Hermeneutics of Evil in the Works of Endo Shusaku : Between Reading and Writing

Evil is a salient component of Endō Shūsaku’s writing. This study offers new insight into the intellectual and artistic development of the author by focusing on a lesser known yet significant body of work – his essays and critical texts – and reads them in light of his ideas on evil, subjectivity and personhood.

Evil is a salient component of Endo Shusaku’s writing. Questions surrounding evil haunted the writer as a student of French literature, having discovered the works of Western authors like François Mauriac and Georges Bernanos. It is around the problem of evil that Endo would create his most renowned novels and the cross-cultural dimensions of the questions he posed on the nature of evil would make him one of the most widely translated Japanese authors.
This study offers new insight into the intellectual and artistic development of the author by focusing on a lesser known yet significant body of work: his essays and critical texts. The book is, on the one hand, an attempt to follow the path of thinking delineated by Endo Shusaku himself and, on the other, a methodological approach to literary studies based on the application of selected categories of Paul Ricœur’s hermeneutics. Thus, the book accentuates the problem of subjectivity and personhood in Endo’s works, ultimately exploring the question, Who is the one who asks about evil?