SOURCE: Williams, Mark B. “Towards Reconciliation.” In Endō Shūsaku: A Literature of Reconciliation, pp. 25-57. London: Routledge, 1999.

[In the following essay, Williams explores Endō's use of character and technique in what Williams maintains is “a consistent search for reconciliation of the self.”]

What a piece of work is a man, how noble in reason, how infinite in faculties, in form and moving how express and admirable, in action how like an angel, in apprehension how like a god: the beauty of the world, the paragon of animals—and yet, to me, what is this quintessence of dust?

(Hamlet, Act 2, sc. ii)

We have tacitly assumed, for some centuries past, that there is no relation between literature and theology. This is not to deny that literature—I mean, again, primarily works of the imagination—has been, is, and probably always will be judged by some moral standards.

(T. S. Eliot)

If it has been believed hitherto that the human shadow was the source of all evil, it can now be ascertained on closer investigation that the unconscious man, that is, his shadow, does not consist only of morally reprehensible tendencies, but also displays a number of good qualities, such as normal instincts, appropriate reactions, realistic insights, creative impulses, etc.

(C. G. Jung)

The discussion in the second half of the Introduction described, in broad brush strokes, the distinctive features of the literature of the Daisan no shinjin, the group with which Endō found affiliation on his return from his period of study in France. Critics have, as noted, played down the significance of this ‘nominal’ affiliation,¹ choosing rather to identify Endō as engaged in a somewhat lonely literary pursuit in search of a form of Christianity better suited to the Japanese spiritual climate than that he had inherited with his baptism into the Catholic tradition, undertaken largely at his mother's instigation, at the age of 11. The reasons for this critical response are not difficult to discern. Not only is there an overwhelming tendency, pervading the author's entire oeuvre, to address in his literature the questions raised by his faith; equally, there is at first glance very little to link Endō's diligently researched and carefully crafted portrayals of characters who bear little overt resemblance to the author who created them with the seemingly indefatigable emphasis on young male protagonists who appear to double with their authors, at least in physical and autobiographical detail, that characterises the works of other members of the group.

The distinction is marked, the jealously guarded distance between Endō as author and the protagonists who occupy the pages of his narratives seemingly at complete odds with the portrayals of protagonists, all too readily interpreted as self-portraits, in the works with which fellow members of the coterie established their reputations. The portrayal of the directionless Shintarō struggling to come to terms with the reality of his dying mother in Yasuoka Shōtarō's Kaihen no kōkei (A View by the Sea, 1959; trans. 1984); that of Shunsuke desperately seeking to halt the fragmentation of his family in Kojima Nobuo's Hōyō kazoku (Embracing Family, 1966); that of Toshio helpless to stem his wife's psychological disorder occasioned by his own marital infidelity in Shimao Toshio's Shi no toge (The Sting of Death, 1960-77): the seemingly overt attention to autobiographical detail in such works, repeated in each case in a string of short stories ostensibly focusing on the same events in the author's personal lives, seems a far cry from even the earliest Endō narratives. Here, in contrast we shall see a variety of protagonists, ranging from a French student-turned-Nazi collaborator, through a doctor implicated, however vicariously, in the wartime experiments in vivisection on Allied POWs, to a Western missionary desperately seeking to circumvent the ban on all Christian proselytisation imposed by the Tokugawa shogunate between 1600 and 1867. In short, in contrast to the proliferation of protagonists in the texts of the other members of the Daisan no shinjin who appear to echo the factual reality of the lives of the artists who created them (whether delivered as first- or third-person narratives), Endō's corpus seems devoid of attention to such autobiographical detail. Not only is his oeuvre notable for a marked dearth of first-person narratives,² but the various protagonists are clearly distinguished from their models, even where these are identifiable.

To cite but one example, as Endō himself remarked with reference to the various wives who populate his works:

[In the creation of a particular character], I obviously take certain traits from various people: for example, my portraits of my wife are actually an amalgam of various traits stemming from my observation of various wives.³

In view of the superficial distinctions between Endō's narratives and those of his peers in the Daisan no shinjin, the tendency to downplay the significance of his affiliation with the coterie is understandable. And it is certainly true that, for all the close personal friendships he forged with several of its members,⁴ Endō remained at best a fringe contributor to the formal activities of the group. But here we are merely scratching the surface: a consideration of the qualities attributed to the group in the Introduction to this book suggests a greater degree of affinity between Endō and his peers—one born of a mutual determination to probe deeper into the psychological worlds of their protagonists—than is readily acknowledged. It is to these points of common interest—and, in particular, to Endō's very real contribution to examination of the literary possibilities of these shared concerns—that this discussion will now turn.

In the Introduction, much was made of the tendency, shared by the various members of the Daisan no shinjin, to focus on the inner horizons of their creations through more consistent observation of the artistic distance separating author and protagonists than is evident in many of the pre-war shishōsetsu. The commitment was shared by Endō, whose determination to fathom the psychology of his characters is, with the arguable exception of Shimao Toshio's portraits of his protagonists struggling to come to terms with the concept of the previously unconscionable ‘future’ following his aborted kamikaze mission, unrivalled within the group. For Endō, the challenge for all his narrators was to highlight the ‘deep inside of man’,⁵ a challenge that can be directly attributed to the author's vision of the composite human being as summarised in a 1988 interview:

Man is a splendid and beautiful being and, at the same time, man is a terrible being as we recognised in Auschwitz—God knows well this monstrous dual quality of man.⁶

The portrayal is of the individual as representing an amalgam of conflicting forces, the implicit challenge to Endō, as author, being the need to seek a literary reconciliation of the conscious and unconscious elements within human nature. As we shall see, the attempt can be seen as the defining moment of Endō's oeuvre. The effect of this attempt, however—the portrayal of protagonists engaged in the gradual process of coming to terms with a deeper level of their being than that to which they had previously assented—is reminiscent of a similar tendency that pervades the literature of the Daisan no shinjin.

We are talking here of Endō as an author at the forefront of the move towards assertion of a ‘new literary self, a process already identified as integral to an understanding of the narratives of the Daisan no shinjin. Of even greater relevance to our current discussion is the extent to which, in pursuit of this goal, Endō conforms to the model, depicted in the Introduction, of the Daisan no shinjin authors exercising greater care in the positioning of their narrators, in an attempt thereby to give voice to the full extent of the conflict within the self. For Yasuoka, for Shimao and the other members of the Daisan no shinjin, as we have noted, the ensuing ‘splintered perspective’ contributed to the overall depiction of characters engaged in constant confrontation with an ‘other’—whether as an independent being or as an alternative facet of the self with whom the protagonist seeks reconciliation. Nowhere, however, is the technique used as extensively, or with such effect, as in the Endō narrative as, in work after work, the ‘voice of the narrator's doppelgänger—his spirit double’ results in a subversion of initial character depictions and a reassessment of narrated events. The ‘critical commentary’ provided in this way is integral to Endō's design and, as such, we shall be returning to this aspect of the author's art later in this chapter. At this stage, however, let us remain with the Daisan no shinjin—with a consideration of other narrative elements, identified in the Introduction as representative of the group, which serve to locate the Endō shōsetsu more readily within this remit than is often acknowledged.

One aspect, cited in the Introduction as distinguishing the literature of the Daisan no shinjin from their precursors in the pre-war shishōsetsu, was the emergence, in the former, of a truly ‘socialised self’. In contrast to the earlier protagonists who remained, on the whole, isolated from social interaction, there is a concern for the social implications of their scenarios in the works of the Daisan no shinjin that leads to portrayal of protagonists who accept their status as insignificant entities in a much broader social spectrum. The generalisation certainly appears to hold true for the Endō narrative. Whether it be the protagonists of several of the earlier works, troubled by a social conscience in the wake of their instinctive responses to confrontation with the forces of evil,⁷ the foreign missionary, Rodrigues in Silence, whose actions are dictated, in large measure, by concern for the outcome of his actions on the Japanese whose destinies rest largely in his hands, or the self-effacing Ōtsu in Endō's final novel, Fukai kawa (Deep River, 1993; trans. 1994), the Endō protagonist is acutely aware of his membership of a larger society. As such, he is rarely tempted to determine the course of his actions without reference to the implications of this on those with whom his destiny is linked.

