Shūsaku Endō

Shūsaku Endō was born in 1923 in Tokyo. Though his family lived in Manchuria for 10 years, following his mother’s divorce, Endō and his mother returned to Japan and lived in Kobe with his aunt. Shortly after the return to Tokyo, Endō became a Catholic, as did his mother. Endō attended university in 1943, though his academic career was disrupted by Japan’s entrance into World War II where he was enlisted in a munitions factory; poor health exempted him from becoming a soldier. He finished his B.A. in French Literature in 1949 and then moved on to the University of Lyons, where he studied Catholic fiction. During his study in France, Endō contracted pleurisy (a lung condition). However, Endō finished his second degree in 1953 and published his first novel Shiroihito in 1955, winning a Japanese literature prize for young writers, and married and had a son soon after. Endō published another award-winning novel, Wonderful Fool, in 1958, but in 1959 severe tuberculosis and a second case of pleurisy hospitalized for the following two years, resulting in several surgeries, the loss of one lung, and a newfound sympathy for suffering characters in his writing. Endō published his pinnacle novel Silence in 1966, and his characters’ long struggles in this book were undoubtedly influenced by his own years of pain. The publication of his crowing work resulted not only in critical success, but also invitations from the Portuguese Ambassador to Japan and a medal from the Vatican. Endō continued to write several more award-winning novels, the most notable of which is Samurai, published in 1980, which depicts the conflict between the East and the West much the same as in Silence. Endō received multiple honorary doctorates from around the world, and in 1995 the Japanese government conferred the honor of the Order of Culture onto him. Endō died from complications of a brain hemorrhage the following year.