Shūsaku Endō sits amid the notable ranks of Japan’s literary “Third Generation,” referring to the third generation of significant writers that helped re-establish Japan as a cultural force in the wake of World War II. Notable Third Generation contemporaries include fellow Japanese Catholic writer Ayako Sono, author of
Bruised Reed, an examination of a Catholic father’s life and work; and Yasuoko Shōtarō, author of
A Melancholy Pleasure and the famed short story
Prized Possessions, an allegory on the oppositional forces at play in Japan as it sought to rebuild itself in the postwar phase. However, more than Endō’s position as a Third Generation writer, it is his unusual position as a Japanese Catholic that allows him to speak from such a distinctive perspective. Endō’s subsequent novel,
Samurai, deals with the same intersection of Western-rooted Catholicism and Eastern Japanese culture that appears in
Silence, though with a markedly lighter tone. Slightly more modern Japanese Catholic authors include playwright Chikao Tanaka, author of “The Head of Mary” which details the redemption of Nagasaki’s underclass as it struggles in the wake of the nuclear bomb, and novelist Toshio Shimao, whose work (such as
The Sting of Death) uses his own personal experience to contemplate the spiritual effects of human sin and depravity. Although not a Japanese author, Endō is sometimes referred to as the Graham Greene of Japan, since Greene, author of
End of the Affair and
The Power and the Glory, shared Endō’s penchant for depicting the Catholic faith in unusual and difficult lights, often to the consternation of their Catholic readers.