Stained Glass Elegies

by Shūsaku Endō, Van C. Gessel (Translator)

First Edition. Slight creasing to DJ. Shelf and edge wear to DJ and boards.

Genres: Short Stories, Japan, Fiction, Japanese Literature, Literature, Literary Fiction

170 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1986

About the author

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).

Reviews

[Adina ( back from Vacay…slowly recovering) · Rating 2 out of 5]

So, this is the guy who wrote Silence, which was made into a very boring movie, although a good one. I've read it inside Found in Translation anthology.

The rating is only for the short story The Incredible Voyage (1968) which was pretty gross and not particularly well written. Two doctors shrink and, with the help of a mini vessel, embark into an exploratory voyage through the insides of one of the doctors' wife. Since something happens and they cannot exit through the mouth, guess what they have to endure....

[Smiley · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars.

The title of this 11-story collection "Stained Glass Elegies" by Shusaku Endo reminded me of Thomas Grey's "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard" in which [Thai translation first by เสฐียรโกเศศ] its fine Thai poem "กลอนดอกสร้อยรำพึงในป่าช้า" (http://epacpunyaphat.weebly.com/uploa...) by พระยาอุปกิตศิลปสาร (นิ่ม กาญจนาชีวะ) we studied in a Thai language textbook required to read, recite (to verify) and reinterpret as part of secondary education syllabus some 50 years ago. So as the title implies, I think the stories would reflect something sad, sombre, transient, etc. Specifically, there are eight stories related to God, Christ, Japanese Christians incarcerated, Father Someone while the others suggest general way-of-life episodes; the three titles being "Incredible Voyage," "Retreating Figures" and "The War Generation."

As for the three stories, I've found "The War Generation" most interesting for its plot, setting, impact, etc. distinctly encapsulated in the Tokyo bombing by the B-29s as part of World War II. It's simply thrilling to read how the famed young genius named Ono Mari has finally managed to appear amid the wreckage to perform her Solo Violin Concert on March 10 as advertised to the public. This extracted paragraphs should suffice in the meantime:

Soon Mari came out onto the dusty stage, clutching her violin and bow in one hand. She had not time to adjust her make-up, and the pained expression lingered as she stood in the centre of the stage. Exhaustion was etched into her face, and the renowned long hair and the wide, almost European eyes seemed agonizingly incongruous with the tattered men's trousers she was wearing. But no one laughed.
'We were burned out of our house,' she apologized, the violin and bow dangling from her hands. 'The trains couldn't go any further than Yotsuya ... I walked here from Yotsuya. I had to come ... knowing this might be my last concert.'
...
Mari shook her head vigorously to get the hair out of her face, tucked the violin under her chin, leaned forward, bent her slender wrist sharply, and adjusted her bow.
From beneath that wrist the strains of Faure's Elegy began to pour out. Not a single cough came from the audience. The tired, begrimed patrons closed their eyes and listened to the music, absorbed in their own private thoughts and individual griefs. ... (p. 156)


To continue ...

[Diana · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a collection of Shusaku Endo's short stories and I found some good, while others seemed like the author's "preparation" or "drafts of ideas" for his major works to come, including Silence and When I Whistle.

The Day Before [1963] by Shusaku Endo - ★★★1/2

In The Day Before, there are two concurrent narratives: one, in which there are Christian persecutions ongoing in Japan, and in another, a man is preparing for an operation that is likely to end his life. The man reflects on the episodes from the Bible, especially on the relationship between Jesus Christ and Judas. As in Silence, we are shown the plight of nine prisoners who refuse to apostatise and are systematically subjected to both psychological and physical torture. However, in their midst, there was also one traitor who later "regretted" his apostasy. Now, nearing the dangerous operation, the narrator is forced to reflect on the man's inherent duality and on the contradictory forces of good and strength, on the one hand, and evil and weakness, on the other, in humanity. Though the narrator strives to see one famous fumie before his operation, he is also bemused and "won over" by a seller who tries to sell him indecent pictures just prior to what are probably his final hours.

[Dhanaraj Rajan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Four and Half Stars.

