Shusaku Endo's Enigmatic Catholicism

I received baptism when I was a child...in other words, my Catholicism was a kind of ready-made suit...I had to decide either to make this ready-made suit fit my body or get rid of it and find another suit that fitted...There were many times when I felt I wanted to get rid of my Catholicism, but I was finally unable to do so. It is not just that I did not throw it off, but that I was unable to throw it off. (1)

A Japanese Catholic living in a country that was then--and remains now--less than one percent Christian, Shusaku Endo's faith was anything but conventional. This demographic statistic, in fact, is perhaps the driving force behind Endo's spirituality as a Catholic and is accordingly reflected in his career as a novelist. In particular, Endo was constantly haunted by Christianity's thoroughly Western nature, and by extension, its seemingly incompatible relationship with traditional Japanese culture.

Whether Endo's sensitive relationship with Eurocentric Christianity was due to personal disillusionment with the West or rather resulted from prolonged frustration over his Japanese contemporaries' apparent disinterest in Christianity is a legitimate topic for debate. But it is well-known that, feeling isolated in Japan on account of his Catholic faith, Endo initially welcomed eagerly an opportunity to study abroad in France. According to Quolibet Journal's Brett Dewey, "Endo hoped that the culture-Catholicism of France would offer him a sort of spiritual homecoming." However, the experience turned out to be profoundly disappointing and, in a way, severely depressing:

"As a Catholic in Japan, Endo was always the outsider, and from the start of his studies in France, he became keenly aware that he was everywhere a stranger.  He suffered in Japan on account of his faith and in France due to racial prejudice and the overwhelming humiliation of what it meant to be Japanese in post-war Europe.  These pivotal years would serve as the touchstone for perhaps Endo’s finest novel, Silence." (2)

Indeed, it is in Silence that Endo muses on what he saw as the unconquerable hopelessness of being as equally unwanted in the Christian West for being Japanese as he was in the Japanese East for being Christian. The image of Japan as an ideological "mud swamp" is a constantly-reoccurring theme, both throughout the novel and in its critical analysis. In his preface to Silence, Sophia University's William Johnston reflects--in a way not unlike Father Rodrigues' own reflections within the novel--on the apparent failure and eventual fate of Christianity in Japan. The Hellenistic representation of the Faith, he writes, "had not allowed [the Japanese] to take into the depths of their being the Christianity that was presented to them. If this Christianity had been less incorrigibly Western, things might have been different." (3)

Endo himself writes:

"This problem of the reconciliation of my Catholicism with my Japanese blood...has taught me one thing: that is, that the Japanese must absorb Christianity without the support of a Christian tradition or history or legacy or sensibility...No doubt this is the peculiar cross that God has given to the Japanese." (4)

Filled with zeal for the Gospel, but prevented by context from effectively spreading it, Endo's life as a Japanese Catholic in many ways parallels his characters' lives as European missionaries. Unable to overcome the cultural differences at the root of these spiritual struggles, Endo ultimately turned to writing to put words to his country's ideological plight. Ironically, then, it is Silence's immense popularity in Japan that most threatens to undermine Endo's thesis. As one critic asks, "If Japan cannot understand Christianity, how has it been possible for Mr. Endo to write such a novel?" (5)


Sources:
(1)  Shusaku Endo, Interview with Kumo Magazine, Preface to Silence, p. xv.
(2)  Brett Dewey, "Suffering the Patient Victory of God: Shusaku Endo and the Lessons of a Japanese Catholic." Quolibet Journal.
(3)  William Johnston, Preface to Silence, pp. xv-xvi.
(4)  Shusaku Endo, Interview with Kumo Magazine, Preface to Silence, p. xvi.
(5)  Yanaibara, Asahi Journal, Preface to Silence, p. xviii.