Golden Country: A Play about Christian Martyrs in Japan

Shusaku Endo

Oca 2012 · Tuttle Publishing

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The events described in this exciting and provocative three-act play, a companion piece to Endo’s highly acclaimed novel Silence, take place in 1633, nearly a hundred years after Christianity was introduced into Japan. By this time, Japanese Christians were being cruelly persecuted by the government; every Christian searched out was made to apostatize or suffer a slow, agonizing death.

The central character of The Golden Country is Father Christopher Ferreira, a Portuguese Jesuit missionary. Given shelter by a Christian farming community, everyone looks to him for help, including one of his chief persecutors. When, after cruel torture, Father Ferriera apostatizes to the disbelief of his Japanese converts, the play reaches a climax that is later capped only by the courage, nobility and love of the martyrs. Father Francis Mathy’s detailed Introduction to this tightly constructed drama, which poses basic questions about the meaning of faith, love and fate, provides valuable historical background.

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Shusaku Endo was born in Tokyo in 1923 and, with his family, converted to Catholicism while he was still a child. Much of his writing centers on the conflict this conversion engendered as he struggled to develop faith in a deity foreign to Japanese culture. His writings also reflect on his experiences during World War II during the bombings and the subsequent shortage of basic human necessities for the Japanese people. He explores the suffering endured and the inevitable shock wave upon human relationships and the human psyche. Endo graduated from Keio University and then journeyed to France after the war to continue his studies, but was forced to return to Japan because of illness. After a period of convalescence Endo decided on a writing career, publishing his first novel, Shiroihito, in 1955. His novel The Samurai, published in the United States in 1996, is considered one of his finest works. His novel Silence, was made into a major motion picture and premiered in November 2016. Endo's reputation is due in part to his exploration of moral dilemma as it relates to divergent cultures. Endo has won many literary awards. In 1982 he was elected to the Japan Arts Academy. Shusaku Endo died in 1996.