Introduction

I like turning my eyes to the places where sin and evil are committed.
This tendency of mine must have been acquired while I was in Lyon […].
I am moved not by good but by evil; it is because I consider human evil
as the essence of drama.1
 — Endō Shūsaku

The hermeneutics of evil appears as a particular domain that lies at the

heart of a general interpretation […] the hermeneutics of evil is not an
indifferent domain but most significant domain, perhaps the very source
of the hermeneutic problem itself.2
 — Paul Ricoeur

The literary career of Endō Shūsaku (1923–1996), one of the leading

Japanese writers of the post-war era, spanned the years from 1947, when
his first essay ‘Katorikku sakka no mondai’ [Dilemmas of Catholic Writers]
appeared in Mita Bungaku journal, until 1993, the year of the publication
of his last major novel Fukai kawa [Deep River, 1993, tr. 1994].3
A member of the literary circle, known as Daisan no shinjin group
[Third Generation of the New Writers], Endō speaks of the voice of the
generation who came to maturity in the mid-1940s and became involved

1 Endō Shūsaku, ‘Umi to dokuyaku no nōto’ [Notes on The Sea and Poison, 1965], in
ESBZ, Vol. 15, 260–261. In original, Endō uses the word dorama written in katakana
(phonetic writing used for the transcription of foreign terms in Japanese). This word
translates as drama but also as story.
2 Paul Ricoeur, The Conflict of Interpretations: Essays in Hermeneutics, ed. Don Ihde
(Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1974), 317.
3 Deep River is usually considered to be the last major work in Endō’s oeuvre. However,
after 1993 until his death in 1996, a number of Endō’s articles, short story collections,
religious writings were published. In this study, I follow the conventional timeline
1947–1993.
2 Introduction

in most important debates in post-war Japan. Alongside other members

of the group – Shimao Toshio (1917–1986), Kojima Nobuo (1915–2006)
and Yasuoka Shōtaro (1920–2013) – in his works of fiction, Endō takes on
the topics of the individual battles and existential dilemmas of the human
being, without excessive references to political or social issues, which, as
critics have pointed out, was an important feature of Daisan no shinjin
group narratives. However, the focus on the individual in a diversity of
narrative forms could be linked to yet another feature of Endō’s writing –
if not its most distinguishable – his Christian background.
It may therefore be reasoned that this particular experience – being
a converted Christian – directed Endō’s attention, as both a reader and a
writer, towards what he himself singles out as a separate current within
Western literature: Christian literature. Extensive studies of French
Christian writers and intellectuals during his university period (1943–
1948), followed by his stay in France in the early 1950s, translations of
French literary works and constant references to French motifs within
Endō’s own writing, locate him within the milieu of post-war Japanese
Christian writers and thinkers such as Takahashi Takako (1932–2013),
Kaga Otohiko (b. 1929), Sono Ayako (b. 1931), Inoue Yōji (1927–2014),
who – with different professional scopes and dissimilar effects – became
the co-participants of a cultural and intellectual exchange between Japan
and France after 1945.4
However, besides being associated with literature, Endō retains a celeb-
rity status among the consciousness of the common Japanese readership.
A regular participant in various cultural and intellectual events, Endō was
a frequent spokesperson and commentator on Christian programs broad-
cast on TV and radio. He also established the biggest amateur theatre
company in Japan, called ‘Kiza’, performing on the stages of Europe and
America. Gradually, Endō’s presence in the cultural and intellectual life of
Japan expanded through his newspaper articles, for example for Yomiuri

4 The list above only includes the names of authors directly associated with Endō
(through personal connections) or those with similar interests in French literature
and thought. See also Xavier’s Legacies: Catholicism in Modern Japanese Culture, ed.
Kevin Doak (Vancouver: UBCS Press, 2011).
Introduction 3

shinbun, an impact increased by his appearances in commercials and TV

entertainment shows.5
A number of Endō’s fictional works – novels and several short
stories – are familiar to Western readers, including translations of his
work such as: Silence, The Sea and Poison, The Samurai, Scandal and
Deep River.6
However, it would be difficult to capture in its entirety the exhaustive
nature of the literary corpus of Endō Shūsaku. Giving particulars of novels
[shōsetsu], short stories [tanpen shōsetsu], detective and mystery stories
[kaiki shōsesetsu or tantei shōsetsu], humorous texts, and plays would still
only offer a partial picture of the writer’s enormously rich literary output
accumulated over time. There remains a vast and at the same time non-
typical group of non-fictional texts in terms of their possible classification
by genre and theme – essays and critical works [essei and hyōron].
If we take into consideration these texts not only as supplementary
but as corresponding to other literary forms, we can acknowledge an essen-
tial feature of Endō Shūsaku’s work, whereby his fiction and non-fiction
complement each other. At the same time, as the analyses carried out in
this study highlight, the treatment of fiction and non-fiction as a coherent
whole, leads towards exposing the personhood of the author, and an issue
strongly related to this, namely the creative processes of each single text.
Essayistic writing constitutes an important component of Endō’s
literary output. Nevertheless, despite a seemingly countless number of
non-fictional texts – among which the most eminent were published in
three volumes of the latest edition of Endō Shūsaku Bungaku Zenshū
[Complete Works of Endō Shūsaku] in 2000 and others spread among