Closely tied to this determination to look beyond the immediate worlds of his protagonists is the tendency, again identified earlier as a distinguishing feature of the Daisan no shinjin text, to allow the sensibilities of more than one ‘focus figure’ to dominate his dramas. The Endō protagonist is an elusive figure, the novel in which a single protagonist is identified at the outset as the fulcrum around which the subsequent drama will revolve and whose perspective subsequently dominates the entire text the exception rather than the rule. Instead, the Endō narrative tends to cater for a variety of ‘focus figures’, each of whom is provided with the opportunity, however rare, to assume centre stage and whose perspective consequently dominates, if only briefly. The technique used to give expression to these varying voices may vary—from the exchange of letters in Shiroi hito (White Man, 1955), through the alternating diary extracts of Yoshioka and Mitsu in Watashi ga suteta onna (The Girl I Left Behind, 1964; trans. 1994) and the carefully considered juxtaposition of the perspectives of Velasco and Hasekura in Samurai (The Samurai, 1980; trans. 1982), to the overt division of Deep River into chapters devoted to the worlds, not merely of Ōtsu and Mitsuko, the purported protagonists, but of a series of other fellow tourists on the trip to the Ganges.⁸ The effect in each case, however, is similar: by virtue of the introduction of the perspectives on narrated events of a series of ‘protagonists’—by implicitly questioning the validity of any single perspective—the author attributes a more universal significance to his narratives than he would have achieved with a single-focus narrative style.

There remains, however, one further characteristic that provides a powerful link between Endō and his contemporaries in the coterie. The distinction between ‘factual reality’ and remaining ‘true’ to the dramas as they evolve even whilst emphasising the distance between author and protagonist was cited in the Introduction as central to the discussions of the evolution to the shōsetsu effected by the Daisan no shinjin in general in the immediate post-war period. The issue was to prove crucial to Endō in his attempts to portray, by means of imaginative reconstruction, the ‘truth’ surrounding his own, intensely personal, spiritual journey. In all but a few cases, the protagonists of his narratives may bear little overt resemblance, in terms of physical and autobiographical detail, to Endō himself. For all this, however, there is a degree of empathy, an identification with the pains and struggles that his protagonists experience as an inevitable part of their journeys toward greater self-awareness no less intense than that of the other authors in the group. The details of the events depicted—the agonising choices with which so many of his protagonists are confronted—may bear little resemblance even to the archival records that represent the wellspring of so much of Endō's literary production, let alone to anything that the author may have personally experienced. For all their ‘fabrication’, however, there is an underlying ‘truth’ to the events, one that is close to the author's heart. Indeed, as Endō admitted in an interview with the critic, Kazusa Hideo, even in the case of those protagonists who ultimately succumb to the force of evil, there is an empathy between author and protagonist born of a sense of shared spiritual turmoil:

If I had been confronted with the decisions faced by [the Nazi collaborator in White Man, by Suguro in Umi to dokuyaku (The Sea and Poison, 1957; trans. 1972) or by Rodrigues in Silence], who am I to say that I would not have responded as they did?⁹

The Endō protagonist is, in this sense, remarkably ‘true’ to the reality of the author's personal experience. More specifically, however, the empathy achieved with his protagonists is a powerful testimony to the consistency with which Endō has indeed sought to pursue the doubts occasioned by his own spiritual journey in his fictional narratives. Before examining the texts themselves, therefore, let us briefly consider the salient elements of the journey upon which the author embarked on that December day in 1933 when, at the behest of his mother and aunt, he agreed to go through with the ritual of baptism into the Catholic tradition.

UNFORESEEN CONSEQUENCES

As Endō himself was the first to admit, the full significance of the baptismal vows was lost on the young boy. The following depiction of events of that day may benefit from more than thirty years of hindsight. It nevertheless serves to encapsulate a sense of the frivolity with which Endō and his friends viewed the entire ceremony, a frivolity disturbed only by frustration at the enforced abandonment of the game of soccer they had been enjoying before being summoned inside to take part in the service:

I was baptised along with several other children from the neighbourhood on Easter Sunday. Or more precisely, since this was not an act taken of my own free will, perhaps I should say that I was forced into baptism. At the urging of my aunt and my mother, I went along with the other children and, despite my predilection for disturbing the class, eventually succeeded in memorising the catechism. As such, the event was generally viewed as the baptism of a mischievous young boy. When the French priest came to that part of the baptism service in which he asked, ‘Do you believe in God?’, I felt no compunction in following the lead set by the other boys and replied, ‘I do’.

It was as though we were engaged in conversation in a foreign language in which my reply to the question, ‘Do you want to eat this sweet?’ was ‘I do’. I had no idea of the enormity of the decision I had just taken. And I did not stop to think of the consequences on my entire life of these two simple words.¹⁰

The more Endō sought to dismiss the incident as a childish charade, however, the more he was obliged to attribute a greater significance to this event than he had initially recognised—and consequently to acknowledge a greater complexity to his being than suggested by this description of events of that day. Increasingly concerned that this one act, however insignificant it may have seemed at the time, would continue to haunt him, Endō determined to come to a clearer understanding, both of the cultural underpinnings of his newly acquired faith and of the implications for his understanding of human nature. The result was the decision to pursue a degree in French literature at Keiō University, with specific focus on the works of Mauriac, Bernanos and other French authors of Catholic persuasion. During the almost three years Endō spent in the early 1950s as one of the first Japanese students to study in France after the cessation of World War II hostilities, increasing frustration at his perceived inability to bridge the cultural divide he had come to discern between East and West was reinforced. Thereafter, the author's ultimate repatriation on medical grounds only served to enhance the perception of the need for recognition of the integral nature of all aspects of his being in the formulation of his vision of the composite self. In an interview offered some years after his return to Japan, Endō was to encapsulate the issue in the following terms:

The confrontation of my Catholic self with the self that lies underneath has, like an idiot's refrain, echoed and re-echoed in my work. I felt I had to find some way to reconcile the two.¹¹

For Endō, however, the process of reconciliation represented a very personal challenge—and led to a recognition of the need to redefine his faith in a manner that would account for the various tensions he had come to discern within his being. The result is a vision of Catholicism that clearly reflects the image of the individual as a composite of often conflicting forces:

It seems to me that Catholicism is not a solo, but a symphony. It fits, of course, man's sinless side, but unless a religion can find a place for man's sinful side in the ensemble, it is a false religion. If I have trust in Catholicism, it is because I find in it much more possibility than in any other religion for presenting the full symphony of humanity. The other religions have almost no fullness; they have but solo parts. Only Catholicism can present the full symphony. And unless there is in that symphony a part that corresponds to Japan's mudswamp, it cannot be a true religion. What exactly this part is—that is what I want to find out.¹²

The desire to reconcile his adopted faith with his own cultural heritage is clearly evidenced in this comment, the author's consequent determination to define the faith in terms with which he and his fellow Japanese could more readily identify leading him to conclude that:

God must be found on the streets of Shinjuku or Shibuya, too—districts which seem so far removed from Him. … It will be one of my tasks to find God in such typical Japanese scenes. … If I succeed in doing that, my ‘Western suit’ will no longer be Western, but will have become my own suit.¹³

The image of Christianity as an ‘ill-fitting suit’ imported from the West was one with which Endō had long struggled, although by the time he produced his article with that title in 1967, the tone was less one of desperation born of the seeming impossibility of having Christianity take root in Japan, more an attempt to establish the pattern required if this ill-fitting garment were to be tailored into something more appropriate to his requirements. In this, Endō was by no means alone: the concept of ‘indigenisation’ of Christianity—the very terminology clearly locating the process in its historical context—is one to have been addressed in theological and literary circles in Japan ever since the return of the Christian missions in the early Meiji era following the rigidly enforced ban on all overt proselytisation during the Tokugawa era. In this regard, one can point to the literary contributions of the authors, already discussed in the Introduction—authors such as Tōkoku, Doppo, Tōson and Sōseki—as providing the literary foundations upon which future generations of authors, including Akutagawa Ryūnosuke, Masamune Hakuchō, Arishima Takeo and Dazai Osamu, would subsequently build and which would lead to the generation of post-war writers, epitomised by Endō, who remained determined to address in their fiction the issues raised by their faith.¹⁴

Endō's self-acknowledged search for a Japanese version of Christianity is thus firmly rooted in the twentieth-century Japanese philosophical tradition. For Endō and his fellow artists seeking to address the issue from a literary perspective, however, the perception of the vast gulf between the ‘monotheistic’ West and the ‘pantheistic’ East¹⁵ has been further exacerbated by the perceived necessity of coming to terms in their literature with a further opposition inherent in their situation—that between their identity as adherents of the ‘religion of the West’ on the one hand and their careers as literary artists on the other. Defining the consequent tension in terms of a ‘trichotomy’,¹⁶ Endō portrays this perception of a threefold opposition in the following terms:

As a Christian, a Japanese and an author, I am constantly concerned with the relationship and conflict created by these three tensions. Unfortunately, I have yet to reconcile and create a certain unity between these three conditions in my mind and, for the most part, they continue to appear as contradictory.¹⁷

At first glance, the desire to identify and isolate various aspects of the human composite would appear to fly in the face of contemporary psychological theory. Why, one may well ask, was Endō so concerned with the need to posit a tension of conflicting forces in a manner that suggests mutual incompatibility rather than representing these as a symbiosis of interrelated forces? Instead of the vision of a ‘trichotomy’ of mutually exclusive facets to human identity, have not others in similar circumstances been led to adopt a more holistic perspective depicting these, not as contradictory but as complementary elements of the composite being? For Endō, however, the depiction of such tension was essential—not as the basis of a fundamentally negative vision of human nature as an amalgam of ultimately irreconcilable forces, but as precursor of the attempt, integral to his literature, to highlight the essentially paradoxical interdependence he increasingly came to discern as at work within the individual. The paradoxical attempt to forge a link between characteristics initially established as opposing forces of some binary tension represents a recurring theme in the novels to be analysed in this study of Endō's literature—and it is on this aspect of the author's art that much of the ensuing discussion will focus.

