알라딘: 깊은 강 엔도 슈사쿠 深い河

 알라딘: 깊은 강 엔도 슈사쿠

깊은 강  | 민음사 세계문학전집 160

엔도 슈사쿠 (지은이),

유숙자 (옮긴이)민음사2007-10-30원제 : 深い河 (1993년)

책소개

국내에는 <침묵>의 작가로 잘 알려진, 평생에 걸쳐 신과 구원의 문제에 천착한 엔도 슈사쿠는, 1993년 병마와 사투를 벌이며 완성한 마지막 장편소설 <깊은 강>에 자기 문학의 모든 주제를 집약해 놓았다. 신은 인간 내면에 살아 숨 쉬며, 인간을 속박하는 것이 아니라 포용하는 존재임을 이 소설을 통해 역설한다.

인생의 황혼기를 맞은 네 사람이 인도 단체 여행을 계기로 만난다. 이소베는 평범하게 살아온 가장이었다. 그러다 암 선고를 받은 아내가 투병 끝에 숨을 거두면서 꼭 다시 태어날 테니 자신을 찾아오라는 말을 남긴다. 동화 작가인 누마다는 병으로 죽음의 고비를 맞았을 때 누구보다 큰 힘이 되어 준 구관조를 잊지 못한다.

기구치는 태평양 전쟁 당시 미얀마에서, 죽은 동료의 인육까지 먹어야 했던 처참한 상황에 대한 기억을 안고 살아간다. 이소베의 죽어 가는 아내를 간호했던 미쓰코는 대학 시절 가톨릭 신자인 오쓰를 그저 장난으로 유혹했다가 버린 기억이 있다. 그녀는 신부가 된 오쓰가 인도의 수도원에 있다는 소식을 전해 듣는다.

각기 다른 사연을 품은 네 사람은 저마다 삶과 죽음의 의미를 찾아 인도로 간 것이다. 불가촉천민부터 수상이었던 인디라 간디까지, 신분과는 상관없이 모든 사람을 품어 안는 갠지스 강과 그곳에서 진정한 평화를 얻는 사람들을 보면서, 가슴에 상처를 안고 살아온 이들은 강한 인상을 받는다.

목차

1장 이소베의 경우

2장 설명회

3장 미쓰코의 경우

4장 누마다의 경우

5장 기구치의 경우

6장 강변 동네

7장 여신

8장 잃어버린 것을 찾아서

9장 강

10장 오쓰의 경우

11장 진실로 그는 우리의 병고를 짊어지고

12장 환생

13장 그는 아름답지도 않고 위엄도 없으니

작품 해설 / 유숙자

작가 연보

책속에서

복수나 증오는 정치 세계뿐만이 아니라, 종교 세계에서도 마찬가지였다. 이 세상은 집단이 생기면 대립이 발생하고 분쟁이 벌어지고, 상대방을 깎아내리기 위한 모략이 시작된다. 전쟁과 전후의 일본 속에서 살아온 이소베는 그러한 인간이나 집단을 싫증나게 보았다. 정의라는 단어도 지겹도록 들었다. 그리고 어느새 마음 깊숙이, 아무것도 믿을... 더보기

체념과 피로가 뒤섞인 생활. 그 존재만으로도 그녀를 피곤하게 하는 선량한 남편. 세속적으로 말하자면 이 남자는 무엇 하나 비난받을 구석이 없다. 없는 까닭에 테레즈는 그에게도 자신에게도 초조함을 느낀다. -87쪽 - iamjune

"나는 그 후로, 생각합니다. 신은 마술사처럼 뭐든 활용하신다고, 우리의 나약함이나 죄도. 그렇습니다. 마술사가 상자에 지저분한 참새를 넣고 뚜껑을 닫고는, 신호와 더불어 두껑을 열잖습니까? 상자 속 참새는 새하얀 비둘기로 바뀌어 날아오릅니다."-93쪽 - iamjune

"나는 이곳 사람들처럼 선과 악을 그다지 확실히 구분할 수 없습니다. 선 속에도 악이 깃들고, 악 속에도 선한 것이 잠재되어 있다고 생각합니다. 그렇기에 신은 요술을 부릴 수 있는 것입니다. 나의 죄마저 활용해서 구원으로 이끌어 주셨지요."-97쪽 - iamjune

누마다는 어떤 부부건 간에, 서로 용해될 수 없는 고독이 있음을 결혼 생활을 지속하면서 알았다. -115쪽 - iamjune

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추천글

종교적인 관점에서 영혼의 재탄생을 그리면서, 현대인이 마주치는 삶의 공허함을 냉정하게 분석했다. - 「퍼블리셔스 위클리」 - 퍼블리셔스 위클리 (미국) 

가스통은 눈을 감고 말이 없었다 - 김연수 (소설가) 

이 책을 추천한 다른 분들 : 

피터 박스올 

 - <죽기 전에 꼭 읽어야 할 책 1001권> (마로니에북스 刊)

저자 및 역자소개

엔도 슈사쿠 (遠藤周作) (지은이) 

일본의 대표적인 현대 소설가. 가톨릭 신자인 이모의 집에서 성장하였으며, 열한 살 때 세례를 받았다. 1949년 게이오 대학 불문학과를 졸업한 후 현대 가톨릭 문학을 공부하기 위해 일본 정부가 수여하는 장학금으로 프랑스 리옹 대학에서 프랑스 문학을 공부했다. 결핵으로 인해 2년 반 만에 귀국한 뒤, 본격적인 작가 활동을 시작하였다. 1955년에 발표한 《하얀 사람》(白ぃ人)으로 아쿠타가와상을 수상했고, 《바다와 독약》으로 신쵸샤 문학상과 마이니치 출판 문화상을 수상하고 일본의 대표적 문학가로서 입지를 굳혔다.

엔도는 프랑스 유학에서 돌아온 후, 유럽의 [신의 세계]를 경험한 [나]가 결국 동양의 [신들의 세계]로 돌아올 수밖에 없었다는 자전적 소설 《아덴까지》를 발표했는데, 그 6개월 뒤에 《백색인白い人》을 발표하였고, 또 6개월 뒤에 《황색인黃色い人》을 발표했다. 그리고 백색인으로 1955년 제33회 아쿠타가와상을 수상한다. 《아덴까지》의 작품 의식을 기반으로 한 《신의 아이(백색인) 신들의 아이(황색인)》 역시 엔도가 유럽과 동양의 종교문화의 차이로부터 겪은 방황, 갈등의 요소를 그대로 투영하고 있다. 1966년에 《침묵》(沈默)을 발표하여 다니자키 준이치로상을 수상했다. 1996년 타계하기 전까지 여러 차례 노벨문학상 후보에 올랐으며, 종교소설과 통속소설의 차이를 무너뜨린 20세기 문학의 거장이자 일본의 국민작가로 평가받고 있다. 대표작으로는 《침묵》, 《예수의 생애》,《내가 버린 여자》, 《깊은 강》, 《사해 부근에서》, 《바다와 독약》, 《그리스도의 탄생》 등 다수가 있으며 1996년 9월 29일 서거. 東京 府中市 가톨릭 묘지에 잠들어 있다. 접기

수상 : 1980년 노마문예상, 1979년 요미우리 문학상, 1966년 다니자키 준이치로상, 1955년 아쿠타가와상

최근작 : <그리스도의 탄생>,<사무라이>,<나를 사랑하는 법> … 총 155종 (모두보기)

유숙자 (옮긴이) 

번역가. 지은 책으로 『재일한국인 문학연구』(학술원 우수학술도서), 『재일한인문학』(공저), 옮긴 책으로는 가와바타 야스나리의 『설국』, 『손바닥 소설』, 『명인』, 다자이 오사무의 『사양』, 『만년』, 『디 에센셜 다자이 오사무』, 나쓰메 소세키의 『행인』(대산문화재단 번역 지원), 『유리문 안에서』, 엔도 슈사쿠의 『깊은 강』, 오에 겐자부로의 『새싹 뽑기, 어린 짐승 쏘기』, 쓰시마 유코의 『「나」』, 김시종 시선집 『경계의 시』, 데이비드 조페티의 『처음 온 손님』, 사토 하루오의 『전원의 우울』, 가와무라 미나토의 『전후문학을 묻는다』 등이 있다. 접기

최근작 : <재일 한국인 문학>,<재일한국인 문학연구> … 총 38종 (모두보기)

유숙자(옮긴이)의 말

동양과 서양, 강자와 약자, 선과 악, 삶과 죽음의 경계가 만년의 엔도에게는 이미 무의미한 것이 되었는지도 모른다. 다만 이 모든 것들이 한데 혼연히 어우러진 인류의 거대한 흐름을 부드럽게 응시하는 초월적인 존재, 모성적인 신의 세계에 작가는 마침내 당도하게 되었다.

오늘도 지구 한 쪽에서는 각기 다른 종교나 신의 이름으로 서로를 죽이고 죽임을 당한다. 한편 타종교 간에 가로 놓인 벽을 허물고 상호 이해의 물꼬를 트려는 움직임도 당연시되는 현실이다. 이러한 시대 정황 속에서 엔도의 작품은 문학의 진정성에 대한 환기와 더불어 현대인들의 정신적 공감을 이끌어 내는 가치를 한층 발휘하고 있다. - 유숙자 (옮긴이)

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출판사 제공 책소개

일본 전후 문학계 대표적인 작가 엔도 슈사쿠의 『깊은 강』이 민음사 세계문학전집(160번)으로 출간되었다. 엔도 슈사쿠는 특히 종교적 문제, 신과 구원의 문제에 천착한 작가로 잘 알려져 있다. 그는 어린 시절부터 가톨릭에서 큰 영향을 받아 왔지만, 그의 작품들은 종교소설의 범주에만 머물지 않는다. 오히려 특정 종교의 벽을 뛰어넘어, 보편적 삶과 그 삶의 진실을 꿰뚫어보는 통찰력으로 독자들을 사로잡아 왔다. 『깊은 강』은 엔도 슈사쿠의 마지막 작품으로, 그가 평생 동안 추구해 온 모든 가치들을 집약해 놓은 그의 대표작이다.

상처 받은 인간들에게 신이 내미는 구원의 손길

『깊은 강』은 엔도 슈사쿠가 1993년 완성한 마지막 장편소설이다. 이때는 그가 여러 차례 수술을 받으면서 투병 생활을 하던 때로, 이 작품은 자신의 50년 가까운 문학 인생의 집대성이라 할 수 있다. 엔도 슈사쿠는 자신에게 커다란 명성을 안겨 준 『침묵』과 함께 이 책을 관 속에 넣어 달라고 유언하기도 했다.

이 작품에서 엔도 슈사쿠는 다양한 등장인물을 통하여 지금까지 자신이 추구해 왔던 모든 주제들을 그려 내고 있다. 삶의 기쁨과 슬픔이나 사랑하는 사람의 죽음 같은 인생의 여러 굴곡을 겪고 이제 황혼기를 맞은 네 사람이 인도 단체 여행을 계기로 만난다. 이소베는 평범하게 살아온 가장이었다. 그러다 아내는 갑작스레 암 선고를 받고, 고통스런 투병 끝에 숨을 거둔다. 그녀는 꼭 다시 태어날 테니 자신을 찾아오라는 말을 남겼다. 동화 작가인 누마다는 병으로 죽음의 고비를 맞았을 때 구관조에게 큰 위안을 받았다. 그러나 그의 수술이 성공적으로 끝난 후 구관조는 마치 그를 대신하듯 죽어 버렸고, 그는 아직도 그 구관조에 대해 애틋한 마음을 품고 있다. 기구치는 태평양 전쟁에 참전했다가 미얀마에서 부상을 입고 낙오되었을 때 동료인 쓰카다가 곁에 남아 주었다. 쓰카다는 기구치를 살리고 자신도 살아남기 위해 다른 동료의 시체를 먹어야 했고, 그는 일본으로 무사히 돌아온 후에도 그 처참한 기억을 떨치지 못하고 평생 괴로워했다. 미쓰코는 이소베의 죽어 가는 아내를 간호했던 자원 봉사자였다. 그녀는 대학 시절 가톨릭 신자인 오쓰를 그저 장난으로 유혹했다가 버린 기억이 있다. 그녀는 신부가 된 오쓰가 인도의 수도원에 있다는 소식을 전해 듣는다. 오쓰는 신부의 길을 걷기 위해 프랑스 수도원에서 수련을 하지만 신과 구원에 대한 그의 생각은 그곳에서 받아들여지지 않았다. 결국 그는 인도로 가서, 홀로 죽어 가는 사람들을 갠지스 강으로 데려다 주는 일을 하게 된다.

『깊은 강』의 인물들은 하나같이 지울 수 없는 슬픔을 가슴속에 품은 채 살아간다. 등장인물들의 삶, 나아가 이 작품 전체에는 죽음의 그림자가 깊게 드리워져 있다. 이들은 자신의 가장 소중한 존재, 가장 가까이에 있던 사람의 죽음으로 인해 인생의 문제에 대해 의문을 품는다. 이들은 인도에서 불가촉천민부터 수상이었던 인디라 간디까지, 신분과는 상관없이 모든 사람을 품어 안는 갠지스 강과 그곳에서 진정한 평화를 얻는 사람들을 보면서 강한 인상을 받는다.

구원에 이르는 강의 이미지, 인간 내부에 존재하는 신의 모습

『깊은 강』은 다음과 같은 흑인 영가로 시작되며, 엔도 슈사쿠는 이 흑인 영가에서 작품의 제목을 따왔다.

깊은 강, 신이여, 나는 강을 건너,

집회의 땅으로 가고 싶어라.

흑인 영가에 나타나는 ‘강’은 그들의 고달픈 기억과 고통에서 해방되어 만나는 새로운 세계, 구원의 세계에 대한 간절한 꿈을 이루어 주는 신과 같은 존재를 의미한다. 소설 ??깊은 강??에서 말하는 ‘강’은 힌두교도들이 죽음을 맞기 위해 찾아오는 성스러운 갠지스 강, 나아가 삶의 모든 고통에서 벗어나 구원의 세계로 이끌어 주는 어머니와 같은 깊고 큰 강을 나타낸다고 볼 수 있다.

또한 작품 속에 등장하는 힌두교의 여신 차문다를 통해 인간들의 고난을 상징적으로 그려 내면서, 나아가 그 고통을 함께 하고 또 끊임없이 사랑을 베푸는 신의 존재를 보여 준다. 이는 역시 강의 상징적인 이미지의 연장이라고 볼 수 있다. 사람들의 오랜 병고를 대신 짊어진 채로 그들에게 젖을 물리고 있는 여신은 우아하고 고결한 성모마리아와 대조적인 이미지로 다가온다. 엔도 슈사쿠는 차문다를 통해 인간 위에 있는 신이 아닌, 인간과 함께하며 인간 안에 살아 숨 쉬는 신의 모습을 그리고자 했다.

그녀의 젖가슴은 이미 노파처럼 쭈글쭈글합니다. 하지만 그 쭈그러든 젖가슴에서 젖을 내어, 줄지어 있는 아이들한테 나눠 줍니다. 그녀의 오른발이 문둥병으로 짓물러 있는 걸 알아볼 수 있겠습니까? 배도 허기 때문에 움푹 꺼질 대로 꺼졌고, 게다가 그걸 전갈이 물어뜯고 있습니다. 그녀는 이런 병고와 아픔을 견디면서도, 쭈그러든 젖가슴으로 인간에게 젖을 주고 있습니다.

평생 신을 좇는 삶을 살아온 인물인 오쓰 역시 엔도 슈사쿠가 말하고자 하는 ‘강’의 이미지를 나타내고 있다. 오쓰는 스스로 인식하지 못했던 어린 시절에 이미 가톨릭교도가 되었고, 평생을 진정한 신을 찾아 헤매었다. 자신이 태어나 자란 나라를 떠나 프랑스까지 갔지만, 모든 인간을 품어 안는 신을 찾던 그는 신학교에서마저 배척당한 후 인도로 오게 된다. 그곳에서 그는 계급이나 성별 등 인간이 만들어 놓은 두터운 벽과는 상관없이 모든 이들에게 구원의 손길을 내미는 갠지스 강에 감동한다. 

결국 엔도 슈사쿠가 ‘강’의 이미지를 통해 이야기하는 주제는 종교를 초월하여 인간의 영혼이 갈구하는, 선과 악이 혼재한 모든 삶을 포용하는 지닌 신의 존재라고 할 수 있다. 접기

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공감순 

     

어제 410번 버스 타고 퇴근 길에 <깊은 강>을 펼쳐 읽다가 갑자기 눈물이 핑 돌아 옆 사람한테 쪽팔려 죽는 줄 알았다. 각 자는 자기 마음 속에 모두 깊은 강을 하나 씩 품고 있다. 자기 마음 속에 흐르는 이 깊은 강을 스스로 자기 힘으로 건너야 하는게 인간일런지도 모른다.  구매

wolf1000 2014-06-20 공감 (14) 댓글 (0)

     

제목만큼이나 깊은 생각에 빠지게하는 위대한 소설.  구매

kronovaserk 2009-09-25 공감 (3) 댓글 (0)

     

죽음 그리고 신... 결국엔 인간의 삶에 내포되어 있고 죽음과 삶은 서로 등을 맞대고 공존하는 것이 아닐까...

우리는 결국 다양한 길(종교들, 인생들)을 걸어 결국엔 같은 곳(겐지스강)으로 향하는 것 뿐이 아닐까....  구매

윤재홍 2016-09-13 공감 (1) 댓글 (0)

     

《침묵》보다는 많이 약하지만 가볍게 읽을만한 종교관련 소설책..엔도 슈사쿠의 마지막을 함께 했던 책이라 감동이 덜해도 숙연한 느낌은 든다.  구매

마콘도 2015-09-05 공감 (1) 댓글 (0)

     

<침묵>이 확실히 더 좋지만, 엔도 슈샤쿠가 종교에 대해 한 평생의 고민들이 한 눈에 쉽게 잘 보이는 작품이다.  구매

GoldSoul 2017-10-12 공감 (1) 댓글 (0)

마이리뷰

     

[마이리뷰] 깊은 강 

1. 노인과 바다로 갈까?, 깊은 강으로 갈까? 고민했지만 깊은 강으로 정말 잘 간것 같다.

침묵의 사무라이가 거대한 풍파를 헤지고 깊은 강에 한쪽 편까지 흘러들어가 갠지스를 바라보는 감동이란!

1-1. 내 존재란것이 온전히 나 하나로만 구성된게 아니었구나.

1-2. 구원을 추구하는 많은 종교는 저마다의 루트로 하나의 정상을 오르고 있는것 같다. 정상에 서면 수많은 길들이 모여 드는것이 보일것도 같은데.

1-3 인간은 누구나 금기를 넘어서면서 산다. 그게 금기인지 아닌지도 모르는 인간도 신이나 겐지스강은 보듬어 주는걸까? 두렵고, 미안하고, 맘 아픈 감정을 가지고 후미에를 밟았던 인간만 보듬어 주는걸까?

1-4 신의 존재는 인간의 허무를 억제하는데 도움이 될수있다.

2.(숙제1) 양파를 생각했다. 엔도슈사쿠의 양파가 카라마조프가의 양파우화랑 연결이 되어 있을까?ㅎ

3.(숙제2) 스피노자 철학에 관한 가벼운 해설서를 올해안에 한번 읽어야 겠다!

4.(숙제3) 이청준의 당신들의 천국, 임레의 운명, 엔도의 깊은강은 올해안에 꼭 한번 더 읽자! 누워서가 아니라 정좌를 틀고!

5.(바램) 갠지스강에 한번 가보고 싶다.

ps. 바깥에 비바람과 천둥번개가 난리인데 맥주가 땡기면 어떻해야 하는걸가?ㅎ

- 접기

막시무스 2022-08-15 공감(60) 댓글(7)

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라파엘의 경우

  작가의 마지막 작품이기 때문인지, 엔도 슈사쿠는 자신의 생애를 돌아보며 잊혀지지 않는 기억들을 선별하고 그것을 각각의 등장인물로 만들어내어 전체 이야기를 전개한다. 따라서 <깊은 강>은 그가 살면서 평생 고민했던 문제들과 그것에 대한 나름의 답변이 종합적으로 드러나는 작품이 된다. 

  이소베의 경우, 미쓰코의 경우, 누마다의 경우, 기구치의 경우, 오쓰의 경우. 등장인물 모두 각각의 경우는 다르지만, 그들은 모두 무언가를 찾는 존재들이다. 그들의 마음 깊은 곳에 있는 무언가는 다른 어떤 것으로 덮어둔다고 해서 해결되지 않으며, 따라서 그들은 결국 그것을 찾지 않고는 살아갈 수 없는 존재들이다. 나의 경우처럼. 

  그들은 자신이 찾는 그것이 무엇인지 정확히 알지 못한다. 미쓰코는 그러한 자신의 상태를 공허감이라고 표현한다. 좋은 대학에 다녀도, 어떤 남자와 연애를 해도, 결혼해서 안정적인 가정을 꾸려도, 경제적으로 풍족하고 호화로운 생활을 누려도, 그녀는 공허감을 느낀다. 이유를 알지도 못하고 정확히 설명도 못하겠지만, 그녀는 다른 사람들처럼 아무렇지 않은 듯이 평범하게 살아갈 수가 없다. 마음 깊은 곳에 있는 공허감은 무엇으로도 채워지지 않고 무엇으로도 덮여지지 않는다. 그래서 결국 찾아갈 수밖에 없다. 자신의 삶에 무엇이 비어 있는 것인지, 자신의 심연에 있어야 할 그것이 무엇인지. 

  나는 그 공허감을 안다. 화목한 가정에서 부모님의 사랑을 듬뿍 받아도 마음 한편에 공허감이 있을 수 있고, 재밌는 친구들과 즐거운 시간을 보내도 집으로 돌아오는 길에서 공허감을 느낄 수 있으며, 사회적으로 인정을 받거나 경제적으로 여유가 있어도 마음 깊은 곳에 공허감이 존재할 수 있다. 그것은 삶의 이유나 의미를 찾는 마음이라고 표현할 수도 있겠지만, 그것을 무엇이라고 표현하든, 채워지지 않는 그 마음은 실체를 드러내지 않으면서도 언제나 존재한다. 파스칼의 통찰이 그것에 대한 적절한 묘사이지 않을까. 인간이 자신의 삶에서 신을 배제한 이후로, 인간의 마음에는 무한한 신을 잃어버린 자리에 무한한 공허가 존재한다고. 인간에게는 유한한 어떤 것으로도 채워지지 않는 그 공허감이 존재한다고. 

  오쓰는 자신이 찾던 것을 예수에게서 발견한다. 그 자신의 표현대로, 예수에게 붙잡힌 오쓰는 결코 예수를 떠날 수 없다. 신학적 견해에 문제가 있다며 신부가 되지 못하고 유급을 당해도, 가톨릭 수도원에서 다른 수도사들에게 비판을 받고 배척을 당해도, 힌두교 수도원에서 힌두교인과 같은 모습으로 생활을 하면서도, 오쓰의 마음에는 십자가에서 모든 병고를 짊어진 볼품없는 모습의 예수가 항상 있다. 문둥병으로 짓물고 허기로 앙상한 늙고 추한 몸으로 코브라와 전갈의 독을 견디며 쭈그러든 젖가슴으로 인간에게 젖을 주고 있는 모습의 차문다 여신처럼, 아름답지도 않고 위엄도 없는 깡마른 예수가 항상 오쓰의 마음에 있다. 그렇게 오쓰는, 죽어야 할 죄인을 대신하여 자신이 모든 비난과 죽음을 받아들이는 무력한 예수처럼, 경계 안에 들어오지 못하고 가장 비참하게 죽어가는 이들과 죽어야 할 범죄자를 위해 자신의 생명을 대신 내어주는 바보 같은 삶을 산다. 

  어떤 사람들은 왜 그렇게 우스꽝스럽고 바보 같은 삶을 선택할까. 미쓰코에게 희롱당하고 버려진 개와 같던 오쓰를, 예수는 받아주었고 아무 말 없이 함께 하였다. 그렇게 오쓰는 예수의 사랑에 붙잡혔고, 그렇게 오쓰는 예수와 마찬가지로 가장 가난하고 가장 비통한 자들 편에서 그들의 고통과 슬픔을 그들과 함께 짊어지고 평생을 살아간다. 오쓰처럼, 그리고 기구치가 만났던 외국인 청년 가스통처럼, 예수의 사랑에 붙잡힌 사람들은 그렇게 예수의 삶을 살아갈 수밖에 없다. 

  이소베의 경우, 미쓰코의 경우, 누마다의 경우, 기구치의 경우, 오쓰의 경우. 그리고 나의 경우. 표현되는 모습은 제각기 다르지만 우리가 결국에 찾지 않고는 살아갈 수 없는 것, 우리의 심연에서 찾고 있는 그것은 사실 신의 존재일지도 모른다. 그리고 예수가 보여준 것처럼 그 신의 모습이 사랑이라면, 우리는 그 사랑을 찾아야만 진정으로 살아갈 수 있는 존재인지도 모른다. 

그는 아름답지도 않고 위엄도 없으니, 비참하고 초라하도다. 사람들은 그를 업신여겨 버렸고, 마치 멸시당하는 자인 듯, 그는 손으로 얼굴을 가리고 사람들의 조롱을 받도다. 진실로 그는 우리의 병고를 짊어지고, 우리의 슬픔을 떠맡았도다. - P65

"하지만 난 인간의 강이 있다는 걸 알았어. 그 강이 흐르는 건너편에 무엇이 있는지 아직 모르긴 해도. 그치만 과거의 많은 과오를 통해, 자신이 무얼 원했는지 이제 겨우 조금 알게 된 느낌이야." 그녀는 다섯 손가락을 단단히 움켜쥐고 화장터 쪽을 바라보며 오쓰의 모습을 찾았다. "믿을 수 있는 건, 저마다의 사람들이 저마다의 아픔을 짊어지고 깊은 강에서 기도하는 이 광경입니다." 하고, 미쓰코의 마음의 어조는 어느 틈엔가 기도풍으로 바뀌었다. "그 사람들을 보으며 강이 흐른다는 것입니다. 인간의 강. 인간의 깊은 강의 슬픔. 그 안에 저도 섞여 있습니다." - P316

미쓰코는 백인 수녀에게 말을 걸었다. "무엇 때문에 그런 일을 하시는 건가요?" "네?" 수녀는 깜짝 놀란 듯 푸른 눈을 커다랗게 뜨고 미쓰코를 응시했다. "무엇 때문에 그런 일을 하시는 건가요?" 그러자 수녀의 눈에 놀라움이 번지더니, 천천히 대답했다. "그것밖에…… 이 세계에서 믿을 수 있는 게 없는걸요. 저희들은." 그것밖에라고 한 건지, 그 사람밖에라고 말한 건지, 미쓰코는 잘 알아듣지 못했다. - P324

라파엘 2022-06-18 공감(44) 댓글(26)

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공감

     

공천착의 경우

1.

