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The Samurai
One of the late Shusaku Endo’s finest works, The Samurai tells of the journey of some of the first Japanese to set foot on European soil and the resulting clash of cultures and politics.
272 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1980
About the author
Shūsaku Endō
349 books873 followersShusaku Endo (遠藤周作), born in Tokyo in 1923, was raised by his mother and an aunt in Kobe where he converted to Roman Catholicism at the age of eleven. At Tokyo's Keio University he majored in French literature, graduating BA in 1949, before furthering his studies in French Catholic literature at the University of Lyon in France between 1950 and 1953. A major theme running through his books, which have been translated into many languages, including English, French, Russian and Swedish, is the failure of Japanese soil to nurture the growth of Christianity. Before his death in 1996, Endo was the recipient of a number of outstanding Japanese literary awards: the Akutagawa Prize, Mainichi Cultural Prize, Shincho Prize, and Tanizaki Prize.
(from the backcover of Volcano).
(from the backcover of Volcano).
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 314 reviews
February 19, 2016
The Samurai is even better that Endo’s better known work, Silence. As much as I was moved by that novel about Spanish and Japanese martyrs, it was hard to imagine another book which could be so good.
The Samurai starts off very slow and the characters seem one-dimensional. The samurai of the book’s title is a simple peasant farmer. He and his companions hardly know why they’ve been chosen for this expedition and yet they also know better than to argue. The Catholic priest assigned as interpreter for the voyage is ambitious, zealous, and officious. No good seems possible from such a hopeless undertaking; certainly not the varied objectives sought by all those who set off for Mexico. The journey takes on a life of its own and one by one the men have to surrender some cherished ideal in order to continue.
Shusaku Endo likes to portray the complexity of Life, human personalities, the clash of cultures, Time and beliefs especially during the early years of Christian missionary efforts to his own beloved Japan. He wants to challenge our comfortable beliefs. His writing is stunning and beautiful in its very understated simplicity.
Like Silence, The Samurai is a fictionalized account of a real story. Highly recommended.
The Samurai starts off very slow and the characters seem one-dimensional. The samurai of the book’s title is a simple peasant farmer. He and his companions hardly know why they’ve been chosen for this expedition and yet they also know better than to argue. The Catholic priest assigned as interpreter for the voyage is ambitious, zealous, and officious. No good seems possible from such a hopeless undertaking; certainly not the varied objectives sought by all those who set off for Mexico. The journey takes on a life of its own and one by one the men have to surrender some cherished ideal in order to continue.
Shusaku Endo likes to portray the complexity of Life, human personalities, the clash of cultures, Time and beliefs especially during the early years of Christian missionary efforts to his own beloved Japan. He wants to challenge our comfortable beliefs. His writing is stunning and beautiful in its very understated simplicity.
Like Silence, The Samurai is a fictionalized account of a real story. Highly recommended.
February 14, 2021
A surprisingly unrelenting and calm tale of the individual versus an unjust and uncaring world full of scheming and hunger for power
Maybe we saw things... which we better could not have seen.
Slow and grinding, and very dark and grim at the end. Unremarkable in prose but hard hitting in message and the Endo’s portrayal of the Christian prosecution in feudal Japan.
We alternating follow Velasco the ambitious priest who thinks he will fix Japan under a Christian banner and the titular The Samurai.
Velasco is a bit like Simba in the Lion King, constantly thinking “if I were bishop of Japan” instead of “if I were king”.
There are religious orders fighting with each other but meanwhile Japan itself is changing.
The other protagonist is Hasekura Rokueomon, the dirt poor swamp samurai who longs to regain his lost family lands. He is send along with Velasco and a few other emissaries to Nueva Espana. Due to all kind of political intrigues the quest however does not end at Mexico City but even Madrid and Rome itself is visited. More important than the physical travel is however the spiritual one especially Velasco goes on. He, in a way similar to the main character of Silence, starts to doubt both his own intentions but also the church as an institution.
I'm not sure if someone from the 17th century would really be so upset with the church being a political and scheming entity. I feel the struggle between idealism/literal Bible interpretation and the world as is in all its pragmatism would much more be a theme for a modern person than for a samurai or priest from this day and age. I could be wrong off course, I mean, martyrdom was a thing and if that was not an expression of faith versus pragmatism I don’t know what is.
Meanwhile the relation the samurai has with his ancestors and their religion is interesting.
Shūsaku Endō repeats parts of sentences and phrases in this book, making the book feel longer than it is and sometimes rather plodding. Maybe this is intentional, with the world in the book changing and hence retrospectively making the efforts of the characters mute and void.
I was curious why Nishi wasn't the main Japanese character? He, as a curious young and outgoing person, seems to me to have been a much more interesting choice than the samurai.
In general there are a lot of generalizations on the Japanese spirit and people, mainly voiced by Velasco, which kind of annoyed me and made me feel distant from the Japanese characters while as reader you get quite a lot of the interior of the priest. There are also a lot of rather heavy handed parallels being drawn between Japan of the 1700's and the hostile world were Jezus preached.
In the end I felt the book redeemed itself with its unflinching account of an almost Soviet style erasure of the past , but certainly not my favourite work of Endo; I enjoyed both The Girl I Left Behind and Silence more.
Maybe we saw things... which we better could not have seen.
Slow and grinding, and very dark and grim at the end. Unremarkable in prose but hard hitting in message and the Endo’s portrayal of the Christian prosecution in feudal Japan.
We alternating follow Velasco the ambitious priest who thinks he will fix Japan under a Christian banner and the titular The Samurai.
Velasco is a bit like Simba in the Lion King, constantly thinking “if I were bishop of Japan” instead of “if I were king”.
There are religious orders fighting with each other but meanwhile Japan itself is changing.
The other protagonist is Hasekura Rokueomon, the dirt poor swamp samurai who longs to regain his lost family lands. He is send along with Velasco and a few other emissaries to Nueva Espana. Due to all kind of political intrigues the quest however does not end at Mexico City but even Madrid and Rome itself is visited. More important than the physical travel is however the spiritual one especially Velasco goes on. He, in a way similar to the main character of Silence, starts to doubt both his own intentions but also the church as an institution.
I'm not sure if someone from the 17th century would really be so upset with the church being a political and scheming entity. I feel the struggle between idealism/literal Bible interpretation and the world as is in all its pragmatism would much more be a theme for a modern person than for a samurai or priest from this day and age. I could be wrong off course, I mean, martyrdom was a thing and if that was not an expression of faith versus pragmatism I don’t know what is.
Meanwhile the relation the samurai has with his ancestors and their religion is interesting.
Shūsaku Endō repeats parts of sentences and phrases in this book, making the book feel longer than it is and sometimes rather plodding. Maybe this is intentional, with the world in the book changing and hence retrospectively making the efforts of the characters mute and void.
I was curious why Nishi wasn't the main Japanese character? He, as a curious young and outgoing person, seems to me to have been a much more interesting choice than the samurai.
In general there are a lot of generalizations on the Japanese spirit and people, mainly voiced by Velasco, which kind of annoyed me and made me feel distant from the Japanese characters while as reader you get quite a lot of the interior of the priest. There are also a lot of rather heavy handed parallels being drawn between Japan of the 1700's and the hostile world were Jezus preached.
In the end I felt the book redeemed itself with its unflinching account of an almost Soviet style erasure of the past , but certainly not my favourite work of Endo; I enjoyed both The Girl I Left Behind and Silence more.
July 22, 2018
Endo’s prose and imagery resembles the technical perfection of Japanese lacquer-ware; polished and graceful, ‘The Sumarai’ charts the story of Father Velasco, a nuanced and complex character whose drive to proselytise Japan, driven as much by egomania as by piousness, leads to him becoming entrapped in a web of political machinations.
The story is told via the perspective of two narrators; father Velasco and the Japanese Samurai Hasekura. Hasekura’s narrative often concentrates on his surroundings, whether it is the verdant and vibrant Japanese countryside or the stifling and discombobulating Mexico heat, or the slow falling snow over a dusk-riddled river-bed, Hasekura’s narrative often concentrates on the wonders of the world around him;
“Winter landscapes had greeted the samurai here before, but now flowers bloomed in profusion, and in fields peasants lazily prodded their oxen. The following day, they saw the sea in the distance. A warm spring sun was shining on the waves, and the clouds floating in the sky were as soft as cotton.”
The samurai’s narration is suffused with sadness. There is an air of melancholy to his feeling of displacement, both in agreeing to the mission in order to regain his familial lands and in his journeys to Mexico, Spain and Italy. Taken from the Japanese marshlands Hasekura feels the weight of the world on his shoulders, whether it be the endless ocean, the acrid heat of the Mexican desert or the ebullience of Christianity, Hasekura feels deeply alienated from the world he explores, he is constantly haunted by the images of swans who occupy the marshlands of his birth, who represent a kind of loss of innocence but spiritual awakening which Hasekura undergoes during the novel.
Hasekura stands in stark contract to Father Velasco. A naturally gregarious man who seeks to explore the world, his narration is dominated by a sense of foreboding and narcissism; Father Velasco is driven by a sense of his own greatness, his muscular Christianity is dominated by his desire for renown; Bishop of Japan and saviour of heathens, he sees himself as an apostle reborn. Yet, mixed with this is genuine Christian humility and, at times generosity. Contradictions abound in Father Velasco’s character; one the one hand he is contemptuous of the Japanese yet on the other he feels a deep affinity for both the land and the people. In many ways Velasco is symbolic of the mindset of many colonialists; they dress up their desire to dominate as altruism and seek to displace the very culture which they, often subconsciously, are drawn to.
