Sada leaned against the wall by the sink and closed his eyes. His eyes flashed the fish he had seen in the aquarium during the day today. For some reason, he felt that the fish and his wife were essentially the same... Ah, that fish is the essence of a woman who he has never discovered in his wife, who is neither a housewife nor a mother, Sada thought.
—— "Lamentations"
Author to Readers : Memories of Lamentations
| Shusaku Endo
From a certain period onwards, I developed the convention of publishing a purely literary novel every three or four years. The interval of three or four years is, for me, the preparation period and the storage period for the creation of long novels, and at the same time I have adopted the method of writing several short stories to explore long stories. I began to use this method myself during the period when I was ready to write a long novel with materials considered during my illness after a long period of hospitalization. I also learned about the history of the Catholic era during my illness, and although I did not consider what kind of material to use at all, after I was discharged from the hospital, I went to Nagasaki as soon as I was discharged, saw the tread paintings, and formed a theme in the later "Silence" in my mind.
The film "Silence" is based on the original author's director: Martin Scorsese
In order to make this long story take shape in my head, I decided to write a few short stories like planets orbiting the sun, and this is the "Lamentations" that has gathered those short stories into a book. So readers can think of Lamentations as a prelude to my Silence. Of course, not all of the works in Lamentations are written in the same era as Silence. Even it is made up of completely unrelated forms of interjection. However, the circumference of the circle has been shrinking and converging into the face of Jesus in "Silence". The short stories in Lamentations finally bear fruit on that face.
Recently, I was fascinated by the face of Jesus on the stepping painting that Nagasaki saw with my own eyes. The haggard face and sad eyes of Jesus, trampled and bruised by everyone, became the eyes of the nine birds, the eyes of the dogs, and the faces of the protagonist's wife in "Lamentations". The rhythm of the step painting in "Silence" is the rhythm of "Lamentations". No, because of the composition of Lamentations, I have always had the melody of Sezar Frank's Piano Concerto flowing in my heart, and it can be said that the melody gradually converged on the face of Jesus and then moved to Silence. Of course, I can admit this fact after some years of writing Lamentations and Silence. Sometimes, people find the hidden, invisible thread that connects their past lives and the group of works together. It is from this point of view that I am talking about Lamentations now. Therefore, I feel that I did not explicitly realize the above method when I wrote Lamentations, but created with the idea of constant exploration. I found this approach to suit myself, after writing Silence. If you hadn't written the short stories of Lamentations one by one, you wouldn't have created Silence, and you wouldn't have had The Shores of Death and The Life of Jesus.
Lately, I've been thinking about how to convey the image of Jesus as I understand it to Japanese readers who have a shallow christian connection. I did not directly let the image of Jesus appear in the work, but as mentioned above, projected its image on the dog, the bird of the nine houses, the wife who added firewood to the bathroom, and so on. However, when I read literary reviews in newspapers and other media, I found that critics only captured "dogs" and "nine-house birds", and the extremely depressed mood at that time is still fresh in my memory.
The reason why I did not use indirect techniques in silence, but boldly and explicitly depicted the image of Jesus on the step painting, is from the above reasons. I also gained another lesson in creating Lamentations, which is that I finally understood how far I could travel as a novelist. The so-called driving distance refers to how many pages are most suitable for expressing what you think. As a result, I began to find that I was not a short story writer, but that between long and short stories, that is, the creation of novellas, was the most powerful thing for me. Including this meaning, it can be said that "Lamentations" was an important work in my growth as a novelist.
This article is excerpted from the novel collection Lamentations
Author: [Japanese] Shusaku Endo
Publisher: Nanjing University Publishing Co., Ltd.
Exhibiting: Nanjing University Publisher and Guardian
Translator: Zhao Zhongming
Published: 2018-6
Shusaku Endo (1923–1996)
Famous Japanese writer. Born into a Catholic family, he lived with his family in Dalian, China as a child, converted to Catholicism at a young age, and studied in France in his youth. In his early years, Shusaku Endo was in a vulnerable position both at home and at school. Therefore, it is natural to pay attention to groups that are equally vulnerable as themselves. Shusaku Endo's memories before entering the Faculty of Literature at Keio University are filled with failure and pain. After entering the university to fully contact the world of literature, Shusaku Endo finally found the direction of life and began to fight for it. But the day did not go according to people's wishes, because of his weak physique, he began a long-term hospital life. Therefore, Shusaku Endo especially understood the vulnerable groups who endured physical and mental hardships, and Inoue put his care for the vulnerable groups into practical action, and carried out a series of social activities such as the "Warm Hospital" campaign. Shusaku Endo showed great concern for betrayers like Judas, who was spurned by the world in the Bible.
Translator: Zhao Zhongming
Graduated from the Department of Chinese of Beijing Normal University, he went to Japan to study Buddhism. He is now teaching at the School of Foreign Chinese of Nanjing University. His major translations include: A History of Japanese Culture (by Ieaga Saburo), Folk Religion in Japan (by Miyake Jun), Fairy Tale Psychology (by Hayabusa Kawai), The Heart of Brutus (by Keigo Higashino), Mr. Sleepy (by Shizuku Ijiin), Drifting Paper Dolls (by Kitamura Fumizu), and Deeper Than the Sea (by Kazumi Kore-eda)
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