For all its seemingly exclusive categorisation, therefore, Endō's depiction of the individual as torn between a series of conflicting identities provides an invaluable key to locating the link between a series of works that would appear, at first glance, to have little in common. Before considering the connection between the early works, in which the author's struggle with the question of identity appears to occupy centre stage, and his more recent novels, in which such issues have been superseded by a more studied examination of the role of the human unconscious, however, let us briefly consider the significance on Endō's fictional products of his examination of the implications of his identity as a novelist of Christian persuasion.

As suggested by the title of the essay with which he marked his emergence on the literary scene, ‘Katorikku sakka no mondai’ (‘The Problems Confronting the Catholic Author,’ 1947), Endō's study of the writings of a series of French Catholic authors during his university days led to the perception in their works of a potential conflict between the ‘desire, as author, to scrutinise human beings’ and ‘the Christian yearning for purity’.¹⁸ There followed a series of essays, some produced while still at university, in which he outlined his vision of these novelists as confronting the conflicting demands of their faith and their chosen careers as authors. The issue is encapsulated by Endō in the following extract:

Normally, an author hopes that his work will induce a sense of artistic excitement in the soul of his reader. But he will not be plagued by a nagging fear that the evil human world he has created may sully the reader's soul. It is probably no exaggeration to claim that the average author is upheld by a belief, however unconscious, that anything can be condoned in the name of art.

The Catholic author, however, finds himself confronted by the following Biblical verse, from Mark 9:42: ‘Whosoever shall offend one of these little ones that believe in me, it is better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and he were cast into the sea.’ The doubt that never left Mauriac's mind was precisely the fear that the gloomy world he had created might draw his reader closer to the world of sin, by granting him a glimpse of Evil.

In which case, mindful of the harsh rejoinder of Christ, ‘If thy hand offend thee, cut it off; if thy eye offend thee, pluck it out’, does the author have a responsibility to remove the very essence of his work out of concern for his audience?¹⁹

As Endō was the first to recognise, however, the authors here under scrutiny were concerned more with literary creativity than with theology. The distinction for Endō—as for his French mentors—was vital and from the outset, he was at pains to acknowledge both the overriding need for the creation of ‘living human beings’ and the obligation, as author, ‘to understand not only the characters' psyche and personality, but also their true flavour, their pains and struggles, everything about them’.²⁰ The distinction lay at the heart of his vision of his art and, as evidenced by the following assessment of the role of the ‘Christian author’, Endō was determined to distinguish between those for whom literature remained a vehicle for proselytisation and those, with whom he himself could more readily identify, for whom artistic integrity remained of paramount importance:

Catholic literature involves not a literary portrayal of God and angels, but must limit itself to scrutiny of human beings. Besides, the Catholic writer is neither saint nor poet. The goal of the poet and saint is to focus all his attention on God and to sing his praises. But the Catholic writer must remember not only that he is a writer, but also his duty to scrutinise the individual. …

If, for the sake of creating a truly ‘Catholic literature’, or for the purpose of preserving and propagating the Catholic doctrine, the personalities of the characters in a novel are subjected to artifice and distortion, then the work ceases to be literature in the true sense of the word.²¹

Endō's desire to forge his artistic world through consideration of the dramatic tension that ensues when religion and literature are placed in opposition is readily apparent in such comments. Equally in evidence, moreover, is the author's conviction that it is only in examining the violent internal struggles within the individual that the author can highlight the integral relationship that exists between the two. Acknowledging the inherent danger that the ‘Christian author’ will be prevented, through a sentimental attitude towards religious motifs, from a deeper probing of human nature, Endō is here giving expression to his belief that, provided that the author persists with the examination of the fundamental essence of his characters rather than seeking to lead them in a particular direction, then the potential for a literature born of this duality remains.

For Endō at this stage, the issue was mainly of interest as part of his wider examination of the novels of the French authors who represented the primary focus of his studies. Increasingly, however, he found himself obliged to acknowledge the lengthy tradition upon which such literature was premised:

The psychoanalytical self-examination of Freud and Bergson, the novelistic technique and psychology of contradiction that permeates the works of Dostoevsky, the question of self-integrity in Gide and the techniques of Proust are problems that the Catholic authors after Bourget and Bordeaux could not deny, issues with which they had to grapple and which had to be overcome. Even if this conflicted with the goal of proselytisation, these authors adopted such techniques in that they contributed to the science of human observation. At that time, these new Catholic writers sensed an urgent need to remove themselves from the lofty heights of ‘apologetic literature’ and to examine ‘godless man’ as human beings. …

Catholic writers under the influence of the likes of Freud, Bergson, Proust and Joyce ‘look at the innermost recesses of human existence’ and, ‘in shining the spotlight on the soul of one who, though possibly appearing no different at the superficial level from fellow-members of twentieth century society, in fact represents a unique individual’, they must scrutinise the secrets, the sins and the evils within the soul of their characters. On such occasions, the more they are able to get beneath the surface of their characters, the more intimacy they will come to feel with them. They must come to feel a sense of empathy with their sins and evils. But [these authors] are also Catholics; and, as believers in the Christian gospel, is there not a danger that they will be polluted through examination of these sins, through the intimacy and empathy they develop with these? Doesn't this pose a threat to their fulfilment as unique human beings?²²

Here and elsewhere, the determination to avoid a betrayal of his duties as an author of creative fiction through resort to an ‘apologetic literature’ is evident. But there is a distinction between avoiding a direct focus on proselytisation in one's writing and seeking to incorporate themes born of one's faith on the other. Motifs raised by the author's faith are never far beneath the surface of this literature, for, as Endō himself argued:

I don't seek Christian material as the basis for my novels: it is just that my environment and themes are Christian; the environment in which I was raised had a distinctly Christian flavour to it, and so, inevitably, I became embroiled with Christian material and themes. I am certainly not writing in order to proselytise or to spread the gospel. … If I were, my works would definitely suffer as literature.²³

Once more, Endō was by no means alone in this assessment: the comment is reminiscent of the claim to struggle with the same perceived tension between theology and literature made by another author, Graham Greene: ‘I am not a Christian author. It is just that Catholic padres happen to populate the pages of my works.’²⁴ To Endō, Greene and others, the danger was that the literary text would be relegated to secondary importance by the author's determination to convey a particular ‘message’. Equally, however, such authors were aware of the concomitant need to avoid seeking within their work the possibility of salvation, either for their creations or for themselves. As Endō commented later in a subsequent discussion:

I believe that when writing, all authors nurse an unconscious sense that they will thereby be liberated, even saved. But if, on completing the work, they realise that that is not the case, isn't that the sign of a great work?²⁵

The determination to avoid succumbing to a sentimental attitude towards religious motifs—and to persist with the examination of the fundamental essence of his characters rather than seeking to force them into a ready mould—represents a constant in the literature of Endō. It also leads to a body of works that conforms very closely to the conclusion ventured by the critic, Boyce Gibson, in his discussion of the religious aspect of the literature of another author involved in a similar quest, Fyodor Dostoevsky:

Unlike the Christian thinker, [the Christian artist] cannot, as he explores situations, focus on what lies beyond them. He does not, for example, write novels about God; he writes them about people in their perplexities about God. He may, indeed he cannot but, reveal his personal convictions, but it will be dissolved in the structure of the novel; it is the people, with their unfulfillments, their stresses, their defiances and also their complacencies and compromises, and their exposure to the light which they may accept or decline, who absorb his attention. It is not his business to explore the universe, but rather, if he has the power, to convey it; what he explores is character.²⁶

With this assessment, Gibson is clearly not attributing to Dostoevsky any monopoly on the exploration of ‘character’. In his suggestion of a link between the spiritual struggles in which so many of Dostoevsky's creations are embroiled and his attention to ‘people with their unfulfillments, their stresses, their defiances and also their complacencies and compromises’, however, Gibson highlights an element of Dostoevsky's art that has exercised a profound influence on the literary ethos, not merely of Endō but of other members of the above-mentioned generation of post-war writers with ties to the Christian church.²⁷ For Dostoevsky, Endō and others, therefore, the spiritual dimension of their exploration of human nature through their fictional constructs is not to be dismissed lightly and Endō, in particular, was at pains to stress from the outset the link he had come to discern between the desire to fathom the complexity within the individual and the tendency he had identified in the writings, not only of Dostoevsky, but of the various French novelists he had considered at length, to focus on the realm of the unconscious. For Endō, the more such authors sought to explore human nature in their novels, the more they were confronted with this inner realm, leading him to conclude:

