Ill-at-ease being a Christian in Japan, he was likewise out of place as a Japanese man in Christian Europe.Įndō explains in his A Life of Jesus, how profoundly sad Jesus was. In 1949 he received an opportunity to study in France.Įndō hoped that by living in a predominantly Christian society he would be spiritually at home. He attended college during the chaos of World War II, though Endō had to interrupt his studies when he was conscripted to work in a munitions factory. Endō returned to Japan before the worst atrocities of the Sino-Japanese War, but that may have been cold comfort to the 10-year-old boy whose move was prompted by his parents’ divorce.Īt 11 he and his mother converted to Catholicism and joined what was, in Japan, a miniscule religious minority. Throughout his life and in his writings he grappled with what to do when the expectations of faith do not match its lived reality.īorn in Tokyo in 1923, he spent his early childhood in Japanese-occupied Manchuria, where his father worked for the Japanese government.
But Endō’s discomfort is more profound than something that looks great on the hanger that never fits exactly right. One of the most vivid descriptions author Shūsaku Endō uses to describe his faith was to call his Catholicism an ill-fitting suit.
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