The more I read Endo, the more I love him. As I had said in my review for Endo's another collection of short stories (The Final Martyrs), many of Endo's stories are his well developed novels in a nutshell form. For a regular Endo reader, there will be repetitions. But they do not exhaust you. You love to read the again and again.

This collection also contains stories which have been developed fully well by Endo in his famous novels (Silence, When I Whistle). But you also get a different shade of a character or a kind of background to a characters that appeared in these novels.

The other thing which I enjoy most in Endo's stories are his own struggle to understand and to accept a foreign religion (Catholicism) as his own. For a Japanese, Christianity offered a completely a different picture. It was reeking of everything which is non-Japanese/Western/foreign. But Endo was baptized and raised a Catholic from his boyhood days. He remained a Catholic. But whole his life he had a feeling whether he was truly a Catholic or just a nominal Catholic.

How to understand his half hearted/disinterested adherence to Catholic practices. Was it a sham? No. It can not be a sham. If it was a sham he would have given it up as a young man or a mature man in his forties. But he kept practicing it. So, how does he understand his adherence to Christianity? He searches for the answers in the stories. He knows there is a truth and he doubts the presentation of Christianity in Japan may be at fault. It was presented as a Western import and was not allowed to be presented in Japanese painting.

There is another interesting question about faith in the face of persecution (physical suffering). This is the themes also in his famous novel Silence. This theme appears in many of the short stories. And they are all very moving. If a person for the fear of physical pain abandons the faith, can he/she be judged? What if the person repents later and lives in utter shame asking only for the mercy of God for his/her act? If Jesus can forgive Peter for rejecting Him, why cannot we be more lenient in judging such people.

As a student of missiology in an Asian country, Endo's words in his novels and short stories appear as missiological pieces. They definitely add interesting details to the present trends in the missiological discussions, specially in the area of Religious Dialogue and Theology of Inculturation. These have appeared in full blown manner in his last novel, Deep River.

[Darryl · Rating 3 out of 5]

Stained Glass Elegies is a compilation of 11 short stories that Endo wrote between 1959 and 1977, which were largely taken from his earlier short story collections Aika (Elegies) and Juichi no iro garasu (Eleven Stained-Glass Segments). Most of the stories touch on Endo's main themes: chronic illness and death; the indifference and paternalism that patients in the modern hospital are afforded; the effect of barbarism and imperialism on Catholics in feudal and wartime Japan; and the internal struggles of Japanese Catholics, who attempt to reconcile Western religious beliefs in a cultural tradition that is seemingly at odds with it.

Many of the stories, unfortunately, are uneven, repetitive and inferior to the two Endo novels I've read so far, The Sea and Poison and Volcano. The main character of several of the stories was Suguro, which also made subsequent stories more difficult (is this the same Suguro as the one two stories past?). The best stories are A Forty-Year-Old Man (1964), in which (you guessed it) Suguro is a hospitalized invalid with tuberculosis, who faces his own mortality and irrelevance as he undergoes a third major operation which may claim his life; Incredible Voyage (1968), a science fiction tale based on the 1960s American television series Fantastic Voyage, which concerns a newly minted doctor and a team of surgeons, who board a submarine that is shrunken to the size of a flea, in order to perform a life saving operation on a beautiful young woman; and Unzen (1965), in which a tourist from Tokyo visits the site where thousands of Christians were tortured and killed during the 17th century Shimbara Rebellion, which centers on Kichijiro, the main character of Endo's most famous and highly regarded novel Silence.

Although Stained Glass Elegies could be considered a good introduction, I would not recommend it to the reader who has not read Endo before. Those who wish to focus on Endo's works may wish to purchase it, but I suspect that those readers, and novices to Endo, will be better served by reading his translated novels instead.

[Harooon · Rating 4 out of 5]

Shūsaku Endō is a Catholic Japanese writer. The stories of his which have been collected in Stained Glass Elegies and translated by Van C. Gessel circle around a few repeated themes of guilt, grief, weakness, martyrdom, and faith. And then there’s Incredible Voyage. We’ll get to that later.

Christianity arrived in Japan with Francis Xavier in the 16th century. Several warlords converted, including Sōrin Ōtomo, the most influential warlord in Kyūshū. Some were drawn by the religion’s message, others simply sought to foster close bonds with the strangers who had guns and technology to trade.