어젯 밤엔 <깊은 강>을 읽고 레비나스를 떠올렸는 데, 잠들 기 전에는 아리송했다가 아침에 일어나니 좀 알겠다. 언제가 <소피의 선택>을 읽고 썼던 무력감과 구원서사에 관한 페이퍼(링크: https://blog.aladin.co.kr/jyang0202/12799417) 가 있는 데, 그 이야기와 일맥 상통한다. 2차 대전 혹은 전쟁 이후에 남자 작가, 철학가, 사상가들이 천착한 어떤 인간과 고통에 대한 이야기에 대해. 파고 파고 또 파내려간 심오함이 도달하는 지점에 그들은 ‘사랑’이라는 이름을 붙이고 자신의 내면이든 세계의 무엇이든 ‘모성적인 어떤 느낌’을 설명에 섞는 데 —나의 고통은 그들의 고통과는 다르므로 윤리적 비아냥은 할 생각이 없다— 여기에 그것이 그들의 삶을 가능하게 한, 메일 바디가 경험(체험)한, 고통에 대한 어떤 안도가 있나보다… 하고 추측할 뿐이다. 그리고 난 그런 안도/구원을 구할 수가 없으니 이 지점에서 차라리 한나 아렌트(끝까지 안도하지 않기를 주문한)에 관심이 생겨버린다.

2.

이소베, 누마다, 기구치, 심지어 오쓰까지… 이 소설에서 엔도 슈사쿠가 그린 남성 인물들 모두에 나는 이입할 수 있고 이해할 수 있었다. (이런 독서는 어렵지 않다.) 그러나 그가 쓴 미쓰코에 대해 (그가 뭘 그리고 싶은지는 알 것 같았는 데)선 딱 절반 정도만 이해했고 이입했다(추후에 <깊은 강> 읽은 여자 독자들의 이입량이 궁금하다). 그리고 이소베의 아내에 대해선 거의 이해하지 못했다. 미안하지만, 이소베의 아내는 이소베의 판타지거나 엔도 슈사쿠의 판타지다. 그러므로 엔도 슈사쿠는 ‘남자’ 작가다.

쫌 더 성급한 일반화로 가볼까? 슈사쿠가 내세운 인물중 가장 깨달은 자에 가까운(?) 오쓰는 남자고, 그를 시험하며 온갖 위악을 떠는(그 역시 슈사쿠의 내면이겠지만) 인물 미쓰코는 여자다. 일본 전후 문학의 거장 엔도 슈사쿠여, 왜 그렇게 캐릭터를 할당했나요?

3.

인물들이 ‘인도’까지 가서 만난 뒤 인상 깊게 소회하는 소설에 등장하는 (하, 독을 견디며 젖이 쪼그라들어 말라붙은 상태로도 젖을 물리는ㅋㅋㅋㅋ)수난의 여신은, 그 모든 고통과 기아아와 죽음을 ‘견디는’ 메타포다. 나는 여기서 읅ㅋ했다. 으어어, 참으로 인류는 고통을 견디는 주체에 여신을 할당(?)하기를 즐기는 도다(자, 이 지점은 읽고 있는 <가부장제의 창조>를 마저 다 읽고 까는 것으로 하겠다.) 그러므로 차라리 천형 앞에 모두를 위해 대신 고통 받는 주체로 젊은 남자인 예수를 할당한 기독교가 양심(?)있게 느껴져버리는 나다(ㅋㅋ).

고통받은 동아시아 남자는 예수를 양파로 바꾸어 부르지만 나 역시 무엇으로 바꿔 불러도 상관 없다. 내게도 이 지독한 삶을 견딜 신이 필요하고, 양파가 필요하고, 기도가 필요하고, 어떤 나만의 내면이 필요하다. 고통의 경험 앞에서 그것의 의미를 희구하는 각자들 만이 발견해 낼 수 있는 태도, 방법, 반응이 있는 것 같다. <깊은 강>은 그에 관한 이야기다. 나는 이를 구원이라고 부르지 않고 의미라고 잠정적으로 부르고 있는 데, 그 의미의 결론으로써의 어떤 삶/죽음이 있다고 하면 오쓰의 경우 혹은 엔도 슈사쿠의 경우는 품위있게 느껴진다.

4. 공쟝쟝의 경우.

천착, 나는 뭔가를 찾고 있다. 그게 뭘까.

공허함?

나는 공허하지 않다. 삶 자체가 허무하긴 하지만 미쓰코가 느끼는 무료함에 가까운 공허는 잘 모르는 감정이다.

빈 곳?

나는 비어있지 않다. 내가 허덕이는 것은 없음보다는 차라리 압도적인 있음에 훨씬 가깝다. 당연 나의 내면에도 어떤 진공처럼 빈 공간이 분명있다. 그런데 현재의 나는 그것이 비어져있다는 것을 안다. 내가 관심 있는 것은 비어져 있는 곳이 아니다. (그것이 채워지리라 기대하지 않고, 그것을 채우기 위해 살지 않는다) 채우고 싶다거나 충족하고 싶다는 마음을 불러 일으키는 상황들을 뚫어져라 응시한다. 그걸 쓴다. 그럼 그걸 채우지 않아도 재밌게 살 수 있다.

의미?

지금으로서는 가장 가까운데, 꽉꽉 들어차 있는 삶을 눈앞에 두고 의미에 몰두하는 것은 다른 종류의 의미로 의미가 없다. 덧붙여 자신의 의미부여가 너무도 심오한 나머지 다른 인간의 생산/재생산에 기대면서 안착(?)해버리거나 초극(!)해 버리는 브루주아적/남성적(동서양막론하고) 무의식…은… 그 맹점이 현재 인류에게 너무 치명적이기 때문에… 와따시는 다른 독자들처럼 그저 심오한 인간애에 감격해서 별 다섯을 줄 수가 절대 없는 것이다.

2차 대전같은 거대한 것을 겪지 않은 나 역시도 (그러나 꼭 그런 거대한 걸 겪어야지 거대한 사유를 해낼 수 있는 것은 아니라고 생각한다.) 고통 이후에 삶을 재건하는 방법에 관심이 많다. 어쩌면 이것이 내가 천착하는 혹은 천착해야 할 주제일지도 모르겠다고. 어제 그런 생각을 했다. 각자의 재건 방식이 있겠지만 그것은 내게 신의 존재나 구원은 아니다. 굳건한 물적 토대(피부에 와닿는 것…)와 현실 인식(고통은 현실로 부터 달아나려는 특성이 있는 것 같다)에 근거한 어떤 삶의 태도이고 실천인 데… 아, 아직은 구체화되지 않았으므로 표현이 쉽지가 않다. 그냥 막연히 아렌트… 푸코… 뇌과학… 읽으면…? 이러고 있다.

사실 몇 년 동안 일기를 쓰면서 난 그것이 ‘언어’이지 않을까 라는 생각을 했더란다(이 지점에서 버지니아 울프가 생각난다). 그런데 지금은 언어는 내가 활용할 수 있는 가성비 좋은(비교적 싸다) 재료일 뿐, 내가 살고 싶은 현실 자체는 아니라고 생각한다.

5.

운동을 가야하기 때문에 글을 성급히 마무리 짓자.

‘제2의 성(여성)’인 내 안에 있는 *신*은 ‘고통받는 주체’이기도 전에 먼저 ‘타자’로서 체험된다. 그것이 나의 분열이고, 허덕임의 기원이며, 어쩌면 글쓰기를 일으키는 역량—크리스테바는 이러한 글쓰기가 곧 사랑의 활동이라고 했다. 아, 크리스테바 읽고 싶어ㅠㅠ—이다.

고통이 고통인지도 몰랐던… 내가 분명히 있고, 온전한(온전할 수 있을까?) 자아감의 회복 이후에야 나의 *신*은 정말 ‘신’ 처럼 경험되는 것일지도🤔.

엔도 슈사쿠는 혹은 오쓰는 자신 안에 있는 신을 그렇게 경험하고 살아보려고 했을 테다.

나 역시 그렇게 살면 되지 않을까. 내 안에 있는 *신*을.

덧1, 이소베의 아내는 환생하고 싶지 않았다에 내 손톱을 걸지. 만약 환생한 세상이 2010년대의 한국이라면 페미물 꼭 먹으세요. 환생하고 싶지 않아지실 거에요.

덧2, 그러므로 여기까지가 일본 문학의 성취이자 한계인가? 그렇다면 몇 년 전 내가 일본 남자 소설가들의 작품을 다시는 안 읽고 싶다고 했던 이유는 분명해진다. 하지만 그렇게 치자면 인류가 생산한 숱한 고전은 9할 이상이 남자들의 작품이므로… 피할 수 없으면 즐겨야 하는 상황인데. 즐겨지지 않음에 내 훌륭함이 있는 것이지. 풉.

- 접기

공쟝쟝 2022-06-24 공감(40) 댓글(23)

ㅡㅡ

     

모든 것을 품는 깊은 강

지난주에 엔도 슈사쿠의 신간 <사무라이>를 읽었다. 그리고 <침묵>으로 시작된 나의 엔도 선생에 대한 사랑은 <깊은 강>으로 이어지게 되었다. 물론 지난주에 산 <바보>도 대기 중이다. 이제는 절판된 <숙적>도 구해서 읽어 보고 싶은데, 책이 없다. 또 헌책사냥에 나서야 하나.

엔도 슈사쿠가 1993년에 발표한 <깊은 강>의 시간적 배경은 1984년 가을, 인디라 간디가 암살되기 직전의 시기다. 그리고 제각각 사연을 지닌 네 명의 인물들이 인도 바라나시에 모인다.

첫 번째 주자인 오사무 이소베는 최근 35년간의 무난해 보이는 결혼생활의 동반자였던 아내를 잃었다. 일본 남자답게 아내에게 애정 표현을 하지 않았다고 그는 고백한다. 아내는 마지막 순간에 반드시 다시 태어날 테니(환생), 꼭 자신을 찾아오라고 부탁한다. 그의 절대 고독은 그 순간부터 시작되었는 지도 모르겠다. 이소베는 병상에서 죽어가는 아내를 돌본 자원 봉사자 나루세 미츠코를 알게 된다.

다음 주자는 바로 나루세 미츠코다. 기독교 대학 불문과 출신의 시골 처녀 나루세 미츠코는 자유연애의 신봉자로 집안의 도움으로 도쿄에서 화려한 대학생활을 펼친다. 그런 그녀에게 오츠라는 이름의 순진한 피에로가 등장한다. 친구들은 ‘모이라’라는 별명으로 불리던 미츠코를 부추겨서 신실한 남자 오쓰를 유혹하자는 기묘한 게임을 제의한다. 사실 미츠코에게 오츠에게서 별다른 매력을 느끼지 못했다. 신이 거대한 사랑의 덩어리라는 둥의 스콜라 철학에서나 나올 법한 타령을 하는 오쓰를 망가뜨려보겠다는 일그러진 욕망을 가지고 그를 유혹한다. 나루세와 사랑에 빠졌다고 생각한 오쓰를 단박에 걷어차 버린 미츠코는 화려했던 대학 시절을 마무리 짓고, 유복한 집안 출신의 일과 자동차 그리고 골프 밖에 모르는 남자와 결혼에 골인한다.

동화작가 누마다는 엔도 슈사쿠의 선생의 문학적 페르소나가 아닐까라는 생각이 들었다. 그리고 태평양전쟁 당시 일본 육군 최악의 작전으로 알려진 임팔 작전에서 살아남은 기구치가 차례로 등장한다. 각자 사연을 품은 이들이 모두 인도 바라나시에 모이면서 엔도 슈사쿠 서사의 수레바퀴는 힘차게 굴러가기 시작한다.

엔도 슈사쿠 선생이 <깊은 강>에서 다루는 여러 층위의 이야기 중에서는 나는 바로 미츠코와 오쓰가 벌이는 핑퐁게임과 ‘양파’에 대한 설전 그리고 처참하게 실패로 끝난 임팔 작전의 생존자 기구치의 고뇌가 가장 인상 깊게 다가왔다. 일본, 프랑스 그리고 인도로 이어지는 미츠코와 오쓰의 끈질긴 인연의 설정이 좀 작위적이라는 느낌이 들긴 하지만, 오쓰가 촉발시킨 공허함을 달래기 위해 무엇이라도 해보겠다는 신념에 찬 미츠코의 긴 여정이 가장 마음에 들었다. 삶과 죽음의 공간이라고 할 수 있는 인도의 바라나시에서 말라리아에 걸린 기구치를 간호하고, 오쓰와 마지막으로 만나면서 과연 그녀는 그토록 갈구하던 공허로부터 안식을 얻을 수 있었을까? 양파라고 그들이 명명한 신의 존재와 구원에 대한 대화는 결국 엔도 슈사쿠 문학의 핵심이 아닐까라는 생각이 들었다.

누마다로부터 출발한 저자의 삶은 자신이 버린 ‘양파’에게 다시 귀의하여 프랑스 신학교에 간 오쓰에게 전이되기에 이른다. 그 무엇으로도 자신의 공허함을 달랠 수 없었던 미츠코는 자신의 피에로였던 오쓰를 계속해서 찾아 희롱한다. 물론 그럴수록 자신이 공허 속으로 침잠하고 있다는 사실을 모른 채 말이다.

사실 난 이 소설을 문제적 인물은 기구치 때문에 읽게 되었다고 해도 과언이 아닐 듯 싶다. 얼마 전에 너튜브를 통해 NHK에서 제작한 임팔작전 다큐멘터리를 본 적이 있다. 5년에 걸친 태평양전쟁 당시 300만 정도의 일본군이 전사했다고 하는데, 그 중에 20% 정도가 아사였다고 한다. 그러니까 일본군은 전쟁에서 가장 기본이라고 할 수 있는 병참 문제에 대한 인식 없이 전쟁에 돌입했다고 해도 과언이 아닌 것이다. 배고픈 병사가 어떻게 최전선에서 보급을 잘 받아 잘 먹고 튼튼한 병사들을 상대로 이길 수 있단 말인가.

최악의 사령관 중의 하나였던 무다구치 버마군 사령관의 무모한 작전에 임팔작전에서 숱한 일본군 병사들이 그렇게 죽어 나갔다. 그들을 추격하던 영국군과 구르카 병사들보다, 기아와 말라리아 그리고 이질이 일본군에게는 가장 무서운 적이었다. 퇴각하던 중에 빈사의 상태에 빠진 기구치를 구한 동료가 바로 쓰카다였다. 그들이 살아날 수 있었던 데에는 아주 끔찍한 비밀이 숨겨져 있었다. 생환하는데 성공한 쓰카다는 결국 양심의 가책을 이기지 못하고 알코올 중독으로 비참한 최후를 맞이한다. 그리고 병상에서 죽어가는 그를 도운 청년이 가스통이라는 이름의 외국 청년이었다.

제각각 다른 목표를 가지고 이렇게 모인 일단의 관광객들을 통솔하는 가이드 에나미 또한 흥미로운 캐릭터가 아닐 수 없다. 4년 동안 인도 철학을 전공했지만, 고국 일본에 그를 위한 일자리를 존재하지 않았다. 결국 가이드를 하면서 관광객들을 상대로 인도의 이모저모를 보여 주는 것이 그의 본업이 되었다. 수박겉핥기식 인도 여행을 하는 자신의 손님들을 경멸하면서, 차문다 여신을 일행에게 소개하는 장면의 역설이란. 결국에 가서 숱한 경고에도 불구하고 갠지스강에서 시신을 화장하는 장면을 찍어 사단을 내고야 포토그래퍼 산조 부부도 빼놓을 수 없을 것 같다.

엔도 슈사쿠의 다른 작품들처럼, <깊은 강> 역시 독자에게 명쾌한 해답을 주지 않는다. 60억 인류의 사고방식과 얼굴 그리고 살아온 내력이 다른 만큼, 엔도 슈사쿠 문학의 수용 또한 다 다를 수밖에 없을 것 같다. 대지의 어머니 같은 갠지스강은 도도하게 흐르며, 구도와 영혼의 안식을 구하는 이들에게 그들이 원하는 아낌없이 내준다. 아니 스스로 깨닫게 해주어야 한다고 해야 하나.

소설에서는 인도의 어머니라 불리는 인디라 간디가 시크 교도 경호원에게 암살당하면서 수면 아래 가라앉아 있던 종교 갈등이 다시 폭발한다. 산조의 어리석은 행동 때문에 결국 아무런 죄 없는 오쓰가 그 대가를 치르게 되고, 범신론적 신념 때문에 어디서도 환영 받지 못하던 오쓰가 ‘양파’의 희생을 재현한다.

엔도 슈사쿠의 작품들을 읽으면 읽을수록 그가 구사하는 마성 같은 서사와 양심을 타격하며삶의 본질을 관통하는 질문들이 매혹적이면서도 두렵다. 그렇기에 그의 작품들을 계속해서 읽게 되는 모양이다. <깊은 강>을 읽다가 사유의 심연에 빠져 버린 그런 느낌이 들 정도였다. 미리 수배해둔 <바보>를 바로 읽기 시작했다.

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양파의 환생

 한 남자, 야소베가 아내를 암으로 잃게 된다. 그 아내는 죽으면서 남편에게 부탁한다. "반드시...다시 태어날 거니까..찾아요..날 찾아요." 야소베는 환생된 아내로 짐작되는 여자아이를 찾으러 인도로 떠난다. 하지만 아이를 쉽게 찾지 못한다. 만나지 못한 실망된 마음으로 돌아오는 길에 구걸하는 한 여자아이를 만난다. 야소베는 공포같은 깨달음이 밀려온다. "어쩌면 이 아이는 아내가 아닐까. 다시 태어난 아내가 아닐까. 그 생각이 칼로 가슴을 에이는 듯이 스쳐갔다." 야소베는 환생된 아내를 찾는 여정 가운데서 아내와 같이 살면서 보낸 삶의 시간들을 복기하면서 아내가 자신에게 행했던 소소하고 작은 친절과 미소들을 기억한다. 그렇게 아내의 손길이 야소베의 삶 가운데 스며들어 있었다. 야소베는 "아내에 대한 추억만이 이 세상에서 가장 가치 있는 것이었다."라고 고백한다. 언제나 존재했던 아내의 손길이 죽어 사라지고 없어지자 야소베는 그 손길을 찾아 헤맨다. 오쓰는 말한다. "신은 존재라기보다는 손길입니다. 양파는 사랑을 베푸는 덩어리입니다." 인간은 윤회된 손길에 의존하며 살아가는 존재일지도 모른다. 내가 믿는 신도. 양파는 사랑이라도 하셨다. 양파 덩어리가 베푸는 손길을 기억하는 자들은 이제는 본인이 사랑의 손길을 행하는 양파 덩어리들이 되기를 소망한다. 야소베의 양파의 덩어리가 꿈틀대기 시작한다.  "그는 황급히 동전을 아이에게 건네고, 택시에 몸을 숨겼다"  그 이후에도 다시 한번 양파 덩어리 손길을 원하는 수많은 자들이 야소베 앞에서 구걸한다. 과연 야소베는 아내의 환생을 어떻게 발견할 것인가?

 종교에는 전혀 관심 없는 미스코는 신부가 되려하는 오쓰를 인도 바라나시에서 다시 만난다. 신혼여행 중 리옹에서 만난 후의 일이다. 오쓰를 매력적으로 여기지도 않고 괴롭히고 놀리곤 하지만, 존재에 이끌려 미스코는 오쓰를 쫒아 다닌다. 그리고 미스코는 스스로를 가리켜 "...... 통 알 수 없는 혼돈스러운 여자"라고 말하며 "이런 멍청한 짓거리고 난 대체 무얼 찾고 있는 걸까. 모두에게 부추김당해 오쓰를 곯려주고, 이것이 나의 삶일까".하며 고뇌하고 번민한다.혼돈이 있는 곳. 가버나움(Capernaum). 예수님이 제자를 택하시고, 말씀 전하고 기적을 행하신 곳이다. 가버나움은 바로잡기에는 너무 엉망이 되어버린 혼돈이라는 뜻도 있고. "나훔"의 마을 이라는 뜻도 있다. 나훔의 위로라는 뜻이다. 박영선 목사님은 "우리가 실패한 그 자리가 하나님이 은혜를 담는 자리 ([인생], 박영선, 62p)" 라고 하신다. 양파는 엉망이고 혼돈스러운 곳으로 찾아오셔서 우리를 택하시고 기적과 사랑을 베푸시며, 고뇌하고 번민하는 자들에게 위로자가 되어주신다. Grace다. 마음이 어지럽고 혼돈스러운 마스코 마음 가운데 양파가 찾아오신다. "자신을 채워 줄게 틀림없는 X를. 그러나 그녀는 그 X가 무엇인지. 알 수 없다." 마스코가 아직 알지 못하고 깨닫지 못하더라도...하지만 무엇인가에 이끌려 쫒아가고, 그 길 가운에 양파를 일생을 신뢰하며 그길을 따라가는 오쓰의 고난의 삶을 본다. 

생의 마지막 길에 다다르는 갠지스 강. 신분과 부의 격차와 상관없이 모든 사람을 품는 곳. 그곳은 추하고 냄새하고 불결한 것. 모든 슬픔을 품는 깊은 강. 갠지스 강. 어머니의 품과 같은 곳. 인생의 순례길에서 우리가 찾고 머물고 싶은 곳이다. "갠지스 강을 볼 때 마다 저는 양파를 생각합니다. 갠지스 강은 썩은 손가락을 내밀어 구걸하는 여자도, 암살당한 간디 수상도 똑같이 거절하지 않고 한 사람 한 사람의 재를 삼키고 흘러갑니다. 양파라는 사랑의 강은 아무리 추한 인간도 아무리 지저분한 인간도 모두 거절하지 않고 받아들이고 흘러갑니다"  갠지스강은 모든 이의 슬픔과 죄를 씻고 새로 태어나는 곳. 환생을 꿈꾸는 자들의 것이다. 예수는 우리의 더러움과 죄를 품으시고 십자가에 못박혀 죽으셨다. 양파의 사랑이다. 그 사랑이 우리 마음과 삶에 환생됨이 곧 "다시 태어남" (거듭남,reborn)이다. 

 감동적이고 놀라운 책이다. 양파의 삶과 양파를 신뢰하는 사람들이 무엇을 믿고 살아가는지 이처럼 은유적으로 잘 표현한 문학 작품이 있을까 싶다. 가장 가까운 곳에서 살뜰이 보살폈던 야소베의 아내, 더럽고 가장 천한 사람의 곁에서 함께 하는 오쓰, 죽어가는 자의 옆에서 꼬부라져 그의 고통을 흡수하는 가스통. 죽음의 두려움에 떨고 있을때 그의 이야기를 들어주었던 구관조. 모두 양파 덩어리의 흔적들이라고 이 소설은 말한다. 이러한 양파의 손길을 느끼고 아는 자들이..그들의 마음에서 양파가 환생되어 우리 가운데에서 끊임없이 머물길 소망한다. 

*파랑색 글자는 책의 문장을 그대로 인용한 것이다. 페이지는 편의상 생략했다. 

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han22598 2021-05-14 공감(32) 댓글(12)

Analysis of Shūsaku Endō’s Deep River – Literary Theory and Criticism

Analysis of Shūsaku Endō’s Deep River – Literary Theory and Criticism



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HOME › JAPANESE LITERATURE › ANALYSIS OF SHŪSAKU ENDŌ’S DEEP RIVER


Analysis of Shūsaku Endō’s Deep River

BY NASRULLAH MAMBROL on OCTOBER 10, 2022

The Japanese writer Shūsaku Endō (1923– 96) was a Christian author who embraced a faith that combined both Eastern and Western spirituality. The novel Deep River centers on a visit to India by a group of Japanese tourists. The novel examines the internal journeys of four of the travelers—Isobe, Kiguchi, Numada, and Mitsuko—and explores their motivations for going to India, the fulfillment of their quests, and their discoveries along the way.

The novel begins with an account of the months just before and after the death of Isobe’s wife. Isobe, confronted with the fact that his mate of 35 years has cancer, comes to realize his dependence on his wife, whom he had taken for granted up to that point. After her death, her final words haunt him: “I . . . I know for sure . . . I’ll be reborn somewhere in this world. Look for me . . . find me . . . promise . . . promise!” In an attempt to fulfill her request, Isobe writes to a professor at the University of Virginia who is doing research on people who claim to have experienced previous lives. After learning of a young woman named Rajini Puniral, who lives in a village near Varanasi and who professes to have been Japanese in a prior life, Isobe determines to go to India in search of the woman.



At an informational meeting prior to the trip, Isobe recognizes Mitsuko, a hospital volunteer with whom his wife had bonded in her last days. On the way home from the meeting, Mitsuko recalls the “hollowness in her heart” during her university days and remembers her attempts to draw Ōtsu, a classmate who practiced the Christian faith, away from God. Ōtsu had told her, “Even if I try to abandon God . . . God won’t abandon me.” After graduating from the university, Mitsuko had married in hope of becoming a typical housewife and ridding herself of the destructive element that “lurked within the depths of her heart.” The marriage ended in divorce. Through the years she had carried on an intermittent correspondence with Ōtsu. His conversation and letters always spoke of a God who “made use even of my sins and turned me towards salvation.” Perhaps, Mitsuko thinks that Ōtsu, who now lives in Va¯ra¯nası¯, is drawing her to India.



At the pretrip meeting, Numada, an author of stories with dogs and birds as the main characters, expresses a desire to visit a wild bird sanctuary during the trip. He had had a pet hornbill but had released it when he entered a hospital for treatment for tuberculosis. His wife, sensing his need for an animal companion, brought a myna bird to the hospital to keep him company. After recovering from a surgery during which his heart had stopped, Numada learned that the myna had died during the operation, and he refl ects, “I wonder if it died in place of me?”

