Japan Book Review: The Samurai
by Endo Shusaku
ISBN: 978-1-80533-03-87
Pushkin Press, 1980
368 pp; paperback
Set in the same 1600s era as his more famous book Silence, author Endo Shusaku again weaves a riveting story based on historical people and events. Silence is the more famous of the two stories Endo wrote about Japan's "Christian Century" as it was later turned into a renowned movie by Martin Scorsese.
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| The Samurai |
This story focuses on two main characters. One is a low-ranking rural warrior, samurai Rokuemon Hasekura, and the other is Franciscan friar Father Velasco, who has spent some years proselytizing in Japan. Hasekura, the eponymous samurai who is docile and duty-bound, is plucked out of obscurity to travel to Nueva Espana (Mexico) to try to open trade with Mexico. He hopes that a successful mission will help his clan get back their ancestral lands which they lost while fighting on the losing side of a recent war. Velasco, who is overly impressed with his own piety, will do anything to help Japan become a Christian nation, and to be named bishop of Japan by the Pope. Yes, his motives are sometimes found to be less than pure.
The reader definitely doesn't have to be a follower of religious history, or really even Japanese history, to be captured by the story. Those that are such followers, might find the real-life complications between the Jesuit and the Franciscan Catholics interesting…and sad.
The samurai and Velasco, who is fluent in Japanese, are the first to set sail from Japan using Japan's untested shipbuilding capability. Both survive the trip, but others do not. Mexico fails to give either Hasekura or Velasco what they want, and their multi-year voyage continues.
As with most of his other books, Endo's writing engrosses the reader with its characters, whether those characters are sympathetic characters or not. The reader must get used to Endo switching between first- and third-person narratives, but will get the hang of it eventually.
There is a helpful and quite interesting seven-page postscript written by Van C. Gessel (the translator of the book from the original Japanese), which discusses how close Endo's characters are to real-life individuals. Don't pass over the postscript.
After a bit of a slow start, readers will be moved by the dilemmas, decisions and disappointments that the main characters (and pretty much all of the auxiliary characters) must deal with. The reader could easily feel sorry for perhaps every character in the book, but life was not easy for many people in 1600s Japan as it was transitioning into the Tokugawa shogunate.
While moving constantly between historical adventure, travel narrative, political drama and varying interpretations of faith, The Samurai is challenging, thought provoking and deep.
Review by Marshall Hughes, author of Rural Reflections.
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