At the outset of this powerful story we find a Doctor Suguro in a backwater of modern-day Tokyo practicing expert medicine in a dingy office. He is haunted by his past experience and it is that past which the novel unfolds.

Eleven short, deeply spiritual stories ranging from autobiographical serendipities to solemn, empathetic parables. The title story is set during the 18th-century Shogunate persecution of Christians in Japan.

In novels such as Silence, Endo Shusaku examined the persecution of Japanese Christians in different historical eras. Sachiko, set in Nagasaki in the painful years between 1930 and 1945, is the story of two young people trying to find love during yet another period in which Japanese Christians were accused of disloyalty to their country. In the 1930s, two young Japanese Christians, Sachiko and Shuhei, are free to play with American children in their neighborhood. But life becomes increasingly difficult for them and other Christians after Japan launches wars of aggression. Meanwhile, a Polish Franciscan priest and former missionary in Nagasaki, Father Maximillian Kolbe, is arrested after returning to his homeland. Endo alternates scenes between Nagasaki-where the growing love between Sachiko and Shuhei is imperiled by mounting persecution-and Auschwitz, where the priest has been sent. Shuhei's dilemma deepens when he faces conscription into the Japanese military, conflicting with the Christian belief that killing is a sin. With the A-bomb attack on Nagasaki looming in the distance, Endo depicts ordinary people trying to live lives of faith in a wartime situation that renders daily life increasingly unbearable. Endo's compassion for his characters, reflecting their struggles to find and share love for others, makes Sachiko one of his most moving novels.

In novels such as Silence, Endo Shusaku examined the persecution of Japanese Christians in different historical eras. Sachiko, set in Nagasaki in the painful years between 1930 and 1945, is the story of two young people trying to find love during yet another period in which Japanese Christians were accused of disloyalty to their country. In the 1930s, two young Japanese Christians, Sachiko and Shuhei, are free to play with American children in their neighborhood. But life becomes increasingly difficult for them and other Christians after Japan launches wars of aggression. Meanwhile, a Polish Franciscan priest and former missionary in Nagasaki, Father Maximillian Kolbe, is arrested after returning to his homeland. Endo alternates scenes between Nagasaki-where the growing love between Sachiko and Shuhei is imperiled by mounting persecution-and Auschwitz, where the priest has been sent. Shuhei's dilemma deepens when he faces conscription into the Japanese military, conflicting with the Christian belief that killing is a sin. With the A-bomb attack on Nagasaki looming in the distance, Endo depicts ordinary people trying to live lives of faith in a wartime situation that renders daily life increasingly unbearable. Endo's compassion for his characters, reflecting their struggles to find and share love for others, makes Sachiko one of his most moving novels.

"Kiku's Prayer" is told through the eyes of Kiku, a self-assured young woman from a rural Japanese village who falls in love with Seikichi, a devoted Catholic man. Practicing a faith still banned by the government, Seikichi is imprisoned but refuses to recant under torture. Kiku's efforts to reconcile her feelings for Seikichi's religion with the sacrifices she makes to free him mirror the painful, conflicting choices Japan faced as a result of exposure to modernity and the West. Seikichi's persecution exemplifies Japan's insecurities, and Kiku's tortured yet determined spirit represents the nation's resilient soul.

Set in the turbulent years of the transition from the shogunate to the Meiji Restoration, "Kiku's Prayer" embodies themes central to Endo Shusaku's work, including religion, modernization, and the endurance of the human spirit. Yet this novel is much more than a historical allegory. It acutely renders one woman's troubled encounter with passion and spirituality at a transitional time in her life and in the history of her people. A renowned twentieth-century Japanese author, Endo wrote from the perspective of being both Japanese and Catholic. His work is often compared with that of Graham Greene, who himself considered Endo one of the century's finest writers.

In October 1613, four samurai set sail for Mexico, accompanied by a Spanish priest who was supposed to act as interpreter. The purpose of this unprecedented mission was to negotiate commercial privileges with the Western world; in return, European missionaries would be allowed to preach Christianity in Japan. However, when their project failed, the emissaries continued their journey to Spain and Italy and were the first Japanese to set foot on European soil. A milestone in 20th century Japanese novels, The Samurai is a profound exploration of faith, frailty, ambition and loyalty, all of which Endo tackled with unparalleled wit and brilliance.  

Translated By Richard A. Schuchert; My book called A Life of Jesus may cause surprise for American readers when they discover an interpretation of Jesus somewhat at odds with the image they now possess.

Scandal has justly become one of the most internationally successful novels by Shusaku Endo, not only because of the fascinating image it offers of the pleasure districts of Tokyo, but also because of the depth with which it paints the issue of individual identity, as well as the allusion to Edgar Allan Poe's black cat or the presence of anonymous phone calls, which have made rivers of ink flow and which have been identified as antecedents of certain motifs in the most current Japanese narrative. Through the story of Suguro, a Catholic writer (like Endo himself), and his encounter with Naruse, a middle-aged widow who used to be sexually aroused by her husband's accounts of brutalities during his time as a soldier in China . Shusaku Endo confronts the reader with an astonishing conception of sadomasochism and sexual life in a very broad sense.

Five wonderful stories by the Japanese master. Winner of every major Japanese literary prize, his work translated around the globe, Shusaku Endo (1923-1996) is a great and unique figure in the literature of the twentient century. "Irrevocably enmeshed in Japanese culture, he is by virtue of his religion [Endo was Roman Catholic] irrevocably alienated from it" (Geoffrey O'Brian, Village Voice). It is this aspect that has made Endo so particularly intriguing to his readership at home and abroad. Now gathered in a New Directions Bibelot edition are five of Endo's supreme short stories exemplifying his style and his interests, presenting, as it were, Endo in a nutshell. "Unzen," the opening story, touches on the subject of Silence Endo's most famous novel -- that is the torture and martyrdom of Christians in seventeenth-century Japan. Next comes "A Fifty-year-old Man" in which Mr. Chiba takes up ballroom dancing and faces the imminent death of his brother and his dog Whitey. In "Japanese in Warsaw" a business man has a strange encounter; in "The Box," an old photo album and a few postcards have a tale to reveal. Finally included is "The Case of Isobe," the opening chapter of Endo's novel Deep River in which Isobe, a member of a tour group, hopes to find in India the reincarnation of the wife he took so much for granted.

The river is the Ganges, where a group of Japanese tourists converge: Isobe, grieving the death of the wife he ignored in life; Kiguchi, haunted by war-time memories of the Highway of Death in Burma; Numada, recovering from a critical illness; Mitsuko, a cynical woman struggling with inner emptiness; and, the butt of her cruel interest, Otsu, a failed seminarian for whom the figure on the cross is a god of many faces. In this novel, the renowned Japanese writer Shusaku Endo reaches his ultimate religious vision.