Kiguchi, another member of the tour group, fought in Burma during the war and now wishes to have a memorial service in India for his comrades who had died and for Tsukada, who had nursed Kiguchi when he had contracted malaria in the jungle. Years after the war, an American volunteer, Gaston, had comforted Tsukada as he died by assuring him of God’s forgiveness for his having eaten meat from the body of a comrade. Kiguchi had felt that the peaceful look on Tsukada’s face at his death “had been made possible because Gaston had soaked up all the anguish in Tsukada’s heart.”



Arriving in Va¯ra¯nası¯, Isobe sets about to fulfill the plea his wife had made on her deathbed. After meeting failure after failure, he cries out in his loneliness, “Darling! . . . Where have you gone?” Mitsuko answers his question with her comment: “At the very least, I’m sure your wife has come back to life inside your heart.”



Numada and Kiguchi also fulfill their personal missions. Numada, after buying a myna and carrying it to a wildlife sanctuary where no hunting is allowed, opens the door of the cage, urges the bird out, and watches it enjoy its freedom. He feels “as though a heavy burden he had carried on his back for many years had been removed.” On the banks of the Ganges, Kiguchi chants a sutra for Tsukada and his comrades who had died in the war. In so doing he carries out the wish he has had since the war.



Though Mitsuko remains unsure as to why she has come on the trip, she knows that she longs for something. After discovering that Ōtsu now devotes himself to carrying dying Hindus to the Ganges, she puts on a sari and approaches the river. A man beckons her to enter. She submerges her body and then acknowledges: “. . . there is a river of humanity. . . . I feel as though I’ve started to understand what I was yearning for through all the many mistakes of my past.”

Deep River deals with the universal themes of love, loss, sacrifice, acceptance, and redemption. Isobe, Numada, Kiguchi, and Mitsuko take spiritual journeys which lead them to understand God as “a great life force” in man and in nature. They recognize sacrificial love in many forms and in so doing experience the God whom Ōtsu defined as “love itself.”



BIBLIOGRAPHY

Endo, Shusaku. Deep River. Translated by Van C. Gessel. New York: New Directions, 1994.
Henry, Rick. “Review of Deep River, by Shusaku Endo.” Review of Contemporary Fiction 16, no. 2 (1996): 182–183.
O’Connell, Patricia. “Review of Deep River, by Shusaku Endo.” Commonweal 122, no. 10 (19 May 1995): 34–35.

===

Deep River

by

Endo Shusaku

general information | review summaries | our review | links | about the author

To purchase Deep River

Title: Deep River

Author: Endo Shusaku

Genre: Novel

Written: 1993 (Eng. 1994)

Length: 216 pages

Original in: Japanese

Availability: Deep River - US

Deep River - UK

Deep River - Canada

Deep River - India

Le fleuve sacré - France

Wiedergeburt am Ganges - Deutschland

Japanese title: 深い河

Translated by Van C. Gessel

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Our Assessment:

B : fine if overly preachy tale of spiritual journeys

See our review for fuller assessment.

Review Summaries

Source Rating Date Reviewer

The Independent . 25/6/1994 Euan Cameron

The LA Times . 22/5/1995 Michael Harris

The Washington Post A 25/6/1995 Andrew Greeley

  From the Reviews:

"Endo has always sought to interpret the proselytising spirit of Christianity for oriental sensibilities. (...) Now, in this beautifully crafted, mature work, his standpoint has changed. Understanding is possible, he now implies, and the path seems to be one that combines the Christian faith with Buddhist acceptance." - Euan Cameron, The Independent

"Deep River is a story of a kind usually dared only by veteran writers -- a direct, seemingly guileless inquiry into the meaning of life. (...) Endo's achievement here is mixed. Kiguchi, Isobe and Numada are realistic characters, and their stories are quietly effective. Otsu and Mitsuko, though, are the sort of people we bump into only in religious novels." - Michael Harris, The Los Angeles Times

"Endo is one of the world's great novelists, a wizard with plot and character and description who writes a simple story about simple people and packs it densely with drama, challenge and finally faith. (...) Endo has written so many wonderful novels that it would be patronizing to suggest that one is better than others. But surely Deep River, this moving story about a pilgrimage of grace, must be rated as one of the best of all of them." - Andrew Greeley, The Washington Post

Please note that these ratings solely represent the complete review's biased interpretation and subjective opinion of the actual reviews and do not claim to accurately reflect or represent the views of the reviewers. Similarly the illustrative quotes chosen here are merely those the complete review subjectively believes represent the tenor and judgment of the review as a whole. We acknowledge (and remind and warn you) that they may, in fact, be entirely unrepresentative of the actual reviews by any other measure.

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The complete review's Review:

       Deep River is a novel of spiritual journeys. Lots of spiritual journeys. It begins with the wife of Isobe being diagnosed as terminally ill, with only a few months to live. In typical Japanese fashion, the diagnosis is kept from her (though she catches on pretty quickly, wasting away in hospital), while Isobe realizes he has never really been that close to her and has, in many senses, failed her as a husband. Her dying demand of him is that he look for the reincarnation she is certain she will return to the world as.

       It's a tall order for Isobe. Sensibly:

Because he lacked any religious conviction, like most Japanese, death meant to him the extinction of everything.

       Nevertheless, he makes a sincere effort to follow her wishes, looking into this whole reincarnation idea and even corresponding with academics who study it. Eventually, this leads him to join a group tour to India, in 1984, where he thinks he might find what he's looking for.

       Among the others on the tour happens to be a woman who volunteered at the hospital while Isobe's wife wasted away, Mitsuko. She is pulled to India because she is also looking for a spiritual encounter. Specifically, she hopes to again meet a man from her past, Ōtsu. An oddball Christian at the university she went to, she seduced him on a whim and challenge -- and demanded he gives up his religious ways if he wanted to be with her. When she dumped him, he turned all the more devoutly to Christianity, going to France to become a priest. A few years later she visited him in France -- while on her honeymoon ! -- and they've corresponded occasionally over the years, and now that he's in the Indian holy city of Vārānasī she wants to seek him out again. (Unsurprisingly, her marriage failed, and obviously she's also been looking for 'meaning' in her life -- hence also her penance cum charity work dealing with patients at the hospital.)

       There are others on the trip too, including a veteran of the war who suffered greatly during the Japanese campaign in Burma, a successful author who writes "stories with dogs and birds as their main characters", and a couple on their honeymoon. They have a Japanese tour guide, Mr. Enami, who studied for four years in India and then found to his great disappointment that no Japanese university was interested in having him preach that kind of eastern wisdom, reducing him to this; he does his job dutifully, but is immensely frustrated.

       India offers a spiritual contrast to Japan, and by bringing in Ōtsu's experiences in France -- where the Church derailed his ambitions to become a priest because his theology was too eastern-tinged to meet with their approval -- allows Endo to cover a wide spectrum, from Buddhism through Hinduism to Christianity. Ōtsu is the central spiritual figure -- and ultimately the Christian martyr, too -- but significantly his religious belief isn't by-the-Book Christianity. As he tells his French superiors:

I don't think God is someone to be looked up to as a being separate from man, the way you regard him. I think he is within man, and that he is a great life force that envelops man, envelops the trees, envelops the flowers and grasses.

       Predictably, they dismiss this as pantheistic mumbo-jumbo; as to why Ōtsu spends so much of his life as a seminarian when his basic understanding of religion differs so from the official line, that is left unexplained.

       Ōtsu explained to Mitsuko:

I can't help but be struck by the clarity and logic of the way Europeans think, but it seems to me as an Asian that there's something they have lost sight of with their excessive clarity and their overabundance of logic, and I just can't go along with it. Their lucid logic and their ways of explaining everything in such clear-cut terms sometimes even causes me pain.

       It's hard not to see Deep River as Endo's own religious summa. Japan's most famous Catholic writer, he also had a difficult time in Europe (and also had severe medical issues which are also echoed in this book), yet clung to his Christianity. The East-meets-West aspect of Deep River, and the suggestion of how Christianity can meld with eastern religion -- the way how he, near the end of his own life, fit all the pieces of his experience together--, frequently threaten to overwhelm the book -- but then, of course, that basically is the book.

       Endo is a fine writer, and much of the novel is quite good. An interesting feature is that he times the India-trip so that they are there when Indira Gandhi is assassinated (by a Sikh bodyguard -- another religious complication he has a bit more trouble with). But this remains a book a book about spiritual journeys -- which would be fine if it weren't so freighted with a specific message, which can make it tough to take. Granted, being entirely unspiritual, I am hardly the ideal audience for such a story, but it's the preachiness on offer here rather than the focus on the spiritual that weighs the books down so terribly -- belief, after all, is a common enough human condition, and can readily be conveyed even to those who don't share it without becoming too irritating, but Endo too often is more preacher than novelist here. Simplistic notions of 'east' and 'west' also grate -- this is a late-twentieth century novel by a worldly writer, and are thus considerably harder to excuse or accept than in fiction from an earlier time. And the martyring of Ōtsu -- christ, another guy who dies for 'our' sins ? give me a break ... -- predictable though it was, is certainly the final straw.

- M.A.Orthofer, 24 January 2013

- Return to top of the page -

===

January 28, 2014

‘DEEP RIVER’ BY SHUSAKU ENDO (REVIEW)

Shusaku Endo is one of our recent additions to the J-Lit Giants hall of fame, and a well deserved one.  I’ve enjoyed several of his books, and I’ve had this novel, highly recommended, on the shelves for a long time.  Fortunately, it didn’t disappoint…

*****

Deep River (translated by Van C. Gessel, published by New Directions) is centred on a package tour to India by a group of Japanese tourists in October 1984 (the date is significant…).  Over the course of just over two-hundred pages, we meet many people, all with different motivations for making the trip abroad.

Four of the group members stand out.  There’s Numada, a children’s author, who finds peace in nature, preferring animals to people; old soldier Kiguchi, returning to the subcontinent to make offerings to his dead colleagues;  Mitsuko, a single woman searching for meaning in her empty life; and Isobe, an old man whose wife recently died of cancer.  Her last wish was for him to look for her after her death – you see, she believes in reincarnation…

The story starts off slowly as we learn about the background of the main characters and their reasons for joining the tour.  While interesting in its way, I was a little impatient at times, with the writer taking half the book to get us to India.  It is important though, as these first chapters set up everything that happens when we arrive.

Of the main characters, it’s perhaps Isobe and Mitsuko (who nursed Isobe’s wife in hospital) who stand out.  Isobe is a typical, unemotional Japanese salaryman, learning to cope with life alone after decades of being cared for in a conventional, dry Japanese marriage.  His wife’s death throws him off guard, leaving him unable to quite grasp what has happened:

“Isobe could not bring himself to believe that the strangely pallid fragments of bone strewn in the box were those of his wife.  What the hell is this?  What are we doing? He mumbled to himself as he stood beside his weeping mother-in-law and several other female relatives.  This isn’t her.”

p.18 (New Directions, 1994)

===

Deep River : Endo, Shusaku, Gessel, Van C.: Amazon.reviews

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Deep River Hardcover – 18 December 1995

by Shusaku Endo (Author), Van C. Gessel (Author)

4.3 out of 5 stars    90 ratings

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The river is the Ganges, where a group of Japanese tourists converge: Isobe, grieving the death of the wife he ignored in life; Kiguchi, haunted by war-time memories of the Highway of Death in Burma; Numada, recovering from a critical illness; Mitsuko, a cynical woman struggling with inner emptiness; and, the butt of her cruel interest, Otsu, a failed seminarian for whom the figure on the cross is a god of many faces. In this novel, the renowned Japanese writer Shusaku Endo reaches his ultimate religious vision.

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...Mr. Endo is a master of the interior monologue, and he builds 'case' by 'case, ' chapter by chapter, a devastating critique of the world that has 'everything' but lacks moral substance and seems headed nowhere.--Robert Coles "New York Times Book Review"

A soulful gift to a world he keeps rendering as unrelievedly parched.--Robert Coles "New York Times Book Review"

One of Japan's greatest twentieth-century writers.-- "Publishers Weekly"

From the Back Cover

Thirty years lie between the leading contemporary Japanese writer Shusaku Endo's justly famed Silence and his powerful new novel Deep River, a book which is both a summation and a pinnacle of his work. The river is the Ganges, where a group of Japanese tourists converge: Isobe, grieving the death of the wife he ignored in life; Kiguchi, haunted by wartime memories of the Highway of Death in Burma; Numanda, recovering from a critical illness; Mitsuko, a cynical woman struggling with inner emptiness; and butt of her cruel interest, Otsu, a failed seminarian for whom the figure on the cross is a god of many faces. Bringing these and other characters to vibrant life and evoking a teeming India so vividly that the reader is almost transported there, Endo reaches his ultimate religious vision, one that combines Christian faith with Buddhist acceptance.

About the Author

Shusaku Endo (1923-1996) is widely regarded as one of the most important Japanese authors of the late twentieth century. He won many major literary awards and was nominated for the Nobel Prize several times. His novel Silence was recently made into a major film directed by Martin Scorsese.

Van C. Gessel is a professor of Japanese at Brigham Young University, and has a Ph.D. in Japanese literature from Columbia University. After joining the Church of Latter-day Saints in 1968, Gessel served as a missionary to Japan from 1970-71. He was given a lifetime achievement award from the Donald Keene Center of Japanese Culture of Columbia University for his translations of modern Japanese fiction.

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Publisher ‏ : ‎ New Directions (18 December 1995)

Language ‏ : ‎ English

Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 222 pages

ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0811212890

ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0811212892

Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 14.48 x 2.29 x 21.34 cm

Customer Reviews: 4.3 out of 5 stars    90 ratings

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5.0 out of 5 stars A book of great substance, rich landscape and thoughtful characters.

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on 29 January 2011

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Deep River is an authentic and rewarding story that peers directly into the heart and mind of one of Japan's really great writers. I opened it and could not close it until I had finished it.

This short (200 page) novel packs more emotional punch and character depth is a paragraph than most books do in a chapter. I was quickly taken in on Endo's portraiture of the main characters. Isobe grieving for his recently deceased wife is captured so well - the classic suffering in silence of a late middle age salaryman suddenly and for the first time unable to suppress feelings and emotions. There is Kiguchi. Endo deftly uses spare but gripping language to describe the desperation of the Japanese soldiers of WWII retreating through Burma at the tail end WWII. It's both a physical and mental hardship which plays on Kiguchi even 40 years later.

Then there is the intriguing interplay between Mitsuko, 20 years removed from the beguilingly smart and beautiful college student who is now in middle age, divorced and still bothered by Otsu, a student at the same time as she, who is committed to Christianity but is insecure and inarticulate about his faith and position in life. She sees him as weak and yet cannot quite convince herself as she herself looks for something to commit to in her own life.

These and others cross paths on a seemingly innocent group tour heading to India. Using the backdrop of 1980's India and the deep spirituality of the people coming to the Ganges in pilgrimage provokes something in each of our characters to lead them further on the path of life. The story ends with some characters finding what they were looking for and for others there remains lots of ambiguity.

For me this was a deeply satisfying snapshot of men and women of various stages of life confronting emotional and spiritual needs.

This is a well paced story with universal themes, empathetic characters and full of provocative challenges to the meaning of faith or friendship or alienation. It's done earnestly and intelligently.

Equally I liked the very Japanese manner and tone. Endo questions the materialism creeping into modern Japan by then. He shows the growing generation gaps between characters of different ages. And he clearly has doubts about Christianity's role in Japan or Asia. He is willing to express where others may have only been thinking or burying deep within them. In Japan those are rare traits and because of that this is a gem.

17 people found this helpful

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Consumer Watchdog

3.0 out of 5 stars Flawed Masterpiece

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on 11 February 2011

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Read this book for the possibilities of what it could have been. Not for what it is. This work really does have a masterpiece hidden within it, like a sculpture in marble, but the final form is missing. Many of the conversations are just not that realistic or engaging while the plot appears somewhat contrived at times. The character of Gaston, for example, appears to have been simply 'transplanted' from 'Wonderful Fool', although it does serve the purpose of echoing the self-sacrifice of Otsu and acts as a counterpoint to Mitsuko's motivation for working in a Hospital. While the book purports to be about a group of Japanese tourists the focus eventually turns to the fate of Otsu, a Catholic priest of sorts. On the one hand, Otsu's failings are, at times, a projection of Endo himself (with his troubles of reconciling Western thought with Eastern traditions) while the sacrifices Otsu makes clearly cast him as a Christ-like figure. Underlying 'Deep River' is the beautiful idea of redemption. The Classical writers directed Western thought to believe that life, in all its guises, is a quest for immortality whether it be through fame, deeds or our own children. In 'Deep River', Endo portrays life not as a quest for immortality (a little surprising given the religious scope of the work), nor as the pursuit of happiness, but as a searching for fulfillment. A disparate group of Japanese tourists each seek an answer to their troubles. Only the minor characters of Sanjo and his wife seem to be 'typical' tourists unburdened with life's troubles being simply swept along by materialism. In a place where two rivers meet, Endo tried to reconcile the East -West dichotomy in his own thinking. He doesn't quite get there. 'Deep River' is a good read but lacks the philosophical weight and credibility of 'Silence'. Endo requested to be buried with two of his books. One of these was 'Deep River', which he believed to be his masterpiece, but which is flawed. The other was 'Silence', which is his masterpiece, and one of the greatest works of the twentieth century.

3 people found this helpful

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Elias Baumgarten

4.0 out of 5 stars Interesting characters and description of an amazing place (Varanasi)

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on 25 January 2013

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This novel is about a few Japanese tourists visiting India, especially Varanasi. I chose to read the novel originally because Varanasi is probably the most amazing place to which I have traveled, a holy Hindu city on the Ganges in India (also known as Benaras). So this novel would probably appeal most to people who have either visited or would want to visit Varanasi or an exotic place of spiritual importance like Varanasi.

On the other hand, the novel is more about the characters of the individual Japanese: a man grieving over the death of his wife and hoping to find her reincarnated, another who has haunting memories of wartime in Burma, two rather shallow (but not atypical) tourists, a couple, one of whom just wants to take pictures without any real interest in the culture and his wife who wishes she were in Europe where everything is neater and cleaner, and a woman who is partly cynical about everything but who also gets drawn into elements of Indian spirituality.

The novel would appeal to people interested in spirituality generally. The author seems to have a cosmopolitan view of spirituality, but the novel also has a Christian element. One of the characters, not mentioned in the previous paragraph, could be thought of as a Christ figure. Many will find him the most powerful figure of all.

I enjoyed the novel and found the characters interesting. I don't know Japanese, but it seemed well translated or, I should say. written quite well in English.

In sum, this is a good novel even if not an example of the greatest literature.

4 people found this helpful

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Ash

5.0 out of 5 stars Very thoughtful

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on 30 April 2016

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I absolutely loved this book. It was a requirement for my Japanese Literature course and I'm very glad I got to read it. It's very interesting, especially because you along with the characters have no idea where it's all headed. I wouldn't describe it as 'eventful', but rather it goes through the book introducing various Japanese characters that are very unlike each other and how they all come together in the Ganges of India, each one searching for their own sense of understanding or closure in their lives. If you're familiar with Indian or Japanese culture, this may be of interest to you. I am personally interested in both, so I was pleased to see a lot of cultural blend. The author of this book, Endo Shusaku, was a Japanese Christian and struggled with that identity, trying to make sense of it, which does reveal itself in the pages of this book. It offers interesting perspectives and I would recommend to read with an open and thoughtful mind.

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Brian Lewis

5.0 out of 5 stars Deeply Moving

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on 2 December 2016

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This novel by Shusaku Endo follows several Japanese tourists from their homeland to India and the holy waters of the Ganges river. The characters each face spiritual and moral crises in the course of the book. The author does an excellent job at intertwining the multiple story lines and setting the tone.

Endo is also the author of Silence, and given the recent movie by Martin Scorcese, some may feel a need to reach that first. But it seems to me that both books, though similar in style and tone are stand alone books, one set in feudal Japan and this set in contemporary Japan and India.

Highly recommended.

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ira feirstein

4.0 out of 5 stars Good but only fair translation.

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on 23 September 2020

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I found it deep. Not sure that the translate is up to the original. Perhaps a new translation could reveal a truly profound Work.

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QuixoticMan

4.0 out of 5 stars Interesting Stories of Self Discoverey with an interesting view of Indian Culture on the Gangees

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on 27 July 2017

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I found this book engaging from the first page. Several character's stories are unfolded in parallel, all leading to an experience on a tour of India around the Ganges River. This is a compelling story witnessing the revelations of these different characters, and also provides an interesting view of Indian Culture on the Ganges river.

Prior to this, I read Endo's Silence. I think I enjoyed Deep River even more.

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Allen Aicken

4.0 out of 5 stars The river subsumes it all.

Reviewed in Canada 🇨🇦 on 20 March 2013

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The book has a spiritual, even religious, heart that sees life through the eyes of one committed to the starting point of Jesus, yet it sees that life, warts and all. There are the usual story themes here but they come from a Japanese perspective, which translates most beautifully into deeper and clearer Western perception. There is hope in ihe novel that filters through from surprising sources.

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Antonio De Felice

4.0 out of 5 stars Very nice book

Reviewed in Japan 🇯🇵 on 22 July 2015

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I liked it a lot. It is a book from several points of view. Each person has a story to tell. Each of them has something good/bad we can think about.

It is really good book to think about ourselves and about the people around us.

3 people found this helpful

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Mary Reynolds

5.0 out of 5 stars Very thought provoking

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on 29 June 2014

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I bought this book to decide ir I wanted to take a short course about it. This book is the amazing story of 4 individuals, each with their own back story, going to India and the Ganges River specifically. Themes include feeling of apartness, responsibility, differing cultures, religions, good and bad within each of us, promises, etc. etc. A novel about people and less about plot. An amazing read for such a short book.

3 people found this helpful

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BGH

5.0 out of 5 stars Really good book and brilliantly translated

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on 3 August 2016

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Really good book and brilliantly translated. There are similarities in terms of theme with another book by Endo: Silence. I really liked the setting of India and the "back stories" of the main characters in this book. Very readable and highly recommended.

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ARP

4.0 out of 5 stars Christianity in the East

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on 11 October 2015

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Considered a seminal work, and perhaps it is. Endo offers Western Christians a rare glimpse into what it means to stand up for the Church in the midst of serious critics

4 people found this helpful

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Ryan

3.0 out of 5 stars Not what I expected

Reviewed in Canada 🇨🇦 on 26 December 2012

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The novel starts pretty well as Endo describes case by case who the main characters are. However the narrative gets repetitive at times and in the end the cases don't really come together.

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Robert D.

5.0 out of 5 stars Perhaps his best..?

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on 24 March 2009

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Though his book Silence is often understood to be his masterpiece, I still think this may be my favorite book by Endo. There are already plenty of reviews here that simply tell you the whole story, so I will not do that, let me just say that if you are on any sort of religious/spiritual or intellectual pilgrimage, this is the kind of book you will appreciate.

4 people found this helpful

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Angela Fitzpatrick

3.0 out of 5 stars I was disappointed in this book

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on 14 September 2014

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I was disappointed in this book. I expected that the characters were going to have some kind of soul awakening in this book and in my opinion they didn't. This book gave some background to each character and talked mostly of their trip to the Ganges.

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bdixon

3.0 out of 5 stars Not properly recorded

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on 18 March 2017

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The last 2 CD's were duplicates of an earlier CD! Disappointed. The author and story were great - sure would like to know how it ended!

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R. Dickerson

5.0 out of 5 stars Classic

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on 22 April 2017

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Classic book and the basis for the movie of the same name. Graphic violence so not good for younger readers. Not a feel good story.

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juanitabanana

5.0 out of 5 stars An extraordinary writer

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on 27 December 2012

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Quite a marvellous, dark, troubling, insightful, beautiful read. Some of the personal stories in this novel are also in his book of short stories 'Five by Endo' and are just as absorbing as part of this novel.

3 people found this helpful

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ibo girl

5.0 out of 5 stars I particularly like Endo's sensitivity in dealing with the India

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on 17 November 2014

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Just finished reading this interesting book about Japanese tourists in India. It is interesting to learn how other cultures view each other. I particularly like Endo's sensitivity in dealing with the India.

5 people found this helpful

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jimmy O

4.0 out of 5 stars Four Stars

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on 21 February 2015

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GOOD READ

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====

====

Deep River

Shūsaku Endō

, 

Van C. Gessel

3.93

2,278 ratings296 reviews

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In this moving novel, a group of Japanese tourists, each of whom is wrestling with his or her own demons, travels to the River Ganges on a pilgrimage of grace.

Genres

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Japan

Japanese Literature

Literature

Religion

Asia

India

 

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216 pages, Paperback

First published June 1, 1993

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Shūsaku Endō

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Shusaku Endo (遠藤周作), born in Tokyo in 1923, was raised by his mother and an aunt in Kobe where he converted to Roman Catholicism at the age of eleven. At Tokyo's Keio University he majored in French literature, graduating BA in 1949, before furthering his studies in French Catholic literature at the University of Lyon in France between 1950 and 1953. A major theme running through his books, which have been translated into many languages, including English, French, Russian and Swedish, is the failure of Japanese soil to nurture the growth of Christianity. Before his death in 1996, Endo was the recipient of a number of outstanding Japanese literary awards: the Akutagawa Prize, Mainichi Cultural Prize, Shincho Prize, and Tanizaki Prize.

(from the backcover of Volcano).

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March 5, 2012

Reading Deep River is like having a sugar rush. It is too much sweet. Right after the book, I just thought of having an edgy book. Maybe one that is dark and sad. I thought I’d like to neutralize the taste and get rid of the sweetness. Maybe a dark and strong coffee or some salty corn chips. Maybe just brush my teeth and I would be fine again.

Had I read this in high school when I was still a naïve young man, I would have rated this with 5 stars outright. It talks about pantheism or a belief that God and material world are one and the same thing and that God is present in everything. It talks about One God. The God was there at the beginning but men had different ideas of worshipping Him so they created different religions. No religion is perfect since men are not perfect. It tackles the beliefs of three religions: Buddism, Catholicism and Hinduism. The setting starts with the characters in Japan and as they search for something, they all end up in India particularly at the Ganges River. This river is the most sacred river to the Hindus. They believe that the river is holy because its water comes from a confluence of many small streams and thus it has its cleansing effect. They believe that when you bathe in it, your soul is purified and you are reborn. They also scatter the ashes of their dead people believing that they will have a peaceful journey to reincarnation. So, even carcasses of dead animals can be seen floating on it. So, they submerge themselves there, swim and even rinse their mouths, unmindful of the fact that the water is ranked among the top 5 most polluted rivers in the world in 2007 due to high levels of fecal coliform bacteria.

