daamma.blogg.se

The emissaries set sail in 1613, accompanied by an ambitious Franciscan missionary who hopes to bargain trading privileges with the West for the right to head his order in Japan. Rokuemon Hasekura, a low ranking warrior, is chosen as one of Japan’s envoys to the Viceroy of Mexico and Pope Paul V. Set in the period preceding the Christian persecutions in Japan, The Samurai traces the steps of some of the first Japanese to set foot on European soil. The Samurai, without doubt one of the late Shusaku Endo’s finest works, seamlessly combines historical fact with novelist’s imaginings. Set in the period preceding the Christian persecutions in Japan recorded so memorably in Endo’s Silence, this book traces the steps of some of the first Japanese to set foot on European soil. ”Everything Shusaku Endo writes is worth reading as good literature…īut, more importantly, for his exploration of human nature.” New York Times.Ĭonsidered one of the late Shusaku Endo’s finest works, The Samurai seamlessly combines historical fact with a novelist’s imaginings. ”An accomplished piece of writing as well as an instructive insight into Japanese reactions to Western religion, culture, and the tolls these reactions can exact…Įndo’s delineation of isolation, of feeling terribly and irrevocably foreign, is moving and effective…Ī thoughtful and timely book.” Kirkus Reviews. Paradoxically, Endo transcends all cultural barriers far from foreign, his work has the intimacy and the vastness of the universally true.” Publishers Weekly. Tanaka feels as alienated as the hero of Rouen, ”constantly experiencing the sense of distance between himself and a great foreign spirit”…

The themes of these two sections are deepened in ”And You, Too,” in which an ambitious academic named Tanaka goes to Paris in the 1960s to become an authority on the Marquis de Sade… Renounces his faith after he returns home, choosing survival for himself and for his people.

”Araki Thomas” tells of the first Japanese student in Rome, a Christian sent there at the dawn of the 17th century who… ”A Summer in Rouen,” set shortly after WW II, follows the recipient of a church sponsored scholarship that has brought him from Japan to France to study Christian literature… Elegantly divided into three sections, this…Ĭalibrates the dislocation of Easterners transplanted to the West.