The Catholic author views this world as a shadow of the supernatural world, and, even whilst observing human psychology, he will detect, behind the ‘second dimension’ psychology of Freud, Bergson and Proust, the ‘third dimension’ of which Jacques Rivière happened to make mention. As a result, the Catholic writer can conceive as reality the introduction of the supernatural world into the world of human interaction, even if the non-Catholic reader is apt to misinterpret this as a distortion of reality.²⁸

The concept of the ‘third dimension’ was one to which Endō would make repeated reference in his subsequent writing, the conviction that focuses on the psyche of his creations resulted in confrontation with some ‘third dimension’ within his characters leading to increasing consideration of the nature of the realm of the unconscious. The connection he had come to see between his faith and this territory, already evidenced in the above citation, was never far beneath the surface, the more he sought to portray a greater profundity to his characters, the greater the emphasis on characters driven by forces beyond their conscious understanding or control. As Endō noted in a more recent study:

Nowadays, it may be possible to discuss ideology without resort to the question of the unconscious; but it is not possible to consider literature and religion in that way. … Religion is more than the product of the intellect; it is a product of the subconscious transcending all intellectualisation and consciousness.²⁹

The belief lies at the heart of Endō's attempt to penetrate the ‘deep inside of man’. It also suggests a link between a series of novels and short stories, written over a period of four decades, that might appear, at first glance, to have little in common. The reader of the earliest stories, Shiroi Hito (White Man) and Kiiroi hito (Yellow Man), both 1955—and even of early novels such as The Sea and Poison,Obakasan (Wonderful Fool, 1959; trans. 1974) and The Girl I Left Behind—may indeed struggle to identify the connection between these and Endō's most recent novels, Sukyandaru (Scandal, 1986; trans. 1988) and Deep River, whether from the standpoint of subject material or its treatment. When viewed as a concerted attempt to probe ever deeper behind the persona, the continuum does, however, emerge and the novels consequently assume their position as the rungs of a carefully crafted ladder. At this point, therefore, let us turn our attention to an examination of the protracted focus on the inner worlds of the various protagonists of Endō's narratives.

INTO THE SHADOWS

Having recognised the integral relationship between his faith and the unconscious, Endō was equally aware of the need, as author, to refrain from seeking to unravel the complexities of this realm in his literature. The question consequently presented itself of the means available to the author by which to probe the unconscious—and to render this in his fiction. The issue is that pursued by Dorrit Cohn (1978) in her penetrating study, Transparent Minds, and it is interesting to note the extent to which the Endō narrative conforms to the model established by Cohn. As such, let us begin our discussion of the techniques employed to this end by Endō with a brief consideration of the various narrative modes cited by Cohn as available to the author in the presentation of the psychological dramas experienced by his/her protagonists.

For Cohn, the three techniques that dominate attempts at rendering consciousness in the third-person prose narrative form are subsumed under the headings of psycho-narration, quoted monologue and narrated monologue. All three represent means whereby the author adds to the complexity of the psychological portraits on offer, but in each case, the distinctive approach results in a differing perspective on the worlds created. Cohn herself summed up these differences as follows:

Psycho-narration summarizes diffuse feelings, needs, urges; narrated monologue shapes these inchoate reactions into virtual questions, exclamations, conjectures; quoted monologue distills moments of pointed self-address that may relate only distantly to the original emotion.³⁰

Turning first to psycho-narration, the narrator's discourse about the protagonist's consciousness, Cohn suggests that it is in its verbal independence from self-articulation that the technique proves most effective:

Not only can it order and explain a character's conscious thoughts better than the character himself, it can also effectively articulate a psychic life that remains unverbalized, penumbral, or obscure. Accordingly, psycho-narration often renders, in a narrator's knowing words, what a character ‘knows’ without knowing how to put it into words.³¹

Psycho-narration comes into its own, therefore, as a means of articulating the sub- or unconscious nature of the psychic states the author narrates. Moreover, as the most direct path to the sub-verbal depth of the mind, the technique is invaluable in shifting the narrative from interpersonal to intrapersonal relationships. The trait is all-pervasive in the Endō narrative—and, as we shall see, the consequent shift from ‘the manifest social surface of behavior to the hidden depth of the individual psyche’³² lies at the heart of the author's portrayal of protagonists engaged upon their own journeys of self-discovery.

The effect induced by insertion of quoted monologue—of intense scrutiny of a character's mental discourse—will vary depending on the extent to which such inner discourse is separated from its third-person context. Traditionally restricted to the form of the audibly soliloquising voice (with the attendant sense of rationalisation or self-deceit that this entails), Cohn argues that, ‘in the novels of Dostoevsky and other late Realist writers, direct citation of a character's thoughts is no longer restricted to isolated moments explicitly set aside for extended contemplation or inner debate … but accompanies his successive encounters and experiences’.³³ Again, the Endō shōsetsu conforms to Cohn's model—with the quoted monologue carefully integrated into the surrounding narrative text. More specifically, the Endō narrative is replete with the literary device, cited by Cohn as a common means of incorporation of such monologue into an extended narrative depiction—that of characters assailed by the presence of an increasingly incontrovertible ‘inner voice’. In the chapters that follow, we shall encounter numerous examples of protagonists obliged to reconsider particular courses of action in deference to a voice they perceive as emanating from their unconscious being. As Cohn acknowledges, ‘the audition of [such a] voice … is one of the conventions of third person fiction, and partakes in the larger convention of the transparency of fictional minds’. Cohn's rejoinder at this point is, however, of considerable importance: ‘But that inner voice itself is a generally accepted psychological reality, and by no means a literary invention.’³⁴ The point was not lost on Endō, whose protagonists respond to this ‘inner voice’ with an intensity born of an awareness of the futility of attempting to repudiate it. The initial instinct to seek to overrule this voice is clearly present as Gaston, Rodrigues, Suguro and other protagonists contemplate their responses to this challenge. All, however, ultimately accept the need for a more considered approach—with the result that they end up paying greater heed to this than they would initially have countenanced.

Even a cursory reading of a representative sample of Endō's works will reveal the propensity of Cohn's third technique for rendering consciousness in fiction: that of narrated monologue. Enabling the author to reproduce verbatim a character's own mental language—in the guise of the narrator's discourse—the technique is cited by Cohn as holding a midpoint between the other two:

rendering the content of a figural mind more obliquely than the former, more directly than the latter. Imitating the language a character uses when he talks to himself, it casts that language into the grammar a narrator uses in talking about him, thus superimposing two voices that are kept distinct in the other two forms.³⁵

The Endō narrator takes maximum advantage of this technique for rendering a character's thoughts in his own idiom while maintaining a basic third-person referent and it is to this that the augmented sense of author-narrator-protagonist empathy noted above can perhaps best be attributed.

Cohn's thesis serves as a valuable key to an understanding of the issue of narrative presentation of the layers of consciousness of his protagonists that was of critical concern to Endō. Let us turn now, however, to consideration of various influences of a more immediate nature that were to determine the nature of the author's response to this challenge.

Such a discussion must surely start with reference to an author to whom Endō himself invariably acknowledged a literary debt: François Mauriac. Endō's attraction to what he saw as Mauriac's ability to achieve psychologically credible protagonists precisely by refraining from the temptation to identify the various layers of consciousness within his characters is evident in the series of short essays he produced at the outset of his career. The issue is subsequently addressed at length in Watashi no aishita shōsetsu (A Novel I Have Loved, 1985), a work whose title represents an open acknowledgement of the author's enduring fascination with Mauriac's classic work, Thérèse Desqueyroux, and in which Endō develops his belief that it is only by leaving the workings of the psyche as an ‘unfathomable chaos’ that the author can succeed in penetrating the realm of the unconscious. Far from imposing an arbitrary order and logic onto the psyche of his creations, he argues, it is his duty as author to sculpture his characters ‘without passing judgement on their intellectual or moral values’.³⁶

The portrayal suggests an author at the mercy of the unconscious. But what of the nature of the contents he discerned within this unfathomable chaos? The issue is critical—for it is the move from a fundamentally negative view of the unconscious (as ‘a swamp that houses our desires and urges which, though present in our subconscious, must remain suppressed and unexpressed’³⁷) towards a concomitant recognition of the realm as ‘the place in which God's love is exercised on mankind’³⁸ that the image of the individual as an amalgam of seemingly conflicting forces is rooted. To Endō, this recognition of the dual nature of the unconscious was derived, in part at least, from a similar progression he had come to discern in the literature of Mauriac and led to portrayal of a realm in which ‘our desire for Good conflicts with our penchant for Evil, in which our appreciation of Beauty conflicts with our attachment to the Ugly’.³⁹

Having acknowledged this fundamental tension within the unconscious, Endō was now in a position to view the human exterior as ‘the entrance to the inner being’.⁴⁰ The vision is one, not of incompatibility, but of a fundamental interdependency and derives, in large measure, from the author's increasing interest in the image of the individual as depicted by Carl Jung. Endō himself was the first to acknowledge the influence on his work of the Jungian vision of the individual;⁴¹ indeed, much of the above-mentioned work, Watashi no aishita shōsetsu, represents a critical study of Thérèse Desqueyroux from a Jungian perspective. Particularly in the light of the protracted assessment of this vision in Endō's later works, however, the influence would appear paramount. And the process is not limited to Endō's ‘mature’ work: in retrospect, a similar approach can be seen even in the earlier novels, works that predate the author's self-acknowledged period of intensive study of the writings of Jung following composition of the award-winning The Samurai. Viewed thus, even the earlier Endō protagonists can be seen as engaged in a process of increasing self-awareness as they seek to reconcile various elements within their being which are initially portrayed as standing in opposition but which are eventually acknowledged as of equal importance in the definition of the ‘whole’ individual.