It soon became apparent that Christianity was a threat to the shogun’s political power. Mistreatment of Christians led to an uprising at Shimabara, which was put down brutally, with tens of thousands of Christians executed. The religion became illegal on pain of death, a decree that was not overturned until the 19th century.

As a Catholic in a land historically hostile to Catholicism, Endō’s characters arrive at their faith through weakness. They are marginalised, despised, and suspected. Like the first Christians, who scurried around the catacombs of Rome, they live maligned, misunderstood lives in the shadow of society, in a continent that rejects their faith as inauthentic and foreign.

After Shimabara, those suspected of Christianity were sent to Nagasaki, where they were made to tread on a fumi-e, a brass or bronze engraving of Jesus or Mary. Anyone who hesitated was taken prisoner. They were tortured, and if they did not renounce their beliefs, martyred. When you see photos of these icons, you can see the face of Jesus has been rubbed off entirely from the thousands of feet that have trodden on it.

Endō imagines this situation in The Day Before. A group of Christians are languishing in prison. One of their own, Tōgōro, has apostatised, but, feeling guilty, continues to reappear in a number of guises to watch their ordeals. Yet he is never strong enough to rejoin his brothers. Some children from the village are brought into the cell next to them, but they discover this is just part of the torture; one prisoner, peering into their cell, discovers “two emaciated boys catching dragonflies and stuffing them into their mouths.” (74)

Those who, like Tōgōro, either stood on the fumi-e or renounced their belief, were able to return home. But they were wracked with guilt for their actions. They continued to practice their beliefs in secret, baptising their children with Portuguese names and praying in secret. They were called the Kakure Kirishitans. They lived in remote towns isolated from the rest of Japan. When Christianity became legal again in the Meiji period, thousands of them broke their silence to rejoin the Catholic church.

But not all. Some carried on their secret beliefs, and in Mothers, the narrator travels to one of the remote islands in which the Kakure have carried on this mysterious lineage. The locals despise them for their illiteracy, secrecy, and superstition, but the Kakure continue to live simple, pious lives, venerating the martyrs of medieval Japan whom they betrayed, and praying to icons of Mary.

Interwoven with this story is that of the narrator’s mother. After her husband abandons the family, she turns to Christianity. The narrator cannot grasp her decision: “I truly could not understand why my mother believed in such a religion. The words of the priest, the stories in the Bible, the crucifix – they all seemed like intangible happenings from a past that had nothing to do with us.” (120)

Struggling to balance the love for his mother with the contempt in which he holds her belief, the narrator’s relationship with her grows somewhat strained. He steals money and defies her by continuing to hang out with a friend of his, a local troublemaker whose family runs a brothel.

While out one night, a message arrives. His mother has had a heart attack. The boy rushes home, but his mother is already dead. He is stricken with grief, not only for his mother’s death, but for his lack of filial piety: “No one turned to look at me; no one spoke a word to me. I knew from the stiffness of their backs that they all were condemning me.” (125)

Meanwhile, in the present day, as he is led to the house of a Kakure, he ponders on their curious beliefs. The Kakure, wrought with survivor’s guilt for abandoning the Shimabara martyrs, ask above all for mercy: mercy for lacking the strength to uphold their faith, and mercy for turning away from Jesus. They practice scourging (flogging themselves with whips) and chant Christian prayers that have merged with Buddhist chants:

The humiliation and anxiety of a traitor does not simply evaporate. The relentless gaze of their martyred comrades and the missionaries who had guided them continued to torment them from afar. No matter how diligently they tried, they could not be rid of those accusing eyes. Their prayers are therefore unlike the awkwardly translated Catholic invocations of the present day; rather they are filled with faltering expressions of grief and phrases imploring forgiveness. These prayers, uttered from the stammering mouths of illiterate kakure, all sprang from the midst of their humiliation. (128-9)

The narrator realises that the Mary whom the Kakure ask to intercede at the moment of death has merged with the Buddhist mother goddess of mercy, Kannon. This helps the narrator connect the guilt he feels for his mother’s death with that of the believer who does not live up to the example of Jesus. As he leaves the village, he walks side-by-side with the Kakure. The village guide goes on ahead of them, his back “stiff” and turned on the narrator and the Kakure. They, in their weakness, have found redemption through Christ.