Indeed the clash of cultures is one of the central themes of ‘The Samurai’. The reticent and insular nature of Japanese society means the the overly-exuberant nature of European Christianity would never be an easy fit. Endo is able to skilfully render the feelings and emotions of the Japanese emissaries and merchants who accompany Father Velasco, who increasingly feeling engulfed within a world which has no place for their introversion and mannerisms and who are gradually guided into disaster by a priest whose egoism blinds him to the futility of his own mission.
The story is told via the perspective of two narrators; father Velasco and the Japanese Samurai Hasekura. Hasekura’s narrative often concentrates on his surroundings, whether it is the verdant and vibrant Japanese countryside or the stifling and discombobulating Mexico heat, or the slow falling snow over a dusk-riddled river-bed, Hasekura’s narrative often concentrates on the wonders of the world around him;
“Winter landscapes had greeted the samurai here before, but now flowers bloomed in profusion, and in fields peasants lazily prodded their oxen. The following day, they saw the sea in the distance. A warm spring sun was shining on the waves, and the clouds floating in the sky were as soft as cotton.”
The samurai’s narration is suffused with sadness. There is an air of melancholy to his feeling of displacement, both in agreeing to the mission in order to regain his familial lands and in his journeys to Mexico, Spain and Italy. Taken from the Japanese marshlands Hasekura feels the weight of the world on his shoulders, whether it be the endless ocean, the acrid heat of the Mexican desert or the ebullience of Christianity, Hasekura feels deeply alienated from the world he explores, he is constantly haunted by the images of swans who occupy the marshlands of his birth, who represent a kind of loss of innocence but spiritual awakening which Hasekura undergoes during the novel.
Hasekura stands in stark contract to Father Velasco. A naturally gregarious man who seeks to explore the world, his narration is dominated by a sense of foreboding and narcissism; Father Velasco is driven by a sense of his own greatness, his muscular Christianity is dominated by his desire for renown; Bishop of Japan and saviour of heathens, he sees himself as an apostle reborn. Yet, mixed with this is genuine Christian humility and, at times generosity. Contradictions abound in Father Velasco’s character; one the one hand he is contemptuous of the Japanese yet on the other he feels a deep affinity for both the land and the people. In many ways Velasco is symbolic of the mindset of many colonialists; they dress up their desire to dominate as altruism and seek to displace the very culture which they, often subconsciously, are drawn to.
Indeed the clash of cultures is one of the central themes of ‘The Samurai’. The reticent and insular nature of Japanese society means the the overly-exuberant nature of European Christianity would never be an easy fit. Endo is able to skilfully render the feelings and emotions of the Japanese emissaries and merchants who accompany Father Velasco, who increasingly feeling engulfed within a world which has no place for their introversion and mannerisms and who are gradually guided into disaster by a priest whose egoism blinds him to the futility of his own mission.
March 21, 2018
The Samurai is basically ‘good’. I should note though that I was somewhat disappointed by the style and the writing.
This is a story of two men, one a low status samurai and the other a Spanish Franciscan missionary who has dedicated his life to christianising Japan. The story is both a struggle between the two and their cultures and a coming together of their points of view to some degree.
What disappointed me was the fact that, although written by Japanese writer, the writing felt very Western. It showed none of the slow development, attention to physical detail, nor focus on family that all attract me to Japanese writers. Some of this may be attributed to the translation but I would argue that Shūsaku Endō has very much mastered a Western writing style, so much so that, for me, he does not create those sensations that I turn to Japanese literature for - that ‘palate cleansing’ that my Friend Marita describes.
This is a story of two men, one a low status samurai and the other a Spanish Franciscan missionary who has dedicated his life to christianising Japan. The story is both a struggle between the two and their cultures and a coming together of their points of view to some degree.
What disappointed me was the fact that, although written by Japanese writer, the writing felt very Western. It showed none of the slow development, attention to physical detail, nor focus on family that all attract me to Japanese writers. Some of this may be attributed to the translation but I would argue that Shūsaku Endō has very much mastered a Western writing style, so much so that, for me, he does not create those sensations that I turn to Japanese literature for - that ‘palate cleansing’ that my Friend Marita describes.
January 8, 2019
This is a marvelous work of historical fiction. I was interested to learn about the lead up to the Edo period of Japan. This was a time of three of Japan’s most important leaders, Nobunaga, Toyotomi and Tokugawa, who were responsible for unifying Japan. This was also when Japan shut out foreign influences and extirpated all the vestiges of Christianity. This was a time of Shoguns, daimyos and samurais. It was an interesting introduction to Japanese history, culture and religion. But the story is more than that.
Four low ranking samurai are chosen as envoys for an important mission to forge ties with the Spanish. It was a risky gambit, to invite proselytizing missionaries to come to Japan at a time when Christians were being persecuted. This was in exchange for a chance to establish trade with the technologically more advanced Spanish. So these four pawns embarked on a perilous journey, more than halfway across the world. They saw sights and met people which no other Japanese had met before. Not only were they pushed to their physical limits, but they were forced to compromise on their honour, beliefs, even their very souls.
It is a moving story of courage, sacrifice and tragedy.
Four low ranking samurai are chosen as envoys for an important mission to forge ties with the Spanish. It was a risky gambit, to invite proselytizing missionaries to come to Japan at a time when Christians were being persecuted. This was in exchange for a chance to establish trade with the technologically more advanced Spanish. So these four pawns embarked on a perilous journey, more than halfway across the world. They saw sights and met people which no other Japanese had met before. Not only were they pushed to their physical limits, but they were forced to compromise on their honour, beliefs, even their very souls.
It is a moving story of courage, sacrifice and tragedy.
November 17, 2012
It's about these samurais,
and their other guys.
There was also this priest,
who's not important, not in the least.
Okay I kinda lied,
cause for this priest some guys died.
They were on an awesome mission to Spain,
but they failed, it all went down the drain.
They even became Christian for the mission,
but none of the samurai did it of their own volition.
Back in Japan they be persecutin,
and all the Christians were in hidin.
The priest guy didn't go back,
cause Japan was all whack.
The samurai totally feared for their lives,
if they died what would become of their wives?
At first things seemed okay,
but then the order came in one day.
The priest came back, that big dummy,
He got caught, and had an upset tummy.
Spat out the names of the samurai,
who were then promptly brought forward to die.
Cause they converted to a "heathen religion",
it was kind of like a really big sin.
So they were burned at the stake,
and I totally ran out of rhymes.
So in the end no one was alive,
what a depressing book, one out of five.
and their other guys.
There was also this priest,
who's not important, not in the least.
Okay I kinda lied,
cause for this priest some guys died.
They were on an awesome mission to Spain,
but they failed, it all went down the drain.
They even became Christian for the mission,
but none of the samurai did it of their own volition.
Back in Japan they be persecutin,
and all the Christians were in hidin.
The priest guy didn't go back,
cause Japan was all whack.
The samurai totally feared for their lives,
if they died what would become of their wives?
At first things seemed okay,
but then the order came in one day.
The priest came back, that big dummy,
He got caught, and had an upset tummy.
Spat out the names of the samurai,
who were then promptly brought forward to die.
Cause they converted to a "heathen religion",
it was kind of like a really big sin.
So they were burned at the stake,
and I totally ran out of rhymes.
So in the end no one was alive,
what a depressing book, one out of five.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
September 12, 2021
Review to follow
April 3, 2009
In The Samurai, Endo tells his story from the point of view of two different characters: Father Velasco, a Spanish Franciscan missionary, and Hasekura, a minor Japanese warrior, who is generally referred to in the text as “The Samurai.” Father Velasco is attempting to spread Christianity in Japan in the 17th century. He convinces the local shogun to send a delegation of Japanese to Nueva Espana (Mexico) for the stated purpose of opening up trade relations, but also to give Velasco more authority in the Catholic church, which will (he thinks) make it easier for him to convert the Japanese people. Hasekura is one of the warriors chosen to go on this long journey that ends up taking the party all the way to Rome.
Endo does a fantastic job of realistically showing the Western point of view through Father Velasco, and of also showing the Eastern/Japanese point of view through the samurai. Both characters are very real, and both are compelling. While I didn’t like Father Velasco much at the beginning, he got much better by the end. Hasekura is a sympathetic character throughout the book - trapped between powers much greater than he is, he must continually bend to their will. Through it all, he remains patient, though not very happy or content (but I wouldn’t be either).
This is not the first book by Endo that I have read, but it is the one that I like best. Endo is worth reading, and The Samurai is definitely an interesting read.
Endo does a fantastic job of realistically showing the Western point of view through Father Velasco, and of also showing the Eastern/Japanese point of view through the samurai. Both characters are very real, and both are compelling. While I didn’t like Father Velasco much at the beginning, he got much better by the end. Hasekura is a sympathetic character throughout the book - trapped between powers much greater than he is, he must continually bend to their will. Through it all, he remains patient, though not very happy or content (but I wouldn’t be either).
This is not the first book by Endo that I have read, but it is the one that I like best. Endo is worth reading, and The Samurai is definitely an interesting read.
November 5, 2010
If you have never read anything by Endo Shusaku, stop reading this and go get one right now. Seriously. At this point, if you are still reading, I assume you are either familiar with Endo or you are just bad at following directions. Either way, here we go.
Japanese novels are very different from American novels. In America, we tend to like an ending where the bad guy dies, the main character gets the hot girl, they have lots of kids and die happy at the age 109. In Japan, books tend to be more realistic. In The Samurai, Endo takes people and situations that actually did happen and adds kind of a speculative side to it. The book's main premise is that Date Masamune sends out a bunch of people to Nueva Espana (Mexico) in order to try to open trade with them. I am assume that people reading this have little knowledge of Japanese history, but there is not room to describe everything here. Suffice it to say that at this point in history, anti-Christian sentiment in Japan was increasing. The story revolves around the difficulties that the group has being a non-Christian nation trying to trade with Christian nations.
