Shusaku Endo
Shusaku Endo (遠藤周作), born in Tokyo in 1923, was raised by his mother and an aunt in Kobe where he converted to Roman Catholicism at the age of eleven. At Tokyo's Keio University he majored in French literature, graduating BA in 1949, before furthering his studies in French Catholic literature at the University of Lyon in France between 1950 and 1953. A major theme running through his books, which have been translated into many languages, including English, French, Russian and Swedish, is the failure of Japanese soil to nurture the growth of Christianity. Before his death in 1996, Endo was the recipient of a number of outstanding Japanese literary awards: the Akutagawa Prize, Mainichi Cultural Prize, Shincho Prize, and Tanizaki Prize.
(from the backcover of Volcano).
“The important thing in this life is to link your sadness to the sadness of others.”
“Desolation would not be the proper word to describe his feelings now; it was more the sense of emptiness he imagined he might feel standing all alone on the surface of the moon.”
“When you were still here, Isobe thought, death seemed so far removed from me. It was as though you stood with both arms outstretched, keeping death from me. But now that you're gone, suddenly it seems right here in front of me.”
“But the scrawny, powerless man with his arms outstretched on the cross had at some point reclaimed Otsu. Still, that doesn't change the fact that I won. With startling rapacity God had merely picked up a man I discarded.”
“We'll shake, we'll shake the tree of dreams, That solitary tree of dreamsIn the centre of the verdant field.”
“A man who wields a pen has to be accountable to society.”
“I don't want to die in darkness any thicker than this. I want to bring some kind of resolution in my life.”
“A person never knows their own true face. Everybody thinks that the phoney, posed social mask they wear is their real face.”
“Every weakness contains within itself a strength.”
“True religion should be able to respond to the dark melodies, the faulty and hideous sounds that echo from the heart of men.”
“The smell of death was thick in the city of Vārāṇasī. And in Tokyo as well. And yet the birds blissfully sang their songs.”
“Over the years I have forged intimate familial ties with these characters, who are reflections of a portion of myself. Consequently, even a character who appeared only once in a short story waits now in the wings, concealed by the curtain, for his next appearance on-stage. Not one of them has ever broken free of his familial ties with me and disappeared for ever - at least, not within the confines of my heart.”
“Sin, he reflected, is not what it is usually thought to be; it is not to steal and tell lies. Sin is for one man to walk brutally over the life of another and to be quite oblivious of the wounds he has left behind.”
“Trample! Trample! It is to be trampled on by you that I am here. ”