Another story of martyrdom, that of Maximilian Kolbe, is re-imagined in Fuda-no-Tsujii. The narrator recounts a man he knew in his student days in the late 1930s, a “foreign monk” that no-one really knew or liked. They called him “Mouse” because he was small and meek. As the world marches to war, foreigners come under suspicion and scrutiny. The students despise Mouse and make a victim of him.

The narrator also looks down on Mouse, but after Mouse witnesses him being beaten up by the military police, the two seem linked in some inextricable way by their weakness. They cross paths again at a gathering of a local Christian Research Association, which the narrator attends not out of faith, but simply “a desire to escape the increasing oppressiveness of student life and the mounting bloodthirstiness of the world outside.” (62)

After hearing a talk about the martyrs of Fuda-no-Tsuji in 1623, Mouse asks the narrator if he can lead him there. The narrator, somewhat tongue-twisted in his disgust at Mouse, somehow finds himself obliging. As they arrive at the spot, Mouse reflects in silence. The man, recognising those martyrs had died on the spot he is standing, starts to be moved. He quickly shuts it out by turning his thoughts against Mouse again: “You couldn’t do what they did. I might be worthless myself, but there’s no way you could do it, either.” (66).

In the present day, reminiscing with friends about the past, the narrator learns what became of Mouse. After returning to Europe he wound up at Dachau during the war. When a fellow prisoner was sentenced to death by starvation, Mouse offered to die in his place. This time, the narrator cannot help but be moved by Mouse’s faith:

The realization that Mouse had been in such a place filled the man with wonderment. And if, in fact, Mouse had died for a friend – for love – then that was not a tale from the long-gone days of the Edo period, but an incident that commanded a place in the man’s own heart. Who or what had effected such a change in Mouse? Who or what had carried Mouse to such a distant point? (68)

All of the stories I’ve talked about so far have focused on faith. Many of them also involve—or reflect upon—the narrator’s having been in hospital for several years and undergoing a major, life-changing surgery. Endō himself was apparently often sick. He had pleurisy, tuberculosis, and scoliosis. Part of his lungs and several ribs had to be removed.

Yet even as his characters reflect on their misery, trying to obscure their weaknesses and the bullying they face by projecting their oppression onto others, Endō has a mischievous sense of humour that also comes out here and there. That’s the case in The Day Before, where the starving Christians, being marched around between different forms of torture, continue to point out various figures in shambolic disguises here and there, which turn out to be the apostate Tōgōro, repeatedly trying and failing to confront his shame. “Hey, there he is!”

As if to drive home that Endō really does have this playful side to him, Gessel has included, among all these tales of sickness and martyrdom, one of the silliest stories I have ever read. Incredible Voyage is based on a 1966 American Science Fiction movie. It is the future, and the ability to shrink people has revolutionised the way surgery is done; now, an expedition shrinks themself, enters the patient inside a miniature submarine, and performs the procedure from within.

Bontarō, a young physician, is in love with Sayuri, the sister of his friend Gōichi. She is coughing up blood. A preliminary examination shows that “the mucosa between the heart and lungs had been attacked by cancer.” (83) Unbeknown to Sayuri, Bontarō manoeuvres himself onto the four-man expedition, led by Gōichi, to cut out the cancer from inside Sayuri:

They had arrived at the spot where they would be injected into her body. As far as they could see the area was thickly overgrown with appeared to be reeds withered by the cold of winter; this was in fact the down growth of hair on the surface of her skin. Although he had already participated in twenty intravenous operations, on this occasion Bontarō was deeply moved. Ah, so this is Sayuri’s skin! (87)

Bontarō is in boyish wonder that, hidden out of sight, lying within the girl he loves, are the same organs that everyone else has. A cluster of red blood cells flies overhead. The team get down to cutting out the cancer-cells, and finish up two hours later. But after a celebratory drink of mini-whisky goes too far, Bontarō drunkenly misses the turn-off back to the extraction point, and the submarine is swept down to the large intestine. They are unable to turn back because of the “air pressure”.

