SOURCE: A review of The Final Martyrs, in Studies in Short Fiction, Vol. 31, No. 4, Fall, 1994, p. 712.

In the below review, Bosha discusses Endo's attempts to reconcile his Japanese and Catholic identities in The Final Martyrs.

The Final Martyrs is Shusaku Endo's second collection of stories to be translated into English by the capable Van C. Gessel. This new book provides the reader with a fresh opportunity to reassess the work of the now 71-year-old writer whom some have dubbed “the Japanese Graham Greene.”

The title story, which is the collection's earliest, dates back to 1959. Set early in the Meiji era in Uragami, near Nagasaki, and concerned with the government persecution of Japanese Christians, it is the book's only piece of historical fiction.

Endo provides graphic depiction of the dodoi torture the Japanese Christians endured, in which they were hoisted upon a cross and beaten while “their arms and...