As planned, I have finished Kiku’s Prayer and as expected, it was a rough ride. In the last half (third?) of the book, we see Kiku and Seikichi suffer unimaginable torture of body and spirit. Kiku, in a desperate attempt to relieve Seikichi’s actual torture, sells her body to bribe a corrupt official. Seikichi is going through physical and mental torture as the government officials try to persuade him to apostatise.

It occurred to me that Endo likes to explore the same themes. For him, the appeal of Christ is closely tied to the image of Christ as the suffering servant. Jesus came into the world to suffer (Endo’s theology is rather iffy at times) and he suffers with us, something that appeals to those who are suffering. Of course, the question of God’s silence in the midst of the suffering is the counterpoint to Christ bearing the shared load and the Japanese Christians experience both comfort and suffering during their torture – some of them carry on because they think Christ has suffered more and they can bear it, some cannot because they don’t understand why God doesn’t come in an relieve their pain.

I have to say, Endo paints a much more hopeful picture of the Japanese Christians this time. Some of them apostatise, yes, but not all. In a way, this differs from Silence, though like Silence we do have several “fallen Christian” characters. I’ll be reading that next, so it’s fun to compare how the two works are alike yet different.

As it turns out, this book was Endo’s love letter to Nagasaki. While he wasn’t from there, he was greatly attached to the place and that probably explains why he referenced the Nagasaki he knew so often in the novel. I also learnt that there’s a second novel written for Nagasaki, which I’ve not read and will have to read soon.