Endo Shusaku is a great storyteller, and while he is telling this particular story, you really begin to hurt while these characters are hurting. Being happy when they are happy. Even if you know what is going on in Japan at this time, you have a little more context into which to put the book, but even if you don't, this is an excellent read.
As far as the translation is concerned, Van Gessel is one of the best. I'm not saying that just because he's my professor for modern Japanese literature. It's really true. Japanese is a hard language to translate mainly because there is so much left to context and a lot more left unsaid because a Japanese reader understands allusion at a deeper level than Westerners do. But Gessel takes that text and makes it into something that is easy and enjoyable for a Westerner to read without feeling completely lost. At the same time he does this, he is able to be invisible enough so that you can really feel Endo's individual voice and style. This is especially important with Endo because he feels so strongly about the subjects that he writes about. Because Gessel is invisible in this sense, we can really be moved by the power of what Endo Shusaku is saying.
Japanese novels are very different from American novels. In America, we tend to like an ending where the bad guy dies, the main character gets the hot girl, they have lots of kids and die happy at the age 109. In Japan, books tend to be more realistic. In The Samurai, Endo takes people and situations that actually did happen and adds kind of a speculative side to it. The book's main premise is that Date Masamune sends out a bunch of people to Nueva Espana (Mexico) in order to try to open trade with them. I am assume that people reading this have little knowledge of Japanese history, but there is not room to describe everything here. Suffice it to say that at this point in history, anti-Christian sentiment in Japan was increasing. The story revolves around the difficulties that the group has being a non-Christian nation trying to trade with Christian nations.
Endo Shusaku is a great storyteller, and while he is telling this particular story, you really begin to hurt while these characters are hurting. Being happy when they are happy. Even if you know what is going on in Japan at this time, you have a little more context into which to put the book, but even if you don't, this is an excellent read.
As far as the translation is concerned, Van Gessel is one of the best. I'm not saying that just because he's my professor for modern Japanese literature. It's really true. Japanese is a hard language to translate mainly because there is so much left to context and a lot more left unsaid because a Japanese reader understands allusion at a deeper level than Westerners do. But Gessel takes that text and makes it into something that is easy and enjoyable for a Westerner to read without feeling completely lost. At the same time he does this, he is able to be invisible enough so that you can really feel Endo's individual voice and style. This is especially important with Endo because he feels so strongly about the subjects that he writes about. Because Gessel is invisible in this sense, we can really be moved by the power of what Endo Shusaku is saying.
February 13, 2021
Shusaku Endo’s The Samurai (1980) is a fictional account of a 17th-century diplomatic mission from Japan to “Nueva España,” or present-day Mexico, and then beyond to Spain and Rome. There’s a lot to this novel as it shifts between first- and third-person narrative, and from historical adventure to travel narrative, political drama and meditation on certain interpretations of faith and Christ.
It came as a surprise to me that Endo based the characters on actual historical figures. As Van C. Gessel, the book’s translator, points out in the postscript, “Endō’s novel, besides being a superbly crafted piece of fiction, is a valuable work of speculation.” A group of about one hundred Japanese, along with Spanish sailors, really did travel to what is now Central America and then crossed the Atlantic and met with Pope Paul V. But almost no documents about their journey exist today.
For Endo, this skeleton must’ve compelled him to provide the right flesh and blood. Through his prose it's clear he spent considerable time working out each detail and contemplating the intentions and motivations of the characters and countries in play. The story also explores missionary work as a precondition for international trade (for Catholics, not Protestants), the rivalry and animosity between Franciscans and Jesuits, the hardships of sea travel, and methods of torture and killing used in Japan to humiliate and terrify Christians. The novel is also interesting for its depiction of Luis Sotelo (the Franciscan friar on which one character is based) and Christianity in the Tohoku region.
It came as a surprise to me that Endo based the characters on actual historical figures. As Van C. Gessel, the book’s translator, points out in the postscript, “Endō’s novel, besides being a superbly crafted piece of fiction, is a valuable work of speculation.” A group of about one hundred Japanese, along with Spanish sailors, really did travel to what is now Central America and then crossed the Atlantic and met with Pope Paul V. But almost no documents about their journey exist today.
For Endo, this skeleton must’ve compelled him to provide the right flesh and blood. Through his prose it's clear he spent considerable time working out each detail and contemplating the intentions and motivations of the characters and countries in play. The story also explores missionary work as a precondition for international trade (for Catholics, not Protestants), the rivalry and animosity between Franciscans and Jesuits, the hardships of sea travel, and methods of torture and killing used in Japan to humiliate and terrify Christians. The novel is also interesting for its depiction of Luis Sotelo (the Franciscan friar on which one character is based) and Christianity in the Tohoku region.
Shelved as 'dnf'
July 20, 2017DNF @ 56%. I decided to DNF this when I noticed that I wasn't looking forward to carrying on at all but was just forcing myself to because I'd chosen it for a challenge book. I think I need a break from reading challenges while my life is challenging!
This feels very similar to Silence (which I read last year) but without the same emotional energy I felt with that book.
This feels very similar to Silence (which I read last year) but without the same emotional energy I felt with that book.
October 4, 2013
Excellent HF book based on a true story: the voyage of four Japanese envoys in the early XVIIth century to Nueva España, Spain and Rome, and from there all the way back to their homeland. The story is told from two PoV: Rokuemon Hasekura, a samurai whose family eagerly want to have their lands back (were taken because they fought for the wrong side during a war), is probably the 'stereotype' we have in mind when thinking about a samurai (except there's no martial arts involved, or flying and none of this Hollywood bullshit): someone loyal, obedient, and that wants to maintain his family's and ancestor's honour, as well as his own. He's the one to describe how someone who has never been outside his master's lands feels when visiting two different continents and culture, and their face to face with Christianity. There are three other envoys, who are also samurai, with their own personnality, which I really enjoyed reading.
The other side of the coin is Father Velasco, a Spanish Franciscan missionnary who has convinced himself that God wants him to prozelitise Japan, no matter the cost. That's why, when a Japanese Lord starts to be interested in trading with Mexico, he soonly realises it is now or never if he wants to fulfill his ambition: become the bishop of Japan. Indeed, he knows that little trade would be possible between Japan and Spain as long as Christians are banned or severely punished in Japan. Therefore, he uses the Japanese cravings for knowledge and profit to make them agree to send emmissaries to the Western World, and him with them. But are the Japanese earnest?
Overall, their trip takes them more than seven years, and many things could've changed.
It is a great book. First, because it's a very interesting topic and the descriptions of both the Western and Japanese world seem very accurate. Second, the characters and the plot are fantastic. Except for the samurai, who are bound in their ignorance, everyone has an ulterior motive, an ambition, and nothing is what it seems. The idea I got from the book is the difference between 'normal' people and the 'government', the 'great interests', in a word, the world of politics (which may be at a state-level or for the ruling of the Church). The hypocrisy, the selfishness, and the ever-moving tides of power who are never reluctant to swallow a few middle-men who never had a chance to survive in this game.
Again, great great book. Well-written. Read it!
P.S. Although the author was Catholic and there's a lot of discussion on the nature of Christianity (which is very interesting btw), it is not proselytizing. It's not a book about how cool Christianity is, it is not a book about redemption or how samurai convert into Catholicism because Western values are so much better. It's nothing of the sort. I thought the author's/characters' thoughts on religion, on the image of the Christ, and why some people believe, were very meaningful, very interesting, but in no way imposing themselves.
The other side of the coin is Father Velasco, a Spanish Franciscan missionnary who has convinced himself that God wants him to prozelitise Japan, no matter the cost. That's why, when a Japanese Lord starts to be interested in trading with Mexico, he soonly realises it is now or never if he wants to fulfill his ambition: become the bishop of Japan. Indeed, he knows that little trade would be possible between Japan and Spain as long as Christians are banned or severely punished in Japan. Therefore, he uses the Japanese cravings for knowledge and profit to make them agree to send emmissaries to the Western World, and him with them. But are the Japanese earnest?
Overall, their trip takes them more than seven years, and many things could've changed.
It is a great book. First, because it's a very interesting topic and the descriptions of both the Western and Japanese world seem very accurate. Second, the characters and the plot are fantastic. Except for the samurai, who are bound in their ignorance, everyone has an ulterior motive, an ambition, and nothing is what it seems. The idea I got from the book is the difference between 'normal' people and the 'government', the 'great interests', in a word, the world of politics (which may be at a state-level or for the ruling of the Church). The hypocrisy, the selfishness, and the ever-moving tides of power who are never reluctant to swallow a few middle-men who never had a chance to survive in this game.
Again, great great book. Well-written. Read it!
P.S. Although the author was Catholic and there's a lot of discussion on the nature of Christianity (which is very interesting btw), it is not proselytizing. It's not a book about how cool Christianity is, it is not a book about redemption or how samurai convert into Catholicism because Western values are so much better. It's nothing of the sort. I thought the author's/characters' thoughts on religion, on the image of the Christ, and why some people believe, were very meaningful, very interesting, but in no way imposing themselves.
