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Originally published in Japanese in 1982, the novel Sachiko by Shūsaku Endō, perhaps Asia’s best-known Catholic author of fiction, has been recently translated into English by Van C. Gessel. In part a conventional love story of star-crossed lovers ripped apart from their embrace by the tragic whirlwind of the history of the twentieth century, Sachiko is above all a powerful and inspiring account of the moral dilemmas and tenacious faith of Japanese and Western Christians amidst the depravity of World War II, one whose outlook surprisingly contrasts with the pessimism of Endō’s best-known novel Silence. Shūsaku Endō (1923-1996) was one of the best-known Japanese novelists in the West. His popularity outside Asia has often been attributed to the fact that he deals mostly with Christian themes, which are not esoteric to the Western reader. In 1994, he was a serious contender for the Nobel Prize in Literature, but lost to another Japanese, Kenzaburō Ōe. B ....