This short novel, consisting of three unconnected parts--two short vignettes and a longer novella--traces the feelings of three Japanese students studying abroad. In all three parts, the experiences are rather pessimistic, with all characters expressing deep unease about the gulf that exists between them and European culture. The takeaway seems to be that those who enjoy their overseas experiences, or "who return home fatter after their period of studying abroad" (224) are somehow proceeding through their experience with closed eyes to what is most important. The pessimism doesn't stop with students on short, study abroad trips. In the third novella, one of the sub-characters, a Japanese interpreter who has spent much of his life in Paris, is always expressing nostalgia about the Tokyo of his past, stating that he can never go back to that Japan, but at the same time will never be accepted as a Frenchman in France. In short, he is 50% Japanese, but also 50% nothing. Having spent most of my adult life as an American living in Japan, I appreciate Endo's views on the difficulty of fully understanding another culture, but reject the the pessimistic idea that one cannot "exchange blood" with a foreign race, and that any honest attempt to dip into the history and culture of a foreign people will result in a spiritual and physical exhaustion. ( )

I didn't actually finish this sombre little book, but only because my bb was leaving and needed something to read on the plane. Regardless, I think I got enough through to get a feel, even if this is all obviously contingent on what amazing or awful things could have happened in the last pages. It's painfully acute, at times - the alienation of the lone foreigner, the hollowness at the centre of every place not yours, the stultifying goodwill. I worry that when cheap travel vanishes, the world will go back to being like this - much like religion, the occasional intensified moments of transcendence aren't worth the constant anxiety and anomie. You also can't help but think, speaking of religion, that this isn't really a book about foreign study as it is about the emotional life of being Japanese and Christian. In which case Endo brought it on himself and I take it all back and will happily eat sour pancakes in sleepy villages and tenderize undersaddle steaks with cossacks and spend some nights in old Kyoto and all the rest of our more usual "travel in the old days" tropes with you, sir.

08/10/08 Finisheddddd! And I stand by everything, except that Tanaka wanting to lick the stones where Sade trod and whipped and bringing it all on himself a bit makes him a bit more human, you know? ( )

A short selection of stories by the writer of "Silence." My favourite of these is the self-exiled Japanese professor working in Paris, who decides to try and track down the chateau that was once home to the Marquis de Sade; his efforts are all in vain, and his sense of desparation and urgency in this redemptive task are palpable. ( )