June 18, 2013
Shusako Endo was a member of a religious minority in Japan, leaning neither to Buddhism nor Shintoism nor to an effort to meld them. He was a Catholic who spent part of his early childhood in Japanese-occupied Manchuria before World War II. In "The Samurai" Endo took up a story from early seventeenth century, when a low-ranking vassal--the translator calls him a lance-corporal--was sent in the company of a Franciscan to New Spain to open trade and wound up traveling as far as Rome. (Those looking for the mythical wandering swordsmen will be disappointed--Endo's Rokuemon Hasekura is if anything tied too closely to his marshland home, and his isolation from power makes him a useful tool, not a wily rebel). Hasekura and his comrades--Endo gives him three other lance-corporals, each with attendants, and merchants as well--are given little information about what they are supposed to accomplish, and their efforts to carry out the will of the court are tragic, as is the ambition of the Franciscan who leads them, mostly astray. Cut off from Japan, they have no way of learning that the court faction that supported them is being defeated by a very religious Buddhist who views Christianity as a threat to Japan. In the background lurks the mercantile competition between Spain and the growing Protestant powers of Northern Europe; loser to the narrative is the struggle between Catholic orders, pitting the Jesuits, who see their labors in Japan ending badly, and the Franciscans, who have shown up at just the wrong time to dispute missionary territory. All this sounds like an intensely political work, but, aside from the great attention to character and period detail, this novel is more of a meditation on duty, faith and loss. One strand follows the journal of the priest--who seeks to become the Bishop of Japan without comprehending that even the office will not be created--a brilliant man trapped by his own machinations and sin of pride (although he is made somewhat more sympathetic by a worldly Vatican). The journal alternates with the moving third-person narrative from Hasekura, the bit player entrusted with a staggering duty the real meaning of which is hidden from him, and his efforts to understand the huge and strange new world he never sought out and the loss of the homeland and family to which he is devoted.
June 19, 2020
I only feel comfortable rating this novel 3 stars because I enjoyed a few of his other novels so much more. To be clear, there was nothing bad about it. It was a historical novel about the clash of religion and politics between Japan and Europe. There is much discussion of power and faith, which are two of Endo's primary concerns as an artist. Yet I hesitate to hail this work as a masterpiece because I did not feel drawn or even connected to the characters.
Unlike in The Sea and Poison and The Girl I Left Behind, I felt that Endo's true powers lie in depicting stark human emotions and that this then represents one of the weaker offerings. Consider his book The Golden Country. It also deals with the struggles of missionaries in Japan, but it is a visceral and memorable account, compact and simple. Aside from the thesis statement dialogue in The Samurai I failed to find most of the scenes memorable. You can certainly read this work for its mature, intellectual discernment, for its historical accuracy or for the pristine prose, which never fails to convey a clear message, but I will turn to Endo's other novels for more variety and more passionate portrayals of human beings. I look forward to delving into the other novels in his oeuvre.
Unlike in The Sea and Poison and The Girl I Left Behind, I felt that Endo's true powers lie in depicting stark human emotions and that this then represents one of the weaker offerings. Consider his book The Golden Country. It also deals with the struggles of missionaries in Japan, but it is a visceral and memorable account, compact and simple. Aside from the thesis statement dialogue in The Samurai I failed to find most of the scenes memorable. You can certainly read this work for its mature, intellectual discernment, for its historical accuracy or for the pristine prose, which never fails to convey a clear message, but I will turn to Endo's other novels for more variety and more passionate portrayals of human beings. I look forward to delving into the other novels in his oeuvre.
May 14, 2022
A work of historical fiction, substantially based on the first diplomatic mission from Japan to western Europe - by way of the Pacific Ocean and a stopover in Mexico. The title, Samurai, perhaps evokes the alternate meanings of the word - not strictly as a warrior, but as someone who attends upon or accompanies higher-ranking persons in society.
The Samurai moves between two perspectives - the first, told in first person, is an ambitious Franciscan missionary, Pedro Velasco, who is likely based on the figure of Luis Sotelo. Velasco is an ambitious figure. He dreams of being appointed bishop of the diocese of Japan, he frets about the Jesuits, a competing order.
The second perspective is that of Hasekura Tsunenaga. Told in third person, with his name often implied, he is often referred to only as a samurai. Velasco hounds the conversion of the Japanese embassy as they make the journey over; it is a long and painful journey. Hasekura converts, but he struggles over if it is real or if it was all for nothing; Velasco also has doubts, the way the most fervent believer has doubts.
If you've read anything by Endo before, particularly Silence, you can anticipate what kind of Catholicism is his; it is one that is profoundly sympathetic to the doubter and the downtrodden.
Reread.
The Samurai moves between two perspectives - the first, told in first person, is an ambitious Franciscan missionary, Pedro Velasco, who is likely based on the figure of Luis Sotelo. Velasco is an ambitious figure. He dreams of being appointed bishop of the diocese of Japan, he frets about the Jesuits, a competing order.
The second perspective is that of Hasekura Tsunenaga. Told in third person, with his name often implied, he is often referred to only as a samurai. Velasco hounds the conversion of the Japanese embassy as they make the journey over; it is a long and painful journey. Hasekura converts, but he struggles over if it is real or if it was all for nothing; Velasco also has doubts, the way the most fervent believer has doubts.
If you've read anything by Endo before, particularly Silence, you can anticipate what kind of Catholicism is his; it is one that is profoundly sympathetic to the doubter and the downtrodden.
Reread.
January 24, 2019
Images and emotions have lingered. Definite recommend for Shogun devotees.
***
After reading the samurai's journeys, trials, perceptions, I continue to be both bemused and impressed by Shusaku Endo's combination of Japanese and Catholic. Further impressed with Japanese spiritual beliefs, behaviors, after reading this.
***
My interest in the the Manila-Acapulco galleon voyages overlapped with Endo's creation.
Thoughts of a couple other books come to mind
Shogun's Reluctant Ambassadors: Japanese Sea Drifters in the North Pacific
Black Robe
The Manila Galleon
When I first read Shogun many years ago, questions arose about what happened next. This book and Silence helped answer
Silence
Shogun: A Novel of Japan
As I write, a fragment of "Round the Bend" comes to mind.
Round The Bend
***
After reading the samurai's journeys, trials, perceptions, I continue to be both bemused and impressed by Shusaku Endo's combination of Japanese and Catholic. Further impressed with Japanese spiritual beliefs, behaviors, after reading this.
***
My interest in the the Manila-Acapulco galleon voyages overlapped with Endo's creation.
Thoughts of a couple other books come to mind
Shogun's Reluctant Ambassadors: Japanese Sea Drifters in the North Pacific
Black Robe
The Manila Galleon
When I first read Shogun many years ago, questions arose about what happened next. This book and Silence helped answer
Silence
Shogun: A Novel of Japan
As I write, a fragment of "Round the Bend" comes to mind.
Round The Bend
August 1, 2017
3.5 stars
Acclaimed as "one of the late Shusaku Endo's finest works" (back cover), this novel was a bit disappointing to me due to its misleading title "The Samurai" which should have depicted a brave samurai in a battle like Miyamoto Musashi or any famous one from "The Tale of the Heike" (Viking, 2012). Having read its synopsis at the back cover, I had no choice but kept going because, instead, it is a story of a low-ranking warrior named Rokuemon Hasekura chosen in 1613 in the Tokugawa Period to set sail as one of Japan's envoys to Nueva Espana (Mexico) and Pope Paul V. Coming to think about his "Silence" (Taplinger, 1980) I read some three years ago, I realize this novel could be of the similar theme, that is, under the shogunate and the daimyo, any Japanese converting to Christianity regarded as a foreign religion had fearfully been oppressed and ruthlessly persecuted in Japan.
To continue ...
Acclaimed as "one of the late Shusaku Endo's finest works" (back cover), this novel was a bit disappointing to me due to its misleading title "The Samurai" which should have depicted a brave samurai in a battle like Miyamoto Musashi or any famous one from "The Tale of the Heike" (Viking, 2012). Having read its synopsis at the back cover, I had no choice but kept going because, instead, it is a story of a low-ranking warrior named Rokuemon Hasekura chosen in 1613 in the Tokugawa Period to set sail as one of Japan's envoys to Nueva Espana (Mexico) and Pope Paul V. Coming to think about his "Silence" (Taplinger, 1980) I read some three years ago, I realize this novel could be of the similar theme, that is, under the shogunate and the daimyo, any Japanese converting to Christianity regarded as a foreign religion had fearfully been oppressed and ruthlessly persecuted in Japan.
To continue ...
September 20, 2019
The Japanese author Shūsaku Endō is known primarily for his 1966 masterwork, "Silence," about the persecution of Christians in mid-seventeenth-century Japan. The backdrop of "Silence" is the aftermath of the Shimabara Rebellion, a peasant rebellion crushed in 1638, which erupted in reaction to the vicious suppression of Christianity under the Tokugawa Shogunate, part of the turn of Japan inward. "The Samurai" focuses on events two decades prior, when Christianity was only partially suppressed, and the Shogunate still somewhat open to contacts with Europe. As with many of Endō’s works, "The Samurai" focuses on the internal struggles of its protagonists to live a Christian life in circumstances of extreme external and internal pressure and conflict.
The pressures and conflicts facing the book’s two protagonists are very different, however. The samurai of the title is Rokuemon Hasekura, a low-ranking samurai (described with the rank “lance corporal” in translation). Hasekura was a real person and many of the events described in the book are documented, though Endō takes some liberties with the historical record, especially in filling gaps. The other is a Franciscan monk and priest, Pedro Velasco, not a real person but closely based on one, Luis Sotelo, who participated in real events much as described in the book. Thus, The Samurai is a type of historical fiction, but one with more veracity than much such fiction, and free of the ideological agendas that frequently mar contemporary offerings, such as Hilary Mantel’s "Wolf Hall".
