My Review — The Samurai by Shūsaku Endō
THE JAPANESE NEVER LIVE THEIR LIVES AS INDIVIDUALS — FATHER VALENTE, MADRID.
I thoroughly enjoyed this book. I read other reviews that felt otherwise, but to me, it reminded me of when I first read the historical fiction sagas of Michener.
The background of the book is best described here from Tokyo Weekender — it recounts the story of Hasekura Rokuemon Tsunenaga, a samurai who sailed from Japan to Rome and met Pope Paul V in 1615.
This real-life, historical crossover goes back to 1613 when Tsunenaga’s father, Hasekura Tsunenari, was sentenced to death for corruption. Ordinarily in these kinds of circumstances, Tsunenaga would share his father’s fate to send a message to any other samurai who might even think about committing a crime. (Either that or the government didn’t want young samurai swearing revenge and becoming a Renaissance-era Japanese Batman.) However, Tsunenaga’s feudal lord and daimyo of Sendai, Date Masamune, decided to be merciful and give the disgraced samurai a chance to redeem himself by sending him on a diplomatic mission to Europe.
At the time, Japan was still trying to decide how they felt about the presence of Christianity in the country, but were leaning towards a begrudging acceptance of it as long as it didn’t interfere in…
