Shusaku Endo’s Literature And Christianity

Shusaku Endo is a representative scholar of the Third Generation of post-world war two in Japan.Specializing in Christian, Endo, at the same time, was influenced by Christian culture in the childhood. Asa Catholic, He felt the contradiction between Catholic monotheism and Japanese pantheism.He made a series of positive exploration on both confrontation and integration between Japaneseculture and Western Christianity, while interpreting the traditional Christian theology in a Japanese way. Heis good at portraying the compassion towards the weak from the God’s point of view in his works. In hisearly novels The Scandal and The Samurai, Endo combined the Christian culture with oriental culturetogether, discussed the "sin" in Japanese consciousness, and defined Christian as "companions of the weak"and "maternal Jesus Christ" in his works. In his later novel Deep River, Endo was no longer adhere to thetraditional Christian monotheistic, then he continued to study the integration of Christianity and thecustoms in Japan. In Christian, God is separated from human, while Endo transformed an image of God towhich is easy to accept for Japanese. From that, Endo formed his unique view of religion.In the process of exploring different cultures, Endo also went deeply on the problem of sin andsalvation. In The Sea and The Poison focused on the "sin" of Japanese, which discussed in-depth of thereligious belief of japan. And thus lead to the problem of salvation. He combined the Japanese religion’spsychology, taken the sin and God’s forgiveness as a starting point, integrated the crime and punishment ofChristianity and Japanese culture. In addition, he paid full attentions on women, the female figures in hisworks is numerous and distinct, they are traditional Japanese women at the same time associated with themeaning of "salvation" in Christian culture, which reflects Endo’s view of religion--"maternal JesusChrist".Endo enriched the themes in Christian literature, involving psychology, gender, culture and otherfields, He combined the awareness of the life cycle in traditional Japanese religion and life and death ofChristian, with interpreting life and death penetratingly, he expressed the thinking of life. In addition, hisworks reflected the war, the Soul--Lost and much other content, which are full of Humanism significance,and revealed the ultimate meaning of religion and its value in modern society. Shusaku Endo’s literature has an obvious thread of development. From conflict to understanding,fusion, he expressed the thought of religious pluralism, which reflected a certain philosophical significance.His later thoughts tended to religious pluralism with researching on psychology, and taken the"unconscious" as the beginning of religious syncretism. Endo seeks the mutual understanding betweendifferent religions, emphasized the meaning of "save" in religious, reflected the profound significance ofreligious philosophy.Shuusaku Endo’s works are ingenious on the structure and with his various portraying methods,Endo’s writing style is unadorned、perceptual and with powerful tone. He was good at using symbol andmetaphor. He took the things and colors which are full of Japanese cultural characteristics associated withChristian theme., which made his literature a unique and a high level artistry.This paper is started with Endo’novels, focusing on the most important two works of Endo--TheScandal, and Deep River. Combined his reviews, essays and other texts in religious literature，aiming atmaking a systematic combination on his literature, and trying to decipher the issues in his literary of thereligion from multiple perspectives, so as to achieve a preliminary understanding on Endo’s literature in aunified way of whole and partial, diachronic and synchronic.The paper is divided into four chapters,Chapter I, Shusaku Endo and Christianity, this chapter took the spread of Christianity in Modern Japanas a start, then briefly introduced Japanese modern Christian background and its influence on Japaneseliterature in modern times, and then made a simple introduction of Endo ’s creation activities.Chapter II, The Christian theme of Endo’s literature. This chapter discussed the important themes andperspectives in the Christian literature of Endo, which was divided into four sections "The existence andthe image of God ","Sin and Redemption ","female subject" and "Life and Death". Combining the novelsfrom The Scandal, The Sea and Poison, Deep River and other works to Japanese traditional culture, thenanalyzed the reasons and significances of the traditional themes of Christ Endo ’s novel which presented aunique situation.Chapter III, The Characteristics of Endo’s Christian literature. It is divided into four parts as"exploratory","humanity","religious pluralism" and "symbol and metaphor", to discuss Endo’s features ofnovels from the ideological content to artistic creation, ordering the creative activities of Endo’s literatureIV chronologically as well. In addition to analysis the ultimate concern of Endo’s works, and researching theart features of Endo from the internal novel.Chapter IV, The significance of Endo’s Christian literature. This chapter analyzed status and influencesin Japanese literature as well as the worldwide based on Shusaku Endo’s Literature.