foreigner and the struggle with illness. His fiction went on to question the historical past in contrast with the modern world, exploring issues such as East and West, faith and faithlessness, tradition and modernity.

Selected works available in English:

When I Whistle: A Novel, Shūsaku Endō, translated by Van C. Gessel
This was the June 2024 group read.
https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...

Scandal
Shusaku Endo, Translated by Dodd Mead

Foreign Studies
Shusaku Endo, translated by Mark Williams

The Sea and Poison
Shusaku Endo, translated by Michael Gallagher
The novel The Sea and Poison won the Akutagawa Prize when it was published in Japan in 1958 and established Shusaku Endo in the forefront of modern Japanese literature. It was the first Japanese book to confront the problem of individual responsibility in wartime, painting a searing picture of the human race’s capacity for inhumanity. At the outset of this powerful story we find a Doctor Suguro in a backwater of modern-day Tokyo practicing expert medicine in a dingy office. He is haunted by his past experience and it is that past which the novel unfolds. During the war Dr. Suguro serves his internship in a hospital where the senior staff is more interested in personal career-building than in healing. He is induced to assist in a horrifying vivisection of a POW. “What is it that gets you,” one of his colleagues asks. “Killing that prisoner? The conscience of man, is that it?” (Summary from New Directions)

The Girl I Left Behind
Shusaku Endo, translated by Mark Williams
Prefiguring themes of his later work, the acclaimed Japanese writer Shusaku Endo here writes of choices made by young adults learning who they are and what they want in life. Yoshioka Tstomu is a student, not much interested in his studies, short on cash and long on sexual desire. Eventually he will settle down in a career and marry his boss’s niece. Yet he begins to hear a voice in his head that sparks a memory of Mitsu, a plain, naive country girl he once took callous advantage of during his college days. The episode meant nothing to him at the time; to her it meant the world. Yoshioka’s future is assured and conventional. Mitsu, on the other hand, takes quite another path, making a Christ-like commitment to take upon herself the suffering of others. (Summary from New Directions)

Deep River by Shusaku Endo
Shusaku Endo, translated by Van C. Gessel

Five by Endo
Shusaku Endo, translated by Van C. Gessel
Here gathered in this small volume are five of the great Japanese writer Shusaku Endo’s supreme short stories exemplifying his style and his interests, presenting, as it were, Endo in a nutshell. “Unzen,” the opening story, touches on the subject of Silence, Endo’s most famous novel—that is the torture and martyrdom of Christians in seventeenth-century Japan. Next comes “A Fifty-year-old Man" in which Mr. Chiba takes up ballroom dancing and faces the imminent death of his brother and his dog Whitey. In “Japanese in Warsaw” a business man has a strange encounter; in “The Box” an old photo album and a few postcards have a tale to reveal. Finally included is “The Case of Isobe,” the opening chapter of Endo’s wonderful novel Deep River. (Summary by New Directions)

The Final Martyrs
Shusaku Endo, translated by Van C. Gessel

The Samurai
Shusaku Endo, translated by Van C. Gessel
This was the February 2021 group read.
https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...

Wonderful Fool
Shusaku Endo, translated by Francis Mathy

Silence by Shūsaku Endō, translated by William Johnston.
This was a group read in November 2015 (note: spoilers in the discussion thread).
https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...

Stained Glass Elegies by Shūsaku Endō, translated by Van C. Gessel
The acclaimed short stories of the master Japanese writer. The arresting beauty of Shusaku Endo's fiction is best known in the West through his highly acclaimed novels The Samurai and Silence . His consummately wrought short stories, with their worlds of deep shadows and achieved clarity, are less familiar. The dozen stories of Stained Glass Elegies , selected by the author together with his translator, display the full range of Endo's talents in short fiction. (Summary by New Directions)

Movies from works of Endo Shusaku:
Saraba natsuno hikariyo (Light and Shade of Youth), 1976, directed by Shigeyuki Yamane
The Sea and Poison, 1986, directed by Kei Kumai
Silence, 2016, directed by Martin Scorsese
A Life of Jesus, year?, directed by Martin Scorsese (script completed January 2024 per interview with Catholic News Agency)

One of Japan’s greatest twentieth-century writers.
— Publishers Weekly

"Endō Shūsaku: New Study Explores the Final Masterpiece by Japan’s Celebrated Christian Author" from nippon.com Sep 28, 2023
https://www.nippon.com/en/japan-topic...

Japanese Identity and Christianity on the Banks of the Ganges: Endō Shūsaku’s “Deep River” from nippon.com Sept 15, 2023
https://www.nippon.com/en/japan-topic...

What is the overall cultural relationship between the Japanese people and Christianity in current times?
"A Little Faith: Christianity in Japan" from nippon.com Nov 22, 2019
https://www.nippon.com/en/japan-topic...
"Christianity has a generally positive image in Japan. Despite this, Christians make up less than 1 percent of the population. The reasons for this apparent paradox can be found in the complex history of the religion’s reception in Japan."

With wide translation and a number of movies based upon his works, has Endo Shusaku had more impact outside of Japan than in the country?