Fuda no Tsuji
He remembered it whenever he got on a tramcar an essay by Nagai Kafu which he had read at school. Kafu wrote about getting on an antiquated-looking tramcar and riding to the end of the line, watching the passengers getting on and off and making up fantasies about the life of each. Nowadays he had little cause to be interested in books. Still, whenever he got on a tramcar, the essay would somehow come back to him.
Even in this wartime atmosphere there were still teachers and staff who wanted to preserve in some way or other―however modestly―the pre-war atmosphere of the University. One of the ways of doing so, one of the ways of displaying opposition, even if not openly, against the times was a gathering such as that which took place once a month in a small reading room of the library. It was the ‘Christian study group’ made up largely of majors in history.
In October of 1624 the authorities received information from an informer. On the basis of this they arrested a number of leading Christians concealed in Edo. They confined them to a prison at Kodenmacho. Two months later they led them together with two foreign priests from Muromachi through Kyobashi, Hamamatsucho and Mita to the place of execution at Fuda no Tsuji. There they were tied to fifty crosses and burned.
He passed Fuda no Tsuji on the street car that evening. For a moment he recalled the event of twenty years ago. He remembered it but with no special emotion.
Fuda no Tsuji first appeared in Shincho magazine in November 1963. As his streetcar nears Fuda no Tsuji (literally, Official Bulletin Board Crossroads), a middle-aged man in worn-out clothes on his way to a school reunion recalls coming near here with a much taunted, meek foreigner nicknamed ‘Mouse’ who worked at his Christian college during the war years two decades earlier. Mouse had asked the man to show him where 50 Christians were executed after a period of cruel imprisonment in 1623. At the reunion he learns that it might have been Mouse who, after returning to Germany, sacrificed himself for a comrade in the Dachau concentration camp. The man ponders “who or what” effected such a change in such a man, and how an event from hundreds of years ago suddenly seems relevant in his life. The story presented here is a kind of prototype or condensation of Endo’s literary world which extends to works such as Iesu no Shougai (A Life of Jesus) (1973) and Chinmoku (Silence) (1966), his representative work which boosted his fame onto the world stage. The author sought insight into human nature, wondering what weakness and strength mean from a religious perspective.
Endo Shusaku Literary Museum
Even in this wartime atmosphere there were still teachers and staff who wanted to preserve in some way or other―however modestly―the pre-war atmosphere of the University. One of the ways of doing so, one of the ways of displaying opposition, even if not openly, against the times was a gathering such as that which took place once a month in a small reading room of the library. It was the ‘Christian study group’ made up largely of majors in history.
In October of 1624 the authorities received information from an informer. On the basis of this they arrested a number of leading Christians concealed in Edo. They confined them to a prison at Kodenmacho. Two months later they led them together with two foreign priests from Muromachi through Kyobashi, Hamamatsucho and Mita to the place of execution at Fuda no Tsuji. There they were tied to fifty crosses and burned.
He passed Fuda no Tsuji on the street car that evening. For a moment he recalled the event of twenty years ago. He remembered it but with no special emotion.
Fuda no Tsuji first appeared in Shincho magazine in November 1963. As his streetcar nears Fuda no Tsuji (literally, Official Bulletin Board Crossroads), a middle-aged man in worn-out clothes on his way to a school reunion recalls coming near here with a much taunted, meek foreigner nicknamed ‘Mouse’ who worked at his Christian college during the war years two decades earlier. Mouse had asked the man to show him where 50 Christians were executed after a period of cruel imprisonment in 1623. At the reunion he learns that it might have been Mouse who, after returning to Germany, sacrificed himself for a comrade in the Dachau concentration camp. The man ponders “who or what” effected such a change in such a man, and how an event from hundreds of years ago suddenly seems relevant in his life. The story presented here is a kind of prototype or condensation of Endo’s literary world which extends to works such as Iesu no Shougai (A Life of Jesus) (1973) and Chinmoku (Silence) (1966), his representative work which boosted his fame onto the world stage. The author sought insight into human nature, wondering what weakness and strength mean from a religious perspective.
Endo Shusaku Literary Museum
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