5 As Endō frequently appeared on various TV shows, gaining an almost celebrity status,

he used the nickname Korian (the Japanese logographic script literally means: ‘fox
and raccoon dog hermitage’). Under this name, he also authored some of his humor-
ous novels, and directed works in his amateur theatre, Kiza. He is still remembered
in Japan as Korian sensei [Master Korian].
6 Other translated fictional works include, White Man/Yellow Man, Wonderful Fool,
Volcano, The Girl I Left Behind, Foreign Studies, Life of Jesus, Stained Glass Elegies
(short story collection), When I Whistle, Song of Sadness, The Golden Country (drama),
The Birth of Christ, Five by Endō (short story collection), Kiku’s Prayer.
4 Introduction

minor collections – there remains no exhaustive study of the writer’s literary

activity that brings to light, especially for Western readers, Endō’s profile
as a critic, essayist and journalist. As this study intends to demonstrate,
Endō’s non-fiction can be seen as a realm where the majority of themes
and questions posed by the author in his subsequent novels or short stories
originate, and as a result they remain in a constant state of interdependence
and dialogue with the content of his fiction.
Taking into account this particular group of texts becomes especially
significant when the object of the analysis is the problem of evil in his works.
This study is therefore inspired by the conviction that in order to adequately
comprehend Endō’s complex and varied perceptions of evil, it is necessary
to assess his fictional works in relation to his essays and non-fictional works.
However, the necessity of such an approach, which would incorpo-
rate both non-fictional and fictional texts in relation to the problem of evil,
is further corroborated by the fact that most research on Endō’s literary
output has so far offered only one angle of analysis of the problem of evil
by limiting its scope to his novels. In the existing scholarship, the dominant
tendency is to analyse novels – such as White Man/Yellow Man, The Sea
and Poison, Volcano, Silence, or Scandal – and to treat essays and critical
works as a background to the fiction.7 It may be added that most of Endō’s

7 There has been a considerable amount of research on the topic of evil in Endō’s works
in Japan. Here I only provide a brief synopsis of the leading approaches that can be
singled out in the fields of literary criticism, comparative literature, or theology.
Imai Mari, the researcher associated with Mita Bungaku, focuses on the genealogy
of evil in Endō’s works (predominantly fiction) and offers a panoramic perspective
of the analysis of the forms of evil. For example, in her essay ‘Aku no mukō ni aru
mono. Endō Shūsaku-ron’ [What Lies Beyond Evil: A Study on Endō Shūsaku],
she pays particular attention to the links that appear between the novels, starting
that from his very first work of fiction Shiroi hito [White Man, 1955] to Sukyandaru
[Scandal, 1986, tr. 1988]. In her research, Imai incorporates references to the writer’s
diary, essays, critical works (though she still treats them as additional texts), notes
Endō made while working on a particular novel and the Western writers he read
(Mauriac, Bernanos, Greene). Additionally, she supports her analysis with passages
from the novels of French writers (those about whom Endō himself wrote in his
non-fiction) in order to highlight the visible similarities or differences.
Introduction 5

non-fictional writing is yet to be translated into Western languages.8 Therefore,

I have decided to translate selected critical works by Endō that are the subject
of my analysis and have attached these as an appendix to this study.
The translated, annotated and analysed essays include the follow-
ing: ‘Dilemmas of Catholic Writers’, ‘Terēzu no kage o otte’ [Following
the Shadow of Thérèse, 1952], ‘Akuma ni tsuite no nōto’ [Notes on Satan,
1968], ‘Aushubittsu shūjōjo o mite’ [On Seeing Auschwitz Concentration
Camp, 1977], and ‘Aku, shi no honnō’ [Evil, the Instinct of Death, 1985].
The subject of the analysis also include three separate texts on Marquis de
Sade treated jointly (partly translated but not attached as whole texts):
‘Maruki do Sado hyōden’ [A Critical Biography of the Marquis de Sade,
1954], ‘Sado kōshaku no hanzai’ [The Crimes of the Marquis de Sade, 1955],
and ‘Akuma no machi’ [The City of the Devil, 1956].
This study presents a two-stage division within Endō’s works that
reflects the evolution of the writer’s understanding of this significant issue
and his ways of dealing with evil. The first stage that has been singled out
(from 1947 up to 1956) coincides with the time of the writer’s early critical
activity and the publication of his first fictional works.9 The second stage
(1968–1985) relates to those essays and critical works created when Endō’s
reputation as a writer was already established.10