In the analysis of the novels that follows, it is this process at work on the texts that will be emphasised. As one by one Endō's characters come to recognise within themselves an amalgam of conscious and unconscious forces, so the conclusion that both are an equal element of the ‘integrated’ individual is reinforced. At the same time, as they come increasingly to be depicted as complex personalities, so the image of characters seeking a balance of previously opposing forces is developed. In this sense, the characters are embarked on a journey—a journey towards ‘wholeness’—that conforms closely with the ‘process of individuation’ as defined by Jung:

I use the term ‘individuation’ to denote the process by which a person becomes a psychological ‘individual’, that is, a separate, indivisible unity or ‘whole’. It is generally assumed that consciousness is the whole of the psychological individual. But knowledge of the phenomena that can only be explained on the hypothesis of unconscious psychic processes makes it doubtful whether the ego and its contents are in fact identical with the ‘whole’. … There is plenty of evidence to show that consciousness is very far from covering the psyche in its totality.⁴²

Having recognised the duality within the individual, Jung subsequently stressed the need to avoid taking a stand in which the individual becomes wholly identified with one or the other pole. For, as he argued later in this same essay:

Conscious and unconscious do not make a whole when one of them is suppressed and injured by the other. If they must contend, let it at least be a fair fight with equal rights on both sides. Both are aspects of life. Consciousness should defend its reason and protect itself, and the chaotic life of the unconscious should be given the chance of having its way, too—as much of it as we can stand. This means open conflict and open collaboration at once. That, evidently, is the way human life should be. It is the old game of hammer and anvil: between them the patient iron is forged into an indestructible whole, an ‘individual’. This, roughly, is what I mean by the individuation process.⁴³

As a result of being possessed of both flesh and spirit, reason and emotion, what is needed is a balance in which a reconciliation between previously opposing forces can be effected. The goal of this journey, this process of individuation, is thus to locate a new centre within the individual—one which is neither conscious nor unconscious, but which partakes of both. This is the ‘Self’, a concept that Jung chose to define in the following terms:

If the unconscious can be recognised as a co-determining factor along with consciousness, and if we can live in such a way that conscious and unconscious demands are taken into account as far as possible, then the center of gravity of the total personality shifts its position. It is then no longer in the ego, which is merely the center of consciousness, but in the hypothetical point between the conscious and unconscious. This new center might be called the Self.⁴⁴

The definitions provide a useful key to an understanding of Endō's attitude towards his creations—as suggested by the plethora of characters within his work who become increasingly aware of an inner voice urging them to reconsider their conscious instincts. Such characters typically experience psychological uncertainty before ultimately succumbing to this inner, more powerful force. When reassessed in the light of such Jungian definitions, however, this can be viewed as an integral part of the process of integration upon which each is embarked. Without this, their ‘Self’ would remain subsumed by their ego and the unconscious side of their being would continue to represent a negative force, a Satanic voice, set up in absolute opposition to the voice of their conscious being. That this is not the case is testimony to Endō's determination to achieve total reconciliation—and to his acceptance of Jung's more positive view of the unconscious:

The unconscious is not a demoniacal monster, but a natural entity which, as far as moral sense, aesthetic taste, and intellectual judgment go, is completely neutral. It only becomes dangerous when our conscious attitude to it is hopelessly wrong. To the degree that we repress it, its danger increases. But the moment the patient begins to assimilate contents that were previously unconscious, its danger diminishes.⁴⁵

As Endō's characters come, increasingly, to listen to the voice of their unconscious, therefore, so they come to conform to Jung's claim that it is ‘only the man who can consciously assent to the power of the inner voice [who] becomes a personality’.⁴⁶ At the same time, moreover, the more they come to plumb the depths of their inner being, the more they are confronted by a realisation of the amalgam of positive and negative forces at work there. The discovery is often painful, as evidenced by the number of protagonists who struggle to come to terms with the growing conviction that thoughts that come to them at moments when their self-confidence has plumbed new depths are as integral an element of their entire being as those, more positive, qualities with which they had hitherto chosen to confront society.

At this point, the challenge confronting Endō as a novelist engaged in a protracted examination of the realm of the unconscious is clear. In probing the inner being of his creations, Endō was committed to a concerted attempt at reconciliation of the seemingly opposing qualities that he discerned there. In so doing, however, Endō found himself increasingly conscious of the above-mentioned need to ‘feel a sense of empathy with the sins and evils’ he discovered there—hence his depiction of the ‘third dimension’ as ‘the territory of demons’ and his conclusion that ‘one cannot describe man's inner being completely unless he closes in on this demonic part.’⁴⁷ Once more, in his self-assessment as an author whose ultimately optimistic evaluation of human nature was dependent, paradoxically, on a series of depictions of characters confronted by the murkier side of their being, the influence of Jung is readily discernible. More specifically, it is a relatively simple task to identify several sections of the critical study, Watashi no aishita shōsetsu, as drawing on Jung's assertion that:

Evil needs to be pondered just as much as good, for good and evil are ultimately nothing but ideal extensions and abstractions of doing, and both belong to the chiaroscuro of life. In the last resort there is no good that cannot produce evil and no evil that cannot produce good.⁴⁸

To Jung, the conclusion to be drawn from this claim was of the need to acknowledge the archetype of the Shadow as standing in opposition to the persona. Defining this as ‘the “negative” side of the personality, the sum of all those unpleasant qualities we like to hide, together with the insufficiently developed functions and the contents of the personal unconscious’,⁴⁹ Jung was at pains to stress this as representing a vital aspect of the integrated individual. For as he acknowledges elsewhere:

Unfortunately there can be no doubt that man is, on the whole, less good than he imagines himself or wants to be. Everyone carries a shadow, and the less it is embodied in the individual's conscious life, the blacker and denser it is. If an inferiority is conscious, one always has a chance to correct it. Furthermore, it is constantly in contact with other interests, so that it is continually subjected to modifications. But if it is repressed and isolated from consciousness, it never gets corrected, and is liable to burst forth suddenly in a moment of unawareness.⁵⁰

As noted earlier, however, it was Jung's vision of the realm of the unconscious as incorporating, not merely the ‘negative’ side of personality suppressed from the conscious being, but also a more positive force to which Endō has found himself drawn. In particular, as a Christian, Endō has been attracted to the Jungian image of the unconscious as the source of religious experience—as ‘the medium from which religious experience seems to flow’.⁵¹ The conception of ‘God as at work, not only in our beautiful parts but over our sullied parts, our sins’⁵² clearly owes much to this basic premise. Equally, moreover, it is in the ensuing vision of the individual as torn between two conflicting forces that the tendency to focus on the ‘demonic’ in a paradoxical quest for a more positive quality within the human composite can be seen as rooted. The result is a technique, evidenced throughout Endō's literature, that can be described as one of paradoxical inversion—a process whereby the author seeks to highlight that element in his protagonists which holds out against societal norms in a deliberate attempt to illuminate the antithetical potential for rebirth in beings who appear irreparably fallen. The consequent fusion of oppositions conforms closely to the description of this process offered by the Jungian psychologist, Erich Neumann:

At the polar points, consciousness loses its faculty of differentiation and in this constellation can no longer distinguish between positive and negative. In this way, it becomes possible for a phenomenon to shift into its opposite.⁵³

Clearly, the technique is by no means limited to the literature of Endō. Indeed, the process can be seen as derived in large measure from the author's determination, discussed above, to seek within his work a poetics of literature rather than a consistent theology. In his use of the device of paradoxical inversion as a primary means of highlighting the internal tensions within his creations, however, Endō has succeeded in elevating dialectic investigation to a level of sophistication rarely evidenced by his literary forebears in Japan.