The storytelling is wonderful though. The plot is thicker than say Paolo Coelho’s The Alchemist and the characters are multi-dimensional. Each of the four Japanese tourists has his/her own interesting story. The story of Isobe was the one that struck me most. The opening scene of him being told that his wife for 35 years had cancer and would only have 4 months to live was so moving it made me glued to the book and ignored the 2 buddy books I was expected to read for our book club. The other equally brilliant story was that of the soldier Kiguchi and I was entralled by the twist. I did not see it coming. The death of his friend and the way Endo made it intersect with the life of atheist nurse Mitsuko were nicely crafted. Endo chose not to incorporate fantasy or supernatural elements to make himself believable. This is my first time to read a Japanese novel with religion as the main theme. I’ve read 8 books by Haruki Murakami and one book each by Banana Yoshimoto, Yukio Mishima and Kenzaburo Oe. They all did not dwell anything on religion and all use gimmicks (talking river, apparition, surrealism, falling leaches, talking cat, etc). So, this book got me interested since I found it refreshing and beguiling.

Yet, after reading, the sweet taste was there. Motherhood statement like All religions are equal. Scenes that seemed like pan in the sky: the Japanese priest carries the dead Hindus imitating Jesus Christ; the nuns belonging to the congregation of Mother Theresa (may the Lord bless her soul) helping the sick and the needy; and the nurse realizes that she needs God in her life after all. They were too positive that my head was swirling and my heart was palpitating from sugar rush. Quite timely because this was the season of Lent but I just did not expect the book to be like a Religion101 prescribed-book in high school.

But then, maybe I am an old man and my eyes are jaded already. I better have my blood sugar checked and my eyes refracted one of these days.

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B0nnie

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April 25, 2012

Deep River is a rich story which jumps around in time, in place, in ideas. So off we go, to Japan, Washington DC, France, Manchuria, Burma and India. We catch glimpses of the gods Chamunda and Kali, the Burma Highway of Death, yakiimo, reincarnation, a Ginko tree, a stray dog, Buddhist holy spots such as Lumbini Kapilavastu, Buddh-Gaya and Sarnath, the caste system called varna jati, the Andes Survivors, Shirley Maclaine, Indira Gandhi - and - sins of the flesh. Pierrot appears as a man, and as a bird. There is the quintessential ugly American, who happens to be Japanese this time.

One of the characters studies the works of François Mauriac, Georges Bernanos, and Julien Green at University (as Endo himself did). Their novels become a blueprint of her life.

Endo has stated in an essay that characters in a novel are free and cannot be coerced. He, like other great Christian writers (Charlotte Bronte, Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, Waugh, Greene, Tolkien, Flannery O’Connor, to name a few), reveals much about his characters through their relationship with God - but they act freely and have a will of their own.

The title and the epigraph reference an old negro spiritual called Deep River. However, the river in question here is the Ganges, sacred to Hindus. On its shores, in the year 1984, the characters search for spiritual meaning in their lives. They are pilgrims who do not know what they seek - it's not really the Buddist temples they are touring. Endo sees them as "cases", and there is a chapter for each.

The case of Otsu is central. A failed Catholic priest, he is a type of Prince Myshkin, a bumbling Christ like figure, full of goodness. Otsu has his onion, a name he uses for God. As in the parable of the onion told by Ivan in The Brothers Karamazov, the humble, earthy onion takes on a spiritual significance.

Another case is the woman Mitsuko. Acting out Moïra in Julien Green's novel, she seduced Otsu while they were students together, then spurns and despises him. Later on, in a loveless marriage she sees herself as Therese Desqueyroux.

Numada, who yearns for a connection with every living thing but finds it only with animals, has a back-story which could be its own novel, though that could be said of all these characters.

There's Kiguchi, a former soldier in Burma, with hellish memories,

I like this image of Chamunda too, Kiguchi unexpectedly announced with deep feeling. "On the battlefields in Burma, I always felt as though death was close at hand, and when I look at this gaunt statue now, I remember all the soldiers who died in the rain. The war was - horrible. And all those soldiers - they looked just like this."

Isobe, recently widowed, searches for his lost wife, yet the search is more inward than he knows.

Enami, the tour guide, has issues of his own and sees Chamunda as his mother. And that figure of woman, whether goddess or virgin or human is a major theme in the story.

The ending is abrupt, although you can easily make your own conclusions. I just wanted more. Also, some expressions in the translation seemed a bit clichéd. So, a heaping 4.5 stars and a handful of stardust too.

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Dhanaraj Rajan

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September 11, 2019

First Declaration: This book is my new favourite. And it has made it to the list of my all time favourites.

The Reasons:

The book answers many questions or tries to answer many questions. These questions are obviously the themes very close to my heart.

Some of the Questions:

1. What is humanity? Is suffering part of humanity? Why can life be only of happiness? (Answer is primarily tried in the episode relating to Hindu Goddess Chamunda. And parts of the answer are also scattered in the other chapters).

2. The differences. Do they add to the value of human kind? What are the negative sides to them? Do we bond together because of the hatred we have for the other? For instance, do I bond with my fellow compatriots because we are united in hating my enemy nation? Is the enmity the reason for our bonding or the love? Can differences be brought together under one unifying umbrella? If yes, at what expense? (Answer partially tried in the episode relating Prime Minister Indira Gandhi's assassination).

3. What is a true religion? Is it Catholicism/Christianity or Hinduism or Buddhism or Shintoism? Can one religion claim superiority over other religions? Can one religion claim full authority for God's revelation? Why are there many religions? The answers are tried in the episodes relating the encounters between a Japanese Catholic Priest (Otsu) and Mitsuko (the girl who seduced Otsu in his school days). These episodes are my favourites too. The present day hot theological discussions on Religious Pluralism are expressed in a wonderful manner by Endo. Implicit in these arguments are also the tensions between the understanding of spirituality in the East and in the West. Superb analysis. (Disclaimer: It will appeal to the people in the East and for the people in West it may not appeal immediately. But it might help in clarifying the positions of the people in the East).

4. Reincarnation. Can a person be reincarnated after his/her death? I loved the answer. One gets reborn in one's memory.

5. Can good exist in bad? And can life and death be together? Can sin which results in separation from God also act as the source of redemption? Again, the answer is lovely.

6. Who is Jesus? What is the River Ganges? What does the Amida Sutra (Buddhist religious text) say? You will love the answers as you read the pages in the book.

7. How does a person cope with the loss of the beloved/hope? How does one deal with the grief? How does one deal with his/her inability to love?

Finally: Endo had brought to the conclusion of his own heart's search for many answers in this novel (Endo's last novel). If he had time left, he could have written another five or six novels each for the each question mentioned. Anyway, he did well in encapsulating everything in a succinct manner and weaving them in a superb story.

Postscript: In this novel, Shusaku Endo recommends, using the characters as his mouthpieces, two French novels. I will have to read them. The recommendations are: Moira by Julien Green and Therese by Francois Mauriac.

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Fabian

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September 28, 2020

Wow, those forlorn and disparate spirits do not rest! But they do manage to come together, and what they find there, at the fated nucleus, fountainhead, existential monolith is exactly what moves the reader towards the epic end. The Ganges has never before been characterized in such a raw, personified way...

Asians in the Holy Lands. Japanese tourists in India...

There is something about the P.O.V. of Japanese tourists... mystical figures all their own. I will definitely abstain from saying anything about Japanese tourists in Las Vegas. Or Los Angeles. Or the beaches of Mexico. So the psychologies of these very Eastern characters is like mana from heaven, we unaccustomed to such unabashed neosemiEuropean repression. Unique, sad. But I cannot altogether subscribe to such fickle ways of reality...

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Mariel

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September 17, 2011

Do you know that scene in Billy Madison when (this is a major spoiler if you haven't seen Billy Madison and still mean to) Bradley Whitford's character is asked to explain the difference between ethics and morals? And he whips out a gun instead? (It's on youtube.Here it is anyway. It must be wrong to post links to Adam Sandler movies. What can I say? I'm a heathen.) Deep River is apparently beloved by ethics students all over goodreads and amazon. I guess it is loved in Japan too, if ejaculatory book jacket quotes are to be believed (why would they falsely present information?). I really didn't love it. I'm probably the only person who pretty much hates this book. I don't know what the heck it had to do with ethics anyway. If I had a gun I'd whip it out instead of answering the big questions about which religion is more valid than the other. I don't care about any of them. So what does that have to do with ethics (or morals)? If anyone trembles in face of the gun than maybe any of these characters was anything more than a platform for Endo's religious posturing.

What Shusaku Endo tried to do with his novel is something I can appreciate in a "That's a nice message" kind of way. Like a bumper sticker in traffic. I don't want to stare at that same bumper sticker for hours during a traffic jam. World peace! Yeah, let's get that. Am I going to be stuck here all day? Look, there's a horrific car accident. Or a billboard. Yawn. Looking for a face in crowds that don't have any. The answer was spiritual. Was it? The make up was different. Hinduism, Buddhism or Christianity. Sure, all religions should get along and are as valid as any other. It seems to me that if you are going to believe in any outside of what you were raised into it would come from living rather than theorizing and talking a whole lot. That bumper sticker solved all my problems!

The characters were fighting the great gnawing hunger in the stomach that's dread of nothing to look forward to. The not even knowing why you don't feel anything. The characters were not characters but faceless subjects for Endo to easiest fit the expressions of the serene gods. If they had looked in each other... If there was an other to look to... One husband took his wife for granted while she was alive and follows her last words about reincarnation because he doesn't know what else to do. It's a feeling she had. But we don't know her! She was the stereotype of the doormat Japanese wife. Where was the belated passion? Doing what someone said or ignoring them is still frictionless. Another guy is dying. So is everyone else. The furthest into the void is Mitsuko and her quest to "win" over God/Jesus when she has premarital sex with a fellow student, Otsu. Yeah, because people who are dying to preach to you about what big Christians they are never whore it up. Riiiight. Since he threatened to kill her when she dumped him I'd say he wasn't taking the basics to heart. She gets the idea from your basic idiot guys having fun because they instinctively scorn someone who doesn't know how to fake the same normal. Not exactly groundbreaking insights here. There could have been something in the mutual emptiness if only. Endo pretty much writes that she feels empty and wants to be chosen over God by a man who doesn't know if he believes in the first place. Because he's as boring as she is, I thought. She'd have better luck with unsmiling Russian guards. If there's a pitch black version of empty it is these two. Too empty for me to give a fuck.

That's not even the worst of it. Deep River is your basic hollow travel guide story. Yep. They go to India (what a load of crock their tour guide was! The Japanese are so shocked by the presence of the lower castes. Because Japan doesn't have that? Are you fucking kidding me, Endo? What about the burakumin? See what I mean? Like American tourists who are shocked by the starving and don't notice the homeless on their own streets. But there are poor people living amongst the rich!) Who needs real characters when you have an exotic backdrop and temples and pictures of virgin Marys and goddesses of suffering. The characters can talk about how they question their beliefs and then you can tack on an ending about relating to the gods that represent and never have any real personal feeling with those who really do live around you. That's better than a hug. But they were in India and anything can happen if you distract readers with the comings and goings.

Are there ethics about not getting away with not writing a real book because you tacked on a religious answer? Or is that a moral dilemma? I hate this book, anyway. I look for answers in art. Can't expressing being the expression? Does it gotta get stuck that way?

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William2

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July 7, 2012

Second reading. Isobe is a middle-aged, Japanese businessman whose wife is dying of cancer. Before she dies she comes out of a coma long enough to whisper to her husband: ‘I know for sure...I’ll be reborn somewhere in this world. Look for me...find me...promise... promise!’ He is stricken by her loss. Whereas he hardly ever thought about her during her life, now he thinks about her all the time. He has never loved her as he does in death.

Ms. Naruse is a young hospital volunteer who sometimes sits with Mrs. Isobe. Back in college she was friends with a bullying group of young men, a few of whom she screwed without pleasure. The men want her to seduce Mr Ōtsu, a young student enrolled in the college's divinity program. Ms. Naruse despises everyone around her--especially Ōtsu--because doing so allows her to feel superior to them. She is in fact quite lost. She competes with Ōtsu’s god. She tries to break his faith. She is a cruel woman utterly lacking a spiritual life and devoid of compassion.

Numada makes his living writing stories about children and animals. He grew up in Japanese-occupied Manchuria (“Manchukuo”). His emotional connections in life have all been with animals. Things are going along quite well for Mr. Numada and his raucous family, he is alone even when surrounded by them, when he develops a serious lung condition. He’s in the hospital for two years and barely survives his final surgery. A myna bird his wife has brought him for company in the hospital, he believes, dies in his stead.

Kiguchi and Tsukada were both soldiers during WW II who traveled the Burmese Highway of Death. British and colonial-Indian troops chased their unit through inhospitable terrain during the rainy season until starvation and illness set in. It is thanks to Tsukada that Kiguchi is still alive. At one point he had brought Kiguchi meat he identified as that of a dead cow. Both survive. Thirty years later back in Japan Tsukada has the misfortune to meet the wife and daughter of the man whose flesh he ate. He drinks himself to death as a result.

All these characters,who respond to suffering in different ways, join a tour group going to India to see the Buddhist holy sites. Mr. Isobe to search for his reborn wife. Why India? This question is never addressed. Ms. Naruse goes to follow the troubled Ōtsu because, despite his misfortunes, he’s found meaning in life that she hasn’t. Numada wants to make an offering in thanksgiving for his survival. Kiguchi wants to undertake a Buddhist ceremony of remembrance for Tsukada and the soldiers who traveled the Highway of Death. At some point they all end up standing before the ghats on the River Ganges.

Varanasi, a Hindu holy city, is a place of extraordinary contrasts. Living and dying is everywhere, one right next to the other. The place is teeming, pestilential, filthy. Old and infirm Hindus from all over India travel here to die so their cremated remains --a free service supplied by outcasts-- can be scattered on the River Ganges. For only in this way, they believe, will their karmic slate be wiped clean. Only in this way can they proceed to the next life unfettered by mistakes made in the one they’re leaving.

In reading Endo’s earlier novels I often bridled at his particularly cloying form of Christian storytelling. In Deep River however something entirely new happens. Ōtsu is an outcast among his Catholic brethren because he will not adopt the view that Catholicism is the one true faith. In India he finally breaks with the Church and finds a welcome from a group of local saddhus, Hindu mendicants. It is his belief that every religion has validity, that every faith moves the supplicant toward salvation. For this view he is damned by his pious, dogmatic teachers and fellow students.

Deep River, Endo’s last novel, represents a fundamental shift for him in his subject matter and possibly in his world view. The book’s strength is its religious pluralism, its ecumenicism, nowhere evident in the doctrinaire earlier novels I have read. His narrative is without clutter and full of pungent Indian street scenes. The characters' humanity or lack thereof is convincing and movingly rendered. This is my favorite Endo novel without question. Highly recommended.

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Sơn Lương

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March 4, 2019

Những câu chuyện từng đọc đâu đó về Sông Hằng, nơi người ta vừa đốt xác thả trôi sông vừa đắm mình, tắm gội, thậm chí uống nước thánh bất chấp sự ô nhiễm của nó, ùa về đầy đủ khi chính chúng được mô tả rõ nét, nhiều lần trong .. Đó cũng là cái nền để tác giả Shusaku Endo luận về khác biệt trong quan niệm về tâm linh và tôn giáo giữa người cùng quốc gia dân tộc, và giữa người thuộc các chủng tộc, nền văn hóa khác nhau.

Bên dòng sông Hằng là câu chuyện về 4 du khách Nhật cùng tham gia một tour đến Ấn Độ, mỗi người chọn điểm đến này với một mục đích riêng. Độc giả sẽ được kể cho nghe về từng trường hợp một, để hiểu rằng họ là Isobe - một người đàn ông góa bụa đến Ấn Độ tìm bóng hình người vợ quá cố, được cho rằng đã tái sinh trong hình hài một bé gái; một cựu binh muốn chữa lành nỗi day dứt từ chiến tranh và cầu nguyện cho các chiến sĩ trận vong, một người muốn tạ ơn đời vì được ‘chết đi sống lại’, và Mitsuko - một người phụ nữ muốn tìm kiếm một hình bóng dù chẳng rõ để làm gì.

Sông Hằng có gì hay để thu hút những du khách, hay đúng hơn là khiến họ sốc? “Tín đồ Ấn gió coi nơi các dòng sông giao nhau là thánh địa. Kẻ giàu đi xe lửa, xe hơi, người nghèo lội bộ, chen chúc nhau đi hành hương tới thành phố này; Họ tin là một khi được dầm mình trong dòng sông Hằng linh thiêng, thì sẽ được rửa sạch mọi tội lỗi và nghiệp chướng, và khi chết rồi, nếu tro người chết được đem rải xuống cho trôi, họ sẽ được giải thoát khỏi vòng luân hồi".

Bốn người, bốn câu chuyện, bốn quan điểm về tâm linh và đức tin. Họ sẽ được dẫn dắt bởi Enami - một hướng dẫn viên người Nhật từng học tại Ấn và yêu nước Ấn. Anh sẽ là đại diện cho một cách nhìn trong câu chuyện đức tin: với một người không cùng lý tưởng về niềm tin và tín ngưỡng, ta sẽ tôn trọng họ hay khinh khỉnh sự “vô minh” của người đó?

Nếu người hướng dẫn viên Enami chọn cách nghĩ thứ hai, thì một nhân vật khác sẽ hoàn toàn đối nghịch với anh. Ootsu, người từ nhỏ đã kính chúa, sau theo học cả thần học để làm linh mục, nhưng cởi mở trong cách nghĩ, rằng Chúa có thể là bất kỳ ai, và ta có thể gọi ngài là Củ Hành cũng được, miễn là có đức tin. “Nhưng dẫu sao đi nữa, Củ Hành không phải chỉ hiện hữu trong Kitô giáo Tây phương, mà còn hiện hữu cả trong Ấn giáo, Phật giáo. Và không phải chỉ tin mà thôi, tôi đã chọn một lối sống chứng minh cho niềm tin đó". Ootsu đã sống như thế, để rồi bị cho là “rối đạo”, chẳng trường đại học, thần học viện hay tu viện nào chấp nhận anh.

Những quan điểm trái ngược nhau sẽ còn tiếp diễn. Chuyện tái sinh thì sao? Ông Isobe, cho đến trước khi vợ qua đời, hoàn toàn chẳng quan tâm gì đến chuyện kiếp sau. Nhưng vì lời trăn trối của vợ, hãy tìm em ở kiếp sau, mà bắt đầu tìm hiểu và dấn thân vào cuộc hành trình tìm tái sinh của vợ. Nhưng với Mitsuko, tái sinh không có thì tốt hơn: "Nghĩ chết là hết sẽ thoải mái hơn, còn hơn là phải è vai ra gánh lấy quá khứ và tái sinh ở kiếp sau".

Chuyện người Hindu "ngâm mình và súc miệng ở chính nơi người ta, sau khi thiêu xác chết, thả tro cho trôi" là dơ bẩn đáng ghê tởm hay linh thiêng? Enami, người từng du học và yêu đất nước Ấn Độ cũng những mâu thuẫn tồn tại trong đất nước này, khẳng định: “Không có dơ gì cả. Một khi đã chọn đi Ấn...là tự đưa mình vào một thế giới hoàn toàn khác biệt với u châu (...) ở một chiều không gian khác (...) Chúng ta từ giờ sẽ đi và một thế giới khác mà chúng ta đã đánh mất".

Mình thích câu chuyện của Mitsuko và Ootsu, và đó cũng là câu chuyện được dành nhiều đất nhất trong sách. Một người không tin vào Chúa, quyết tâm quấy phá một người ngoan đạo và còn buộc anh phải từ bỏ người, để rồi cuối cùng mải miết đi tìm anh. "Cô không hiểu rõ tại sao xưa cũng như nay cô lại cứ bận tâm bận trí về anh ta. Cuộc đời của Ootsu, như xác côn trùng sa lưới nhện, cứ dai dẳng treo ở một nơi nào đó trong lòng cô. Mình không nhất thiết phải gặp. Cô không biết bao lần đã tự nhủ lòng như thế. Dù có đi Varanasi đi nữa, mình cũng chẳng tìm con người ấy mà làm gì".

Bên dòng sông Hằng được viết từ góc nhìn của một người Công giáo, nhắc đến cả Phật giáo và Ấn giáo. Còn mình đọc với tư cách một người vô thần. Tôn giáo, như nhiều người có tín ngưỡng mà mình từng tiếp xúc, họ nói rằng trải qua biến cố trong đời rồi mới còn tôn giáo cứu giúp, có một cái để họ tin và dựa vào.

Ông Isobe khi vợ mất mới bắt đầu thử tin vào tâm linh. Mitsuko không phải là người duy nhất vô thần, mà còn có cặp vợ chồng mới cưới chọn trăng mật ở Ấn Độ thay vì đi châu Âu.

Với mình Bên dòng sông Hằng là quyển sách đáng đọc. Mình thích cái cách những người xa lạ buộc phải gắn bó với nhau trong thời gian ngắn trong những chuyến đi. Thích cách tác giả đưa ra những va chạm về đức tin và tín ngưỡng. Và thích nhất một câu đâu đó trong sách, “Trong cuộc đời của chúng ta đều có cái gì đó, dù đã chấm dứt nhưng không mất hẳn.”

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Celia

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February 8, 2020

"Endo has successfully dramatized the discovery that the sacred river of humanity flows within ourselves."--National Catholic Reporter

That description has really grabbed me.

Book is now both heard and read. I listened to the crisp voice of David Holt while I followed the text in a library paperback.

The book is written by a Japanese author but is primarily about India. A group of Japanese tourists are led through various parts of India as they seek spiritual re-birth. The experience of seeing the Ganges is central to their re-awakening.

The characters are very well drawn out.

There is Isobe, recently widowed and searching for his re-incarnated wife,

Kiguchi, a war veteran haunted by memories of Burma,

Numada, a writer recovering from a serious illness, and

Mitsuko, a cynical nurse searching for a heretical priest she knew in her youth.

I look forward to my next Shusaku Endo: Silence.

5 stars

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Nguyên Trang

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January 12, 2019

Đọc xong câu chuyện chỉ cho mình thấy một điều: đó là ở đời này, chỉ có đau đớn là thứ tồn tại thật sự và có ý nghĩa. Hạnh phúc thì lúc nào cũng vậy, hời hợt, thoáng qua. Ở đời, ai có nỗi đau lớn lao là một may mắn; còn không, hãy cúi mình xuống hứng nỗi đau nhân gian ;)) anw điều này cũng không có gì mới mẻ.

Truyện viết ok nhưng không đặc biệt quá. Giống như Ấn Độ, nó pha trộn rất nhiều thứ lại với nhau. Tuy nhiên, mình không thấy nó chạm được tới nơi tới chốn chỗ cần tới. Là truyện đáng đọc nhưng không phải truyện nhất thiết phải đọc.

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Inderjit Sanghera

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May 16, 2020

The novel begins with the beautiful-yet haunting-image of a man who, upon finding out that his wife has cancer, also hears the vulgar reverberations of a street pedlar selling his wares, his wife's death  forever associated with the pedlar's voice in his mind.  In many ways this passage comes to symbolise the feelings of the various characters who inhabit the novel, who are seeking a sense of fulfilment in India as their inner lives have become dominated by a sense of loss and ennui.

Endo explores the motivations of his characters with patience and understanding, building empathy for his characters. So the spiritually empty Mitsuko seeks to the vacuity which has overtaken her life with mockery; firstly for the conventions of bourgeois Japanese society and secondly for religion via her cruel treatment towards the pathetic Otsu. The writer Numada is unable to replicate the empathy he shares with animals in his relationship with people, whereas Kiguchi is haunted by his time as a soldier during the Second World War. Finally we come to Isobe, the character whose wife dies of cancer and is seeking for a sense of passion and love for her which didn't exist when she was alive.

Whilst, like most Endo's stories, the novel is highly moralistic, it does this in way which isn't cloying or sententious, or in a way that all of the character reach a moral apotheosis at the end of the novel. Instead Endo focuses on the human condition, with the stories acting as snapshots at a certain point in time of the characters lives, who demonstrated both frailty and strength, selfishness and selflessness and who are merely seeking a sense of belonging in a world which they cannot seem to make sense of. 

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booklady

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Want to read

September 9, 2019

After reading my friend Dhanaraj Rajan's review of this book I knew I wanted to read this.

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Thiên Di

71 reviews · 56 followers

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May 7, 2019

một cuốn sách Người đã gửi tới cho tôi để trả lời cho câu hỏi mà tôi luôn canh cánh trong lòng và luôn hỏi Người. và hệt như cách nghĩ khi đó ai hỏi tôi vì sao tôi yêu Người: bởi vì Người là một người đau khổ, đau khổ hơn tất cả chúng ta, và đau khổ như thế nhưng Người luôn yêu tôi.

cuốn sách hay ở chỗ tác giả kết nối mọi nền văn hóa với một tình yêu thương bàng bạc xuyên thấm, khiến ta xúc động

"...Ngài không duyên dáng, không oai vệ

Ngài bị khinh khi, và là đồ phế bỏ của người đời,

con người đớn đau và những ốm o xo bại,

như một kẻ có gặp chúng tôi thì lo giấu mặt

bị khinh khi, và chúng tôi đã chẳng đếm xỉa

Trái lại, chính các bệnh tật của chúng tôi, Ngài đã mang

chính các đau khổ của chúng tôi, Ngài đã vác..."

(Isaiah 53:2-4)

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S.