The crew are racing against the clock. They need to escape Sayuri before she wakes up. A plan is devised to exit through the digestive system, but it turns out that Sayuri did not relieve herself before the operation like she was supposed to. In desperation, the crew exits the submarine and starts cutting their way through Sayuri’s stool while fighting off threadworms. To finally propel their submarine out the bum, they irritate the wall of... wherever they are, and are finally swept out on a gust of wind (gross).

Bontarō is still somewhat disgusted and embarrassed by the whole thing when he runs into Sayuri a few days later. His involvement in the surgery is still unknown, and he makes up an excuse for the bruises and injuries he sustained during it. Sayuri tells him to be careful, a bit of the boyish enchantment returns: “Despite it all, he thought she was beautiful. He knew he loved her. In the end love had won out over physiology.” (95)

An engrossing collection, for sure. The best stories are those which deal with guilt, pain, and humiliation. But—maybe it’s childish—a little toilet humour, a little giggle helps reset us between the serious stories. As well as belief, one needs relief. I’m glad Gessel showed us Endō, the other Endō , the silly Endō, the one who writes about fighting threadworms in women.

You can read this review and others on my blog.

[Heather · Rating 3 out of 5]

Endo writes vividly about the history of Christian martyrdom in Japan and his own personal experience of the pain of middle life in this short story collection.

While I love Endo's writing, I liked some of the stories in this anthology more than others. Since most of them were autobiographical, they became repetitive, especially where Endo's stay in the hospital and several lung surgeries were concerned.

The ones I enjoyed the most were "Despicable Bastard," in which a man goes along with his supposedly Christian companions to a leper hospital during WWII and experiences the shame of his discomfort with the lepers, along with his fear of physical pain; "Fuda-no-Tsuji," in which a man reflects on a teacher he knew earlier in life whom none of the students respected, but who ended up sacrificing his life to save another's during the Holocaust; "Mothers," in which Endo explores his own relationship with his mother alongside a trip to visit some kakure Christians, descendants of 17th century apostates who worship the Virgin Mary; and "The War Generation," in which a man reflects on a concert he attended in Tokyo during the firebombing and how he must carry these hidden memories in his normal, everyday life.

I'm especially interested in Endo's views on weakness--how so many of us struggle with wanting to do the right thing, yet are too selfish or afraid. A lot of his stories reflect that struggle, and also the forgiveness and freedom from guilt that God offers those of us who fail in it at any given time. It's a very human struggle and it's part of what makes his novel Silence so powerful to me.

[Othy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow! What an amazing collection. Not all of these are great, but the majority are spectacular views into the lives and hearts of people who suffer or struggle. Endo has such a compassionate heart and style, pulling even the most miniscule moments of grace from even the most cowardly people. Many of these stories are retrospective or put two different stories next to one another so that their themes can resonate. There is even a science fiction story, though this one didn't seem very successful to me, alas. All in all, a tremendous collection!

[M. Jundurrahmaan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Favorites: Unzen, Old Friends, War Generation, Mothers, A Forty Year-Old Man

Least Favorite: Incredible Journey

Now let's talk about this.

By far, it's my first read on Endo, and I was surprisingly appalled by the quality of his words, somehow washed clean from my memories about Kawabata and Mishima. It's also a little bit Western, but predominantly Japanese with the perspective pitched on stories about one's spirituality in the modern world. Though he strikes close to Kawabata, he's a lot more compact--maybe cringy at a few points (like on Incredible Journey), but were enduring enough to the point where you wouldn't feel he's actually trying to be one.

I've read a review here that you wouldn't have a good start on him if you read this one first, but as more compressed than his other works, Stained Glass Elegies is a lot more like a personalized reform of the Bible to the point where it'll usually hits home.

[Anna Rose · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sadness and regret without hopelessness.

