Frontmatter -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- Mitsu and Kiku -- The searcher -- Nagasaki -- The Road is long -- The Temple of the Southern Barbarians -- A Day of Hope -- Spies -- Battles in the Dark -- The contest -- Heavy rain -- A chance encounter -- The setting of the sun -- The reunion -- Separation -- The crowd -- Tsuwano -- Maruyama -- The valley of pain -- Two kinds of love -- A man named ITŌ -- The blessed and the unblessed -- Otome pass -- The third winter -- Snow and the blessed mother -- Going home -- Epilogue -- Between the Lines: Author's Afterword
Summary
Endo Shusaku was a renowned twentieth-century Japanese author who wrote from the unusual perspective of being both Japanese and Catholic. His work is often compared to that of Graham Greene, who himself considered Endo one of the century's finest writers. A historical novel set in the turbulent period between the fall of the shogunate and the Meiji Restoration, Kiku's Prayer embodies themes central to Endo's work, including religion, modernization, and the endurance of the human spirit