 

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December 13, 2013

it's been reported in literary papers or sections that an unofficial "twenty-year rule" applies to the Nobel Prize in Literature-- that is, every twenty years or so (unless it was every twenty-five years, and I'm misremembering), the Nobel Literature Prize committee "has" to award the prize to a Japanese writer. such would not be unvelieable. if I remember the WP entry on the NPL correctly, the first twenty years of the prize were entirely Sweden or Sweden-Norway specific, until the realization slowly dawned that the entire world was watching what was then the only true international prize, and a large cash bonus to boot. Japan is 10% of the world economy and possibly that percentage of major world literature in sales, and perhaps more importantly to the publishing world at large, it highly respects copyright and will even invest in projects requiring half of all royalties be sent abroad.

the first big postwar duel apparently erupted between YASUNARI KAWABATA (the master of elegiac, short little pieces capturing Japanese uniqueness and intricate social minueting) and his protégée YUKIO MISHIMA (who wrote longer, more ambitious plot-filled novels about grief and longing). literary scholars, after decades of scholarship on both, probabliy feel the Prize was mis-awarded-- MISHIMA, despite his vainglorious death, is more highly referenced and influential; more writers fifty years on list him as "influence," whereas Kawabata, while known to the entire community, is more the origami-expert of the intricate fold.

today of course the central Nobel story is HARUKI MURAKAMI vs. HARUKI MURAKAMI. as in, will the Nobel Prize award the medal to HM or will it fail to act in time. no other name is seriously floated in contention.

the 1980s battle is interesting on a different level. both KENZABURO OE (the eventual winner) and ENDO SHUSAKU are a bit less read today and considered a step down from the KAWABATA-MISHIMA showdown. OE represented secular sociality and ENDO heretical Christianity. but aside from this issue, there is the overall sense of aesthetics in each's work, and of course the philosophy.

this is a book about five Japanese pilgrims to the Ganges and the "case" of each, describing the spiritual concerns and life events that bring them all to India for a brief trip. it begins "on the airplane" and then explores the background and history of each.

endo's other work I've read although a 3/5 non-fiction/fiction piece (literary analysis and just literature), always inspires rounds of conversation in artistic dinners.

this work is more just a very solid 5/5 lit work

red-queen

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Huy

731 reviews

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December 23, 2018

Mình là một người không tin vào Tôn giáo, không tin vào những đấng linh thiêng hay tối cao. Và mình lúc nào cũng thấy thắc mắc khi gặp những người sùng đạo và tin tưởng vào những bậc cao hơn, và mãi không bao giờ hiểu được, một người vô thần như mình đọc những cuốn sách kiểu này, dĩ nhiên là sẽ không thấy thích.

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George

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December 12, 2022

3.5 stars. An original, intelligent, character based novel about Japanese tourists undergoing varieties of life crisis, visiting the river Ganges, at Varanasi, India, during the week of the assassination of the Indian Prime Minister. All the characters seek reconciliation, self acceptance or fulfillment.

One character is a World War 2 veteran haunted by memories of his experiences in Burma, another, Isobe, is coming to terms with his wife’s death from cancer and her comments on reincarnation. Otsu, a Japanese Catholic, never fully accepted by the church elders, has followed his faith in God, to India. Misuko is a woman seeking forgiveness for once seducing Otsu in a frivolous attempt to undermine his faith when she was a student.

This book was first published in 1993.

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David Rush

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December 17, 2017

Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth. Matthew 5:5

Jews demand signs and Greeks look for wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles 1 Corinthians 1:22-25

I wonder at the faith and Christianity of Shusaku Endo a thoughtful, reflectfull Japanese Christian. Did he feel as at odds with his faith and heritage as the central character, Otso, of Deep Rivet?Did he feel himself as outcast as Otsu who identified with the lowest caste of India?

I will draw a conclusion that Endo found the essence of Christ in the suffering sacrifice rather that the victorious resurrected champion of the prosperity gospel. I think Endo saw “true” Christianity in the comfort of the poor and meek.

I think more people would NOT like this book than do. In Endo's world the avenues of success only bring a hollow happiness. In my (American) world the general feel I get is that the Christianity brings a victorious uplifting life full of prosperity. Endo would have none of that. For him you only get to the truth by embracing the poor and outcast.

So....do you think this life is a project of empirical pluses and minuses and the point is to end up with a positive when you die? And the “authentic” life is one that discounts anything that is not measurable, and religion is at best an illusion and at worst the bane of humanity?

If so, this book will be nonsense to you.

Are your religions beliefs secure and do they provide reason and stability that explains everything? If so, this book will be nonsense to you.

There are a number of “themes” involving connecting with something. First, for Otsu, is the notion that Christ is found most clearly in the rejected. Which leads him, as a Catholic priest, to be shunned by his order and end up adopting the clothes of a Hindu untouchable who's only task is to carry other discarded, poor, and dying people to the river Ganges just before they die.

And then there is this idea that our existence is actually a river of humanity and we are all trying to connect with it. I think Endo is saying we use most of our energy avoiding the very things that really do give us the connection to everything else we need.

For Miss Naruse she wants to experience actual love, not the kind that is actually a role that people adopt with enthusiasm.

For Mr Kiguchi it is honoring his fellow Japanese soldiers who suffered a burtal retreat in WWII in Burma.

For Mr Numada it is a mystical connection with nature embodied by a Myna bird.

And finally for Mr Isobe, he is only recognizing his connection with his wife after she dies after telling him to look for her to be reborn somewhere in the world.

If I were to write a high school report about it I think I would come up with something about the Deep River of the the Ganges is much like life itself. And that the road of death Mr. Kiguchi was on is also much like life itself. In that we will all die sometime.

If you are sure of yourself, in your belief or non-belief...then you will think this book is nonsense. But for those of us you inexplicably think what the world tells us about itself is most likely wrong...well, you might end up loving this book.

Quotes...

After living nearly five years in a foreign country, I can't help but be struck by the clarity and logic of the way Europeans think, but it seems to me as an Asian that there's something they have lost sight of with their excessive clarity and their over abundance of logic, and I just can't go along with it....in the final analysis, the faith of the Europeans is conscious and rational, and these people reject anything they cannot slice into categories with their rationality. Pg117

But an Asian like me just can't make sharp distinctions and pass judgment on everything the way they do. Pg118

Every time I look at the River Ganges, I think of my Onion (Christ). The Ganges swallows up the ashes of every personas it flows along, rejecting neither the beggar woman who stretches out her finger-less hands for the murdered prime minister Gandhi. The river of love that is my Onion flows past, accepting all, rejecting neither the ugliest of men nor the filthiest. Pg 185

The Onion had died many long years ago, but he had been reborn in the lives of other people. Even after nearly two thousand years had passed, he had been reborn in those nuns, and had been reborn in Otsu. And just as Otsu had been taken off to a hospital on a litter, the nuns likewise disappeared in the river of people. Pg 215

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Chinook

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January 24, 2018

For a short book, Deep River covers a lot. It’s interesting to be gazing through a window at the lives of these Japanese men and women as they themselves gaze through a window at Europeans (mostly French) and Indians. The main themes of the book are religion and grief - characters contemplate rebirth, Japanese Buddhism, the differences between Japanese Christianity and European Christianity, Hinduism and a few personal constructions, like the man who thinks of God as being in communion with nature and a woman who eventually decides that humanity is all connected in their river of sorrows.

But the book also touches on the horrors of war, on marriage, of generational gaps in Japan, on sex and love, on work and its discontents, on travel and being respectful of new cultures. It is heavily influenced by two books, Moira and Thérèse Desqueyroux, which influence and mirror one woman’s choices.

Japanese novels tend, for me, to be somewhat hard to understand at a fundamental level - there always seems to be something presented as a universal feeling or action that baffles me. In this novel it’s the bullying of Otsu, which seems to the students to be inevitable and amusing. The tour guide later takes a similar attitude towards the tourists, one of wanting to have revenge against them for no reason that makes sense to me. It’s also sometimes hard to wrap my mind around the male-female relationships presented in Japanese novels.

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Tereza

139 reviews · 13 followers

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February 1, 2020

Moje první seznámení s Endóem (paradoxně s jeho poslední knihou) a hned láska na první začtení. Příběh o ztrátách a hledání, pošetilých tužbách srdce, o pomíjivosti času - to všechno na pozadí uměřeného Japonska, pořádkumilovné Francie a barevné, nespoutané a neuchopitelné Indie. Přečtěte si ji!

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Brennan

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November 13, 2021

Endo's infamous final novel, that had many quibbling over whether he finally abandoned the strict perimeters of Catholicism for a more generous pluralism/ecumenism. After all the reading I did for thesis, it seems inconclusive. His wife Junko indicates in a reflection a few years after his death that the pluralist beliefs of Otsū in Deep River are Endo's own. But a 1994 interview (the year of the novel's publication) with his close friend (and translator) William Johnston, Endo is recorded as saying "I have no doubt that dialogue is a very fine thing. But it has its limits. After all, when we Christians talk to Buddhists and learn from them, we must know where to draw the line. I would like to hear something about that." All that to say we can't really know. Nor should we.

I enjoyed the novel, but its cast of characters fell flat for me. I did not find them meticulously drawn or movingly real. Their monologues and dialogues were stilted. I always wonder what is lost in translation. Certain decisions by Gessel are odd--words like "pendulous" and "pestilential" stick out sorely. I did find the novel's cliffhanger ending reminiscent of Mark's gospel, an indication that Endo's spirituality remained Christocentric. Better than Volcano, worse than The Sea and Poison.

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Nguyet Minh

168 reviews · 95 followers

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August 22, 2021

Sông Hằng - một dòng sông linh thiêng của người Ấn giáo, là nơi mà dòng chảy của nó đón nhận tất cả những sinh mệnh bất kể đẳng cấp hay địa vị, là nơi mà dù xa đến đâu, dù bằng nhiều phương tiện khác nhau, người Ấn giáo nhất định phải tìm về để chết, để chờ chết hoặc để ngụp lặn tắm rửa trong đó với niềm tin sâu sắc rằng dòng nước thiêng ấy sẽ rửa sạch mọi tội lỗi và nghiệp chướng, tro của người qua đời được rải xuống sông sẽ giúp họ thoát khỏi kiếp luân hồi.

Nhóm du khách Nhật với những nghề nghiệp, hoàn cảnh và câu chuyện khác nhau cùng tham gia một tour du lịch đến Ấn Độ với những mục đích riêng nhưng có vẻ như đều liên quan đến việc kiếm tìm. Đó là ông Isobe mất đi người vợ và lời trăn trối của vợ về việc sẽ tái sinh và mong muốn ông hãy đi tìm bà. Đó là Mitsuko, nữ hộ lý vô thần dù đã kết hôn nhưng chưa bao giờ tìm thấy cảm xúc hoặc tình yêu đích thực của đời mình, cô là người đàn bà mà “ngọn lửa ân ái chẳng bao giờ cháy lên được.” Trong sự trống rỗng đó, cô luôn nghĩ đến Ootsu, một người bạn cũ với đức tin to lớn với Chúa và chỉ mong trở thành linh mục để tận hiến cho đức tin ấy. Cô đi tìm anh tại một tu viện ở Vasanari. Đó là ông Numata, một người chuyên viết chuyện đồng thoại, thế giới đồng thoại ông tạo ra sẽ dẫn ông thoát khỏi những mâu thuẫn và sự tàn bạo của cuộc sống với bệnh tật và mất mát. Đó là ông Kiguchi - một cựu chiến binh ở chiến trường Miến Điện năm xưa với ám ảnh khôn nguôi về đồng đội đã chết, về việc chứng kiến cảnh ăn thịt người của nhau để tồn tại và có sức giúp kẻ khác. Và đó là cặp vợ chồng nhiếp ảnh gia Sajou, tiêu biểu cho lớp trẻ chuộng chủ nghĩa thực dụng. Họ chỉ đơn giản đến Ấn Độ vì tò mò và mua sắm vài thứ kỷ niệm với thái độ khinh miệt nền văn hoá này.

Trưởng đoàn là anh chàng hướng dẫn viên Enami, người gắn bó với Ấn Độ nhiều năm và am hiểu văn hoá của nó đủ để bảo vệ nó khỏi sự khinh miệt từ khách Nhật. Anh có một khái niệm lạ lùng về thiên nhiên Ấn Độ, đó là vẻ “dâm tính” của nó, luôn “có cái gì đó cứ kích thích dục tính, âm ỉ trong cái không khí nóng bức của xứ Ấn”, xứ mà thiên nhiên mang hai mặt: sáng tạo và phá hủy. Khi sống lâu trong một nền văn hoá nào đó, người ta dễ trở nên sùng bái nó và định kiến với những quan điểm khác.

Tất cả họ tìm đến Vasanari, một thành phố rất Ấn Độ trong lòng Ấn Độ để trải nghiệm không gian thánh địa linh thiêng, nơi các dòng chảy giao nhau nhưng cũng là nơi mà tín ngưỡng và thực tế tạo thành những mảng đối lập của sạch sẽ và dơ dáy, từ bi và tàn nhẫn. Người ta tìm về Ấn Độ bởi hy vọng khám phá khởi nguồn của Phật giáo nguyên thuỷ nhưng những âm hưởng và tàn dư còn sót lại đã bị che lấp bởi Ấn giáo khổng lồ. Vậy nên, những vị khách ấy đã trở nên thất vọng và thờ ơ. Ông Isobe không ngừng thầm gọi vợ trong niềm mong mỏi gặp lại “tái sinh” của bà dọc bờ sông Hằng. Mitsuko vô tình gặp lại anh bạn linh mục trong một hình hài khác như một người Ấn giáo thực thụ với những xác chết vác trên vai đưa họ về dòng sông Ấn giáo, về với Chúa trong tâm thức của riêng anh. Những đám người ăn xin bị bệnh phong cùi, những xác động vật trôi sông, sự nóng bức ngột ngạt từ những giàn thiêu lộ thiên cùng mùi người sống, mùi tử khí tạo nên một bức tranh hỗn độn không thể tìm được ở nơi nào khác trên thế giới khi mà sự trật tự và ngăn nắp đã trở thành tiêu chuẩn.

Ông Numata chưa bao giờ cho rằng thiên nhiên là tàn bạo, ngược lại nó hẳn là cầu nối sự sống và con người. Ông đi tìm mua một con nhồng hoang để phóng sinh nó trở về với tự nhiên, là cách ông trả ơn cho việc giữ được sinh mệnh của mình qua bệnh hiểm nghèo. Còn Kiguchi chỉ mong mỏi tìm đến một ngôi chùa để cầu siêu cho các chiến sĩ tử trận năm xưa. Với tín đồ Ấn giáo, hữu ngạn sông Hằng mới chính là nơi linh thiêng nhất, còn tả ngạn biểu tượng cho sự dơ dáy.

Xuyên suốt câu truyện là những quan điểm tôn giáo và trăn trở về thần học trái ngược nhau của những người cùng dân tộc. Trong đó có cả Kito giáo, Phật giáo, Ấn giáo và cả vô thần. Đức tin như một tấm thảm được trải ra cho tất cả mọi người. Có kẻ chọn đi lên nó, có kẻ thích đi ở bên ngoài bằng đôi chân trần của mình. Niềm yêu kính một tôn giáo là thứ tình cảm tự nguyện và bền chặt của một cá nhân với đức tin đó, còn kẻ vô thần là một vị khách đứng bên ngoài quan sát bằng đôi mắt khách quan. Cũng có lúc, khi cuộc sống vắng bóng tâm tình hay chẳng còn gì để bấu víu vào nữa, người ta định hướng lại lối sống, chọn cách quay về với nơi họ từng thờ ơ, để tìm những kết nối tâm linh lấp đầy lại cảm giác cô đơn trống rỗng.

Cuộc đời đã sắp xếp sẵn mọi việc một cách thứ tự mà người sống trong đó chẳng thể biết trước được. Người rời bỏ thế gian sẽ không bao giờ có cơ hội được biết người còn sống sẽ phải đối diện với điều gì. Ý vị thâm sâu của đời sống chỉ có thể đến khi có nhiều đánh đổi và mất mát. Chỉ tình yêu son sắt mới khiến người ta chôn sâu ước nguyện được tái sinh để gặp lại người thương, để tiếp tục tha thiết và gắn bó.

Dọc bờ sông Hằng, họ ném đi ảo ảnh và tìm thấy thực tế chồng chất lên nhau, “tái sinh” hay hoàn toàn biến mất đều là thứ trực cảm tâm linh nằm trong sâu thẳm mỗi người. Vợ chồng nhiếp ảnh gia Sajou không đại diện cho bất cứ hình thức tâm linh nào, bất chấp mất mát đau buồn của người khác để thỏa mãn cho những đòi hỏi tầm thường của bản thân, vô tình đưa chàng linh mục Ootsu cận kề cái chết khi vừa phải bảo vệ sự trong sạch cho người chết đến thói hám danh của kẻ sống. Cuối truyện là sự kiện bà tổng thống Indira Gandhi bị ám sát đẩy niềm tin tôn giáo lẫn thực tế xã hội với bất đồng, bất bình đẳng lên đỉnh điểm. Dẫu là người đàn bà ăn xin rụng hết ngón tay hay bà thủ tướng bị ám sát cũng đều trở về với dòng sông Hằng, nơi đón nhận cả điều tốt đẹp lẫn nhơ bẩn.

Và hành trình tìm kiếm của nhóm khách Nhật ấy cũng khép lại. Điều họ tìm thấy chính là việc phải tiếp tục tồn tại với một tâm thế khác.

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Emilia P

1,705 reviews · 49 followers

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August 9, 2012

Dang, yo.

Shusaku Endo wrote this book I read called SILENCE. It's about Catholic missionaries to Japan in like the 1600s and it's kinda boring and pretty one-note but also well written and about an important culture clash. Shusaku Endo, a Japanese Catholic, is an intriguing character himself, and so one is impelled to read more of his work. Especially since it's featured in Season 6 of Lost. And with good reason.

Silence was written in the 60s and Deep River was written in the 90s. The openness and full-heartedness of the latter belies a man with the wisdom and sadness and understanding of a whole life between these books - but it's still very clearly the same dude -- a person who cares about faith and the soul, in a way that is very Japanese and un-Japanese at the same time.

I tried to explain this to my cooly-Japanophile husband - to say this book was about how Japanese people are so focused on appearing calm and collected on the surface but are tumultuous and sad and beautiful underneath, and that perhaps that calm exterior itself signals, hints at, a profundity of soul which we openly emotional Westerners can only dream about. So that's what I thought this book captured really well -- everyone suffers, and here is a story about how four or five (or six or seven!) emphatically Japanese people suffered, in their own cultural context, mostly in silence and bitterness, and how they dealt with it by tapping into the life-force which connects us across cultures, ages, faiths (there's a Japanese Catholic priest who dresses up like a Hindu to carry bodies to the creamation grounds, to wit) , etc, while on a trip to the Ganges, the river of rebirth, in India. It sounds hippy-dippy, but it isn't. It's about how big our small little lives are -- it's a character study above all, no big sweeping things happen in it, in the end. It's about accepting and bearing suffering, and trying to love. It's kind of sad. But it's sweet.

There's a quote on the back about how Endo is unsentimental, yet sympathetic, and that's a mark of great writing. I have to agree. This is a wonderful book. Read it, yo.

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Nick

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November 22, 2011

A group of Japanese tourists travel to India to visit historic sites from the life of the Buddha, without realizing that there are few modern Buddhists there. They wind up in Varanasi, by the side of the sacred, polluted Ganges, where people go to die. The group includes Isobe, who is looking for his reincarnated wife, who he ignored when she was alive and Mitsuko, who has found emptiness in a series of personae: hedonistic student, wife, volunteer at a hospital. Least affecting is Numada, a author of children's books and haunted by the fate of animals. Kiguchi's story is riveting, as he struggles not just with the memories of surviving the war in Burma, but of the soldier who sacrificed everything to save him. A thoughtful, meditative book, focussed on the struggle to define what truly matters, but not without a sly humor, as the fastidious Japanese try and mostly fail to cope with the overwhelming mass of humanity that is India, along with the comic foils, a pair of married tourists, her wishing to be in France, he trying to establish himself as a photographer. A book that lingers in the mind.

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A.K. Kulshreshth

 

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April 27, 2020

This is a great work. I listened to the audio book and will also read the print version.

Four very diverse characters, all Japanese, end up on a visit to the holy city of Varanasi, on the banks of the sacred river Ganga. Each of them has a different motive. In my interpretation, they get what they wanted to varying degrees, with none of them finding easy answers.

This is a book that works at many levels - from its range of settings in India, Japan, France, Burma and Manchuria, to its chronicling of events from Second World War Burma to Indira Gandhi's assassination and its characters and story arch. Two of its characters - Mitsuke and Otsu - are particularly fascinating.

It is necessary to mention that there are plenty of bloopers in this work. For example, the harmonium is not similar to a harmonica, contrary to Mr. Endo's assertion (assuming the translator is not to blame). In the audio book, Ganga is pronounced Gaan-Jaa. That is wrong, which is bad enough, but Gaanjaa also has a meaning. It means Opium in Hindi (and in other Indian languages)...

I put down the bloopers to poor quality control, and still rate this work highly because of its many strengths.

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Aubrey

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December 18, 2015

There is death. Yet, there is also life. There are long emotionally dead passages. Yet, there are also moments so charged with feeling they consume all in their path, carry them along for a bit and then leave behind ones willing to do anything to catch up. You have the search for reincarnated love ones, the search for emotional fulfillment, the search to reconcile death with life, the search for atonement, each person ever searching for something omnipresent in its never clearly defined state. And on it goes, this one period of time accepting all parts of life into its midst; the river mentioned in the pages embodies this, and will take everything in without spitting out any straightforward conclusions of its own. This is definitely a novel that won't get very far with a reader without some interpretation on their part; it is only fully enjoyed if one can see their own life experiences within the pages, and leave with a new understanding of just what it means to exist.

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Kristel

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December 7, 2019

This is the second book that I have read by Roman Catholic, Japanese Author Shūsaku Endō. His books, Silence and Deep River are both included on the 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die list. Endō explores religion, especially Catholicism and the Japanese culture in his writings. In this book, set during the time period when Indira Ghandi, prime minister of India, was assassinated examines the lives of 4 Japanese who are on a tour to India to visit Buddhist sites.

1. Osamu Isobe, a man looking for his reincarnated wife.

2. Mitsuko Naruse, a former housewife who takes a trip both as a pilgrimage and to see her ex-boyfriend Otsu as atonement for mistreating him

3. Numada, a bird watcher who wants to set a bird in his possession free.

4. Kiguchi, a former WWII Imperial Japanese Army soldier.

These characters are on a journey, a pilgrimage and it is the story of their individual pilgrimage. The deep river is the Ganges where all peoples are taken in and flow together.

This was an interesting book and look at both Japanese and Indian culture. One point the author makes; I think, is that all Gods are the same God and that in seeking God, no matter which God, that Jesus is born again in that person. Another point in the book is that peoples, cultures, and religions are at odds with each other and in the best circumstances, conflict remains. I personally did not enjoy the descriptions of the river but also believe that the author did an excellent job of painting the picture of the river bank and of India (without using the camera). This book did not inspire me to want to visit India.

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2019-botm

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Pip

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January 11, 2018

I found this novel so much more powerful that Silence, which was about a group of Portuguese missionaries who were tortured in Seventeenth Century Japan. Endo, a practising Catholic, returns to the theme of forcing a Christian to deny one's faith, an idea which seems quaintly anachronistic now, but which he must feel strongly about to reintroduce it again. This time he tracks a group of Japanese on a pilgrimage to Buddhist Holy Sites in India. One of them had ignored his wife until her dying plea for him to look for her reincarnated self allowed Endo an opportunity to explore the idea of reincarnation. Another protagonist is a children's novelist with an affinity for animals who believes that a mynah bird sacrificed himself so that the author could live. Although he is not Christian the sacrifice of Jesus is mirrored in his story. A third pilgrim had suffered atrociously in Burma. His life was saved by a comrade who ate human flesh in order to survive (another Christian symbol) but became an alcoholic because his guilt was terrible. The fourth protagonist is a woman who believes she has no capacity for love. She seems to be following a student friend whom she had seduced and then dumped after forcing him to deny his faith. That he should also be in Varanasi, striving to live a meaningful life by helping the Untouchables carry bodies to the Ghats, and that he should die saving a clueless tour member who is insensitively trying to photograph the funeral pyres, stretches coincidence to the limits, but the whole works because it is a nifty way to talk about contrasting religious beliefs.

I listened to an Audible version, read by David Holt. He was a pleasure to listen to, my only carp being that when he spoke as the clueless Japanese tourist he used an English dialect which seemed forced to me, but that was a minor quibble. The Deep River of the title was the Ganges, of course, but it also was the river of humanity, flowing on, absorbing individuals ceaselessly despite their various beliefs and idiosyncracies.

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Wen Cof

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November 17, 2014

Shusaku Endo’s book Deep River is about a journey to the river Ganges with a collection of tourists immersed in their own private spiritual struggles. Each character presents a face of spirituality as a whole. The characters face uncomfortable spiritual questions that aren’t always neatly answered. I loved the book because it brings together ideas of Christianity, Buddhism and Hinduism.

Not only are the questions uncomfortable, so are the characters. The young woman Mitsuko, is so cruel, I almost stopped reading the book. But I’m glad I continued, because I realized that what she displays on the outside, so many of us are really hiding on the inside. She comments that the chaos and disorder of India is comforting to her, while the neatly organized gardens of Paris are disconcerting. There is something comforting about the chaos of India to Mitsuko, and there is something comforting about the chaos of the book to the reader. It jangles and fits together at odd angles. The ending is not a neat bow on a package, but is left open the reader to write their own conclusion.

So why did I love this book with ugly characters and an inharmonious plot? Because it didn’t try to explain or mollify their questions – it just took me on a journey as a reader through their process, and allowed me to draw my own conclusions about right, wrong, good, evil, life and death. It allowed me to also travel to the Ganges and observe and reflect.

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Christopher

 

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July 23, 2012

Another book I started with high hopes which failed to live up to my expectations. Endo's characters all end up seeming contrived and sometimes ridiculous in their actions and dialogue as the stories progress and they make their pilgrimages to the Hindu and Buddhist holy sites along the Ganges. I was hoping for some insight into Christianity as it is viewed and experienced in Japan and the Orient but was instead treated to an individual's ecumenistic dreams. And I think maybe he sets up some of his characters as straw men to let us all know what he thinks of modern materialistic Japan. The character's backgrounds are all somewhat interesting and I think Endo writes very well (or has been translated very well). However, no great events happen, no deep thoughts are offered, no great revelations are found, and ultimately, the book ends up being a rather boring read. I saw another review somewhere before I started reading this that said: "Deep River, Shallow Story" - I agree. It's not your everyday pulpish junk, so I bumped up the 2.5 stars to 3. I can't imagine spending time on another Endo work again.

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Long On Air

104 reviews · 37 followers

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January 31, 2020

Một quá trình cuốn hút bằng đậm đặc câu chuyện, đậm đặc trải nghiệm. Cái kết hay cụ thể hơn là câu trả lời cho trường hợp của từng nhân vật đều rất hay, ý nghĩa nhưng có phần hơi ngắn gọn. Khi đọc về cuối, thoáng qua mong muốn tác giả sẽ viết kĩ hơn, sâu hơn về tâm lí, cảm xúc từng nhân vật như ở phần đầu.

