SOURCE: "Shusaku Endo Is Dead at 73; Japanese Catholic Novelist," in The New York Times, September 30, 1996, p. B8.

[In the following essay, Page gives a brief overview of Endo's career and the themes that consumed his work.]

Shusaku Endo, a leading Japanese novelist who wrote about faith and faithlessness, East and West, heritage and modernity, died yesterday at Keio University Hospital in Tokyo. He was 73 and lived in Tokyo.

The cause was complications of hepatitis, The Associated Press reported.

Mr. Endo was born in Tokyo and grew up partly in China. When he was 11, a Roman Catholic aunt persuaded him to be baptized. After World War II, during which ill health kept him out of the fighting, he attended Keio University and went to Lyons, France, to study French Catholic authors' writing. In time he was called modern Japan's most distinguished Catholic novelist.

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