The fascination with the darker side of human nature is evident in Endō's earliest fiction and, as shown by the discussion in Chapter 2 of Endō's two early novellas, White Man and Yellow Man, this frequently assumes the guise of examination of the potential evidenced by the Endō protagonist to inflict pain and suffering on his fellow man.⁵⁴ The depiction of the protagonist of White Man collaborating with the Gestapo interrogation and torture of his friends in the French Resistance, of Suguro and his fellow interns seemingly intoxicated by the gruesome experiments into vivisection on American POWs as depicted in The Sea and Poison, of Tanaka's inexplicable identification with the more outrageous aspects of the lifestyle of the Marquis de Sade as portrayed in Ryūgaku (Foreign Studies, 1965; trans. 1989): all appear designed to suggest a morbid fascination with the nature of Evil per se.

As suggested by the above discussion, however, to interpret the novels thus is to overlook the paradoxical intent behind these portrayals. And, as evidenced by the conviction offered by Father Durand in Endō's early novel, Kazan (Volcano, 1960; trans. 1978), in his admission that ‘if a man doesn't feel guilty of any sin, he doesn't have to depend on God’,⁵⁵ there are occasions when Endō's fictional constructs appear to encroach, over explicitly, into the discussion of the nature of this reversal. Reviewed in the light of this technique, however, such depictions do call for reassessment: the tendency to focus on the ugly, the frightening and the grotesque can now be recognised as stemming rather from a conviction of the impossibility of portraying the potential for salvation without an understanding of its antithesis, the ‘demonic’ element within mankind. Once more, Endō cites Mauriac as his model, with explicit reference to the latter's belief that:

The writer has a duty to expose human nature, sullied as it is by sin. But, in the depths beyond this sin exists something in which the Christian places implicit trust. This is another ray of light that purifies and sanctifies the sin before the author's own sceptical gaze. The author should bear witness to this light.⁵⁶

Endō proceeds to equate this ‘ray of light’ with a ‘twilight glow reminiscent of a Rembrandt painting—the light of God's grace’,⁵⁷ an image highly effective in accounting for the paradoxically positive effect induced, on occasion, by Endō's depiction of even the darkest of acts. In thus removing the focus from the portrayal of baser human instincts to a concentration on plumbing, ever deeper, the inner being of the protagonists capable of such inhuman behaviour, Endō has introduced a variety of images, to be discussed in the ensuing chapters, designed to suggest this ‘ray of light’. In so doing, and the more he has honed this technique, the more he has come to identify this as the means available to himself as author to introduce issues of a spiritual nature into his literature. This, in turn, has led to his uncompromising assertion in his more recent work that:

Evil and faith are similar. … Take lust, for example. In structural terms, there is no difference between the psychology of lust and the psychology of faith. They are locked in a relationship of interdependence, as two sides of a coin. And it is in the search for some link between the two that religion and literature come together.

In other words, in keeping with the principle that ‘all roads lead to Rome’, I have come to view all evil as a perverted image of the search for Christ.⁵⁸

The comment epitomises the mysterious power that Endō had come to locate at the heart of the unconscious, a power that elsewhere in the same study Endō portrays as the ‘X-like quality urging the individual towards discipline and balance’.⁵⁹ The notion of the ‘X-like quality within man’ represents another constant refrain in Endō's corpus; he even used this as the title of one of his essay collections.⁶⁰ Reminiscent of Jung's depiction of the psyche as a ‘regulatory system’ that renders the reconciliation of seemingly opposing forces not merely feasible, but an entirely natural phenomenon, the concept reflects the author's attempt to redefine the ‘demonic part’ resident in the unconscious in terms designed to highlight the spiritual drama he was seeking to create. As Endō proceeded to point out, however, the concept is equally the product of a vision of literature as a means of restoring inner equilibrium to the unconscious—of both author and reader—that is again derived from his study of various Jungian archetypes:

The stories and images created by our unconscious are the ultimate proof that our hearts are consistently seeking out this ‘X’. Needless to say, this ‘X’ is not death and destruction—but life, that which elevates our lives—the Being which I personally refer to as Jesus.⁶¹

The conclusion provides an invaluable insight into the author's view of narrativity. The more he has probed the workings of the unconscious, the more he has come to see this ‘X-like quality’ as an indispensable stimulus for the ‘narrative-creating archetype’⁶² within the artist—and to view this as an unconscious force without which the author is unable to give conscious representation to his, or her, inner being. Acknowledging his debt to the study of narratology by the Japanese psycholinguist, Izutsu Toshihiko—and citing, in particular, the latter's claim that ‘the images of the unconscious are embellished and subsequently develop into a tale’⁶³—Endō subsequently gave expression to this vision in terms designed to highlight the role exercised by the archetype in the creation of all literature:

Having come into contact with the author's unconscious, a ‘fact’ is embellished and developed into a tale—into an image and a ‘truth’ transcending the original ‘fact’.⁶⁴

The literary technique to emerge from this process is frequently described by Endō as that of ‘transposition’. A clear reflection of the author's vision of the art of the novelist as involving, not a recreation of reality but rather the removal—the ‘transposition’—of material born of real life to a different dimension, together with the gradual and imperceptible replacement of one figure with another. More specifically in the Endō narrative, the process involves a gradual minimalising of the disparity between beings traditionally assigned to differing dimensions and an ever-increasing acknowledgement of the need for his creations to look ever deeper within their inner being for resolution of the conflicts with which they find themselves confronted. As the author recognised in Watashi no aishita shōsetsu:

Behind the technique of transposition lies the conviction that salvation is to be found, not in some distant place separated from us by a vast expanse of open sky, but within our own being—in the dirtiest and most mundane part of our being.⁶⁵

The implications for the Endō narrative are readily apparent. The more the author has sought to provide concrete form to the process whereby his creations arrive at a greater sense of self-awareness, the more he has probed the unconscious thoughts and motivations that continue to guide their actions. At the same time, consistent focus on this inner realm has resulted in an ever-increasing tendency to blur the distinction between the conscious and unconscious realms, initially portrayed as in polar opposition. The ensuing process represents a fusion, a resolution of dichotomies accompanied by a growing awareness of some unconscious aspect of the being as it is gradually brought into rapprochement with a conscious element that lies at the heart of the process of individuation. It is only in addressing such oppositions that the individual is in a position to continue this journey; and it is only in effecting a resolution of qualities that appear to be irreconcilable that he/she is able to move towards a more ‘integrated’ being.

But at this point we must return to the literature—to an examination of the various dichotomies, all of which can be seen as symbols of this fundamental human duality that Endō seeks to fuse during the course of his novels. In large measure, these can be identified with specific novels and, as such, discussion of Endō's challenge on a particular opposition is best introduced in the appropriate chapter. Before turning to the texts themselves, however, a brief consideration of the more significant examples of such fusion during the course of Endō's works is in order.

Of these, perhaps the most discussed with regard to Endō's literature is that between East and West. Stemming from Endō's adoption of what he perceived of at the time as a ‘Western’ religion and his decision to pursue his studies in French literature, the two poles are initially established in a series of early essays epitomised by ‘Kamigami to kami to’ (‘The gods and God,’ 1947) as separated, at least at the superficial level, by an unbridgeable divide. At this stage, confronted by perception of an unfathomable gulf between the ‘pantheistic’ (kamigami) East and the ‘monotheistic’ (kami) West and tempted to attribute the illness that led to premature abandonment of his studies in France and his subsequent protracted hospitalisation in Japan to his unsuccessful attempt to confront the ‘great flow’ of European tradition, the author would appear to be engaged in a deliberate attempt to establish a clear-cut opposition. The definitions ventured in ‘The gods and God’ and other early essays, therefore, brook no compromise: the challenge as here presented is that of bridging the perceived divide between the ‘pantheistic’ world of the East in which ‘everything (e.g. Nature, the gods, etc.) represents an amalgam and extension of the individual and in which the individual remains but a part of the whole’ and the ‘monotheistic’ world of the West in which ‘there exists an absolute distinction and division between God, angels and the individual that represent a fundamental condition of existence’.⁶⁶

The same trend is equally evident in Endō's early fiction: the titles of the two early novellas, White Man and Yellow Man would appear to represent a similarly cut-and-dried distinction. Once more, however, the fact that the author is not simply engaged in a lament at the impossibility of effective cross-cultural communication is to be inferred from the earlier discussion of the process of paradoxical inversion—and closer examination of the works themselves suggests just such a technique operating at the textual level. As such, the more characters are confronted by this seemingly unfathomable divide, the more they come to view the East and West, less as irreconcilable opposites, more as elements of a dynamic tension in which the one is ultimately only definable in terms of the other. Inevitably, the process is gradual. The growing optimism concerning the possibility of reconciliation evident within the texts is, however, distinctive, leading to the author's recent admission:

As a result of continuous consideration of the concept of the unconscious in my literature, I am now convinced that meaningful communication between East and West is possible.

