Among other health problems, he contracted tuberculosis, underwent thoracoplasty, and had a lung removed. A return visit in 1960 prompted another case of the same disease, and he stayed in hospital (in France and Japan) for the greater part of three years. In 1952, while studying in France, he came down with pleurisy in Paris. Throughout his life bouts of disease plagued him, and he spent two years in hospital at one point. He was considered a novelist not a university professor, however. In 1956, he was hired as an instructor at Sophia University, and Seijo University assigned him the role of "Lecturer on the Theory of the Novel" in 1967. They had one son, Ryūnosuke, born in 1956.Įndō lectured at at least two Tokyo universities. In 1954, a year after completing his studies in France, he won the Akutagawa Prize for Shiroi Hito (White Men). Upon his return to Japan, his success as a writer was almost immediate. His studies at the University of Lyon over the 1950–1953 period deepened his interest in and knowledge of modern French Catholic authors, who were to become a major influence on his own writing. Įndō was among the first Japanese university students to study in France. In 1968, he would later become chief editor of one of these, the prestigious Mita Bungaku. His studies were interrupted by the war, during which he worked in a munitions factory and also contributed to literary journals. Įndō first attended Waseda University for the stated purpose of studying medicine, but later decided to switch to the literature programme at Keio University. Some say this was brought on by his mother, who had converted to Catholicism after her divorce, while others state the aunt instigated the initiation. Endō was baptized as a Catholic at the age of 11 or 12 in the year 1934. When his parents divorced in 1933, Endō's mother brought him back to Japan to live with an aunt in Kobe. Already twenty years have passed since the persecution broke out the black soil of Japan has been filled with the lament of so many Christians the red blood of priests has flowed profusely the walls of churches have fallen down and in the face of this terrible and merciless sacrifice offered up to Him, God has remained silent.Soon after Endō was born in Tokyo in 1923, his family moved to Dairen, then part of the Kwantung Leased Territory in Manchuria. I suppose I should simply cast from my mind these meaningless words of the coward yet why does his plaintive voice pierce my breast with tall the pain of a sharp needle? Why has Our Lord imposed this torture and this persecution on poor Japanese peasants? No, Kichijiro was trying to express something different, something even more sickening. "Father", he had said "what evil have we done?" And yet, even as I write these words I feel the oppressive weight in my heart of those last stammering words of Kichijiro in the morning of his departure: "Why has Deus Sama imposed this suffering on us?" and then the resentment in those eyes that he turned upon me. I know that the day will come when we will clearly understand why this persecution with all it's sufferings has been bestowed upon us - for everything that Our Lord does is for our good. “I do not believe that God has given us this trial to not purpose.
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