Hasekura is only one step removed from the peasantry; he is a minor noble, but one who chops wood and farms just as do his neighbors, his inferiors. He is a simple man—not stupid, but tied to his family, living and, most of all, dead. His aim is to do his duty to his family and his lord; his only keen unfulfilled desire is to regain family lands lost due to his father’s falling under a political cloud, which his uncle is always pushing him to regain, even though there is little chance of such a change. Velasco, on the other hand, is a schemer—deeply religious, but unable to separate his personal ambition from his desire to serve Christ through converting Japan. He is allowed to stay in Japan, discreetly running a leper hospital, when most Christians have already been forced underground, because he is one of the few Westerners who can write and speak Japanese, and thus is occasionally useful to the rulers of Japan.
In most of Japan, Christians are being actively persecuted, but not yet, for the most part, in the land of the daimyo of this section of northeast Japan (referred to in the book only as the “Lord,” but in reality Date Masamune, the “One-Eyed Dragon of Ōshu”). Velasco, a Franciscan, blames the Jesuits for this state of affairs, believing they pushed too aggressively and made the Shogun fear they were a spearhead for domination by the Portuguese and Spanish. Therefore, he cooks up a plan whereby the daimyo will build a European-style ship with the help of stranded Spanish sailors, and send an embassy to New Spain (i.e., roughly Greater Mexico), to open a trading relationship. Velasco believes that this will pry open the doors of Japan to Christianity, as the Shogun will be unable to resist the lure of profits, and will be convinced that only by tolerating Christians will profits be possible. And, not incidentally, Velasco believes that if he can pull this off, the Pope will make him Bishop of Japan. The daimyo, none too eagerly and with a divided council, agrees to send four samurai, including Hasekura, as ambassadors to New Spain—but low-ranking ones, and without official portfolio. To Velasco, this is enough, since he believes that he, or if not him, God, can spin straw into gold. To Hasekura, this is his duty; whether he wants to do it (he does not) is irrelevant. He goes because he is told to and does not inquire much as to why.
The book relates, through the eyes alternately of Hasekura and Velasco, the journey to New Spain, the mixed results requiring a further trip to Spain itself, and then to Rome. Ultimately (spoiler alert), the ambassadors convert to Christianity in an attempt to get support for the formal opening of a trade relationship, which is, at the moment of success, torpedoed by news that all of Japan has now proscribed Christianity, contrary to Velasco’s false claims that Japan is becoming more receptive. The samurai return, after several years, to Japan and to their families, only to find it was all in vain. The daimyo has done an about-face; those on his council, including Hasekura’s lord, who supported the embassy have been purged; and the samurai are forced to formally and publicly renounce Christianity, which they do not find hard to do, since they never actually believed. But, within a year, they are nonetheless executed for their crime of conversion. Velasco, offered a comfortable sinecure in Manila, instead sneaks into Japan, and is immediately captured. He, too, is soon executed, along with other priests, by burning at the stake. It is not a happy ending, though Velasco is happy enough, at the end of all things, and Hasekura, too, acknowledges that his fate was inevitable on the day he boarded the great ship to leave behind all that he had known. “And now, he was setting off for another unknown land. . . . Suddenly he heard [his Christian servant] Yozō’s strained voice behind him. ‘From now on . . . He will attend you.’ The samurai stopped, looked back, and nodded his head emphatically. Then he set off down the cold, glistening corridor towards the end of his journey.”
Endō is well known for his claim that Christianity finds it extremely difficult to take root in Japan. In Silence, the apostate Jesuit protagonist famously compares Japan, for Christianity, to a “mudswamp.” In The Samurai, Endō, through Velasco, repeatedly claims that the Japanese are focused solely on religion as it relates to this life, caring only for its instrumental benefits, wealth and health, unable to lift their eyes to anything higher, and therefore unable to warm up to transcendental religions. (For Velasco, this trait is what he intends to turn to his own benefit.) I am not sure if this is true; from my limited knowledge of Buddhism and Shintoism, it seems accurate, but Endō is not so much making a doctrinal claim about Japanese religions as a cultural claim about Japanese attitudes.
What makes me hesitate to take Endō’s claim entirely at face value is that he has been accused, especially by other Japanese Christians, of importing modern concepts into his writings. Thus, for example, "Silence" famously revolves around the apostasy of a young priest (again, a real historical personage) when his Christian flock, not he, is tortured, and he is told he can stop their pain by apostasy. He sees Christ commanding him to apostatize; just another suffering the Lord must endure. But nobody in sixteenth-century Japan thought that way. The actual priest apostatized (and lived out his life in Japan) because he himself was tortured. The Church always admired, encouraged, and even demanded martyrdom; the idea that Christ could desire apostasy flies in the face of sixteen hundred years of Christian history and theology. As others have pointed out, it is a very modern idea, fundamentally making the individual the focus, rather than Christ.
"The Samurai" does not contain any similar overtly modern angle, however. Velasco, offered the opportunity to apostatize to save himself from a terrible death, dismisses the offer out of hand. Hasekura is never offered any choices at all; at every turn those more powerful than him push and pull him one way and another. The arc of Hasekura’s story is not from unbelief to belief; it is more an exploration of why the Japanese mind finds the transcendent story and promise of Christianity difficult to warm to, and how, for some, that warmth might be found. Hasekura, a man taught to worship, most of all, duty and honor, is unable to understand how Christians can worship an emaciated, beaten, crucified, dishonored man. Such a man, unlike the daimyo, is not worthy of respect. “He could detect nothing sublime or holy in a man as wretched and powerless as this.” Yet the wheels of Hasekura’s mind turn when that same wretched man inspires heroic acts in his worshipers, such as Velasco’s brave service of the dying, onboard during a storm.
Still, Hasekura resists conversion, even only for appearances and to accomplish his mission. “He sensed the blood of many generations of the Hasekura family flowing through his own body, their ways permeating his own life. He could not willfully alter that blood or those ways by himself. . . . Those dead souls would not permit him to become a Christian.” When he does convert, it is only for the desperate need to have his mission be a success, because he was ordered to ensure it was a success—though, unknown to him, the men above him who gave the order had their own hidden agendas and spoke with betrayal in their hearts. Hasekura does not believe that Christ is the Christ, not at his baptism and not even, necessarily, on his way to execution. To the extent he begins to understand Christ, it is only when he returns to Japan, and everything unravels for him, such that he begins to wonder if, after all, there is not something to Christ. In his travels, “What the samurai had seen was not the many lands, the many nations, the many cities, but the desperate karma of man. And above the karma of man hung that ugly, emaciated figure with his arms and legs nailed to a cross, and his head dangling limply down.” Perhaps, Endō is saying, Christ will never offer to the Japanese wealth or health, but instead something greater—the knowledge that neither wealth nor health really matters, only union with God, who loves mankind.
Yet this is no simple narrative. Another theme is whether bad acts can be justified by higher ends. Velasco justifies “soiling his hands,” lying and scheming, by arguing (to himself) that the lack of receptivity of the Japanese to Christianity requires extreme means. Still, he wonders. He wonders, too, whether the appalling treatment of the Indians in the New World can be justified by their now being brought to Christ, those that remain, that is. But he does not dwell on it. His counterpoint here is a Japanese man living in a small Indian village in New Spain, whom the emissaries happen to stumble upon. He became a monk some decades before, attaching himself to a Spanish missionary in Japan and following him to Mexico, yet abandoned the organized Church as complicit in the destruction of the Indians, and is now living out his life in the village. “My Jesus is not to be found in the palatial cathedrals. He lives among these miserable Indians.” If Christ is broken and suffering, and loves the broken and suffering, how can pandering to the powerful, whether Japanese or European, serve Him? Velasco has no answer for this, except, of course, his own ultimate sacrifice for the Japanese.
Perhaps this is why Velasco is tormented by doubts, until right before the end. After all, from his perspective, if God wants Japan converted, He should be helping the priest, because Velasco is a winner, at least in his own eyes. If Velasco were a modern management consultant, his prayers would tell God that “our goals are aligned; let’s drill down on some win-win situations.” Yet God thwarts his plans, and Velasco hallucinates, or maybe hears, as things fall apart, the cackling voice of a woman laughing at him. He despairs intermittently. “I even feel at times as if God was toying with me.” Doubts are nothing new for the spiritually focused; Mother Teresa, it turned out after her death, was tormented by doubt her whole life. Who is really better off—the tormented schemer, or the stolid samurai? The answer, really, is neither; they are both, and we are all, subject to God’s plan, whatever that is, under God’s sky.
The pressures and conflicts facing the book’s two protagonists are very different, however. The samurai of the title is Rokuemon Hasekura, a low-ranking samurai (described with the rank “lance corporal” in translation). Hasekura was a real person and many of the events described in the book are documented, though Endō takes some liberties with the historical record, especially in filling gaps. The other is a Franciscan monk and priest, Pedro Velasco, not a real person but closely based on one, Luis Sotelo, who participated in real events much as described in the book. Thus, The Samurai is a type of historical fiction, but one with more veracity than much such fiction, and free of the ideological agendas that frequently mar contemporary offerings, such as Hilary Mantel’s "Wolf Hall".
Hasekura is only one step removed from the peasantry; he is a minor noble, but one who chops wood and farms just as do his neighbors, his inferiors. He is a simple man—not stupid, but tied to his family, living and, most of all, dead. His aim is to do his duty to his family and his lord; his only keen unfulfilled desire is to regain family lands lost due to his father’s falling under a political cloud, which his uncle is always pushing him to regain, even though there is little chance of such a change. Velasco, on the other hand, is a schemer—deeply religious, but unable to separate his personal ambition from his desire to serve Christ through converting Japan. He is allowed to stay in Japan, discreetly running a leper hospital, when most Christians have already been forced underground, because he is one of the few Westerners who can write and speak Japanese, and thus is occasionally useful to the rulers of Japan.
