was a Japanese author who wrote from the perspective of a Japanese Catholic. Internationally, he is known for his 1966 historical fiction novel Silence, which was adapted into a 2016 film of the same name by director Martin Scorsese. He was the laureate of several prestigious literary accolades, including the Akutagawa Prize and the Order of Culture, and was inducted into the Roman Catholic Order of St. Sylvester by Pope Paul VI.
Together with Junnosuke Yoshiyuki, Shà Âtarà  Yasuoka, Junzo Shono, Hiroyuki Agawa, Ayako Sono (also Catholic), and Shumon Miura, Endà  is categorized as part of the "Third Generation" (that is, the third major group of Japanese writers to appear after World War II).
Soon after Endà  was born in Tokyo in 1923, his family moved to Dairen, then part of the Kwantung Leased Territory in Manchuria. When his parents divorced in 1933, Endà Â's mother brought him back to Japan to live with an aunt in Kobe. Endà  was baptized as a Catholic at the age of 11 or 12 in 1934. Some say this was brought on by his mother, who had converted to Catholicism after her divorce, while others state the aunt instigated the initiation.
Endà  first attended Waseda University for the stated purpose of studying medicine, but later decided to switch to the literature programme at Keio University. His studies were interrupted by the war, during which he worked in a munitions factory and also contributed to literary journals. In 1968, he would later become chief editor of one of these, the prestigious Mita Bungaku.
Endà  was among the first Japanese university students to study in France. His studies at the University of Lyon over the 1950âÂÂ1953 period deepened his interest in and knowledge of modern French Catholic authors, who were to become a major influence on his own writing.
Upon his return to Japan, his success as a writer was almost immediate. In 1954, a year after completing his studies in France, he won the Akutagawa Prize for Shiroi Hito (White Men).
Endà  married Okada Junko in 1955. They had one son, Ryà «nosuke, born in 1956.
Endà  lectured at at least two Tokyo universities. In 1956, he was hired as an instructor at Sophia University, and Seijo University assigned him the role of "Lecturer on the Theory of the Novel" in 1967. He was considered a novelist not a university professor, however.
Throughout his life bouts of disease plagued him, and he spent two years in hospital at one point. In 1952, while studying in France, he came down with pleurisy in Paris. A return visit in 1960 prompted another case of the same disease, and he stayed in hospital (in France and Japan) for the greater part of three years. Among other health problems, he contracted tuberculosis, underwent thoracoplasty, and had a lung removed.
While he lost the 1994 Nobel Prize in Literature to Kenzaburà  à Âe, he received the Order of Culture the subsequent year. Endà  died shortly thereafter from complications of hepatitis at Keio University Hospital in Tokyo on September 29, 1996.
While Endà  wrote in several genres, his oeuvre is strongly tied to Christianity. Endà  has been called "a novelist whose work has been dominated by a single theme ... belief in Christianity". Others have said that he is "almost by default ... [labeled] a 'Japanese Catholic author' struggling to 'plant the seeds of his adopted religion' in the 'mudswamp' of Japan". He often likened Japan to a swamp or fen. In the novel Silence, an official tells a priest who has apostatized, "Father, it was not by us that you were defeated, but by this mudswamp, Japan." In Endà Â's stage version of this story, The Golden Country, this official also says: "But the mudswamp too has its good points, if you will but give yourself up to its comfortable warmth. The teachings of Christ are like a flame. Like a flame they set a man on fire. But the tepid warmth of Japan will eventually nurture sleep." Thus, many of Endà Â's characters are allegories.
Some Christian critics have looked askance at Endà Â's worksâÂÂfor example, as portraying historical Japanese Christian martyrs in too negative a lightâÂÂbut others have embraced him, with positive assessments in Catholic and Christian journals and the award of an honorary degree from the Jesuit John Carroll UniversityâÂÂthe first the institution had ever bestowed upon an author.
While not the main focus of his works, a few of Endà Â's books mention Kakure Kirishitans (hidden Christians), though Endà  preferred to use the term instead of the more common . Some of his characters (many of whom are allegories) may reference non-Western religions.
His books reflect many of his childhood experiences, including the stigma of being an outsider, the experience of being a foreigner, the life of a hospital patient, and the struggle with tuberculosis. However, his books mainly deal with the moral fabric of life; most of his characters struggle with complex moral dilemmas, and their choices often produce mixed or tragic results.
His Catholic faith can be seen at some level in all of his books, and it is often a central feature. His work is often compared to that of Graham Greene, with whom he shared a mutual admiration: Greene himself labeled Endà  one of the finest writers alive, while it is reported that Endo would re-read Greene's novel The End of the Affair before beginning a new work of his own.
The , in Sotome, Nagasaki, is devoted to the writer's life and works.