Sachiko, by Endō Shūsaku ( chapter 2: Sachiko)

2 SACHIKO

E VE RY ONE SAID THAT Sachiko more closely resembled

her grandmother, Mitsu, than she did her own parents. It wasn’t just her face. Sometimes even her mother would nod appreciatively and whisper that something Sachiko had done was “Exactly like Granny!”

But Sachiko was never pleased by such comments. “Stop saying that I look like Granny!” She would puff out her cheeks in protest. “I’m not a wrinkly old woman!”

Sachiko’s family was Catholic, so instead of a Buddhist altar in their home, they had placed a crucifix on top of the dish cabinet in the parlor. Next to the crucifix was a photograph of her late grandfather and grandmother.

Her grand father was Okukawa KumazĎ, her grand mother Okukawa Mitsu. The photo had yellowed somewhat with age, but in the blurred image her grand father, dressed in a formal haori jacket, had an exceedingly somber look on his face, while Granny was looking out at the viewer with a bashful gaze.

“The older a person gets, the more their face starts looking the way it did when they were a child,” Sachiko’s father explained to her. “That’s why Granny’s face seems childlike.”

Sachiko’s memories of her grandmother Mitsu’s face were dim.

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She did remember that once, when they were living in Motofurukawa-machi, she had been sitting on Granny’s lap on the veranda, watching a puppy play. Mother had often said that Granny was the sort of person who couldn’t simply walk by when she saw some abandoned creature, be it a puppy or a kitten. “ There were times she’d sneak her own dinner to a stray cat,” Sachiko reminisced.

Curiously, the only stories Sachiko had heard from Granny that lingered in her memory were the ones she had related as Sachiko sat on her lap watching the frolicking puppy.

“I was about the same age you are now, Sachiko. In the Nakano district of Urakami, Kiku and I found a stray dog and brought it home, but our folks wouldn’t let us keep it, so we did the only thing we could do: Kiku and I secretly took care of the puppy.”

“Who was Kiku?”

Granny looked suddenly distressed and whispered as she looked at her granddaughter. “Kiku was my cousin, a few years older than me.”

“Wow, then she must be really old!”

“She’s not really old. A long time ago, Santa Maria at the Æura Church took Kiku to heaven.”

“The Santa Maria at the Æura Church?”

“That’s right. That Santa Maria.” Granny nodded forcefully, confidently, as she spoke.

Sachiko still clearly remembered that conversation with her grandmother. And every Sunday when she went to mass with her parents and brother at the Æura Church and saw that statue of the Blessed Mother to the right of the altar, she thought of that conversation.

One day she asked her mother, “Did you ever meet Kiku?”

“I didn’t,” her mother responded with a suspicious glance.

“Who told you about Kiku?”

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“Tell me about her.”

Sachiko couldn’t clearly remember when she had started pestering her mother to hear more about Kiku. But often at Sunday mass, as she knelt with her parents in prayer, she would gaze at the statue of the Blessed Mother and think about Kiku.

“I’ll tell you about Kiku once you’ve grown up,” her mother had told her.

“Why won’t you tell me now?” “ You’re still too young.”

A comment like that only fanned Sachiko’s curiosity. Granny had whispered to her that Santa Maria had taken Kiku to heaven.

What sort of bond had existed between Santa Maria and Kiku?

Those were the thoughts in Sachiko’s head as she gazed at the Blessed Mother, who nestled the Baby Jesus in her arms and looked down at Him with girlish, angelic eyes. The expression on the face of the Blessed Mother changed when viewed from different angles.

An innocent face. A startled face. A quizzical face. A joyful face. A lonely face.

When she mentioned to her mother, “That Blessed Mother has lots of different faces, doesn’t she?” her mother’s response was an indifferent “Oh, really?”

Their homeward route after mass took them down the slope from the church past the Amenomori Hospital. Sachiko liked walking this path. There was something in the atmosphere of this area that made it seem as though it wasn’t Japan, but instead some foreign land.

“The director of this hospital has a daughter who plays the piano extremely well,” her mother told Sachiko. Both of Sachiko’s parents were Catholic, and since childhood they, as Sachiko did now, had climbed this slope every Sunday to participate in the mass at the Æura Church. They were well acquainted with the history of the area.

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“One of the foreigners ran a hotel here. It was called the Cliff House Hotel. After she died, the residence was bought by Doctor Amenomori, who turned it into a hospital.”1 When Sachiko was three or four years old, the Amenomori Hospital was moved to Shin-machi. Later, several foreign priests and monks started up a printing operation in the vacated building.

One of those monks was Brother Zeno, the one Sachiko had taught the children’s song to. Another was the man with the round spectacles who always looked exhausted.

One Sunday after mass, Brother Zeno noticed Sachiko walking by, and with a broad smile on his face, he poked his head out the window and called “Sachiko-san, hello!” He was wearing an apron.