In most of Japan, Christians are being actively persecuted, but not yet, for the most part, in the land of the daimyo of this section of northeast Japan (referred to in the book only as the “Lord,” but in reality Date Masamune, the “One-Eyed Dragon of Ōshu”). Velasco, a Franciscan, blames the Jesuits for this state of affairs, believing they pushed too aggressively and made the Shogun fear they were a spearhead for domination by the Portuguese and Spanish. Therefore, he cooks up a plan whereby the daimyo will build a European-style ship with the help of stranded Spanish sailors, and send an embassy to New Spain (i.e., roughly Greater Mexico), to open a trading relationship. Velasco believes that this will pry open the doors of Japan to Christianity, as the Shogun will be unable to resist the lure of profits, and will be convinced that only by tolerating Christians will profits be possible. And, not incidentally, Velasco believes that if he can pull this off, the Pope will make him Bishop of Japan. The daimyo, none too eagerly and with a divided council, agrees to send four samurai, including Hasekura, as ambassadors to New Spain—but low-ranking ones, and without official portfolio. To Velasco, this is enough, since he believes that he, or if not him, God, can spin straw into gold. To Hasekura, this is his duty; whether he wants to do it (he does not) is irrelevant. He goes because he is told to and does not inquire much as to why.
The book relates, through the eyes alternately of Hasekura and Velasco, the journey to New Spain, the mixed results requiring a further trip to Spain itself, and then to Rome. Ultimately (spoiler alert), the ambassadors convert to Christianity in an attempt to get support for the formal opening of a trade relationship, which is, at the moment of success, torpedoed by news that all of Japan has now proscribed Christianity, contrary to Velasco’s false claims that Japan is becoming more receptive. The samurai return, after several years, to Japan and to their families, only to find it was all in vain. The daimyo has done an about-face; those on his council, including Hasekura’s lord, who supported the embassy have been purged; and the samurai are forced to formally and publicly renounce Christianity, which they do not find hard to do, since they never actually believed. But, within a year, they are nonetheless executed for their crime of conversion. Velasco, offered a comfortable sinecure in Manila, instead sneaks into Japan, and is immediately captured. He, too, is soon executed, along with other priests, by burning at the stake. It is not a happy ending, though Velasco is happy enough, at the end of all things, and Hasekura, too, acknowledges that his fate was inevitable on the day he boarded the great ship to leave behind all that he had known. “And now, he was setting off for another unknown land. . . . Suddenly he heard [his Christian servant] Yozō’s strained voice behind him. ‘From now on . . . He will attend you.’ The samurai stopped, looked back, and nodded his head emphatically. Then he set off down the cold, glistening corridor towards the end of his journey.”
Endō is well known for his claim that Christianity finds it extremely difficult to take root in Japan. In Silence, the apostate Jesuit protagonist famously compares Japan, for Christianity, to a “mudswamp.” In The Samurai, Endō, through Velasco, repeatedly claims that the Japanese are focused solely on religion as it relates to this life, caring only for its instrumental benefits, wealth and health, unable to lift their eyes to anything higher, and therefore unable to warm up to transcendental religions. (For Velasco, this trait is what he intends to turn to his own benefit.) I am not sure if this is true; from my limited knowledge of Buddhism and Shintoism, it seems accurate, but Endō is not so much making a doctrinal claim about Japanese religions as a cultural claim about Japanese attitudes.
What makes me hesitate to take Endō’s claim entirely at face value is that he has been accused, especially by other Japanese Christians, of importing modern concepts into his writings. Thus, for example, "Silence" famously revolves around the apostasy of a young priest (again, a real historical personage) when his Christian flock, not he, is tortured, and he is told he can stop their pain by apostasy. He sees Christ commanding him to apostatize; just another suffering the Lord must endure. But nobody in sixteenth-century Japan thought that way. The actual priest apostatized (and lived out his life in Japan) because he himself was tortured. The Church always admired, encouraged, and even demanded martyrdom; the idea that Christ could desire apostasy flies in the face of sixteen hundred years of Christian history and theology. As others have pointed out, it is a very modern idea, fundamentally making the individual the focus, rather than Christ.
"The Samurai" does not contain any similar overtly modern angle, however. Velasco, offered the opportunity to apostatize to save himself from a terrible death, dismisses the offer out of hand. Hasekura is never offered any choices at all; at every turn those more powerful than him push and pull him one way and another. The arc of Hasekura’s story is not from unbelief to belief; it is more an exploration of why the Japanese mind finds the transcendent story and promise of Christianity difficult to warm to, and how, for some, that warmth might be found. Hasekura, a man taught to worship, most of all, duty and honor, is unable to understand how Christians can worship an emaciated, beaten, crucified, dishonored man. Such a man, unlike the daimyo, is not worthy of respect. “He could detect nothing sublime or holy in a man as wretched and powerless as this.” Yet the wheels of Hasekura’s mind turn when that same wretched man inspires heroic acts in his worshipers, such as Velasco’s brave service of the dying, onboard during a storm.
Still, Hasekura resists conversion, even only for appearances and to accomplish his mission. “He sensed the blood of many generations of the Hasekura family flowing through his own body, their ways permeating his own life. He could not willfully alter that blood or those ways by himself. . . . Those dead souls would not permit him to become a Christian.” When he does convert, it is only for the desperate need to have his mission be a success, because he was ordered to ensure it was a success—though, unknown to him, the men above him who gave the order had their own hidden agendas and spoke with betrayal in their hearts. Hasekura does not believe that Christ is the Christ, not at his baptism and not even, necessarily, on his way to execution. To the extent he begins to understand Christ, it is only when he returns to Japan, and everything unravels for him, such that he begins to wonder if, after all, there is not something to Christ. In his travels, “What the samurai had seen was not the many lands, the many nations, the many cities, but the desperate karma of man. And above the karma of man hung that ugly, emaciated figure with his arms and legs nailed to a cross, and his head dangling limply down.” Perhaps, Endō is saying, Christ will never offer to the Japanese wealth or health, but instead something greater—the knowledge that neither wealth nor health really matters, only union with God, who loves mankind.
Yet this is no simple narrative. Another theme is whether bad acts can be justified by higher ends. Velasco justifies “soiling his hands,” lying and scheming, by arguing (to himself) that the lack of receptivity of the Japanese to Christianity requires extreme means. Still, he wonders. He wonders, too, whether the appalling treatment of the Indians in the New World can be justified by their now being brought to Christ, those that remain, that is. But he does not dwell on it. His counterpoint here is a Japanese man living in a small Indian village in New Spain, whom the emissaries happen to stumble upon. He became a monk some decades before, attaching himself to a Spanish missionary in Japan and following him to Mexico, yet abandoned the organized Church as complicit in the destruction of the Indians, and is now living out his life in the village. “My Jesus is not to be found in the palatial cathedrals. He lives among these miserable Indians.” If Christ is broken and suffering, and loves the broken and suffering, how can pandering to the powerful, whether Japanese or European, serve Him? Velasco has no answer for this, except, of course, his own ultimate sacrifice for the Japanese.
Perhaps this is why Velasco is tormented by doubts, until right before the end. After all, from his perspective, if God wants Japan converted, He should be helping the priest, because Velasco is a winner, at least in his own eyes. If Velasco were a modern management consultant, his prayers would tell God that “our goals are aligned; let’s drill down on some win-win situations.” Yet God thwarts his plans, and Velasco hallucinates, or maybe hears, as things fall apart, the cackling voice of a woman laughing at him. He despairs intermittently. “I even feel at times as if God was toying with me.” Doubts are nothing new for the spiritually focused; Mother Teresa, it turned out after her death, was tormented by doubt her whole life. Who is really better off—the tormented schemer, or the stolid samurai? The answer, really, is neither; they are both, and we are all, subject to God’s plan, whatever that is, under God’s sky.
October 1, 2020
I figured that it’s been some time since I read something by Endo, so when I dropped by Library@Orchard, I decided to borrow the Samurai. A part of me regrets not finding this book earlier because it is such a powerful read (I really think Endo does amazing work when his stories are set in the Edo-period) and makes for a great companion to Silence.
In The Samurai, four samurai, their retainers, and a few merchants leave Japan to New Spain (aka Mexico). Their aim is to get trading rights with the West, with the promise of their ancestral lands being restored should they succeed. Accompanying them is a selfish priest named Velasco, who’s aim is to convert the group of Japanese and gain the title of Bishop of Japan.
It is pretty amazing that Endo managed to craft such a spell-binding book when the subject matter and the characters are so ugly. The priest Velasco, the men’s primary contact for Christianity, is greedy, ambitious, and grasping, hiding his lust for the title of Bishop behind empty words about his desire to see Japan become Christian. The samurai are passive men: apart from Nishi, the youngest, they spend the novel being uncomfortable and doing what they have to do for the mission.
To me, it felt as though Hasekura was a stand-in of sorts for Endo. If you aren’t aware, Endo didn’t convert to Christianity willingly – he was baptised at eleven at his mother’s behest, and compared Christianity to an ill-fitting suit. I’m sure that the theme of Christianity being fundamentally incompatible with Japan, a theme that appears in The Samurai and even more prominently, in Silence, comes from these years of running away. But just as Endo found that he could not run away from Christianity and his attraction to Christ, Hasekura finds that after spending his entire journey rejecting the God that Velasco preaches, it is this despised and rejected figure that becomes precious to him. In essence, God is the one who has pursued Hasekura with doggedness and despite the odds, has reached him.
