Shusaku Endo - The Samurai
I just finished reading The Samurai, a novel by Japanese author Shusaku Endo, and I thought I’d take the time to write a quick review. To start with, the book has become one of my favorites and I’d reccomend it to anyone who likes fiction, especially those who are Christian. Endo was a committed, though at times reluctant, Catholic from a country that is still less than 1% Christian. Many of his writings therefore reflect the struggle of Christians and the Christian religion in Japan and the ostracism and persecution felt by those who convert.
The Samurai is no different and follows the story of a young low-ranking Japanese samurai who is chosen as one of the first official ambassadors to Europe in 1613 and an ambitious Fransiscan missionary who acts as interpreter on the mission. The missionary hopes to bargain for trading privileges with Mexico in exchange for the right to freely proselytize in Japan, where the few Christians are highly persecuted and conversion is increasingly becoming illegal. The journey is long and unendurably difficult as the group travels from Japan to Mexico to Spain to Rome and back. It ultimately ends in failure, and in despair the missionary is forced to deal with his selfish ambition and misreading of God’s will while the samurai returns to a changed Japan and finds that his only comfort is found in the man on the cross that dominated every inch of his visit to Europe and who he still doesn’t understand.
The writing is beautiful, although it sometimes feels a little repetitive, and full of the concise Japanese poetry that I remember from other works I’ve read. For example, it begins with this:
It began to snow.
Until nightfall a faint sunlight had bathed the gravel-covered river bed through breaks in the clouds. When the sky turned dark, an abrupt silence ensued. Two, then three flakes of snow fluttered down from the sky.
As the samurai and his men cut wood, snow grazed their rustic outfits, brushed against their faces and hands, then melted away as if to underscore the brevity of life…
The book is somewhat based on a true story and meticulously historically accurate. I learned a lot about Japan through the reading and despite the difference in time and culture, I could find very much to relate to in the lives of the missionary and the samurai, ranging from doubts and the desire to please others to ambition and the longing to do great things while simultaneously being mistrustful of my real motives. As I said earlier, I would reccomend this to anyone. It is, in my opinion, a masterpiece.