[Christina Pan · Rating 4 out of 5]

beautiful prose, he writes like he manicures and shaves his beard if he had one every morning, everything is clean and styled to precision. wish he explained catholicism more

[Nelson · Rating 3 out of 5]

They say write what you know—and despite being culled from two different short story collections, on the evidence here, Endō's writing is overwhelmingly autobiographical. The stories here tend to fall into two kinds: those dealing with a man coping with an extended hospital stay for a lung problem (as Endō had to endure) or those dealing with a man thinking back over his Catholic youth and how it relates to the experience of Christian martyrs in Japan in an earlier era. So while the stories hold together well, there is also a fair amount of thematic repetition. The air of regret and mild remorse seems to be a consistent element in all the tales. Perhaps the most memorable tale (a hospital story) is an apparently comic one, about a future (2005) operation where a young surgeon in love with a beautiful cancerous patient is part of a team shrunk down (like you do in 2005) to operate on her tumor. It's funny and quite quite strange because, unlike the film Fantastic Voyage, our heroes escape not through a tear weeping from an eye duct but from an altogether less noble aperture. Though everything comes out okay in the end, it's hard to know how to take this story of a besotted young man seeing his love up close. Of the other stories, perhaps the strongest are the opener "A Forty-Year Old Man" and "Mothers." The first tale describes the regret and guilt and quiet desperation of a man in hospital for a lung operation, visited by his wife, his sister-in-law (with whom he has had an affair) and her bored husband. Almost nothing is said and yet everything is communicated. Here, as in another story ("Retreating Figures") a key symbolic role is played by a talking bird the narrator receives. "Mothers" is altogether the finest linking of the themes of past regret (in this case, of the narrator, a cool convert, toward his devout mother) and present interest (the narrator, a novelist of Catholic Japan, visiting a remote island with bizarre outlier Catholics called kakure—reviled even by Japanese Catholics). The two narratives are twinned far more expertly than in some of the other stories, coming to fruition finally in the faded, amateurish image of a madonna in the home of the leader of the kakure. In some of the stories, the shifts between past and present and between the different temporal registers of remembered events seems clumsily and confusingly handled (perhaps a translation issue?). In the best tales, there is a crystalline clarity between past and present, which lends great power to Endō's themes. Recommended more for those already familiar with the novelist's work—newcomers might find the tales' obsessive and repetitive reworkings of Endō's favorite topics tedious.

[Nathan Marone]

It shouldn't be too much of a surprise, I guess, but Endo is truly obsessed with the idea of martyrdom in these 11 short stories. Thematically it gets old quickly. Every other story involves someone in a hospital thinking about martyrdom, someone doing research on martyrdom, or someone visiting Christian/Pagan sects who have sequestered themselves on remote Japanese islands. His interest in the body, its physical limits and sacramental tangibility would be natural for a Catholic. To that end, I found Stained Glass Elegies insightful in a way I don't expect much Protestant literature to do. But when Endo moves away from the topic he can be just as adept at spinning wildly imaginative yarns.

Favorite story - "Incredible Journey." It takes place in 2005, a time in which doctors do not operate on patients from outside the body, but instead are shrunk down to microscopic levels and then injected into the patient where they move around the body in a submarine sorta thing.

[Novia · Rating 1 out of 5]

I couldn't finish it :(

[Brownshoebrian · Rating 3 out of 5]

Sad stuff.

[Karen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Subtle short stories which have links to a lot of Endo's other writings and themes explored more fully in his novels

[Stephen Rowland · Rating 2 out of 5]

A rather mediocre, repetitive collection. If you wish to read 'Silence' 10 more times, have a blast.

[Scott · Rating 5 out of 5]

