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To: H-WORLD%MSU.EDU@KSUVM.KSU.EDU Date sent: Wed, 21 Sep 1994 09:29:06 -0500 (CDT) I have used two of Endo's books ("Silence" and "The Samurai") in courses on Japanese history. At St. Olaf, a church-related college, a significant number of students seem interested in Endo's religious concerns, but I found that "The Samurai" worked equally well when I taught a Japanese history class at Carleton, a secular college. Endo's books are not tracts promoting Christianity, but sensitive and ambivalent investigations of the compatibility of Christianity with Japanese culture. By implication, they question whether other Western cultural values and institutions can be transplated without being fundamentally changed. They also vividly depict Japanese-Western relations in the early 17th-century. I think there is little to offend non-Christian students. Last year, in my St. Olaf class, the most thoughtful and articulate paper I received on Endo's "Silence" was from a Muslim student. Robert Entenmann St. Olaf College entenman@stolaf.edu
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