By the way, don’t take this as a praise to Christianity – Endo’s Christ is a suffering Christ and quite different from Christianity that was tied up with the expansion of Western powers. A portion of the book is spent in Mexico and Endo skilfully critiques the work of the missionaries there – the force they used to convert the natives and their hypocrisy in refusing to accept what they have done. It seems like Endo is suggesting that for Christianity to take root (especially in Japan), it must shed its image associated with the West.
On a somewhat related note, these issues of how Christianity should be spread (through trade/using trade as a lever or through force) reminded me that the same debates were taking place in China*. I haven’t seen any novels that cover the same themes in a Chinese context, but I was reminded that though Endo looks narrowly at Christianity in Japan and shows us his image of Christ, the same arguments have been taking place in other countries.
Overall, The Samurai is an uncomfortable but rewarding read. It’s doesn’t belong in the conventional “Christian fiction” section, which makes it a bit hard to categorise given its overt religious themes, but if you’re interested in the debates taking place around the localisation of Christianity and/or learning a bit about the history of Christianity in Japan through fiction, I highly recommend this book.
*As a parallel: Missionaries who came on the backs of opium – that is very much like how Velasco argued for trade to be used to convert Japan.
This review was first posted at Eustea Reads
In The Samurai, four samurai, their retainers, and a few merchants leave Japan to New Spain (aka Mexico). Their aim is to get trading rights with the West, with the promise of their ancestral lands being restored should they succeed. Accompanying them is a selfish priest named Velasco, who’s aim is to convert the group of Japanese and gain the title of Bishop of Japan.
It is pretty amazing that Endo managed to craft such a spell-binding book when the subject matter and the characters are so ugly. The priest Velasco, the men’s primary contact for Christianity, is greedy, ambitious, and grasping, hiding his lust for the title of Bishop behind empty words about his desire to see Japan become Christian. The samurai are passive men: apart from Nishi, the youngest, they spend the novel being uncomfortable and doing what they have to do for the mission.
To me, it felt as though Hasekura was a stand-in of sorts for Endo. If you aren’t aware, Endo didn’t convert to Christianity willingly – he was baptised at eleven at his mother’s behest, and compared Christianity to an ill-fitting suit. I’m sure that the theme of Christianity being fundamentally incompatible with Japan, a theme that appears in The Samurai and even more prominently, in Silence, comes from these years of running away. But just as Endo found that he could not run away from Christianity and his attraction to Christ, Hasekura finds that after spending his entire journey rejecting the God that Velasco preaches, it is this despised and rejected figure that becomes precious to him. In essence, God is the one who has pursued Hasekura with doggedness and despite the odds, has reached him.
By the way, don’t take this as a praise to Christianity – Endo’s Christ is a suffering Christ and quite different from Christianity that was tied up with the expansion of Western powers. A portion of the book is spent in Mexico and Endo skilfully critiques the work of the missionaries there – the force they used to convert the natives and their hypocrisy in refusing to accept what they have done. It seems like Endo is suggesting that for Christianity to take root (especially in Japan), it must shed its image associated with the West.
On a somewhat related note, these issues of how Christianity should be spread (through trade/using trade as a lever or through force) reminded me that the same debates were taking place in China*. I haven’t seen any novels that cover the same themes in a Chinese context, but I was reminded that though Endo looks narrowly at Christianity in Japan and shows us his image of Christ, the same arguments have been taking place in other countries.
Overall, The Samurai is an uncomfortable but rewarding read. It’s doesn’t belong in the conventional “Christian fiction” section, which makes it a bit hard to categorise given its overt religious themes, but if you’re interested in the debates taking place around the localisation of Christianity and/or learning a bit about the history of Christianity in Japan through fiction, I highly recommend this book.
*As a parallel: Missionaries who came on the backs of opium – that is very much like how Velasco argued for trade to be used to convert Japan.
This review was first posted at Eustea Reads
October 29, 2019
I have this weird thing where I get obsessed with Japanese authors and then have to read everything they've ever written, Mishima, Kawabata, now Natsume, so I thought that having recently read and very much enjoyed Endo's Silence, that I would have a new obsession.
Well, unfortunately, The Samurai is not very good, despite having a promising set-up. Like the other novel, this one is based, albeit loosely, on actual events. I had never heard of Japanese legation that went from Japan to Mexico to Spain and onwards in the early 17th century! Sent to ostensibly open trade, the Japanese emissaries become Christians to further their mission. This during a time of inward-drawing that saw Christians persecuted out of existence in Japan! What a great premise for a novel! Throw in a semi-fictional, disturbed and vainglorious Catholic priest who engineers all this zany shit, and you have the makings of a fine novel on vanity, religion, and intolerance.
Too bad the novel is utterly uninteresting. Don't get me wrong, I did finish it and I liked the ending and some bits here and there throughout, but the novel lacked, for lack of a better word, any kind of soul. Emotions ring hollow and we're never really given enough insight into the titular tormented guy to have his actions weigh on us as they should. The vile, machinating priest Velasco has a lot more depth, but he is also kind of a hideous import into a story that is really about wrestling with one's fealty to worldly things versus otherworldly things.
I couldn't help but think as I was reading this that maybe it was the translation that soured me, so perhaps another reading in another version might bring all the lurking beauty here to the fore a little better...
Well, unfortunately, The Samurai is not very good, despite having a promising set-up. Like the other novel, this one is based, albeit loosely, on actual events. I had never heard of Japanese legation that went from Japan to Mexico to Spain and onwards in the early 17th century! Sent to ostensibly open trade, the Japanese emissaries become Christians to further their mission. This during a time of inward-drawing that saw Christians persecuted out of existence in Japan! What a great premise for a novel! Throw in a semi-fictional, disturbed and vainglorious Catholic priest who engineers all this zany shit, and you have the makings of a fine novel on vanity, religion, and intolerance.
Too bad the novel is utterly uninteresting. Don't get me wrong, I did finish it and I liked the ending and some bits here and there throughout, but the novel lacked, for lack of a better word, any kind of soul. Emotions ring hollow and we're never really given enough insight into the titular tormented guy to have his actions weigh on us as they should. The vile, machinating priest Velasco has a lot more depth, but he is also kind of a hideous import into a story that is really about wrestling with one's fealty to worldly things versus otherworldly things.
I couldn't help but think as I was reading this that maybe it was the translation that soured me, so perhaps another reading in another version might bring all the lurking beauty here to the fore a little better...
January 15, 2018
"Do you think He is to be found within those garish cathedrals? He does not dwell there. He lives... not within such buildings. I think He lives in the wretched homes of these Indians."
In the Postscript, Endo indicates that The Samurai is autobiographical in a sense, since he matches his travel experience aboard a ship with the travels that the Japanese merchants and the Samurai trudged through. Indeed, the story can be read allegorically as an account of one's spiritual pilgrimage, and the original title of Endo's tale is (rightly, I believe) called A Man Who Met a King.
Because of that, the novel is deeply personal, and it is a haunting account (based on a true story) of a samurai's dilemma whether to convert to Christianity or not for the sake of fulfilling his mission. He must obediently follow the commands of the Council of Elders in Japan to request permission from the government of Nueva España for the trading rights of Japan. He travels with his servants and two other from his rank, along with other Japanese merchants who seek to gain fortune in Nueva España, aboard a ship led by a Franciscan priest named Velasco.
The mission was moot from the beginning, and the Japanese are constantly being manipulated by Velasco for his own gains. Velasco's tactics include fake conversions and baptisms to convince Nueva España of the success of his missionary endeavors. But as the samurai continues to reject the Christianity forced upon him by Velasco, he finds a Japanese monk who lives among colonized Indians, and is continually haunted by the image of the "ugly and emaciated" Christ whom many call King.
I won't spoil the ending for you, but the story is truly memorable, and it is one that will deconstruct the boundaries of a comfortable Christianity to shreds.
In the Postscript, Endo indicates that The Samurai is autobiographical in a sense, since he matches his travel experience aboard a ship with the travels that the Japanese merchants and the Samurai trudged through. Indeed, the story can be read allegorically as an account of one's spiritual pilgrimage, and the original title of Endo's tale is (rightly, I believe) called A Man Who Met a King.
Because of that, the novel is deeply personal, and it is a haunting account (based on a true story) of a samurai's dilemma whether to convert to Christianity or not for the sake of fulfilling his mission. He must obediently follow the commands of the Council of Elders in Japan to request permission from the government of Nueva España for the trading rights of Japan. He travels with his servants and two other from his rank, along with other Japanese merchants who seek to gain fortune in Nueva España, aboard a ship led by a Franciscan priest named Velasco.
The mission was moot from the beginning, and the Japanese are constantly being manipulated by Velasco for his own gains. Velasco's tactics include fake conversions and baptisms to convince Nueva España of the success of his missionary endeavors. But as the samurai continues to reject the Christianity forced upon him by Velasco, he finds a Japanese monk who lives among colonized Indians, and is continually haunted by the image of the "ugly and emaciated" Christ whom many call King.
I won't spoil the ending for you, but the story is truly memorable, and it is one that will deconstruct the boundaries of a comfortable Christianity to shreds.
June 21, 2010
An amazing book. This novel is consummate historical fiction, taking the reader into another time with details and humanity presenting a very specific and strange era as understandable and unforgettable. Endo is often called "the Japanese Graham Greene" because he is Catholic and his topics deal with Catholicism/faith and the modern world. In this book he goes so deep into showing some religious history and Japanese history and how they intertwined in the age of exploration (and actually some Mexican history too). I first went for this book because of the Mexican stuff and it was pretty neat to see a Japanese writer tackle the new world in historical fiction. This is a brilliant book and an underknown/appreciated event in history. C'mon is shows the true story of samurai's visiting Mexico in the 1600's and then going on to visit the Vatican, seriously.