Endo is one of the post-WWII Japanese authors, like Yukio Mishima or Kenzaburo Oe, who was both prolific and widely translated. The stories in this volume are highly autobiographical. Endo was Catholic, experienced the war while attending university in Tokyo and then working in a munitions factory, and in the 1950s and 1960s suffered severe health problems, spending three years in hospital. Catholicism, war, and illness are the three subjects that dominate the stories. To a somewhat lesser degree, themes of childhood, family, and cowardice filter through the stories. Many, but not all, have a protagonist/narrator named Saguro, who is a writer, clearly a doppelganger for Endo himself.
The stories focused on Catholicism are the most interesting in the volume. Some are the results of pilgrimages, where the protagonist visits important cites for Catholics in Japan. Portuguese Catholics arrived in Japan in 1549, but during the Edo period(1603 to 1868) Japan closed itself off to the west, and Catholics, either foreigners or Japanese converts, were often imprisoned, abused, tortured, or murdered. In the pilgrimage stories–really travel narratives–the protagonist goes to notorious locations where Catholics were persecuted and made to suffer painfully simply for being Catholic. These stories are in part detailed history lessons about particular moments and places in Japan’s past. The horror of these places–prisons, torture chambers, killing grounds–are countered by contemporary moments when those places have become banal and quotidian and the horror has been forgotten or erased. As Basho does in "The Narrow Road to the Deep North" when he uncovers signs of Japan’s violent history in his perambulation through the beautiful countryside, so does Endo manifest the violence committed against Catholics in what seems to be initially a pleasant travelog.
The second set of stories are about the conditions, deprivations, and bombings during the war. They remind me of Kenzaburo Oe’s novel "Teach us to Outgrow our Madness." In WWII, when Japan once again did not trust western culture, Endo’s experiences in Catholic schools and churches seems to resonate with what happened during the Edo Period: that is, military officials assigned to oversee Catholic institutions during the war would harass and beat students, teachers, and priests, because they were seen as dangerous outsiders or foreign agents.
Correlative to both the war and historical stories is the theme of cowardice/bravery: Catholics who simply took the abuse dished out by Japanese culture and did not recant their conversion (bravery) or those who under threat of violence recanted (cowardice). There was a third set who recanted but continued to practice Catholicism in secret or in a modified, hybrid form (cowardice and bravery?). Endo links historical oppression with WWII Japan and the Holocaust, making the point that violent cultural intolerance is an existential state of being.
The existential threat to life is also what makes sense of the illness and hospitalization stories, except that that threat, rather than coming from larger historical and cultural sources, comes from the individual’s body. The threat to life and limb is a constant in Endo’s experience. Even in hospitals, which are places of repair and recovery, the existential threat remains. Endo acknowledges those who don’t survive: how their bodies, history, and war–circumstances out of their control–turned against them. But he spends more time wondering at how–or even just that–people survive against all the odds–bodily, historically, culturally– stacked against them. Endo does not celebrate survival, because he is too exhausted by his body, the war, and history to do much more than gently muse. What I find most interesting about the book is the lack of heroics and the celebration of heroism and Endo’s turn toward weakness and simply surviving as values and choices (when choices can be made) worth being cognizant of.

[Dany · Rating 5 out of 5]

I still don 't know what life means, what it means to be a human being. I'm idle and I'm lazy, and I go on deceiving myself, but, if nothing else, I have finally learned that when one person comes in contact with another, it is no simple encounter-there is always some sort of scar left behind. (A Forty Year Old Man)

To bear his burden, he had needed some sense of meaning in his life. Or rather, he had accepted his life because it had meaning. (My Belongings)

Although rationally he had always known this, until now he had not sensed the tangible reality of it all. But here it was right before his very eyes. (Incredible Voyage)

In the ten years he had been writing fiction, Suguro had grown increasingly impatient with those modern novelists who tried to single out the egotism and pride in every act of man. To Suguro's mind, such a view of humanity entailed the loss of something of consummate value, like water poured through a sieve. (Unzen)

The apostate endures a pain none of you can comprehend. (Unzen)

The main reason I said nothing to her, however, was my distasteful realization that the firm bonds between my mother and myself- stronger than even I had suspected- continued to link us some twenty years after her death, even in my dreams. (Mothers)

I thought of the Christians who had been hurled into these waters four centuries before. If I had been born in such a time, I would not have had the strength to endure such a punishment. Suddenly I thought of my mother. (Mothers)

In the depths of my heart lurks a desire not to be disturbed even by those who are close to me. I make my way down the path. (Mothers)

Sometimes I catch a glimpse of myself in these kakure, people who have had to lead lives of duplicity, lying to the world and never revealing their true feelings to anyone. (Mothers)

One bespectacled boy was having trouble catching the balls flung at him by a chubby little fellow. His awkwardness made me think of my own youth. It had taken me until I was this old to realize that, at some time or other in their lives, people all taste the same sorrows and trials. Who could say that this boy was not experiencing the same grief I had felt forty years before? (Old Friends)

I only feel pain in the winter when it is cold. When spring comes, I am fine again. That is the way it always is. (Old Friends)

[Rasmus Tillander · Rating 4 out of 5]

Novelleja uskosta, siitä luopumisesta, kunniasta ja sairaudesta.