Nhưng có thể đấy là dụng ý của Endo Shusaku. Nhiều khi cách mà chúng ta đi qua mỗi trải nghiệm đã là một câu trả lời rồi, nên đến cuối cùng không cần phải diễn giải quá nhiều chăng?

Đặc biệt yêu thích cấu trúc của cuốn sách. Cách tác giả sắp xếp để từng nhân vật, từng câu chuyện xuất hiện rất thú vị. Các giá trị văn hoá, tôn giáo, tâm linh được truyền tải tinh tế, vừa vặn, không gây sự choáng ngợp hay cảm giác khó tiếp nhận cho độc giả.

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Melissa

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January 30, 2018

A very interesting study in faith as seen through the eyes of a group of Japanese tourists to India as they recall pivotal moments of their lives, experiences, and their personal struggles as they try to reconnect with past acquaintances, past loves, and reconcile past traumas through the lens of different faiths and depths of faith as they visit the intersection of Asian faith, with Buddhism, Catholicism, and Hinduism.

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Book Wormy

1,340 reviews · 18 followers

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December 26, 2019

For me this book was an interesting exploration of religious beliefs and how they are more alike than different when you break it down and look into it. We start by exploring Christianity and the idea of sacrificing yourself for a higher good before moving on to look at Buddhism and the ideas of reincarnation eventually we end up in India with Hinduism and the caste system which while there is a strict hierarchy kept in life in death everyone is equal and the River Ganges accepts all souls with no questions asked.

The Japanese tourists on the pilgrimage all have different reasons for going to India and while some personal quests are successful others (on the surface are not) everyone in the group is changed by the experience.

I liked the way the back stories of everyone on the trip are slowly revealed and how they all have subtle connections to each other. India is also beautifully bought to love in all her beauty and all her ugliness

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Joanne Fate

318 reviews · 3 followers

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January 22, 2021

This isn't my first Shusaku Endo book, and it won't be my last. The book starts with chapters that could be short stories in and of themselves. The main characters are all Japanese. Endo brings most of them to India on a tour. There's a lot about religions in this book. Endo was Roman Catholic, living in a mostly Buddhist country. When they travel to India they tour many religious places.

Parts of this book are sad. There's talk of death and the afterlife. The writing transcends all that. It is beautifully written and profound.

I'll stop there. I'm listening through the alphabet, partly to try to get to some books that have been in my library for a while.

I loved the narration as well. It suited the book.

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Emma Much

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April 15, 2022

very nice

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Ana Rita Ramos

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December 28, 2021

Lindíssimo.

Pessoas com motivações e histórias de vida muito diferentes partem para a Índia para se encontrarem dentro de si mesmas e/ ou para buscarem alguém. É-nos feita através dos seus olhos uma visita à Índia pobre e ao rio Ganges onde todos os indianos anseiam terminar a sua existência.

Um livro forte no conteúdo e no significado cheio de mensagens profundas e ensinamentos.

Quando terminei fiquei com a sensação de querer mais.

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Brent

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June 18, 2020

Unreliable narrator is a term many people are probably familiar with from literature class. It doesn't quite cover what is happening in this novel though, as it is written in third person. So the narrator is giving you, the reader, a (fairly) accurate view of the thoughts and actions of the characters (or at least an accurate view of the thoughts and the actions that each character finds to be important), but the characters in the story are, to varying degrees, rather unreliable.

They have incorrect knowledge that informs their thinking and decision making. They have prejudices and desires, and these prejudices and desire color the events they chose to focus on in the story. Many of the reviews have comments as, "Endo says..." or "the author is saying."

Endo is not saying anything in this book the way the statement, "Endo says..." would imply. Yes he wrote the story, and collected sections out of the lives of his characters, but it is his characters that are saying and doing things. Endo means something and it is our job as a reader to try and understand what he means by selections of events and thoughts that he choose to weave into a story.

For example, characters make statements about the various religions in the book, that as far as their knowledge and understanding goes, they believe to be true. Some of these statements are true and some of them are demonstrably false. As a reader you can choose two options, Endo didn't bother to do his homework and made some mistakes (or some variation there of), or he knew the statement was false, but allowed his character to say it because it was something his character believed.

Depending on which option you choose, it will change how you interpret the book. There is also a risk involved because if you the reader does not know that the character is mistaken, you are less likely to ask further questions of the text.

In the story there is one, and possibly two, character(s) who believe that Mary is a Goddess in the Roman Catholic Church. This is a common confusion that many people have, even other non-Roman Catholic Christians can misunderstand who Roman Catholics believe.

But Endo was a Roman Catholic and he knew what he believed. So why would his characters state the Mary was a Goddess? If it is something that other Christian misunderstand about Roman Catholics, think how confusing it must be for someone who doesn't come from a Christian background (as most of his characters don't) to try to understand Mary's place in Roman Catholic theology.

That is just the Christian misunderstanding his characters have. Some of them make equally incorrect statements about Hinduism and Buddhism. And here is where part of the problem may be, Western readers are probably as ignorant of Hinduism and Buddhism as Asian readers are likely to be of Christianity. So when someone is reading along, and they come to a Hindu goddess named in the work, they are likely to think, "Oh okay, that is how it is. Good to know," and keep reading. But a large part of the story is the incongruity of the beliefs his characters hold (what they think Catholics believe about Mary), and what is true (what Catholics really believe about Mary). What the characters believe cause them to misinterpret many of the actions of others in the book. One of the characters, a Japanese tour guide in Indian, even muses on how his fellow Japanese probably don't understand what the meaning of religious practice is to Hindus, while he is (if I am reading the text properly) misunderstanding the practice himself.

So if you think Endo was a sloppy writer, you may come to the conclusion that the book is about all religions lead to the same place and we should all get along. But if you think Endo was purposeful in his craft, then that leads to some more interesting questions.

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booklady

2,200 reviews · 65 followers

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Want to read

September 9, 2019

After reading my friend Dhanaraj Rajan's review of this book I knew I wanted to read this.

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Thiên Di

71 reviews · 56 followers

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May 7, 2019

một cuốn sách Người đã gửi tới cho tôi để trả lời cho câu hỏi mà tôi luôn canh cánh trong lòng và luôn hỏi Người. và hệt như cách nghĩ khi đó ai hỏi tôi vì sao tôi yêu Người: bởi vì Người là một người đau khổ, đau khổ hơn tất cả chúng ta, và đau khổ như thế nhưng Người luôn yêu tôi.

cuốn sách hay ở chỗ tác giả kết nối mọi nền văn hóa với một tình yêu thương bàng bạc xuyên thấm, khiến ta xúc động

"...Ngài không duyên dáng, không oai vệ

Ngài bị khinh khi, và là đồ phế bỏ của người đời,

con người đớn đau và những ốm o xo bại,

như một kẻ có gặp chúng tôi thì lo giấu mặt

bị khinh khi, và chúng tôi đã chẳng đếm xỉa

Trái lại, chính các bệnh tật của chúng tôi, Ngài đã mang

chính các đau khổ của chúng tôi, Ngài đã vác..."

(Isaiah 53:2-4)

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S.

 

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December 13, 2013

it's been reported in literary papers or sections that an unofficial "twenty-year rule" applies to the Nobel Prize in Literature-- that is, every twenty years or so (unless it was every twenty-five years, and I'm misremembering), the Nobel Literature Prize committee "has" to award the prize to a Japanese writer. such would not be unvelieable. if I remember the WP entry on the NPL correctly, the first twenty years of the prize were entirely Sweden or Sweden-Norway specific, until the realization slowly dawned that the entire world was watching what was then the only true international prize, and a large cash bonus to boot. Japan is 10% of the world economy and possibly that percentage of major world literature in sales, and perhaps more importantly to the publishing world at large, it highly respects copyright and will even invest in projects requiring half of all royalties be sent abroad.

the first big postwar duel apparently erupted between YASUNARI KAWABATA (the master of elegiac, short little pieces capturing Japanese uniqueness and intricate social minueting) and his protégée YUKIO MISHIMA (who wrote longer, more ambitious plot-filled novels about grief and longing). literary scholars, after decades of scholarship on both, probabliy feel the Prize was mis-awarded-- MISHIMA, despite his vainglorious death, is more highly referenced and influential; more writers fifty years on list him as "influence," whereas Kawabata, while known to the entire community, is more the origami-expert of the intricate fold.

today of course the central Nobel story is HARUKI MURAKAMI vs. HARUKI MURAKAMI. as in, will the Nobel Prize award the medal to HM or will it fail to act in time. no other name is seriously floated in contention.

the 1980s battle is interesting on a different level. both KENZABURO OE (the eventual winner) and ENDO SHUSAKU are a bit less read today and considered a step down from the KAWABATA-MISHIMA showdown. OE represented secular sociality and ENDO heretical Christianity. but aside from this issue, there is the overall sense of aesthetics in each's work, and of course the philosophy.

this is a book about five Japanese pilgrims to the Ganges and the "case" of each, describing the spiritual concerns and life events that bring them all to India for a brief trip. it begins "on the airplane" and then explores the background and history of each.

endo's other work I've read although a 3/5 non-fiction/fiction piece (literary analysis and just literature), always inspires rounds of conversation in artistic dinners.

this work is more just a very solid 5/5 lit work

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Huy

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December 23, 2018

Mình là một người không tin vào Tôn giáo, không tin vào những đấng linh thiêng hay tối cao. Và mình lúc nào cũng thấy thắc mắc khi gặp những người sùng đạo và tin tưởng vào những bậc cao hơn, và mãi không bao giờ hiểu được, một người vô thần như mình đọc những cuốn sách kiểu này, dĩ nhiên là sẽ không thấy thích.

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George

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December 12, 2022

3.5 stars. An original, intelligent, character based novel about Japanese tourists undergoing varieties of life crisis, visiting the river Ganges, at Varanasi, India, during the week of the assassination of the Indian Prime Minister. All the characters seek reconciliation, self acceptance or fulfillment.

One character is a World War 2 veteran haunted by memories of his experiences in Burma, another, Isobe, is coming to terms with his wife’s death from cancer and her comments on reincarnation. Otsu, a Japanese Catholic, never fully accepted by the church elders, has followed his faith in God, to India. Misuko is a woman seeking forgiveness for once seducing Otsu in a frivolous attempt to undermine his faith when she was a student.

This book was first published in 1993.

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David Rush

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December 17, 2017

Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth. Matthew 5:5

Jews demand signs and Greeks look for wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles 1 Corinthians 1:22-25

I wonder at the faith and Christianity of Shusaku Endo a thoughtful, reflectfull Japanese Christian. Did he feel as at odds with his faith and heritage as the central character, Otso, of Deep Rivet?Did he feel himself as outcast as Otsu who identified with the lowest caste of India?

I will draw a conclusion that Endo found the essence of Christ in the suffering sacrifice rather that the victorious resurrected champion of the prosperity gospel. I think Endo saw “true” Christianity in the comfort of the poor and meek.

I think more people would NOT like this book than do. In Endo's world the avenues of success only bring a hollow happiness. In my (American) world the general feel I get is that the Christianity brings a victorious uplifting life full of prosperity. Endo would have none of that. For him you only get to the truth by embracing the poor and outcast.

So....do you think this life is a project of empirical pluses and minuses and the point is to end up with a positive when you die? And the “authentic” life is one that discounts anything that is not measurable, and religion is at best an illusion and at worst the bane of humanity?

If so, this book will be nonsense to you.

Are your religions beliefs secure and do they provide reason and stability that explains everything? If so, this book will be nonsense to you.

There are a number of “themes” involving connecting with something. First, for Otsu, is the notion that Christ is found most clearly in the rejected. Which leads him, as a Catholic priest, to be shunned by his order and end up adopting the clothes of a Hindu untouchable who's only task is to carry other discarded, poor, and dying people to the river Ganges just before they die.

And then there is this idea that our existence is actually a river of humanity and we are all trying to connect with it. I think Endo is saying we use most of our energy avoiding the very things that really do give us the connection to everything else we need.

For Miss Naruse she wants to experience actual love, not the kind that is actually a role that people adopt with enthusiasm.

For Mr Kiguchi it is honoring his fellow Japanese soldiers who suffered a burtal retreat in WWII in Burma.

For Mr Numada it is a mystical connection with nature embodied by a Myna bird.

And finally for Mr Isobe, he is only recognizing his connection with his wife after she dies after telling him to look for her to be reborn somewhere in the world.

If I were to write a high school report about it I think I would come up with something about the Deep River of the the Ganges is much like life itself. And that the road of death Mr. Kiguchi was on is also much like life itself. In that we will all die sometime.

If you are sure of yourself, in your belief or non-belief...then you will think this book is nonsense. But for those of us you inexplicably think what the world tells us about itself is most likely wrong...well, you might end up loving this book.

Quotes...

After living nearly five years in a foreign country, I can't help but be struck by the clarity and logic of the way Europeans think, but it seems to me as an Asian that there's something they have lost sight of with their excessive clarity and their over abundance of logic, and I just can't go along with it....in the final analysis, the faith of the Europeans is conscious and rational, and these people reject anything they cannot slice into categories with their rationality. Pg117

But an Asian like me just can't make sharp distinctions and pass judgment on everything the way they do. Pg118

Every time I look at the River Ganges, I think of my Onion (Christ). The Ganges swallows up the ashes of every personas it flows along, rejecting neither the beggar woman who stretches out her finger-less hands for the murdered prime minister Gandhi. The river of love that is my Onion flows past, accepting all, rejecting neither the ugliest of men nor the filthiest. Pg 185

The Onion had died many long years ago, but he had been reborn in the lives of other people. Even after nearly two thousand years had passed, he had been reborn in those nuns, and had been reborn in Otsu. And just as Otsu had been taken off to a hospital on a litter, the nuns likewise disappeared in the river of people. Pg 215

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Chinook

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January 24, 2018

For a short book, Deep River covers a lot. It’s interesting to be gazing through a window at the lives of these Japanese men and women as they themselves gaze through a window at Europeans (mostly French) and Indians. The main themes of the book are religion and grief - characters contemplate rebirth, Japanese Buddhism, the differences between Japanese Christianity and European Christianity, Hinduism and a few personal constructions, like the man who thinks of God as being in communion with nature and a woman who eventually decides that humanity is all connected in their river of sorrows.

But the book also touches on the horrors of war, on marriage, of generational gaps in Japan, on sex and love, on work and its discontents, on travel and being respectful of new cultures. It is heavily influenced by two books, Moira and Thérèse Desqueyroux, which influence and mirror one woman’s choices.

Japanese novels tend, for me, to be somewhat hard to understand at a fundamental level - there always seems to be something presented as a universal feeling or action that baffles me. In this novel it’s the bullying of Otsu, which seems to the students to be inevitable and amusing. The tour guide later takes a similar attitude towards the tourists, one of wanting to have revenge against them for no reason that makes sense to me. It’s also sometimes hard to wrap my mind around the male-female relationships presented in Japanese novels.

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Tereza

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February 1, 2020

Moje první seznámení s Endóem (paradoxně s jeho poslední knihou) a hned láska na první začtení. Příběh o ztrátách a hledání, pošetilých tužbách srdce, o pomíjivosti času - to všechno na pozadí uměřeného Japonska, pořádkumilovné Francie a barevné, nespoutané a neuchopitelné Indie. Přečtěte si ji!

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Brennan

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November 13, 2021

Endo's infamous final novel, that had many quibbling over whether he finally abandoned the strict perimeters of Catholicism for a more generous pluralism/ecumenism. After all the reading I did for thesis, it seems inconclusive. His wife Junko indicates in a reflection a few years after his death that the pluralist beliefs of Otsū in Deep River are Endo's own. But a 1994 interview (the year of the novel's publication) with his close friend (and translator) William Johnston, Endo is recorded as saying "I have no doubt that dialogue is a very fine thing. But it has its limits. After all, when we Christians talk to Buddhists and learn from them, we must know where to draw the line. I would like to hear something about that." All that to say we can't really know. Nor should we.

I enjoyed the novel, but its cast of characters fell flat for me. I did not find them meticulously drawn or movingly real. Their monologues and dialogues were stilted. I always wonder what is lost in translation. Certain decisions by Gessel are odd--words like "pendulous" and "pestilential" stick out sorely. I did find the novel's cliffhanger ending reminiscent of Mark's gospel, an indication that Endo's spirituality remained Christocentric. Better than Volcano, worse than The Sea and Poison.

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Nguyet Minh

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August 22, 2021

Sông Hằng - một dòng sông linh thiêng của người Ấn giáo, là nơi mà dòng chảy của nó đón nhận tất cả những sinh mệnh bất kể đẳng cấp hay địa vị, là nơi mà dù xa đến đâu, dù bằng nhiều phương tiện khác nhau, người Ấn giáo nhất định phải tìm về để chết, để chờ chết hoặc để ngụp lặn tắm rửa trong đó với niềm tin sâu sắc rằng dòng nước thiêng ấy sẽ rửa sạch mọi tội lỗi và nghiệp chướng, tro của người qua đời được rải xuống sông sẽ giúp họ thoát khỏi kiếp luân hồi.

Nhóm du khách Nhật với những nghề nghiệp, hoàn cảnh và câu chuyện khác nhau cùng tham gia một tour du lịch đến Ấn Độ với những mục đích riêng nhưng có vẻ như đều liên quan đến việc kiếm tìm. Đó là ông Isobe mất đi người vợ và lời trăn trối của vợ về việc sẽ tái sinh và mong muốn ông hãy đi tìm bà. Đó là Mitsuko, nữ hộ lý vô thần dù đã kết hôn nhưng chưa bao giờ tìm thấy cảm xúc hoặc tình yêu đích thực của đời mình, cô là người đàn bà mà “ngọn lửa ân ái chẳng bao giờ cháy lên được.” Trong sự trống rỗng đó, cô luôn nghĩ đến Ootsu, một người bạn cũ với đức tin to lớn với Chúa và chỉ mong trở thành linh mục để tận hiến cho đức tin ấy. Cô đi tìm anh tại một tu viện ở Vasanari. Đó là ông Numata, một người chuyên viết chuyện đồng thoại, thế giới đồng thoại ông tạo ra sẽ dẫn ông thoát khỏi những mâu thuẫn và sự tàn bạo của cuộc sống với bệnh tật và mất mát. Đó là ông Kiguchi - một cựu chiến binh ở chiến trường Miến Điện năm xưa với ám ảnh khôn nguôi về đồng đội đã chết, về việc chứng kiến cảnh ăn thịt người của nhau để tồn tại và có sức giúp kẻ khác. Và đó là cặp vợ chồng nhiếp ảnh gia Sajou, tiêu biểu cho lớp trẻ chuộng chủ nghĩa thực dụng. Họ chỉ đơn giản đến Ấn Độ vì tò mò và mua sắm vài thứ kỷ niệm với thái độ khinh miệt nền văn hoá này.

Trưởng đoàn là anh chàng hướng dẫn viên Enami, người gắn bó với Ấn Độ nhiều năm và am hiểu văn hoá của nó đủ để bảo vệ nó khỏi sự khinh miệt từ khách Nhật. Anh có một khái niệm lạ lùng về thiên nhiên Ấn Độ, đó là vẻ “dâm tính” của nó, luôn “có cái gì đó cứ kích thích dục tính, âm ỉ trong cái không khí nóng bức của xứ Ấn”, xứ mà thiên nhiên mang hai mặt: sáng tạo và phá hủy. Khi sống lâu trong một nền văn hoá nào đó, người ta dễ trở nên sùng bái nó và định kiến với những quan điểm khác.

Tất cả họ tìm đến Vasanari, một thành phố rất Ấn Độ trong lòng Ấn Độ để trải nghiệm không gian thánh địa linh thiêng, nơi các dòng chảy giao nhau nhưng cũng là nơi mà tín ngưỡng và thực tế tạo thành những mảng đối lập của sạch sẽ và dơ dáy, từ bi và tàn nhẫn. Người ta tìm về Ấn Độ bởi hy vọng khám phá khởi nguồn của Phật giáo nguyên thuỷ nhưng những âm hưởng và tàn dư còn sót lại đã bị che lấp bởi Ấn giáo khổng lồ. Vậy nên, những vị khách ấy đã trở nên thất vọng và thờ ơ. Ông Isobe không ngừng thầm gọi vợ trong niềm mong mỏi gặp lại “tái sinh” của bà dọc bờ sông Hằng. Mitsuko vô tình gặp lại anh bạn linh mục trong một hình hài khác như một người Ấn giáo thực thụ với những xác chết vác trên vai đưa họ về dòng sông Ấn giáo, về với Chúa trong tâm thức của riêng anh. Những đám người ăn xin bị bệnh phong cùi, những xác động vật trôi sông, sự nóng bức ngột ngạt từ những giàn thiêu lộ thiên cùng mùi người sống, mùi tử khí tạo nên một bức tranh hỗn độn không thể tìm được ở nơi nào khác trên thế giới khi mà sự trật tự và ngăn nắp đã trở thành tiêu chuẩn.

Ông Numata chưa bao giờ cho rằng thiên nhiên là tàn bạo, ngược lại nó hẳn là cầu nối sự sống và con người. Ông đi tìm mua một con nhồng hoang để phóng sinh nó trở về với tự nhiên, là cách ông trả ơn cho việc giữ được sinh mệnh của mình qua bệnh hiểm nghèo. Còn Kiguchi chỉ mong mỏi tìm đến một ngôi chùa để cầu siêu cho các chiến sĩ tử trận năm xưa. Với tín đồ Ấn giáo, hữu ngạn sông Hằng mới chính là nơi linh thiêng nhất, còn tả ngạn biểu tượng cho sự dơ dáy.

Xuyên suốt câu truyện là những quan điểm tôn giáo và trăn trở về thần học trái ngược nhau của những người cùng dân tộc. Trong đó có cả Kito giáo, Phật giáo, Ấn giáo và cả vô thần. Đức tin như một tấm thảm được trải ra cho tất cả mọi người. Có kẻ chọn đi lên nó, có kẻ thích đi ở bên ngoài bằng đôi chân trần của mình. Niềm yêu kính một tôn giáo là thứ tình cảm tự nguyện và bền chặt của một cá nhân với đức tin đó, còn kẻ vô thần là một vị khách đứng bên ngoài quan sát bằng đôi mắt khách quan. Cũng có lúc, khi cuộc sống vắng bóng tâm tình hay chẳng còn gì để bấu víu vào nữa, người ta định hướng lại lối sống, chọn cách quay về với nơi họ từng thờ ơ, để tìm những kết nối tâm linh lấp đầy lại cảm giác cô đơn trống rỗng.

Cuộc đời đã sắp xếp sẵn mọi việc một cách thứ tự mà người sống trong đó chẳng thể biết trước được. Người rời bỏ thế gian sẽ không bao giờ có cơ hội được biết người còn sống sẽ phải đối diện với điều gì. Ý vị thâm sâu của đời sống chỉ có thể đến khi có nhiều đánh đổi và mất mát. Chỉ tình yêu son sắt mới khiến người ta chôn sâu ước nguyện được tái sinh để gặp lại người thương, để tiếp tục tha thiết và gắn bó.

Dọc bờ sông Hằng, họ ném đi ảo ảnh và tìm thấy thực tế chồng chất lên nhau, “tái sinh” hay hoàn toàn biến mất đều là thứ trực cảm tâm linh nằm trong sâu thẳm mỗi người. Vợ chồng nhiếp ảnh gia Sajou không đại diện cho bất cứ hình thức tâm linh nào, bất chấp mất mát đau buồn của người khác để thỏa mãn cho những đòi hỏi tầm thường của bản thân, vô tình đưa chàng linh mục Ootsu cận kề cái chết khi vừa phải bảo vệ sự trong sạch cho người chết đến thói hám danh của kẻ sống. Cuối truyện là sự kiện bà tổng thống Indira Gandhi bị ám sát đẩy niềm tin tôn giáo lẫn thực tế xã hội với bất đồng, bất bình đẳng lên đỉnh điểm. Dẫu là người đàn bà ăn xin rụng hết ngón tay hay bà thủ tướng bị ám sát cũng đều trở về với dòng sông Hằng, nơi đón nhận cả điều tốt đẹp lẫn nhơ bẩn.

Và hành trình tìm kiếm của nhóm khách Nhật ấy cũng khép lại. Điều họ tìm thấy chính là việc phải tiếp tục tồn tại với một tâm thế khác.

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Emilia P

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August 9, 2012

Dang, yo.

Shusaku Endo wrote this book I read called SILENCE. It's about Catholic missionaries to Japan in like the 1600s and it's kinda boring and pretty one-note but also well written and about an important culture clash. Shusaku Endo, a Japanese Catholic, is an intriguing character himself, and so one is impelled to read more of his work. Especially since it's featured in Season 6 of Lost. And with good reason.

Silence was written in the 60s and Deep River was written in the 90s. The openness and full-heartedness of the latter belies a man with the wisdom and sadness and understanding of a whole life between these books - but it's still very clearly the same dude -- a person who cares about faith and the soul, in a way that is very Japanese and un-Japanese at the same time.

I tried to explain this to my cooly-Japanophile husband - to say this book was about how Japanese people are so focused on appearing calm and collected on the surface but are tumultuous and sad and beautiful underneath, and that perhaps that calm exterior itself signals, hints at, a profundity of soul which we openly emotional Westerners can only dream about. So that's what I thought this book captured really well -- everyone suffers, and here is a story about how four or five (or six or seven!) emphatically Japanese people suffered, in their own cultural context, mostly in silence and bitterness, and how they dealt with it by tapping into the life-force which connects us across cultures, ages, faiths (there's a Japanese Catholic priest who dresses up like a Hindu to carry bodies to the creamation grounds, to wit) , etc, while on a trip to the Ganges, the river of rebirth, in India. It sounds hippy-dippy, but it isn't. It's about how big our small little lives are -- it's a character study above all, no big sweeping things happen in it, in the end. It's about accepting and bearing suffering, and trying to love. It's kind of sad. But it's sweet.

There's a quote on the back about how Endo is unsentimental, yet sympathetic, and that's a mark of great writing. I have to agree. This is a wonderful book. Read it, yo.

