The Samurai

Shusaku Endo’s The Samurai (1980) is a fictional account of a 17th-century diplomatic mission from Japan to “Nueva España,” or present-day Mexico, and then beyond to Spain and Rome. There’s a lot to this novel as it shifts between first- and third-person narrative, and from historical adventure to travel narrative, political drama and meditation on certain interpretations of faith and Christ.

It came as a surprise to me that Endo based the characters on actual historical figures. As Van C. Gessel, the book’s translator, points out in the postscript, “Endō’s novel, besides being a superbly crafted piece of fiction, is a valuable work of speculation.” A group of about one hundred Japanese, along with Spanish sailors, really did travel to what is now Central America and then crossed the Atlantic and met with Pope Paul V. But almost no documents about their journey exist today.

For Endo, this skeleton must’ve compelled him to provide the right flesh and blood. Through his prose it's clear he spent considerable time working out each detail and contemplating the intentions and motivations of the characters and countries in play. The story also explores missionary work as a precondition for international trade (for Catholics, not Protestants), the rivalry and animosity between Franciscans and Jesuits, the hardships of sea travel, and methods of torture and killing used in Japan to humiliate and terrify Christians. The novel is also interesting for its depiction of Luis Sotelo (the Franciscan friar on which one character is based) and Christianity in the Tohoku region.

As an aside, I found this amusing… An excerpt from a 1982 article by Julian Moynahan, writing about Endo and The Samurai for The New York Times:

“Shusaku Endo is modern Japan’s most distinguished Roman Catholic novelist. If that description makes you blink, consider that a cross-national survey of religious belief published in American newspapers within the past year reported that among the populations studied, the Japanese came last in the percentage of people expressing any belief in immortality or the survival of the soul after death. Another recent survey, comparing I.Q. averages among populations of some leading nations, Eastern and Western, places the Japanese at the very top. It would seem, then, that Mr. Endo has his work cut out for him. Willy-nilly, a great part of his primary readership will be extra-bright people who are either not religious at all or who profess attachment to a religion for the sake of social solidarity, tradition, ceremony or worldly advancement.”

Hasekura Rokuemon Tsunenaga, the samurai who sailed to Rome and met Pope Paul V in 1615.

The Big Clock

Directed by John Farrow and starring Ray Milland, Charles Laughton, Maureen O’Sullivan, and Rita Johnson, this 1948 noir is a combination of farce and thriller.

Victim of circumstance George Stroud (Milland) is sure to be accused of the murder we already know his despotic boss (Laughton) committed. Most of the film, which is based on a Kenneth Fearing novel, is set in and around the skyscraper headquarters of Laughton’s publishing empire, where Milland's in charge of a magazine focused on true crime. All he wants is a vacation with his wife and son, something he's had to put off time and again because Laughton is always shoveling more work at him. He decides to quit, and for some reason has a few drinks with Rita, Laughton's former girl. Then, drunk, he buys a painting and is given a green sundial. The next morning he wakes up in Rita's hotel room with a hangover. He leaves her (still alive) to catch up with his wife in West Virginia, but soon after arriving in Wheeling he gets a phone call. Something bad has happened, and he tells his wife he must return to the city to straighten something out.

Meanwhile, Rita has been bludgeoned to death by sundial. For the next half of the movie, George evades the cops and his colleagues, who are basically working with him to look for him because a few witnesses saw him and Rita together the night before. The Big Clock is a fast 95 minutes of fun noir. It's complex and twisty with witty references to time and a disdain for media moguls and the materialistic.

Confessions of a Mask

Yukio Mishima's Confessions of a Mask (仮面の告白, Kamen no Kokuhaku) was first published in 1949, following the 1948 release of his first novel, Thieves (盗賊, Tōzoku). Written while Mishima was in his 20s, it feels in many respects like a young man's autobiography. Kochan, the protagonist, examines his passions and violent fantasies as an introvert of weak constitution. His "mask" hides from society his true self as a homsexual and also serves to conceal himself from himself, a sort of defense or alter ego molded by his imagination to make him feel comfortable in his own skin. He takes this mask on his pursuit of a girl named Sonoko, and he falls in love with her, he believes. As the air raids on Tokyo grow fiercer, their tepid relationship somehow endures in spite of his inability to cast out his true desires.

The book meanders in a way you might expect from a young author's introspective first-person narrative. Mishima, a man of innumerable facets, shows yet another side here, which is honest and deeply personal. It's probably more worthwhile reading if you've read him before. Also, translator Meredith Weatherby's work is forceful and fluid, and a testament to the idea that translation is an artform in itself.