![]() Interrupted Schooling Endo began studies just as war began between Japanese and Western powers. Thrown out of his father's house, Endo settled in a dormitory for Christian students. His father was angry when he learned his son had applied not to medical school but to the Department of Literature. When the time arrived for college entrance exams, though he was a poor student, Endo did well enough to be admitted into the prestigious, private Keio University in 1943. Rebelling against the influence of his deeply religious mother, Endo moved in with his father. At the age of eleven Endo could certainly not have been aware that his conversion to Christianity was an action directly opposing the growing nationalistic, jingoistic, and antiforeign trends that were reshaping Japan and moving the country toward war. Endo was baptized a Catholic in 1934.Äuring this time, social and economic policies in Japan were swiftly turning against the importation of foreign goods and foreign beliefs, and an impetus toward purging such alien artifacts and ritually cleansing the land through warfare was beginning. ![]() At her urging, her sons attended catechism class, which Endo agreed to do only after he learned that the foreign priest would provide candy. Endo's aunt was a devout Catholic, and at her encouragement his mother converted to Catholicism. Religious Conversion and Schooling When Endo was ten, his parents divorced, and his mother, Iku, returned to Japan with him and his brother, moving in with her sister's family in Kobe. One point of contention was Japanese control of the key South Manchurian Railroad.) (While Manchuria was a region in northeast China, international agreements sanctioned a Japanese presence there, which was resented by When he was quite young, his father, Tsunehisa Endo, a bank employee, was transferred to a branch office in Dalian, a city in Japanese-occupied Chinese Manchuria, and the boy moved there with his parents and older brother. Works in Biographical and Historical ContextÄ®arly Life in Manchuria Endo was born on March 27, 1923, in Tokyo, Japan. An internationally recognized novelist, Endo is considered one of the most influential and popular writers in postwar Japan. Since he began writing in 1955, he published more than 175 books, including forty-five novels and seventeen short-story collections, in addition to scores of volumes of essays, criticism, travel reminiscences, plays, and screenplays. Shusaku Endo was one of the most prolific novelists of postwar Japan.
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