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Nick

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November 22, 2011

A group of Japanese tourists travel to India to visit historic sites from the life of the Buddha, without realizing that there are few modern Buddhists there. They wind up in Varanasi, by the side of the sacred, polluted Ganges, where people go to die. The group includes Isobe, who is looking for his reincarnated wife, who he ignored when she was alive and Mitsuko, who has found emptiness in a series of personae: hedonistic student, wife, volunteer at a hospital. Least affecting is Numada, a author of children's books and haunted by the fate of animals. Kiguchi's story is riveting, as he struggles not just with the memories of surviving the war in Burma, but of the soldier who sacrificed everything to save him. A thoughtful, meditative book, focussed on the struggle to define what truly matters, but not without a sly humor, as the fastidious Japanese try and mostly fail to cope with the overwhelming mass of humanity that is India, along with the comic foils, a pair of married tourists, her wishing to be in France, he trying to establish himself as a photographer. A book that lingers in the mind.

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A.K. Kulshreshth

 

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April 27, 2020

This is a great work. I listened to the audio book and will also read the print version.

Four very diverse characters, all Japanese, end up on a visit to the holy city of Varanasi, on the banks of the sacred river Ganga. Each of them has a different motive. In my interpretation, they get what they wanted to varying degrees, with none of them finding easy answers.

This is a book that works at many levels - from its range of settings in India, Japan, France, Burma and Manchuria, to its chronicling of events from Second World War Burma to Indira Gandhi's assassination and its characters and story arch. Two of its characters - Mitsuke and Otsu - are particularly fascinating.

It is necessary to mention that there are plenty of bloopers in this work. For example, the harmonium is not similar to a harmonica, contrary to Mr. Endo's assertion (assuming the translator is not to blame). In the audio book, Ganga is pronounced Gaan-Jaa. That is wrong, which is bad enough, but Gaanjaa also has a meaning. It means Opium in Hindi (and in other Indian languages)...

I put down the bloopers to poor quality control, and still rate this work highly because of its many strengths.

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Aubrey

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December 18, 2015

There is death. Yet, there is also life. There are long emotionally dead passages. Yet, there are also moments so charged with feeling they consume all in their path, carry them along for a bit and then leave behind ones willing to do anything to catch up. You have the search for reincarnated love ones, the search for emotional fulfillment, the search to reconcile death with life, the search for atonement, each person ever searching for something omnipresent in its never clearly defined state. And on it goes, this one period of time accepting all parts of life into its midst; the river mentioned in the pages embodies this, and will take everything in without spitting out any straightforward conclusions of its own. This is definitely a novel that won't get very far with a reader without some interpretation on their part; it is only fully enjoyed if one can see their own life experiences within the pages, and leave with a new understanding of just what it means to exist.

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Kristel

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December 7, 2019

This is the second book that I have read by Roman Catholic, Japanese Author Shūsaku Endō. His books, Silence and Deep River are both included on the 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die list. Endō explores religion, especially Catholicism and the Japanese culture in his writings. In this book, set during the time period when Indira Ghandi, prime minister of India, was assassinated examines the lives of 4 Japanese who are on a tour to India to visit Buddhist sites.

1. Osamu Isobe, a man looking for his reincarnated wife.

2. Mitsuko Naruse, a former housewife who takes a trip both as a pilgrimage and to see her ex-boyfriend Otsu as atonement for mistreating him

3. Numada, a bird watcher who wants to set a bird in his possession free.

4. Kiguchi, a former WWII Imperial Japanese Army soldier.

These characters are on a journey, a pilgrimage and it is the story of their individual pilgrimage. The deep river is the Ganges where all peoples are taken in and flow together.

This was an interesting book and look at both Japanese and Indian culture. One point the author makes; I think, is that all Gods are the same God and that in seeking God, no matter which God, that Jesus is born again in that person. Another point in the book is that peoples, cultures, and religions are at odds with each other and in the best circumstances, conflict remains. I personally did not enjoy the descriptions of the river but also believe that the author did an excellent job of painting the picture of the river bank and of India (without using the camera). This book did not inspire me to want to visit India.

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Pip

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January 11, 2018

I found this novel so much more powerful that Silence, which was about a group of Portuguese missionaries who were tortured in Seventeenth Century Japan. Endo, a practising Catholic, returns to the theme of forcing a Christian to deny one's faith, an idea which seems quaintly anachronistic now, but which he must feel strongly about to reintroduce it again. This time he tracks a group of Japanese on a pilgrimage to Buddhist Holy Sites in India. One of them had ignored his wife until her dying plea for him to look for her reincarnated self allowed Endo an opportunity to explore the idea of reincarnation. Another protagonist is a children's novelist with an affinity for animals who believes that a mynah bird sacrificed himself so that the author could live. Although he is not Christian the sacrifice of Jesus is mirrored in his story. A third pilgrim had suffered atrociously in Burma. His life was saved by a comrade who ate human flesh in order to survive (another Christian symbol) but became an alcoholic because his guilt was terrible. The fourth protagonist is a woman who believes she has no capacity for love. She seems to be following a student friend whom she had seduced and then dumped after forcing him to deny his faith. That he should also be in Varanasi, striving to live a meaningful life by helping the Untouchables carry bodies to the Ghats, and that he should die saving a clueless tour member who is insensitively trying to photograph the funeral pyres, stretches coincidence to the limits, but the whole works because it is a nifty way to talk about contrasting religious beliefs.

I listened to an Audible version, read by David Holt. He was a pleasure to listen to, my only carp being that when he spoke as the clueless Japanese tourist he used an English dialect which seemed forced to me, but that was a minor quibble. The Deep River of the title was the Ganges, of course, but it also was the river of humanity, flowing on, absorbing individuals ceaselessly despite their various beliefs and idiosyncracies.

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Wen Cof

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November 17, 2014

Shusaku Endo’s book Deep River is about a journey to the river Ganges with a collection of tourists immersed in their own private spiritual struggles. Each character presents a face of spirituality as a whole. The characters face uncomfortable spiritual questions that aren’t always neatly answered. I loved the book because it brings together ideas of Christianity, Buddhism and Hinduism.

Not only are the questions uncomfortable, so are the characters. The young woman Mitsuko, is so cruel, I almost stopped reading the book. But I’m glad I continued, because I realized that what she displays on the outside, so many of us are really hiding on the inside. She comments that the chaos and disorder of India is comforting to her, while the neatly organized gardens of Paris are disconcerting. There is something comforting about the chaos of India to Mitsuko, and there is something comforting about the chaos of the book to the reader. It jangles and fits together at odd angles. The ending is not a neat bow on a package, but is left open the reader to write their own conclusion.

So why did I love this book with ugly characters and an inharmonious plot? Because it didn’t try to explain or mollify their questions – it just took me on a journey as a reader through their process, and allowed me to draw my own conclusions about right, wrong, good, evil, life and death. It allowed me to also travel to the Ganges and observe and reflect.

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July 23, 2012

Another book I started with high hopes which failed to live up to my expectations. Endo's characters all end up seeming contrived and sometimes ridiculous in their actions and dialogue as the stories progress and they make their pilgrimages to the Hindu and Buddhist holy sites along the Ganges. I was hoping for some insight into Christianity as it is viewed and experienced in Japan and the Orient but was instead treated to an individual's ecumenistic dreams. And I think maybe he sets up some of his characters as straw men to let us all know what he thinks of modern materialistic Japan. The character's backgrounds are all somewhat interesting and I think Endo writes very well (or has been translated very well). However, no great events happen, no deep thoughts are offered, no great revelations are found, and ultimately, the book ends up being a rather boring read. I saw another review somewhere before I started reading this that said: "Deep River, Shallow Story" - I agree. It's not your everyday pulpish junk, so I bumped up the 2.5 stars to 3. I can't imagine spending time on another Endo work again.

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Long On Air

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January 31, 2020

Một quá trình cuốn hút bằng đậm đặc câu chuyện, đậm đặc trải nghiệm. Cái kết hay cụ thể hơn là câu trả lời cho trường hợp của từng nhân vật đều rất hay, ý nghĩa nhưng có phần hơi ngắn gọn. Khi đọc về cuối, thoáng qua mong muốn tác giả sẽ viết kĩ hơn, sâu hơn về tâm lí, cảm xúc từng nhân vật như ở phần đầu.

Nhưng có thể đấy là dụng ý của Endo Shusaku. Nhiều khi cách mà chúng ta đi qua mỗi trải nghiệm đã là một câu trả lời rồi, nên đến cuối cùng không cần phải diễn giải quá nhiều chăng?

Đặc biệt yêu thích cấu trúc của cuốn sách. Cách tác giả sắp xếp để từng nhân vật, từng câu chuyện xuất hiện rất thú vị. Các giá trị văn hoá, tôn giáo, tâm linh được truyền tải tinh tế, vừa vặn, không gây sự choáng ngợp hay cảm giác khó tiếp nhận cho độc giả.

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Melissa

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January 30, 2018

A very interesting study in faith as seen through the eyes of a group of Japanese tourists to India as they recall pivotal moments of their lives, experiences, and their personal struggles as they try to reconnect with past acquaintances, past loves, and reconcile past traumas through the lens of different faiths and depths of faith as they visit the intersection of Asian faith, with Buddhism, Catholicism, and Hinduism.

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Book Wormy

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December 26, 2019

For me this book was an interesting exploration of religious beliefs and how they are more alike than different when you break it down and look into it. We start by exploring Christianity and the idea of sacrificing yourself for a higher good before moving on to look at Buddhism and the ideas of reincarnation eventually we end up in India with Hinduism and the caste system which while there is a strict hierarchy kept in life in death everyone is equal and the River Ganges accepts all souls with no questions asked.

The Japanese tourists on the pilgrimage all have different reasons for going to India and while some personal quests are successful others (on the surface are not) everyone in the group is changed by the experience.

I liked the way the back stories of everyone on the trip are slowly revealed and how they all have subtle connections to each other. India is also beautifully bought to love in all her beauty and all her ugliness

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Joanne Fate

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January 22, 2021

This isn't my first Shusaku Endo book, and it won't be my last. The book starts with chapters that could be short stories in and of themselves. The main characters are all Japanese. Endo brings most of them to India on a tour. There's a lot about religions in this book. Endo was Roman Catholic, living in a mostly Buddhist country. When they travel to India they tour many religious places.

Parts of this book are sad. There's talk of death and the afterlife. The writing transcends all that. It is beautifully written and profound.

I'll stop there. I'm listening through the alphabet, partly to try to get to some books that have been in my library for a while.

I loved the narration as well. It suited the book.

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Emma Much

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April 15, 2022

very nice

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Ana Rita Ramos

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December 28, 2021

Lindíssimo.

Pessoas com motivações e histórias de vida muito diferentes partem para a Índia para se encontrarem dentro de si mesmas e/ ou para buscarem alguém. É-nos feita através dos seus olhos uma visita à Índia pobre e ao rio Ganges onde todos os indianos anseiam terminar a sua existência.

Um livro forte no conteúdo e no significado cheio de mensagens profundas e ensinamentos.

Quando terminei fiquei com a sensação de querer mais.

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Brent

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June 18, 2020

Unreliable narrator is a term many people are probably familiar with from literature class. It doesn't quite cover what is happening in this novel though, as it is written in third person. So the narrator is giving you, the reader, a (fairly) accurate view of the thoughts and actions of the characters (or at least an accurate view of the thoughts and the actions that each character finds to be important), but the characters in the story are, to varying degrees, rather unreliable.

They have incorrect knowledge that informs their thinking and decision making. They have prejudices and desires, and these prejudices and desire color the events they chose to focus on in the story. Many of the reviews have comments as, "Endo says..." or "the author is saying."

Endo is not saying anything in this book the way the statement, "Endo says..." would imply. Yes he wrote the story, and collected sections out of the lives of his characters, but it is his characters that are saying and doing things. Endo means something and it is our job as a reader to try and understand what he means by selections of events and thoughts that he choose to weave into a story.

For example, characters make statements about the various religions in the book, that as far as their knowledge and understanding goes, they believe to be true. Some of these statements are true and some of them are demonstrably false. As a reader you can choose two options, Endo didn't bother to do his homework and made some mistakes (or some variation there of), or he knew the statement was false, but allowed his character to say it because it was something his character believed.

Depending on which option you choose, it will change how you interpret the book. There is also a risk involved because if you the reader does not know that the character is mistaken, you are less likely to ask further questions of the text.

In the story there is one, and possibly two, character(s) who believe that Mary is a Goddess in the Roman Catholic Church. This is a common confusion that many people have, even other non-Roman Catholic Christians can misunderstand who Roman Catholics believe.

But Endo was a Roman Catholic and he knew what he believed. So why would his characters state the Mary was a Goddess? If it is something that other Christian misunderstand about Roman Catholics, think how confusing it must be for someone who doesn't come from a Christian background (as most of his characters don't) to try to understand Mary's place in Roman Catholic theology.

That is just the Christian misunderstanding his characters have. Some of them make equally incorrect statements about Hinduism and Buddhism. And here is where part of the problem may be, Western readers are probably as ignorant of Hinduism and Buddhism as Asian readers are likely to be of Christianity. So when someone is reading along, and they come to a Hindu goddess named in the work, they are likely to think, "Oh okay, that is how it is. Good to know," and keep reading. But a large part of the story is the incongruity of the beliefs his characters hold (what they think Catholics believe about Mary), and what is true (what Catholics really believe about Mary). What the characters believe cause them to misinterpret many of the actions of others in the book. One of the characters, a Japanese tour guide in Indian, even muses on how his fellow Japanese probably don't understand what the meaning of religious practice is to Hindus, while he is (if I am reading the text properly) misunderstanding the practice himself.

So if you think Endo was a sloppy writer, you may come to the conclusion that the book is about all religions lead to the same place and we should all get along. But if you think Endo was purposeful in his craft, then that leads to some more interesting questions.

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George

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December 12, 2022

3.5 stars. An original, intelligent, character based novel about Japanese tourists undergoing varieties of life crisis, visiting the river Ganges, at Varanasi, India, during the week of the assassination of the Indian Prime Minister. All the characters seek reconciliation, self acceptance or fulfillment.

One character is a World War 2 veteran haunted by memories of his experiences in Burma, another, Isobe, is coming to terms with his wife’s death from cancer and her comments on reincarnation. Otsu, a Japanese Catholic, never fully accepted by the church elders, has followed his faith in God, to India. Misuko is a woman seeking forgiveness for once seducing Otsu in a frivolous attempt to undermine his faith when she was a student.

This book was first published in 1993.

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David Rush

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December 17, 2017

Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth. Matthew 5:5

Jews demand signs and Greeks look for wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles 1 Corinthians 1:22-25

I wonder at the faith and Christianity of Shusaku Endo a thoughtful, reflectfull Japanese Christian. Did he feel as at odds with his faith and heritage as the central character, Otso, of Deep Rivet?Did he feel himself as outcast as Otsu who identified with the lowest caste of India?

I will draw a conclusion that Endo found the essence of Christ in the suffering sacrifice rather that the victorious resurrected champion of the prosperity gospel. I think Endo saw “true” Christianity in the comfort of the poor and meek.

I think more people would NOT like this book than do. In Endo's world the avenues of success only bring a hollow happiness. In my (American) world the general feel I get is that the Christianity brings a victorious uplifting life full of prosperity. Endo would have none of that. For him you only get to the truth by embracing the poor and outcast.

So....do you think this life is a project of empirical pluses and minuses and the point is to end up with a positive when you die? And the “authentic” life is one that discounts anything that is not measurable, and religion is at best an illusion and at worst the bane of humanity?

If so, this book will be nonsense to you.

Are your religions beliefs secure and do they provide reason and stability that explains everything? If so, this book will be nonsense to you.

There are a number of “themes” involving connecting with something. First, for Otsu, is the notion that Christ is found most clearly in the rejected. Which leads him, as a Catholic priest, to be shunned by his order and end up adopting the clothes of a Hindu untouchable who's only task is to carry other discarded, poor, and dying people to the river Ganges just before they die.

And then there is this idea that our existence is actually a river of humanity and we are all trying to connect with it. I think Endo is saying we use most of our energy avoiding the very things that really do give us the connection to everything else we need.

For Miss Naruse she wants to experience actual love, not the kind that is actually a role that people adopt with enthusiasm.

For Mr Kiguchi it is honoring his fellow Japanese soldiers who suffered a burtal retreat in WWII in Burma.

For Mr Numada it is a mystical connection with nature embodied by a Myna bird.

And finally for Mr Isobe, he is only recognizing his connection with his wife after she dies after telling him to look for her to be reborn somewhere in the world.

If I were to write a high school report about it I think I would come up with something about the Deep River of the the Ganges is much like life itself. And that the road of death Mr. Kiguchi was on is also much like life itself. In that we will all die sometime.

If you are sure of yourself, in your belief or non-belief...then you will think this book is nonsense. But for those of us you inexplicably think what the world tells us about itself is most likely wrong...well, you might end up loving this book.

Quotes...

After living nearly five years in a foreign country, I can't help but be struck by the clarity and logic of the way Europeans think, but it seems to me as an Asian that there's something they have lost sight of with their excessive clarity and their over abundance of logic, and I just can't go along with it....in the final analysis, the faith of the Europeans is conscious and rational, and these people reject anything they cannot slice into categories with their rationality. Pg117

But an Asian like me just can't make sharp distinctions and pass judgment on everything the way they do. Pg118

Every time I look at the River Ganges, I think of my Onion (Christ). The Ganges swallows up the ashes of every personas it flows along, rejecting neither the beggar woman who stretches out her finger-less hands for the murdered prime minister Gandhi. The river of love that is my Onion flows past, accepting all, rejecting neither the ugliest of men nor the filthiest. Pg 185

The Onion had died many long years ago, but he had been reborn in the lives of other people. Even after nearly two thousand years had passed, he had been reborn in those nuns, and had been reborn in Otsu. And just as Otsu had been taken off to a hospital on a litter, the nuns likewise disappeared in the river of people. Pg 215

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Chinook

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January 24, 2018

For a short book, Deep River covers a lot. It’s interesting to be gazing through a window at the lives of these Japanese men and women as they themselves gaze through a window at Europeans (mostly French) and Indians. The main themes of the book are religion and grief - characters contemplate rebirth, Japanese Buddhism, the differences between Japanese Christianity and European Christianity, Hinduism and a few personal constructions, like the man who thinks of God as being in communion with nature and a woman who eventually decides that humanity is all connected in their river of sorrows.

But the book also touches on the horrors of war, on marriage, of generational gaps in Japan, on sex and love, on work and its discontents, on travel and being respectful of new cultures. It is heavily influenced by two books, Moira and Thérèse Desqueyroux, which influence and mirror one woman’s choices.

Japanese novels tend, for me, to be somewhat hard to understand at a fundamental level - there always seems to be something presented as a universal feeling or action that baffles me. In this novel it’s the bullying of Otsu, which seems to the students to be inevitable and amusing. The tour guide later takes a similar attitude towards the tourists, one of wanting to have revenge against them for no reason that makes sense to me. It’s also sometimes hard to wrap my mind around the male-female relationships presented in Japanese novels.

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Tereza

139 reviews · 13 followers

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February 1, 2020

Moje první seznámení s Endóem (paradoxně s jeho poslední knihou) a hned láska na první začtení. Příběh o ztrátách a hledání, pošetilých tužbách srdce, o pomíjivosti času - to všechno na pozadí uměřeného Japonska, pořádkumilovné Francie a barevné, nespoutané a neuchopitelné Indie. Přečtěte si ji!

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Brennan

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November 13, 2021

Endo's infamous final novel, that had many quibbling over whether he finally abandoned the strict perimeters of Catholicism for a more generous pluralism/ecumenism. After all the reading I did for thesis, it seems inconclusive. His wife Junko indicates in a reflection a few years after his death that the pluralist beliefs of Otsū in Deep River are Endo's own. But a 1994 interview (the year of the novel's publication) with his close friend (and translator) William Johnston, Endo is recorded as saying "I have no doubt that dialogue is a very fine thing. But it has its limits. After all, when we Christians talk to Buddhists and learn from them, we must know where to draw the line. I would like to hear something about that." All that to say we can't really know. Nor should we.

I enjoyed the novel, but its cast of characters fell flat for me. I did not find them meticulously drawn or movingly real. Their monologues and dialogues were stilted. I always wonder what is lost in translation. Certain decisions by Gessel are odd--words like "pendulous" and "pestilential" stick out sorely. I did find the novel's cliffhanger ending reminiscent of Mark's gospel, an indication that Endo's spirituality remained Christocentric. Better than Volcano, worse than The Sea and Poison.

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Nguyet Minh

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August 22, 2021

Sông Hằng - một dòng sông linh thiêng của người Ấn giáo, là nơi mà dòng chảy của nó đón nhận tất cả những sinh mệnh bất kể đẳng cấp hay địa vị, là nơi mà dù xa đến đâu, dù bằng nhiều phương tiện khác nhau, người Ấn giáo nhất định phải tìm về để chết, để chờ chết hoặc để ngụp lặn tắm rửa trong đó với niềm tin sâu sắc rằng dòng nước thiêng ấy sẽ rửa sạch mọi tội lỗi và nghiệp chướng, tro của người qua đời được rải xuống sông sẽ giúp họ thoát khỏi kiếp luân hồi.

Nhóm du khách Nhật với những nghề nghiệp, hoàn cảnh và câu chuyện khác nhau cùng tham gia một tour du lịch đến Ấn Độ với những mục đích riêng nhưng có vẻ như đều liên quan đến việc kiếm tìm. Đó là ông Isobe mất đi người vợ và lời trăn trối của vợ về việc sẽ tái sinh và mong muốn ông hãy đi tìm bà. Đó là Mitsuko, nữ hộ lý vô thần dù đã kết hôn nhưng chưa bao giờ tìm thấy cảm xúc hoặc tình yêu đích thực của đời mình, cô là người đàn bà mà “ngọn lửa ân ái chẳng bao giờ cháy lên được.” Trong sự trống rỗng đó, cô luôn nghĩ đến Ootsu, một người bạn cũ với đức tin to lớn với Chúa và chỉ mong trở thành linh mục để tận hiến cho đức tin ấy. Cô đi tìm anh tại một tu viện ở Vasanari. Đó là ông Numata, một người chuyên viết chuyện đồng thoại, thế giới đồng thoại ông tạo ra sẽ dẫn ông thoát khỏi những mâu thuẫn và sự tàn bạo của cuộc sống với bệnh tật và mất mát. Đó là ông Kiguchi - một cựu chiến binh ở chiến trường Miến Điện năm xưa với ám ảnh khôn nguôi về đồng đội đã chết, về việc chứng kiến cảnh ăn thịt người của nhau để tồn tại và có sức giúp kẻ khác. Và đó là cặp vợ chồng nhiếp ảnh gia Sajou, tiêu biểu cho lớp trẻ chuộng chủ nghĩa thực dụng. Họ chỉ đơn giản đến Ấn Độ vì tò mò và mua sắm vài thứ kỷ niệm với thái độ khinh miệt nền văn hoá này.

Trưởng đoàn là anh chàng hướng dẫn viên Enami, người gắn bó với Ấn Độ nhiều năm và am hiểu văn hoá của nó đủ để bảo vệ nó khỏi sự khinh miệt từ khách Nhật. Anh có một khái niệm lạ lùng về thiên nhiên Ấn Độ, đó là vẻ “dâm tính” của nó, luôn “có cái gì đó cứ kích thích dục tính, âm ỉ trong cái không khí nóng bức của xứ Ấn”, xứ mà thiên nhiên mang hai mặt: sáng tạo và phá hủy. Khi sống lâu trong một nền văn hoá nào đó, người ta dễ trở nên sùng bái nó và định kiến với những quan điểm khác.

Tất cả họ tìm đến Vasanari, một thành phố rất Ấn Độ trong lòng Ấn Độ để trải nghiệm không gian thánh địa linh thiêng, nơi các dòng chảy giao nhau nhưng cũng là nơi mà tín ngưỡng và thực tế tạo thành những mảng đối lập của sạch sẽ và dơ dáy, từ bi và tàn nhẫn. Người ta tìm về Ấn Độ bởi hy vọng khám phá khởi nguồn của Phật giáo nguyên thuỷ nhưng những âm hưởng và tàn dư còn sót lại đã bị che lấp bởi Ấn giáo khổng lồ. Vậy nên, những vị khách ấy đã trở nên thất vọng và thờ ơ. Ông Isobe không ngừng thầm gọi vợ trong niềm mong mỏi gặp lại “tái sinh” của bà dọc bờ sông Hằng. Mitsuko vô tình gặp lại anh bạn linh mục trong một hình hài khác như một người Ấn giáo thực thụ với những xác chết vác trên vai đưa họ về dòng sông Ấn giáo, về với Chúa trong tâm thức của riêng anh. Những đám người ăn xin bị bệnh phong cùi, những xác động vật trôi sông, sự nóng bức ngột ngạt từ những giàn thiêu lộ thiên cùng mùi người sống, mùi tử khí tạo nên một bức tranh hỗn độn không thể tìm được ở nơi nào khác trên thế giới khi mà sự trật tự và ngăn nắp đã trở thành tiêu chuẩn.

Ông Numata chưa bao giờ cho rằng thiên nhiên là tàn bạo, ngược lại nó hẳn là cầu nối sự sống và con người. Ông đi tìm mua một con nhồng hoang để phóng sinh nó trở về với tự nhiên, là cách ông trả ơn cho việc giữ được sinh mệnh của mình qua bệnh hiểm nghèo. Còn Kiguchi chỉ mong mỏi tìm đến một ngôi chùa để cầu siêu cho các chiến sĩ tử trận năm xưa. Với tín đồ Ấn giáo, hữu ngạn sông Hằng mới chính là nơi linh thiêng nhất, còn tả ngạn biểu tượng cho sự dơ dáy.

Xuyên suốt câu truyện là những quan điểm tôn giáo và trăn trở về thần học trái ngược nhau của những người cùng dân tộc. Trong đó có cả Kito giáo, Phật giáo, Ấn giáo và cả vô thần. Đức tin như một tấm thảm được trải ra cho tất cả mọi người. Có kẻ chọn đi lên nó, có kẻ thích đi ở bên ngoài bằng đôi chân trần của mình. Niềm yêu kính một tôn giáo là thứ tình cảm tự nguyện và bền chặt của một cá nhân với đức tin đó, còn kẻ vô thần là một vị khách đứng bên ngoài quan sát bằng đôi mắt khách quan. Cũng có lúc, khi cuộc sống vắng bóng tâm tình hay chẳng còn gì để bấu víu vào nữa, người ta định hướng lại lối sống, chọn cách quay về với nơi họ từng thờ ơ, để tìm những kết nối tâm linh lấp đầy lại cảm giác cô đơn trống rỗng.

