Reaction to Endo's "The Samurai"

I was introduced to Japanese author Shusaku Endo after reading that Martin Scorsese was preparing to direct a film adaptation of Endo's book, Silence. My reaction to that news and Endo's book can be found here.

The Samurai is the second book of Endo's I've read, and I liked it better than Silence. It's the story of four Japanese envoys sent with Spanish sailors and a Franciscan missionary to open trade negotiations with 17th-century Spain. While away on their four-year journey, the sentiments among Japan's leaders change. Doors to any connection with outsiders close and persecution of missionaries and Japanese Christians begins. The envoys, as symbols of an earlier effort to open doors to Spanish trade and missionary work, suffer the consequences of the new Japanese policies they return into.

The story focuses in particular upon two men: an ambitious missionary named Valesco, and a samurai named Rokuemon Hasekura who served as one of the envoys. The novel is a fictional speculation on the events surrounding actual historical figures. The book was widely acclaimed when it was released in 1980, and received Japan's most coveted literary award.

I was moved by the slow change in the missionary's character so that his raw and sinful ambition finally gave way to the humility of his final confession. It was also engaging to see the slow conversion of the samurai. From an insincere compliance to baptism, Hasekura finally embraces the Lord who will not abandon him.

In fact, it's noteworthy that Endo's working title for this novel was A Man Who Met a King, according to a postscript by the translator:

That title is most appropriate, for the Hasekura of both fact and fiction had the opportunity to come face to face with several kings of the earth. These meetings, however, all proved to be hollow, defeating. Hasekura and his warrior comrades are bested in the arena of the flesh and return to Japan humiliated and unsuccessful. But when Hasekura stands before an abyss of despair and likely death, he encounters yet another King, one who seeks only to salve his wounds, one who has also been 'despised and rejected of men.' It is when Hasekura meets and embraces this pathetic King that his own sorrows become endurable.

The translator goes on to point out in the postscript that this novel was Endo's most autobiographical, and Hasekura's slow arrival at faith in Christ paralleled Endo's own faith journey as well.

A fascinating story about a part of history I had never studied, and about trials to faith I have never experienced.