Shūsaku Endōn novellikokoelma Stained Glass Elegies tarjosi kiinnostavan näkökulman japanilaiseen katolilaisuuteen ja ylipäätänsä elämään toisen maailmansodan aikana ja jälkeen. Pitkälti omaelämänkerrallisissa teksteissä vietetään aikaa sairaalassa, muistellaan työtä lentokonetehtaassa lukiolaisena ja käydään läpi japanilaisten marttyyrien tarinoita. Hämmentävän poikkeuksen näihin luo novelli "Incredible Journey", joka on julesvernemäinen tarina kutistussäteen avulla potilaisiinsa sisään menevistä lääkäreistä. Tällainen tekniikka on siis mahdollista vuonna 2005!

No, mutta sci-fi ei nyt varsinaisesti ollut tämän kokoelman parasta antia. Vaan elävät kuvaukset marttyyreista, epäuskosta ja uskon hylkäämisestä. Todella kiinnostavaa vähemmistöuskonnon itseymmärrystä ei-eurooppalaisesta näkökulmasta. Kokoelma oli inauksen toisteinen, mutta se ei minua juuri härinnyt.

Endō vakuutti. Vaitiolo menee ehdottomasti lukulistalle.

[Alec]

#4
'What a moron . . .' The man was standing to the side of the nettle patch, his body half concealed beneath his umbrella, relieving himself after holding back longer than he would have wished. He stole a glance at the monk. The trousers that covered those spindly legs were streaked with mud, and his fidgety movements were like a rodent's.

#10
He finished off his second bottle, and while he was debatting whether to order a third, the glass door of the restaurant opened with a clatter. In the artificial light the rain looked like needles. A tall, thin woman in a black raincoat, around fifty or so, came into the restaurant.

[Hans Otterson]

I read three of the stories in the this book before putting it down. They're fine, but they're a bit flat and understated. I've read Endo's Silence and liked it, so I know that's simply his style. Problem is, they're not grabbing me and shaking me, and I'm sort of in a phase where I only want to read fiction that grabs and shakes me.

(This is a part of the Shelf Love project: shorturl.at/dCRV9)

WoF

[Joe Natali · Rating 4 out of 5]

An excellent and compelling collection of short stories that allows the reader tremendous insight into Endo's religious thought. Themes that are fully developed in novels like "Silence" and "The Samurai" are present here, as well as less familiar themes, like the fear of death, and the existential malaise that seems to plague modernity.

[Jeff Hobbs]

Read so far:

*Forty-year-old man --
*Despicable bastard --
My belongings --
Fuda-no-Tsuji --
*The Day before --
*Incredible voyage --
Unzen --
Mothers --3
*Retreating figures --
War generation --
Old friends --

[Ahmed Hichem · Rating 4 out of 5]

I like these short stories, Endo's way of telling a story and trying to put kind of personal life touch in each story, I felt that I know more about Endo that before esp when he talked about his mum and his staying in the Hospital. Interesting read!!

[Matt★ · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Forty-Year-Old Man — 5
Despicable Bastard — 3
My Belongings — 4
Fuda-no-Tsuji — 5
The Day Before — 4
Incredible Journey — 1
Unzen — 4
Mothers — 4
Retreating Figures — 3
The War Generation — 5
Old Friends — 3

[Aaron · Rating 2 out of 5]

Endo's prose is too diffuse in these stories. No momentum. I continually found myself losing interest.

[Philip Chaffee · Rating 4 out of 5]

These are stories to savor, though given their heavy themes--death, trauma, cowardice, faith and sacrifice--it's a book to take your time with.

[AJ · Rating 5 out of 5]

a fantastic collection; Endō has a unique authorial voice that resonates deeply

[Bigmac McCarthy · Rating 4 out of 5]

At times beautiful and melancholy, but the most interesting part of this one was the author's background: Endo was a Japanese Catholic and wrote extensively about Christian persecution in Japan. He also had some extensive health issues that kept him in the hospital for years at a time, which he also saw fit to document in his stories. Read concurrently with Nine Stories by J.D. Salinger