“My job, making food for everyone here. Busy, busy!” he told Sachiko, as though he were conveying some vital secret. Brother Zeno was often heard saying, “Busy, busy!” Sometimes, when Brother Zeno talked with Sachiko through the window, she caught a glimpse of the bespectacled old priest peering out at her with a forlorn expression on his face.

There was hardly room to walk inside the printing building, which was crammed with tables piled with movable type, printing presses, and stacks of pamphlets tied in bundles. The old priest sometimes looked like an ominous shadow in that dark, greasy-smelling room.

In all honesty, Sachiko preferred the cheerful Brother Zeno to the old priest. The older man seemed kindly, but there was something sorrowful about him.

Sometimes the priest would say to her, “Sachiko, please love Blessed Mother Mary.” But his Japanese was so much worse than 1

Charlotte Walker established the hotel in 1896; it was sold to Doctor Amenomori in 1922.

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that of Brother Zeno that she wasn’t really sure what he was saying.

“I don’t like that priest very much,” she confided to her mother.

“Why not?”

“He always looks like he’s about to cry. Brother Zeno’s a lot more fun!”

“The priest’s name is Father Kolbe. He’s come to Japan from very far away, so I’m sure he’s quite lonely. That must be why he always looks so sad.”

That made Sachiko feel as though she had said something very bad.

One Sunday Father Kolbe called to Sachiko through the window. “Sachiko, give you this.” He gave her a bookmark with a sacred image on it, one of many such bookmarks imprinted with a famous painting of Jesus or a portrait of Mary, with scriptures from the Bible written underneath.

The bookmark that Father Kolbe gave her had a depiction of the Blessed Mother gazing with pained eyes at the body of Jesus, which had been taken down from the cross. A scripture in Japanese read, “Greater love than this no man hath, that a man lay down his life for his friends.”2 Sachiko was only six at the time, so it was impossible for her to grasp the meaning of the scripture. But an image given by a Father was not to be treated carelessly in the homes of believers, so Sachiko carefully placed it in her little box of treasures. It was actually a chocolate box, its lid decorated with a snowy scene from Switzerland, a place she had never seen.

2 I have used the Douay-Rheims translation of the Bible, taken from the Latin Vulgate, for renditions of scriptural quotations in the novel. The DouayRheims has long been one of the favorite Bible translations in the Englishspeaking Catholic Church. This par ticu lar verse reads the same in both the Douay-Rheims and the Challoner revision.

Sachiko tells the story of two young Japanese Christians in Nagasaki trying to find love in the painful years between 1930 and 1945. Endō Shūsaku’s compassion for his characters, reflecting their struggles to live their faith despite persecution and war, makes Sachiko one of his most moving novels.

“An important work of historical fiction that raises profound questions about the moral legitimation and human cost of war, transnational relationships, and the atomic bombing of Nagasaki.” —Kevin M. Doak, author of A History of Nationalism in Modern Japan: Placing the People “Beautifully translated by Van C. Gessel, the parallel stories of Sachiko bring a fresh urgency to Endō’s profound understanding of the conflicting aims of culture and spirituality.” —J. Thomas Rimer, coeditor of The Columbia Anthology of Modern Japanese Literature “Set during World War II in Nagasaki and Auschwitz, Endō’s novel Sachiko provides a powerful portrait of a woman who pursued a life of faith, hope, and love. This outstanding and delicate translation highlights Gessel’s deep compassion and understanding of Japanese history, tradition, and culture.”

—Emi Mase-Hasegawa, author of Christ in Japanese Culture: Theological Themes in Shūsaku Endō’s Literary Works “Endō continues to fascinate and challenge his readership in equal measure.

In the wake of Martin Scorsese’s recent movie adaptation of his best-selling work, Silence, interest in Endō’s oeuvre has been renewed. Sachiko provides us with further evidence of Endō’s extraordinary storytelling ability.”

—Mark Williams, author of Endō Shūsaku: A Literature of Reconciliation Endō Shūsaku (1923–1996) was Japan’s leading Christian writer, a prolific author of novels, stories, and plays. Among his translated works are The Samurai, Deep River, Wonderful Fool, and Foreign Studies. His bestknown novel, Silence, was adapted into a film by Martin Scorsese in 2017.

Van C. Gessel is professor of Japanese at Brigham Young University. He has translated eight of Endō’s works, including Kiku’s Prayer (Columbia, 2012). In 2018 he received an imperial decoration, Order of the Rising Sun. WEATHERHEAD BO OKS ON ASIA Printed in the U.S.A.

Cover design: Julia Kushnirsky Cover photograph: ©Alamy COLUMBIA UNIVERSIT Y PRESS | NEW YORK cup.columbia.edu