I figured that it’s been some time since I read something by Endo, so when I dropped by Library@Orchard, I decided to borrow the Samurai. A part of me regrets not finding this book earlier because it is such a powerful read (I really think Endo does amazing work when his stories are set in the Edo-period) and makes for a great companion to Silence.

In The Samurai, four samurai, their retainers, and a few merchants leave Japan to New Spain (aka Mexico). Their aim is to get trading rights with the West, with the promise of their ancestral lands being restored should they succeed. Accompanying them is a selfish priest named Velasco, who’s aim is to convert the group of Japanese and gain the title of Bishop of Japan.

It is pretty amazing that Endo managed to craft such a spell-binding book when the subject matter and the characters are so ugly. The priest Velasco, the men’s primary contact for Christianity, is greedy, ambitious, and grasping, hiding his lust for the title of Bishop behind empty words about his desire to see Japan become Christian. The samurai are passive men: apart from Nishi, the youngest, they spend the novel being uncomfortable and doing what they have to do for the mission. Yet despite all this, despite the ugliest side of Christianity being shown to them, one of the samurai, Hasekura, finds that he accepts this despised, rejected Christ that he spent most of the novel rejecting. [SPOILER] At the same time, Velasco is humbled and ends up as a pretty conventional martyr.

To me, it felt as though Hasekura was a stand-in of sorts for Endo. If you aren’t aware, Endo didn’t convert to Christianity willingly – he was baptised at eleven at his mother’s behest, and compared Christianity to an ill-fitting suit. I’m sure that the theme of Christianity being fundamentally incompatible with Japan, a theme that appears in The Samurai and even more prominently, in Silence, comes from these years of running away. But just as Endo found that he could not run away from Christianity and his attraction to Christ, Hasekura finds that after spending his entire journey rejecting the God that Velasco preaches, it is this despised and rejected figure that becomes precious to him. In essence, God is the one who has pursued Hasekura with doggedness and despite the odds, has reached him.

By the way, don’t take this as a praise to Christianity – Endo’s Christ is a suffering Christ and quite different from Christianity that was tied up with the expansion of Western powers. A portion of the book is spent in Mexico and Endo skilfully critiques the work of the missionaries there – the force they used to convert the natives and their hypocrisy in refusing to accept what they have done. It seems like Endo is suggesting that for Christianity to take root (especially in Japan), it must shed its image associated with the West.

On a somewhat related note, these issues of how Christianity should be spread (through trade/using trade as a lever or through force) reminded me that the same debates were taking place in China*. I haven’t seen any novels that cover the same themes in a Chinese context, but I was reminded that though Endo looks narrowly at Christianity in Japan and shows us his image of Christ, the same arguments have been taking place in other countries.

Overall, The Samurai is an uncomfortable but rewarding read. It’s doesn’t belong in the conventional “Christian fiction” section, which makes it a bit hard to categorise given its overt religious themes, but if you’re interested in the debates taking place around the localisation of Christianity and/or learning a bit about the history of Christianity in Japan through fiction, I highly recommend this book.

*As a parallel: Missionaries who came on the backs of opium – that is very much like how Velasco argued for trade to be used to convert Japan.