I have gradually come to realise that, despite the mutual distance and the cultural and linguistic differences that clearly exist in the conscious sphere, the two hold much in common at the unconscious level.⁶⁷

Another opposition subjected to a similar process of fusion within Endō's oeuvre is that between strength and weakness, poles which, for Endō, have derived in large measure from consideration of the distinction between those ‘strong’ Christians who were willing to martyr themselves for their faith during the era of Christian persecution in early seventeenth-century Japan and those ‘weaklings’ who, unwilling or unable to sacrifice themselves in this way, ended up according with the Shogunate's wishes and performing the act of efumi by placing their foot on a crucifix (fumie) in an outward act of apostasy. The issue is one with which Endō has consistently struggled and has resulted in an identification with the generations of Kakure (Hidden) Christians forced, not only to perpetuate their faith in secret, but to live with the stigma of being branded as ‘weaklings’ as a result of their having succumbed to the overwhelming pressure to apostatise.⁶⁸ The more Endō was to consider the lives of these Kakure, obliged to live with the sense of ignominy and shame at having defiled the image of Christ whom they continued to venerate, the more he came to question the traditional dismissal of the Kakure as ‘weak’ apostates rather than as possessed, paradoxically, of the strength to live the rest of their lives in full knowledge of this act of betrayal and to seek rather to portray the existence of an innate relationship between the two forces. The result is a series of characters, initially epitomised by Gaston in Wonderful Fool and Mitsu in The Girl I Left Behind, who are portrayed as weak and powerless—but human; and it is in stressing their humanness that Endō seeks to locate within his ‘weak’ characters an inner vigour and consequent capacity for acts of strength. Significantly, in so doing, such characters are not suddenly endowed with qualities which they did not formerly possess. Rather, in casting increasing doubts upon the initial categorisation of such characters, Endō seeks to hint at the potential within such characters to influence, not only their own destinies but also the lives of those with whom they come into contact. Only gradually is the paradox unravelled. But, as the very qualities that were initially seen as signs of weakness come to be seen as the potential source of ultimate salvation, so the fusion of the traditional opposition between ‘strength’ and ‘weakness’ is reinforced.

In the Endō text, the opposition between strength and weakness assumes a variety of guises that will be discussed in the analysis of the novels themselves. In particular, however, as suggested by the author's study of the fate of the Kakure Christians, the concept is frequently embodied in the suggestion of a fundamental link between two other qualities traditionally placed in opposition: that between faith and doubt. Inspired, in part at least, by the author's own spiritual journey, this has led to a series of novels in which the most profound faith appears only to be expressible through the language of doubt and scepticism—in a manner reminiscent of Dostoevsky's depiction of the dark, sceptical soul of Ivan Karamazov as countered by portrayal of the pure soul of Alyosha. The resulting suggestion of chaos, in which the one is required to support the other, enables the author seeking to capture the hearts of his characters at the moment of greatest internal drama—as their inner beings are wracked by fundamental doubts concerning the underpinnings of their lives—to highlight the potential for fusion between forces initially perceived as in opposition.

Endō's reader is confronted with several further examples of this technique, each designed to bring into question any absolute categorisation of human nature. The gradual merging of a total absence of sin-consciousness with an awareness of the pangs of conscience occasioned by Evil (as evidenced, for example, in The Sea and Poison), the ability of characters reduced to the depths of despair to discern the paradoxical potential for hope in the form of the ray of light shining through the darkness (as evidenced, for example, in Silence): all now come to be seen as contributing to the process of fusion as outlined above, the cumulative effect being that the reader is encouraged to reserve judgement on initial, seemingly unassailable impressions.

As noted earlier, the vision of human nature to emerge from this process of reconciliation is fundamentally optimistic, if complex. The more Endō penetrates the inner worlds of his protagonists—the more he seeks to isolate the ‘X-like’ quality present within even the most mundane of his characters—the more he is in a position to hint at the potential they all possess to influence their own destiny through greater self-awareness. To be sure, there are occasions when the Endō protagonist appears intent on self-destruction, times when these creations appear unable to make sense of, let alone to control, their own inner tensions and uncertainties. The consequent vision of the inner world as a battleground, especially for forces of a psychic nature, is, however, deeply rooted in Jungian psychology, the ensuing depictions of characters embroiled in psychological uncertainty reminiscent of Jung's portrayal of humans as irrational beings, driven by subtle, unknown and unknowable psychic motives.

Once more, the task for Endō as novelist was to present this vision of the divided self in literary terms and, as suggested by the number of Endō's characters, especially in his later novels, who find themselves confronted by ‘mō hitori no jibun’ (another self), Endō too found himself increasingly drawn to portrayal of this tension through examination of the concept of the doppelgänger.⁶⁹ Frequently expressed in terms of characters engaged in a desperate search for hontō no watashi (the real me) or hontō no anata (the real you), Endō's interest in this division—and his attempts to portray this alter ego as representing the positive side of the Shadow archetype as defined by Jung—is introduced in overt terms in the title of the 1968 short story, ‘Kagebōshi’ (‘Shadows’; trans. 1993). Here, the more the young protagonist probes the ‘real’ person behind the public mask assumed by his former pastor, the more aware he becomes of a certain facet of the priest's personality with which he has yet to come to terms.

The concept of the doppelgänger, or bunshin (lit. divided self), is one which we shall be considering in some detail in the discussion of the novel Scandal in which portrayal of the shadowy figure who continues to haunt the protagonist, Suguro, conforms closely to the model established for the double by Carl Keppler in his in-depth analysis of what he describes as the ‘literature of the second self’. In Chapter 6, therefore, we shall consider the extent to which Suguro and the ‘impostor’ he encounters accord with Keppler's prescription of ‘an inescapable two that are at the same time an indisputable one’.⁷⁰ Let us limit the discussion at this stage, however, to a few words about the manner in which, in the portrayal of characters who become ever more aware of a deeper level of their being that they are ultimately unable to keep suppressed, the Endō narrative mirrors accurately the process at work in all fiction of the second self as delineated by Keppler.

Rodrigues in Silence, Hasekura and Velasco in The Samurai and, more explicitly, Suguro and Madame Naruse in Scandal, Ōtsu and Mitsuko in Deep River … Endō's fiction provides a steady stream of characters who experience varying degrees of success in coming to terms with perception of their own divided selves as a result of engagement with mō hitori no jibun. Confrontation with this ‘other self’ results in an invasion of the previously unquestioned self-sufficiency and peace of mind of protagonists, and it is in this sense, in bringing about a moral development in these characters, that they conform to Keppler's depiction of the second self of the ‘conscious ego’.⁷¹

Portraying the process set in motion as a result of such confrontation as a ‘reconciliation of absolute irreconcilables’,⁷² Keppler describes the consequent awakening effected within protagonists in such circumstances in the following terms,

The ‘I’ one ordinarily supposes oneself to be in the everyday world is not the only tenant in the house of self … this house is far larger than one has imagined, full of shadowy recesses and corridors, but full of wonder as well.⁷³

The passage represents an apposite encapsulation of the process at work in Endō's narratives. Gradually convinced during the course of the novels of the need to acknowledge this other self as an integral part of their whole being, Endō's protagonists come increasingly to accept that their earlier faulty or incomplete perception of themselves and others was the result of failure to come to terms with this ‘other self’. The pain inherent to the process is never glossed over. The overall effect, however, is that of an adventure of reconciliation, an adventure symbolised by the experience of encountering the second self that accords with Keppler's encapsulation of all such narratives:

If we compare the first self before his experience of the second with the same first self after the experience … we will see that in most cases … it has yielded a great deal. … In the vast majority of cases the harm done to the first self by the second is harm as catastrophic as harm can be. … [But] it is a harm that stirs awake, that lances through the comfortable shell of self-complacency or self-protection, that strips away all masks of self-deception, that compels self-awareness and in the agony of the process brings self-enlargement.⁷⁴

The passage could have been written with the literature of Endō in mind, and, as we shall see in the discussion of individual texts that follow, each can be seen as supporting Keppler's claim that ‘every second self story … is to one degree or another a story of shaping … [a story of] the growth of the first self’.⁷⁵

In examining the personalities to emerge from Endō's fiction, therefore, the reader cannot but be struck by the ‘growth’ occasioned within the various protagonists—and the consequent depiction of human nature conforms closely to the vision, outlined at the beginning of this chapter, of man as a ‘splendid and beautiful being and, at the same time, … a terrible being’. In the considerations that follow of the journeys towards greater self-understanding upon which each of these is engaged, therefore, so the view of these as embarked upon their own ‘process of individuation’ will be developed. The discoveries that each makes along the way will inevitably differ and the extent to which the author succeeds in maintaining the focus on this process of growth will, of necessity, be determined, in part at least, by the narrative considerations discussed earlier. As a concerted attempt to penetrate the public facade and to expose the alternative facets of the divided self that lurk behind this veneer, however, Endō's work represents an invaluable addition to the corpus of literary texts in Japan devoted to consideration of this aspect of human nature.

It is in this sense that I have chosen to refer to Endō's literary corpus as a ‘literature of reconciliation’, and the texts analysed below have all been selected as exemplars of this trend. Discussed in chronological order in an attempt to highlight this continuum, it is as elements of the consistent search for reconciliation of the self, initially presented as torn between conscious and unconscious forces, that the various novels will be considered. All but the first novellas are available in English translation but, for those unfamiliar with Endō's work, synopses of all the works discussed in this study are included as Appendix B. But at this point, let us allow the texts to speak for themselves.

