Of all Japanese novelists, Shusaku Endo is the most accessible to Western readers. This is not merely because he spent many years in France and has obviously been influenced by a variety of European writers, but because he is also a Roman Catholic….

Whether we are Christians or not, a heritage of Christianity permeates all our thinking; but that heritage is wholly alien to all but a small section of the Japanese population.

Once again, in When I Whistle, Endo returns to the theme, already used by him in his masterly The Sea and Poison, of human vivisection. (p. 23)

The one flaw of the novel lies in the Iago-like character of Eiichi, whose evil is so calculated and complete that it is difficult to believe in him. Graham Greene, to whom critics like to compare Endo, would have shown some faint illumination of grace even in a heart...