Book Review: THE SAMURAI by Shusaku Endo

The Samurai by Shūsaku Endō
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

"I believe that being alive means living fervently... Just as a woman seeks fervent passion from a man, so God seeks passion in us. A man cannot live twice. To be neither hot nor cold, but merely lukewarm... is that what you want?"

Written fourteen years after SILENCE (which Martin Scorsese turned into a film starring Liam Neeson and Andrew Garfield), THE SAMURAI is also based on a true story in the same period: the Tokugawa shogunate -- when Japan was cut off from the world for 200 years, and Christianity was brutally, cruelly supressed.

While SILENCE told the story of Jesuit missionaries in Japan, THE SAMURAI focused on the true-to-life samurai, Hasekura Rokuemon (aka Hasekura Tsunenaga) and his ill-fated travels from Japan to Mexico, Spain, and Rome, along with a Franciscan missionary. Together, they idealistically sought to strengthen economic and religious ties between East and West, while unbeknownst to them, they had become unwitting pawns in a deadly game they had no chance of winning.

"Do you think He is to be found within those garish cathedrals? He does not dwell there. He lives... not within such buildings. He lives in the wretched homes of these Indians... That is how He spent His life... I have finally been able to grasp an image of Him that conforms to my own heart."

I think it was fitting that I read this on Easter Sunday, a day when the sibling sectors within Christianity show different ways to celebrate the focal point of the faith: His death and rising, and all that it means.

Shusaku Endo himself was baptized Catholic at a very young age and had trouble accepting the key tenets of his faith growing up, and his personal experience with doubt is what makes his novels ring true. Endo is unafraid to ask questions and state painful truths we do not dare voice out, as if he knew that God is closer to Doubting Thomas than a Pharisee swollen with complacency.

If you could only read one Endo novel, SILENCE is generally acknowledged to be his masterpiece, and I have to agree. But I thought THE SAMURAI was more accessible, while still containing elements from SILENCE: the emphasis on the crucifix as a visible, tangible sacramental of God made weak, visible everywhere in the world, wherever there is suffering... the contrast drawn between 2 cultures and 2 very different worldviews... and always, the haunting memory of men who, wittingly or not, bore witness to One who suffered unto death, even as they too walked that same path.

To read an Endo novel is to be haunted with more questions than answers, with hearts made heavy and souls made light at the same time... and if that isn't what makes literature great, then I don't know what does.

View all my reviews