Notes

1. This point is manifest mainly in the paucity of critical discussion of Endō's role within this literary grouping. For an exception, see Yasuoka Shōtarō, Kojima Nobuo and Ōkubo Fusao, ‘Tsuitō zadankai: Endō Shūsaku to daisan no shinjin’ (Commemorative discussion: Endō Shūsaku and the Daisan no shinjin), Bungakkai, 50 (12) (December 1996), pp. 210 ff.

2. Those that do exist tend to assume the guise of a letter to a clearly identified reader or a diary entry in which the focus is more on the character's mental discourse than on factual detail.

3. ‘Watashi no bungaku to seisho’ (My literature and the Bible), Kirisutokyō bunka kenkyūjo kenkyū nenpō, 12 (1980), pp. 15-16.

4. One has only to look at the names of those selected to offer valedictory tributes to Endō in the commemorative editions of the various literary journals produced on the occasion of Endō's death to determine the lifelong significance of the ties Endō forged with fellow members of the Daisan no shinjin.

5. This is the title of an interview given by Endō that appeared in Chesterton Review, 14:3 (1988), p. 499.

6. Ibid.

7. I am thinking here in particular, of the protagonist of Shiroi hito (White Man), Suguro in Umi to dokuyaku (The Sea and Poison) and Tanaka in Ryūgaku (Foreign Studies).

8. As further evidence of the absence of a single focus figure in Deep River, note the gradual shift, discussed in Chapter 7, from emphasis on Mitsuko to equal prominence given to Ōtsu.

9. Cited by Kazusa in a lecture delivered at the Centre for the Study of Christian Arts, Tokyo, 26 May, 1997.

10. Endō, ‘Awanai yōfuku’ (Ill-fitting Clothes), in Endō Shūsaku bungaku zenshū ESBZ), vol. 10, Tokyo, Shinchōsha, 1975, p. 374.

11. Mathy, Francis, ‘Shūsaku Endō: Japanese Catholic Novelist’, Thought, Winter 1967, p. 592.

12. Interview with Tanaka Chikao. Cited in ibid., p. 609.

13. ‘Watashi no bungaku’ (My Literature), ESBZ, vol. 10, p. 370.

14. Here, in addition to Endō, I am thinking of such authors as Shimao Toshio, Shiina Rinzō, Miura Shumon, Miura Ayako, Sono Ayako, Takahashi Takako, Yasuoka Shōtarō and Ariyoshi Sawako.

15. In several of his early essays, Endō dwells on this clear-cut division between East and West as a prelude to his concerted attempt (to be discussed later) to challenge the notion of the unfathomable divide between the two. See, for example, ‘Kamigami to kami to’ (The gods and God), ESBZ, vol. 10, pp. 14 ff.

16. Endō has frequently used the term sanbunhō (trichotomy) to describe this perceived division. See, for example, Endō and Yashiro Seiichi, ‘Sukyandaru no kōzō: ningen no tajūsei ni tsuite’ (The structure of the novel Scandal: Concerning the multifaceted nature of humankind), Shinchō (83 (4), (1986), p. 197.

17. ‘Nihonteki kanjō no soko ni aru mono: metafijikku hihyō to dentōbi’ (That which lies at the heart of the Japanese sensibility: Metaphysical criticism and the traditional aesthetic), ESBZ, vol. 10, p. 146.

18. ‘Furansowa Mōriakku’ (François Mauriac), ESBZ, vol. 10, p. 94.

19. ‘Katorikku sakka no mondai’ (The problems confronting the Catholic author), ESBZ, vol. 10, p. 28.

20. ‘Shūkyō to bungaku’ (Religion and literature), ESBZ, vol. 10, p. 119.

21. ‘Katorikku sakka no mondai’, op. cit., pp. 20-1.

22. Ibid., pp. 21, 23.

23. ‘Watashi ni totte no kami’ (God as I see Him), Seiki, 354 (1979), p. 62.

24. Cited in Ningen no naka no X (The ‘X’ within Man), Tokyo, Chūō kōronsha, 1978, p. 137.

25. Interview with Kaga Otohiko, ‘Taidan: Samurai ni tsuite’ (Discussion: About The Samurai), Bungakkai, 34:8 (1980), p. 206.

26. Gibson, Boyce, The Religion of Dostoevsky, London, SCM Press, 1973, p. 54.

27. In this regard, one could mention, in particular, Shiina Rinzō and Shimao Toshio who were quick to acknowledge their literary debt to Dostoevsky.

28. ‘Katorikku sakka no mondai’, op. cit., p. 27.

29. Watashi no aishita shōsetsu (A Novel I have Loved), Tokyo, Shinchōsha, 1985, pp. 21, 30.

30. Cohn, Dorrit, Transparent Minds: Narrative Modes for Presenting Consciousness in Fiction, New Jersey, Princeton University Press, 1978, pp. 135-6.

31. Ibid., p. 46.

32. Ibid., p. 56.

33. Ibid., p. 61.

34. Ibid., p. 77, emphasis in original.

35. Ibid., p. 105.

36. Watashi no aishita shōsetsu, op. cit., p. 13.

37. Ibid., p. 20.

38. Ibid., p. 33.

39. Ibid., p. 13.

40. Ibid., p. 33.

41. See, for example, ‘Literature and religion, especially the role of the unconscious: The Voice of the Writer, J. K.Buda (trans.), Collected Papers of the 47th International PEN Congress, Tokyo, 1986, pp. 29-37.

42. Jung, C. G., ‘Conscious, unconscious and individuation’, The Collected Works of C. G. Jung, London, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1953-77; (hereafter CWJ), vol. 9.i, pp. 275-6.

43. Ibid., p. 288.

44. ‘The detachment of consciousness from the object’, CWJ, vol. 13, p. 45.

45. ‘The practical use of dream-analysis’, CWJ, vol. 16, p. 152.

46. ‘The development of personality’, CWJ, vol. 17, p. 180.

47. ‘The anguish of an alien’, Japan Christian Quarterly, 40:4 (Fall 1974), p. 184.

48. ’Introduction to the religious and psychological problems of alchemy’, CWJ, vol. 12, p. 31. Endō makes a similar claim in Watashi no aishita shōsetsu, op. cit., p. 176.

49. ’The psychology of the unconscious’, CWJ, vol. 7, p. 65, n. 5.

50. ’Psychology and religion’, CWJ, vol. 11, p. 76.

51. ’The undiscovered self’, CWJ, vol. 10, p. 293.

52. Watashi no aishita shōsetsu, op. cit., p. 72.

53. Neumann, Erich, The Great Mother, R. Manheim (trans.), New York, Pantheon Books, 1955, pp. 75-6.

54. Use of the masculine pronoun here is deliberate since the Endō protagonist is predominantly male.

55. Volcano, R. Schuchert (trans.), New York, Taplinger, 1978, p. 127.

56. Cited in ‘Katorikku sakka no mondai’, op. cit., p. 25.

57. Ibid.

58. Watashi no aishita shōsetsu, op. cit., pp. 176-7.

59. Ibid, p. 167.

60. Ningen no naka no X, op. cit.

61. Watashi no aishita shōsetsu, op. cit., p. 175.

62. Ibid., p. 146.

63. Ibid., p. 152.

64. Ibid., p. 154.

65. Ibid., p. 70.

66. ‘Kamigami to kami to’ (The gods and God), ESBZ, vol. 10, pp. 18-19.

67. ‘Author's Introduction’, in Endō, Foreign Studies, M. Williams (trans.), London, Peter Owen, 1989, p. 11.

68. For a relatively recent discussion of Endō's views on this issue, see Kirishitan Jidai: Junkyō to kikyō no rekishi (The Christian Era: A History of Martyrdom and Apostasy), Tokyo, Shōgakkan, 1992.

69. Again, this aspect of Endō's art is clearly indebted to Western precedent: in a discussion with myself in July 1993, Endō acknowledged his indebtedness in this regard to the precedent established, in particular, by Graham Greene in the person(s) of Francis Andrews in The Man Within and by Dostoevsky in the portrayal of Golyadkin in The Double.

70. Keppler, C. F., The Literature of the Second Self, Tucson, University of Arizona Press, 1972, p. 1. Keppler uses the term ‘second self’ instead of ‘doppelgänger’ (which ‘suggests duplication, either physical or psychological, or both’) or ‘inner self’ (which is ‘too limited, suggesting a twofoldness which is purely internal’). In view of its wider currency, I have chosen to persist with the term doppelgänger—but would concur with Keppler's caveat against the suggestion of simple duplication.

71. Ibid., p. 204.

72. Ibid., p. 10.

73. Ibid., p. 206.

74. Ibid., pp. 194-5.

75. Ibid., p. 195.