I discuss the existing scholarship on the topic in Japan in my PhD thesis The Problem
of Evil in the Works of Endō Shūsaku: Between Reading and Writing (University of
Leeds, 2013).
The theological approach is presented in studies by Emi Mase-Hasegawa The Christ
in Japanese Culture: Theological Themes in Shusaku Endo’s Literary Works (2008) and
by Adelino Ascenso’s Transcultural Theodicy in the Fiction of Shūsaku Endō (2009),
which so far is the only monograph entirely dedicated to the problem of evil in Endō’s
literature while still prioritizing fiction over non-fiction.
8 One essay by Endō translated as a whole into English to date is ‘Ihōjin no kunō’ [The
Anguish of an Alien, 1973] in Japan Christian Quarterly, Vol. 40, No. 4 (Fall, 1974),
179–185. In 1984, Endō presented his essay ‘Literature and Religion, especially the
Role of Unconsciousness’ at the 47th International P.E.N. Congress in Tokyo.
9 Within this periodization I consider two novellas, White Man/Yellow Man (pub-
lished in 1955), as the writer’s first fictional work.
10 I treat the figure of the Marquis de Sade as a kind of transition from the way Endō
depicts evil in the pre-novelistic period (first stage) to the second stage, when evil is
6 Introduction

By positioning the main issue of evil in the context of ‘reading’ and

‘writing’, I attempt to demonstrate the processual character of the questions
asked by the writer about evil. Furthermore, as indicated by the dual-faceted
title, which on the one hand highlights the problem of evil and on the
other hand incorporates this subject matter into Endō’s horizon of experi-
ence (as the person who reads about evil and writes about his experience
of reading), I examine the possibility of capturing the interdependencies
that occur within the relations: the text – the reader – the author.
My examination of these interdependencies is justified on the prem-
ises of the hermeneutical model proposed by the French philosopher Paul
Ricoeur (1913–2005), who discusses the problem of evil and simultaneously
points to the fact that an understanding of this problem always relates to
knowledge that is already mediated through the world of signs, symbols,
and texts.11 Thus, the objective of hermeneutical actions is to reconstruct,
through interpretation, the complex, multi-layered semantic structure that
is founded on the co-occurrence of the apparent and the hidden meaning.
In practice, this means that the procedures of hermeneutical actions that
set into motion the process of understanding and explication turns into
a series of operations that actualize the delineated problem (in this case
the issue of evil) and, simultaneously, through the interpretative process,
reconstruct a number of interdependencies between reality and the text as
well as what happens between the text, the author and the reader figured
in the process of reading and writing.
Therefore, as the point of departure in my approach, I explore a group
of Endō’s essays and critical texts as well as his last novel, Deep River, in the
belief that these constitute a record of the complex road leading to a deeper

at the centre of the writer’s attention. This leads us to the second stage of the writer’s
approach to evil, where Endō speaks from the position not (only) of a critic but, in
the first place, as the writer himself.
11 The selection of the specific methodological approach adopted in this study was
determined by the fact that Endō in a way guides us into the hermeneutical issues.
I elaborate on this after presenting the main tenets of the hermeneutical project
of Paul Ricoeur. See section ‘Hermeneutics of Endō Shūsaku’ in Chapter 1, ‘Paul
Ricoeur’s Hermeneutics of Evil’.
Introduction 7

understanding and explication of the issue of evil. I intend to interpret these

texts by focusing on the semantic, reflective, and existential dimension in
the writer’s approach to the subject of evil.
Thus, following Endō’s line of thinking, I strive to grasp two factors
that shape his outlook. The first results from what constitutes the difficulty
in explicating evil given the problem of its essentially enigmatic nature.12
That is, I look at the questions that the writer asks on the topic, and at his
way of searching for answers through broadly understood cultural texts,
which may be literary, mythological and symbolical. Therefore, through
decoding the overt and covert layer of the ‘text’, I focus on this aspect of
interpretation that reveals its semantic dimension.13
The second factor is the reflexive and existential consequence of Endō’s
treatment of this subject matter – enigma. These consequences lead to
his literary output through which we – researchers and readers of Endō’s
works – can pose the following question: who is the person who is talk-
ing about evil and what are the important things that we learn from this
person’s stories dealing with the encounter with evil?
The works of Endō Shūsaku that have been presented in this study
could be treated as an example of the writing that was shaped through the
constant entwining and overlapping of the two literary conventions of
non-fiction and fiction. They both reconstruct and co-produce the pro-
cedures of continual revision of ‘the narrated story’ – the drama – on the
topic of evil that Endō initiated once he identified the problem of evil as
an important subject.
In his narratological theory, Ricoeur says that the aim of hermeneutics
is ‘to reconstruct the set of operations by which a work lifts above the opaque
depths of living, acting, and suffering, to be given by an author to readers.’14

12 As I explain in Chapter 1, the approach proposed in this study should not be confused
with the ‘psychological fallacy’ of W. Dilthey.
13 According to Ricoeur’s hermeneutics, the term ‘text’ may be understood very broadly
as a set of objectivized products by which human subjectivity has manifested itself
through time.
14 Ricoeur, Time and Narrative, Vol.1, tr. Kathleen McLaughlin and David Pellauer
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984), 53.