July 2, 2017
Magistral autobiografía de Endo e historia de la Historia. Presente y pasado son uno aquí: el autor, sus vivencias y sentimientos; y al mismo tiempo, personajes ficticios que sin embargo se inspiran en aquellos que vivieron en el siglo XVII la expulsión y martirio de los cristianos en Japón. Un viaje de Oriente a Occidente, una travesía que existió y se refleja en "El samurai" de forma ajustada y bien documentada. Un viaje en el espacio, el tiempo y el interior del alma de todos cuantos tomaron y toman parte en él.
June 4, 2014
i'm not exactly sure why i didn't get into this. it had all the right elements for my pleasure and i still didn't find it that interesting. i'll need a re-read some time. i feel like i've missed something.
December 30, 2020
"Even if these merchants intend to use baptism and indeed the Lord himself for the sake of riches and commerce, God will not abandon them once they have received baptism. The Lord will never forsake someone who has uttered his name even once. That is what I want to believe" (99).
Lol. All that time developing an implicit sacramental theology of Silence, only for it to be one of The Samurai's explicit motifs. Father Velasco's appeals to baptism's indelibility become as tired as a Kichijiro apostasy. Ironically, though, I think sacrament is overall less significant here than in Silence (or maybe I'm just sulky).
As one might guess from above, The Samurai overlaps with Silence quite a bit. Lest one think Endo is obsessed with mudswamps and priests though, I think these are his only two novels that take place in the Edo period of Japan. The events of The Samurai occurred a couple decades before Silence, and while there is thematic overlap, they're actually quite different books.
I think The Samurai is the stronger of the two: it has two strongly formed central characters, beautiful portraits of the landscapes (Mexico, Spain, Italy, and Japan), and a balanced presentation of Western and Eastern perspectives. It is more difficult to read. The prose is dense, and the characters' spiritual and moral development are even more understated than they are in Silence. I know a lot of people feel like they're trudging through Silence (I did on my first read), and The Samurai is even more languid. The last 50 pages, though, were more gripping for me than Silence.
The plot is convoluted, and I won't attempt a summary here. The narrative alternates between the first person account of Spanish priest Father Velasco and a third present omniscient description of Hasekura, the samurai. Velasco is a remarkably unlikable man, motivated by vanity and power, and Hasekura is a likable but mysterious man who rarely speaks his mind, even internally. The novel tracks both men's conceptions of Christ, which shift and clarify as they lose the personal and cultural blinders that obscure Him. The novel's stunning end is at once more generous and more cryptic than Silence's. Velasco and Hasekura share parallel fates, but they are hardly collapsible. To anyone who liked Silence, I can't recommend The Samurai enough.
Lol. All that time developing an implicit sacramental theology of Silence, only for it to be one of The Samurai's explicit motifs. Father Velasco's appeals to baptism's indelibility become as tired as a Kichijiro apostasy. Ironically, though, I think sacrament is overall less significant here than in Silence (or maybe I'm just sulky).
As one might guess from above, The Samurai overlaps with Silence quite a bit. Lest one think Endo is obsessed with mudswamps and priests though, I think these are his only two novels that take place in the Edo period of Japan. The events of The Samurai occurred a couple decades before Silence, and while there is thematic overlap, they're actually quite different books.
I think The Samurai is the stronger of the two: it has two strongly formed central characters, beautiful portraits of the landscapes (Mexico, Spain, Italy, and Japan), and a balanced presentation of Western and Eastern perspectives. It is more difficult to read. The prose is dense, and the characters' spiritual and moral development are even more understated than they are in Silence. I know a lot of people feel like they're trudging through Silence (I did on my first read), and The Samurai is even more languid. The last 50 pages, though, were more gripping for me than Silence.
The plot is convoluted, and I won't attempt a summary here. The narrative alternates between the first person account of Spanish priest Father Velasco and a third present omniscient description of Hasekura, the samurai. Velasco is a remarkably unlikable man, motivated by vanity and power, and Hasekura is a likable but mysterious man who rarely speaks his mind, even internally. The novel tracks both men's conceptions of Christ, which shift and clarify as they lose the personal and cultural blinders that obscure Him. The novel's stunning end is at once more generous and more cryptic than Silence's. Velasco and Hasekura share parallel fates, but they are hardly collapsible. To anyone who liked Silence, I can't recommend The Samurai enough.
May 2, 2018
Taking place in the 1600s, a low-level Japanese Samurai with his servants, some merchants, and a Spanish monk travel from Japan to Mexico to Spain to Rome and then back. Apparently this actually happened.
Shusaku Endo has a lot of things to say about a lot of things. He says them subtly and beautifully. In this book I see the art of juxtaposition. Passion and passivity. Political and individual. Bureaucratic Jesus and personal Jesus. Scheming and sincerity. Western idealism and eastern pragmatism. The book is a little slow at the beginning, but becomes very meaningful for the last third of the book. The action/drama all happens politically and internally; sorry, no chase scenes or fights.
It is my understanding that this piece of fiction is autobiographical when it comes to the authors own relationship with Jesus.
I definitely recommend this book to you if you are a westerner moving to Japan, a Japanese person who has been exposed to Christianity, or just someone who has interest in Japanese culture and history.
I probably recommend this book to you if you are interested in cross-cultural clashes, a Christian who cares about the rest of the world, or a someone who is interested in Christianity in an eastern mind. You'd probably like this book if you are Japanese.
I recommend against this book if you are impatient or someone who needs clearly defined "good guys" and "bad guys".
Shusaku Endo has a lot of things to say about a lot of things. He says them subtly and beautifully. In this book I see the art of juxtaposition. Passion and passivity. Political and individual. Bureaucratic Jesus and personal Jesus. Scheming and sincerity. Western idealism and eastern pragmatism. The book is a little slow at the beginning, but becomes very meaningful for the last third of the book. The action/drama all happens politically and internally; sorry, no chase scenes or fights.
It is my understanding that this piece of fiction is autobiographical when it comes to the authors own relationship with Jesus.
I definitely recommend this book to you if you are a westerner moving to Japan, a Japanese person who has been exposed to Christianity, or just someone who has interest in Japanese culture and history.
I probably recommend this book to you if you are interested in cross-cultural clashes, a Christian who cares about the rest of the world, or a someone who is interested in Christianity in an eastern mind. You'd probably like this book if you are Japanese.
I recommend against this book if you are impatient or someone who needs clearly defined "good guys" and "bad guys".
January 15, 2015
This novel does a great job of looking at how convoluted faith in God can be. Velasco the priest has faith in God to convert fully by baptism even adults without personal faith in Jesus, but at the same time cannot bring himself to believe that God can bring about the conversion of Japan without his lying and scheming. The contradiction points to the same sort of inconsistencies in our own faith in Christ. Some "big" things we have no problem trusting Him for, but in some smaller areas of life we shut out his commands because we fear they would deter us from accomplishing His will.
Jesus is portrayed not as a Saviour in this story, but as a sufferer who knows what we are enduring in our own suffering. Perhaps a healthy alternative to the God of the Prosperity Gospel, but still a bit of an overshoot because there is no victory in Jesus in this book. It ends sadly with the martyrdom of all involved, none having really attained the moral or spiritual stature one hoped to see. Perhaps there is realism in that, but it hardly strengthens the heart to carry on in the faith. Nevertheless, the picture of the Son of Man on the crucifix always there to suffer with us does bring comfort to the sorrowful, but it is a comfort that needs a dose of hope and salvation.
Jesus is portrayed not as a Saviour in this story, but as a sufferer who knows what we are enduring in our own suffering. Perhaps a healthy alternative to the God of the Prosperity Gospel, but still a bit of an overshoot because there is no victory in Jesus in this book. It ends sadly with the martyrdom of all involved, none having really attained the moral or spiritual stature one hoped to see. Perhaps there is realism in that, but it hardly strengthens the heart to carry on in the faith. Nevertheless, the picture of the Son of Man on the crucifix always there to suffer with us does bring comfort to the sorrowful, but it is a comfort that needs a dose of hope and salvation.
December 12, 2017
Possibly best of Endo's novels, the best I've read this far anyway. It has all the things characteristics of him, ambiguous and unorthodox, instense personal emotions, insight and an effective historical backdrop. Because of his peculiar situation, as a Japanese Catholic, the novel again offers a unique perspective on both the Japanese culture and their country as a whole and Catholicism, not shying away from the good or the bad. The characters were I think the strongest point of the novel, with the Samurai and father Velasco representing different worlds which with time converge without ever openly conflicting (as opposed to Silence), where the focus becomes not the Christ King in all of his glory that's favoured by many Western fiction authors or the glory of his Church, but the weak, wrenched and defeated Christ on his cross who suffers alongside us.
January 10, 2021
The Samurai is made up of some pretty poignant stuff (especially toward the end), but my-oh-my is it boring. I might have just been antsy to move on, but I have a feeling it has more to do with the writing (or, again, translating) style. Endo repeats himself over and over, and reuses similes until their effect is not only lost, but irritating, too. That said, this is a decent book, not without merit (especially for those to whom narrative development is important, if not integral). Whereas Silence is about Christians feigning religious indifference, The Samurai is about the religiously indifferent feigning Christianity. Neither group is left unscathed.
April 10, 2017
Endo is the Dostoevsky of Japanese literature. He has an uncanny ability to portray the human experience in such a manner that deeply convicts his reader. He takes you on a journey of time, space, and spirit, one that is both autobiographical for he the author and enrapturing for we his reader. Where Silence shows the heart and struggle of a devout man who has spent his whole life doing good, The Samurai depicts the soul and suffering of two men who know not the heart of God but are forevermore swept up by it and its eternal love.
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