Cuộc đời đã sắp xếp sẵn mọi việc một cách thứ tự mà người sống trong đó chẳng thể biết trước được. Người rời bỏ thế gian sẽ không bao giờ có cơ hội được biết người còn sống sẽ phải đối diện với điều gì. Ý vị thâm sâu của đời sống chỉ có thể đến khi có nhiều đánh đổi và mất mát. Chỉ tình yêu son sắt mới khiến người ta chôn sâu ước nguyện được tái sinh để gặp lại người thương, để tiếp tục tha thiết và gắn bó.

Dọc bờ sông Hằng, họ ném đi ảo ảnh và tìm thấy thực tế chồng chất lên nhau, “tái sinh” hay hoàn toàn biến mất đều là thứ trực cảm tâm linh nằm trong sâu thẳm mỗi người. Vợ chồng nhiếp ảnh gia Sajou không đại diện cho bất cứ hình thức tâm linh nào, bất chấp mất mát đau buồn của người khác để thỏa mãn cho những đòi hỏi tầm thường của bản thân, vô tình đưa chàng linh mục Ootsu cận kề cái chết khi vừa phải bảo vệ sự trong sạch cho người chết đến thói hám danh của kẻ sống. Cuối truyện là sự kiện bà tổng thống Indira Gandhi bị ám sát đẩy niềm tin tôn giáo lẫn thực tế xã hội với bất đồng, bất bình đẳng lên đỉnh điểm. Dẫu là người đàn bà ăn xin rụng hết ngón tay hay bà thủ tướng bị ám sát cũng đều trở về với dòng sông Hằng, nơi đón nhận cả điều tốt đẹp lẫn nhơ bẩn.

Và hành trình tìm kiếm của nhóm khách Nhật ấy cũng khép lại. Điều họ tìm thấy chính là việc phải tiếp tục tồn tại với một tâm thế khác.

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Emilia P

1,705 reviews · 49 followers

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August 9, 2012

Dang, yo.

Shusaku Endo wrote this book I read called SILENCE. It's about Catholic missionaries to Japan in like the 1600s and it's kinda boring and pretty one-note but also well written and about an important culture clash. Shusaku Endo, a Japanese Catholic, is an intriguing character himself, and so one is impelled to read more of his work. Especially since it's featured in Season 6 of Lost. And with good reason.

Silence was written in the 60s and Deep River was written in the 90s. The openness and full-heartedness of the latter belies a man with the wisdom and sadness and understanding of a whole life between these books - but it's still very clearly the same dude -- a person who cares about faith and the soul, in a way that is very Japanese and un-Japanese at the same time.

I tried to explain this to my cooly-Japanophile husband - to say this book was about how Japanese people are so focused on appearing calm and collected on the surface but are tumultuous and sad and beautiful underneath, and that perhaps that calm exterior itself signals, hints at, a profundity of soul which we openly emotional Westerners can only dream about. So that's what I thought this book captured really well -- everyone suffers, and here is a story about how four or five (or six or seven!) emphatically Japanese people suffered, in their own cultural context, mostly in silence and bitterness, and how they dealt with it by tapping into the life-force which connects us across cultures, ages, faiths (there's a Japanese Catholic priest who dresses up like a Hindu to carry bodies to the creamation grounds, to wit) , etc, while on a trip to the Ganges, the river of rebirth, in India. It sounds hippy-dippy, but it isn't. It's about how big our small little lives are -- it's a character study above all, no big sweeping things happen in it, in the end. It's about accepting and bearing suffering, and trying to love. It's kind of sad. But it's sweet.

There's a quote on the back about how Endo is unsentimental, yet sympathetic, and that's a mark of great writing. I have to agree. This is a wonderful book. Read it, yo.

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Nick

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November 22, 2011

A group of Japanese tourists travel to India to visit historic sites from the life of the Buddha, without realizing that there are few modern Buddhists there. They wind up in Varanasi, by the side of the sacred, polluted Ganges, where people go to die. The group includes Isobe, who is looking for his reincarnated wife, who he ignored when she was alive and Mitsuko, who has found emptiness in a series of personae: hedonistic student, wife, volunteer at a hospital. Least affecting is Numada, a author of children's books and haunted by the fate of animals. Kiguchi's story is riveting, as he struggles not just with the memories of surviving the war in Burma, but of the soldier who sacrificed everything to save him. A thoughtful, meditative book, focussed on the struggle to define what truly matters, but not without a sly humor, as the fastidious Japanese try and mostly fail to cope with the overwhelming mass of humanity that is India, along with the comic foils, a pair of married tourists, her wishing to be in France, he trying to establish himself as a photographer. A book that lingers in the mind.

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A.K. Kulshreshth

 

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April 27, 2020

This is a great work. I listened to the audio book and will also read the print version.

Four very diverse characters, all Japanese, end up on a visit to the holy city of Varanasi, on the banks of the sacred river Ganga. Each of them has a different motive. In my interpretation, they get what they wanted to varying degrees, with none of them finding easy answers.

This is a book that works at many levels - from its range of settings in India, Japan, France, Burma and Manchuria, to its chronicling of events from Second World War Burma to Indira Gandhi's assassination and its characters and story arch. Two of its characters - Mitsuke and Otsu - are particularly fascinating.

It is necessary to mention that there are plenty of bloopers in this work. For example, the harmonium is not similar to a harmonica, contrary to Mr. Endo's assertion (assuming the translator is not to blame). In the audio book, Ganga is pronounced Gaan-Jaa. That is wrong, which is bad enough, but Gaanjaa also has a meaning. It means Opium in Hindi (and in other Indian languages)...

I put down the bloopers to poor quality control, and still rate this work highly because of its many strengths.

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Aubrey

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December 18, 2015

There is death. Yet, there is also life. There are long emotionally dead passages. Yet, there are also moments so charged with feeling they consume all in their path, carry them along for a bit and then leave behind ones willing to do anything to catch up. You have the search for reincarnated love ones, the search for emotional fulfillment, the search to reconcile death with life, the search for atonement, each person ever searching for something omnipresent in its never clearly defined state. And on it goes, this one period of time accepting all parts of life into its midst; the river mentioned in the pages embodies this, and will take everything in without spitting out any straightforward conclusions of its own. This is definitely a novel that won't get very far with a reader without some interpretation on their part; it is only fully enjoyed if one can see their own life experiences within the pages, and leave with a new understanding of just what it means to exist.

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Kristel

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December 7, 2019

This is the second book that I have read by Roman Catholic, Japanese Author Shūsaku Endō. His books, Silence and Deep River are both included on the 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die list. Endō explores religion, especially Catholicism and the Japanese culture in his writings. In this book, set during the time period when Indira Ghandi, prime minister of India, was assassinated examines the lives of 4 Japanese who are on a tour to India to visit Buddhist sites.

1. Osamu Isobe, a man looking for his reincarnated wife.

2. Mitsuko Naruse, a former housewife who takes a trip both as a pilgrimage and to see her ex-boyfriend Otsu as atonement for mistreating him

3. Numada, a bird watcher who wants to set a bird in his possession free.

4. Kiguchi, a former WWII Imperial Japanese Army soldier.

These characters are on a journey, a pilgrimage and it is the story of their individual pilgrimage. The deep river is the Ganges where all peoples are taken in and flow together.

This was an interesting book and look at both Japanese and Indian culture. One point the author makes; I think, is that all Gods are the same God and that in seeking God, no matter which God, that Jesus is born again in that person. Another point in the book is that peoples, cultures, and religions are at odds with each other and in the best circumstances, conflict remains. I personally did not enjoy the descriptions of the river but also believe that the author did an excellent job of painting the picture of the river bank and of India (without using the camera). This book did not inspire me to want to visit India.

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Pip

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January 11, 2018

I found this novel so much more powerful that Silence, which was about a group of Portuguese missionaries who were tortured in Seventeenth Century Japan. Endo, a practising Catholic, returns to the theme of forcing a Christian to deny one's faith, an idea which seems quaintly anachronistic now, but which he must feel strongly about to reintroduce it again. This time he tracks a group of Japanese on a pilgrimage to Buddhist Holy Sites in India. One of them had ignored his wife until her dying plea for him to look for her reincarnated self allowed Endo an opportunity to explore the idea of reincarnation. Another protagonist is a children's novelist with an affinity for animals who believes that a mynah bird sacrificed himself so that the author could live. Although he is not Christian the sacrifice of Jesus is mirrored in his story. A third pilgrim had suffered atrociously in Burma. His life was saved by a comrade who ate human flesh in order to survive (another Christian symbol) but became an alcoholic because his guilt was terrible. The fourth protagonist is a woman who believes she has no capacity for love. She seems to be following a student friend whom she had seduced and then dumped after forcing him to deny his faith. That he should also be in Varanasi, striving to live a meaningful life by helping the Untouchables carry bodies to the Ghats, and that he should die saving a clueless tour member who is insensitively trying to photograph the funeral pyres, stretches coincidence to the limits, but the whole works because it is a nifty way to talk about contrasting religious beliefs.

I listened to an Audible version, read by David Holt. He was a pleasure to listen to, my only carp being that when he spoke as the clueless Japanese tourist he used an English dialect which seemed forced to me, but that was a minor quibble. The Deep River of the title was the Ganges, of course, but it also was the river of humanity, flowing on, absorbing individuals ceaselessly despite their various beliefs and idiosyncracies.

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Wen Cof

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November 17, 2014

Shusaku Endo’s book Deep River is about a journey to the river Ganges with a collection of tourists immersed in their own private spiritual struggles. Each character presents a face of spirituality as a whole. The characters face uncomfortable spiritual questions that aren’t always neatly answered. I loved the book because it brings together ideas of Christianity, Buddhism and Hinduism.

Not only are the questions uncomfortable, so are the characters. The young woman Mitsuko, is so cruel, I almost stopped reading the book. But I’m glad I continued, because I realized that what she displays on the outside, so many of us are really hiding on the inside. She comments that the chaos and disorder of India is comforting to her, while the neatly organized gardens of Paris are disconcerting. There is something comforting about the chaos of India to Mitsuko, and there is something comforting about the chaos of the book to the reader. It jangles and fits together at odd angles. The ending is not a neat bow on a package, but is left open the reader to write their own conclusion.

So why did I love this book with ugly characters and an inharmonious plot? Because it didn’t try to explain or mollify their questions – it just took me on a journey as a reader through their process, and allowed me to draw my own conclusions about right, wrong, good, evil, life and death. It allowed me to also travel to the Ganges and observe and reflect.

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Christopher

 

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July 23, 2012

Another book I started with high hopes which failed to live up to my expectations. Endo's characters all end up seeming contrived and sometimes ridiculous in their actions and dialogue as the stories progress and they make their pilgrimages to the Hindu and Buddhist holy sites along the Ganges. I was hoping for some insight into Christianity as it is viewed and experienced in Japan and the Orient but was instead treated to an individual's ecumenistic dreams. And I think maybe he sets up some of his characters as straw men to let us all know what he thinks of modern materialistic Japan. The character's backgrounds are all somewhat interesting and I think Endo writes very well (or has been translated very well). However, no great events happen, no deep thoughts are offered, no great revelations are found, and ultimately, the book ends up being a rather boring read. I saw another review somewhere before I started reading this that said: "Deep River, Shallow Story" - I agree. It's not your everyday pulpish junk, so I bumped up the 2.5 stars to 3. I can't imagine spending time on another Endo work again.

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Long On Air

104 reviews · 37 followers

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January 31, 2020

Một quá trình cuốn hút bằng đậm đặc câu chuyện, đậm đặc trải nghiệm. Cái kết hay cụ thể hơn là câu trả lời cho trường hợp của từng nhân vật đều rất hay, ý nghĩa nhưng có phần hơi ngắn gọn. Khi đọc về cuối, thoáng qua mong muốn tác giả sẽ viết kĩ hơn, sâu hơn về tâm lí, cảm xúc từng nhân vật như ở phần đầu.

Nhưng có thể đấy là dụng ý của Endo Shusaku. Nhiều khi cách mà chúng ta đi qua mỗi trải nghiệm đã là một câu trả lời rồi, nên đến cuối cùng không cần phải diễn giải quá nhiều chăng?

Đặc biệt yêu thích cấu trúc của cuốn sách. Cách tác giả sắp xếp để từng nhân vật, từng câu chuyện xuất hiện rất thú vị. Các giá trị văn hoá, tôn giáo, tâm linh được truyền tải tinh tế, vừa vặn, không gây sự choáng ngợp hay cảm giác khó tiếp nhận cho độc giả.

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Melissa

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January 30, 2018

A very interesting study in faith as seen through the eyes of a group of Japanese tourists to India as they recall pivotal moments of their lives, experiences, and their personal struggles as they try to reconnect with past acquaintances, past loves, and reconcile past traumas through the lens of different faiths and depths of faith as they visit the intersection of Asian faith, with Buddhism, Catholicism, and Hinduism.

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Book Wormy

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December 26, 2019

For me this book was an interesting exploration of religious beliefs and how they are more alike than different when you break it down and look into it. We start by exploring Christianity and the idea of sacrificing yourself for a higher good before moving on to look at Buddhism and the ideas of reincarnation eventually we end up in India with Hinduism and the caste system which while there is a strict hierarchy kept in life in death everyone is equal and the River Ganges accepts all souls with no questions asked.

The Japanese tourists on the pilgrimage all have different reasons for going to India and while some personal quests are successful others (on the surface are not) everyone in the group is changed by the experience.

I liked the way the back stories of everyone on the trip are slowly revealed and how they all have subtle connections to each other. India is also beautifully bought to love in all her beauty and all her ugliness

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Joanne Fate

318 reviews · 3 followers

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January 22, 2021

This isn't my first Shusaku Endo book, and it won't be my last. The book starts with chapters that could be short stories in and of themselves. The main characters are all Japanese. Endo brings most of them to India on a tour. There's a lot about religions in this book. Endo was Roman Catholic, living in a mostly Buddhist country. When they travel to India they tour many religious places.

Parts of this book are sad. There's talk of death and the afterlife. The writing transcends all that. It is beautifully written and profound.

I'll stop there. I'm listening through the alphabet, partly to try to get to some books that have been in my library for a while.

I loved the narration as well. It suited the book.

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Emma Much

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April 15, 2022

very nice

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Ana Rita Ramos

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December 28, 2021

Lindíssimo.

Pessoas com motivações e histórias de vida muito diferentes partem para a Índia para se encontrarem dentro de si mesmas e/ ou para buscarem alguém. É-nos feita através dos seus olhos uma visita à Índia pobre e ao rio Ganges onde todos os indianos anseiam terminar a sua existência.

Um livro forte no conteúdo e no significado cheio de mensagens profundas e ensinamentos.

Quando terminei fiquei com a sensação de querer mais.

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Brent

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June 18, 2020

Unreliable narrator is a term many people are probably familiar with from literature class. It doesn't quite cover what is happening in this novel though, as it is written in third person. So the narrator is giving you, the reader, a (fairly) accurate view of the thoughts and actions of the characters (or at least an accurate view of the thoughts and the actions that each character finds to be important), but the characters in the story are, to varying degrees, rather unreliable.

They have incorrect knowledge that informs their thinking and decision making. They have prejudices and desires, and these prejudices and desire color the events they chose to focus on in the story. Many of the reviews have comments as, "Endo says..." or "the author is saying."

Endo is not saying anything in this book the way the statement, "Endo says..." would imply. Yes he wrote the story, and collected sections out of the lives of his characters, but it is his characters that are saying and doing things. Endo means something and it is our job as a reader to try and understand what he means by selections of events and thoughts that he choose to weave into a story.

For example, characters make statements about the various religions in the book, that as far as their knowledge and understanding goes, they believe to be true. Some of these statements are true and some of them are demonstrably false. As a reader you can choose two options, Endo didn't bother to do his homework and made some mistakes (or some variation there of), or he knew the statement was false, but allowed his character to say it because it was something his character believed.

Depending on which option you choose, it will change how you interpret the book. There is also a risk involved because if you the reader does not know that the character is mistaken, you are less likely to ask further questions of the text.

In the story there is one, and possibly two, character(s) who believe that Mary is a Goddess in the Roman Catholic Church. This is a common confusion that many people have, even other non-Roman Catholic Christians can misunderstand who Roman Catholics believe.

But Endo was a Roman Catholic and he knew what he believed. So why would his characters state the Mary was a Goddess? If it is something that other Christian misunderstand about Roman Catholics, think how confusing it must be for someone who doesn't come from a Christian background (as most of his characters don't) to try to understand Mary's place in Roman Catholic theology.

That is just the Christian misunderstanding his characters have. Some of them make equally incorrect statements about Hinduism and Buddhism. And here is where part of the problem may be, Western readers are probably as ignorant of Hinduism and Buddhism as Asian readers are likely to be of Christianity. So when someone is reading along, and they come to a Hindu goddess named in the work, they are likely to think, "Oh okay, that is how it is. Good to know," and keep reading. But a large part of the story is the incongruity of the beliefs his characters hold (what they think Catholics believe about Mary), and what is true (what Catholics really believe about Mary). What the characters believe cause them to misinterpret many of the actions of others in the book. One of the characters, a Japanese tour guide in Indian, even muses on how his fellow Japanese probably don't understand what the meaning of religious practice is to Hindus, while he is (if I am reading the text properly) misunderstanding the practice himself.

So if you think Endo was a sloppy writer, you may come to the conclusion that the book is about all religions lead to the same place and we should all get along. But if you think Endo was purposeful in his craft, then that leads to some more interesting questions.

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Daniel Warriner

 

18 books · 57 followers

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March 16, 2020

Shusaku Endo's 1993 novel Deep River (深い河, or Fukai Kawa) follows a group of Japanese tourists on a tour of Buddhist sites in India. Each is searching for some form of spiritual understanding or healing. Isobe lost his wife years before and ruminates on reincarnation. Mitsuko, my favorite character in the novel for her type and how well Endo developed her, is a cynical nurse who believes she's incapable of love, and who mocks the priest Otsu for his devotion to Christianity and its "Onion," the name she feels more comfortable calling its god. Kiguchi seems forever stuck in painful memories of the war and Japanese withdrawal from Burma. While Numada, a writer who seeks salvation from nature, is certain that a myna died in his place so that he could live.

The novel pits a number of themes and philosophies against each other, such as East and West, Hinduism, Buddhism and Christianity, and egotism and compassion. We're also given a wide array of perspectives, carefully laid out to us as the characters recount their pasts and question who they are. The tour takes place during the final days of Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, and Endo's rich descriptions of the atmosphere during that time, the Ganges, the religious sites, relics, and gods, as well as various strata of Indian society will leave lasting impressions. He's been called by some the Japanese Graham Greene, and I could see why as I read this book; it's more evident in Deep River than in other Endo novels. Overall, it's an exceptionally well-crafted story that'll make you think about humanity, love, death, devotion, and spiritual paths.

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Linda

 

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March 2, 2017

I found this to be a powerful book. The four main characters each have intriguing back stories and travel to India searching for freedom from grief and emptiness. Isobe, in a typical Japanese marriage of "usefulness," loses his wife and discovers a need to find her. Alientated Numada recovers from near death with the help of a mynah bird and wants to repay his debt. Kiguchi looks to the land of Buddha to heal his trauma from WWII and the death of the friend who saved his life during the war but could not stand to live afterwards. The empty-hearted Mitsuko and the steadfastly spiritual Otsu pull the story forward, though, with Mitsuko both drawn to and repelled by pierrot Otsu and his struggle with his beloved "Onion" God. The stories interconnect in clever ways using symbols and metaphor. Each character finds an end to his own story, although may not seem to realize it, and some readers may not be satisfied by the Mitsuko-Otsu story ending that seems to be hanging.

Maybe due to translation, I was surprised by the emotion and poetry of the writing, something I haven't seen from other Japanese authors I've read. The Sanjo newlyweds are one-dimensional representatives of shallow modern society, and other characters tend to be mouthpieces for Endo's messages, but I thought expressed well through the tragic stories. Atheists probably will hate this book, though. Descriptions of India and the Ganges are colorful and philosophical. I felt the pathos of the characters and the current of the Ganges.

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Kenji

137 reviews · 3 followers

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April 16, 2018

A melancholic and beautiful book. Amidst a backdrop of the heaviness of the human experience, Shusaku Endo remains delicate. His message is gentle and compassionate; not at all like the heavy-handedness of most spiritual literature. In this book, a random group of heavy-souled Japanese tourists come to India and discover facets of their spiritual journeys. This book is about grief. It is about shame. It is about pantheism. It is about seeing Jesus from western and non-western perspectives. It is about mercy. It is about the pain and the beauty of living. This book is not for everybody. I recommend this book for people who are interested in general spirituality, the Japanese mind, and non-western perspectives of Christianity. I think students of world cultures would love this book too. I do not recommend this book for people who have trouble viewing another culture or worldview on its own terms or for people that are not accustomed to picking up subtleties in literature. I especially do not recommend this book for people who are uninterested in getting their paradigms of Christianity sincerely challenged or questioned.

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Andrew

1,975 reviews · 689 followers

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January 29, 2018

Having written Silence, it's hard to come back and write something just as stunning, but Deep River isn't far off. It's hard to pin down -- Shusaku Endo is writing heavily in the vein of forgotten French Catholic writers, like those who get name-checked in the story, Francois Mauriac and Julien Green.

And indeed, Endo got a lot of comparisons to writers like that, as well as Graham Greene, but that's missing a large part of the picture. For example, a lot of the coincidences and reunion moments that come off as cloying, forced efforts in Western novels (Hesse's Narcissus and Goldmund, prime example) somehow work in a Japanese context -- much in the same way I didn't find myself questioning the motif of the reborn soul in Mishima's Sea of Fertility, the consistent reappearance of Otsu, the sad-sack nonconformist priest in Deep River didn't bother me either (although Mitsuko declaring that she wants to destroy his faith, that made my eyes roll). Somehow the mystical tone that Endo sets makes everything work.

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Jim

2,029 reviews · 666 followers

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February 13, 2015

Shūsaku Endō is that rarity: a Japanese Catholic -- but with a difference. In Deep River, he looks at the members of a Japanese tour group that visits North India. The beginning of the book takes most of the characters in turn, showing how there is some lack in their lives that they hope to remedy by the side of the Ganges.

In the end, the various members of the group take baby steps. Only Ohtsu, a renegade Catholic priest that one of the group knew in Japan, has found himself. Dressed in a dhoti, he carries the dying to the ghats along the river where there bodies will be burned.

I found Deep River to be a sincere attempt to study the need for a spiritual dimension in this life, but Endo takes a difficult route to this end and comes up wanting. Still, I like Endo and I like his book.

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Anna

110 reviews · 54 followers

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January 11, 2018

*Zero stars* Deep River was quite possibly the worst book I have ever read in my life. To make it worse it was assigned in my English class so I couldn't just return it to the library like I've done with other bad books. The characters were bland and the plot was non-existent. People tell me this book is about spiritual journeys but I saw no journey. Confrontation maybe, but there was no journey. There was no conclusion to the book. If the author had died mid sentence and so the editors had to finish the sentence and then immediatley print that might explain the unfinished ending. Even still, I want to pettition the school to have the students read a better book for this unit. There are so many good religious commentary books out there and yet we are subjected to this torture. The students deserve better from our English department. Nothing has made me less excited to learn about other religions, and to read more assigned books, than Deep River has.

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Jordan Tomeš

147 reviews · 9 followers

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March 14, 2018

It would be easy to criticize Endo for pushing his religious views on the reader too much in this book. I personally choose to be thankful for this. In terms of function, it has been a long time since a book touched me and affected me so deeply (maybe the cans of IPA's I drank while reading this helped, too).

I loved the backstories of all the characters. Endo's writing style is rich, vivid, and powerful. It really made all the characters stand out for me. Yes, the characters sometimes did something that seemed a little off to me, and the ending was sweeter than Charlies Chocolate Factory on its best day. But overall -- I really enjoyed this and feel like returning to this book again.

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Jamie Barringer (Ravenmount)

859 reviews · 35 followers

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February 14, 2017

This book reminds me of the Canterbury Tales (Chaucer), and of The Bridge of San Luis Rey, by Thornton Wilder. Like those books, Deep River is a collection of character sketches tied together by a situation, in this case a group of Japanese tourists on a tour of India. The author explores themes of death and rebirth, faith and religions(especially Christianity and Buddhism), and suffering in its various forms.

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Gloria Chen

144 reviews · 4 followers

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December 24, 2016

I really liked Deep River. On the surface, it's just a story about a Japanese tourist group. There is a tour guide, schedule and some annoying passengers. But the tour group is also in India, and is there during the assassination of Indira Gandhi. The different stories of the main protagonists were all interesting (and sad) to me, and the more I thought about them the more impressed I was by their hidden similarities. Would definitely read again!

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Sue Dix

520 reviews · 20 followers

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January 15, 2018

This book tells the stories and backstories of a group of Japanese tourists in India and centers around the river Ganges and the varying views of religion by the tourists and the peoples of India. It is an intriguing and enfolding novel with vivid depictions of disease, war, poverty, and the ways in which the characters are affected by what they see and experience.

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Dani

137 reviews

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August 28, 2014

It was amazing. I will need to buy this for my own collection.

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June 24, 2018

Favorite novel I've read. Profound.

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X_g_xi

31 reviews · 2 followers

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August 10, 2021

Là một người “vô thần”, nhưng đối với mình quyển sách này khá thú vị, nhẹ nhàng, chậm rãi . Mình có thể hiểu thêm một vài kiến thức về các tôn giáo, cũng như tín ngưỡng của một vài nhân vật. Mặc dù có vài ba luồng kiến thức mình không thể thông suốt được.

Câu chuyện là sự chuyển đổi từ bối cảnh của Nhật Bản u buồn sang hình ảnh Ấn Độ hỗn độn. Theo bước chân của đoàn khách Nhật mình được du lịch Ấn Độ một cách hay ho qua từng trang sách. Thật ra hiểu biết của bản thân mình đối với Ấn Độ rất mơ hồ, ngoài cái kiến thức toán học từ thời xa xưa của mình “Ấn Độ là nước dùng chữ số 0 đầu tiên trên thế giới”, thì thật sự khi nói đến Ấn Độ mình chẳng nghĩ đến được điều gì cả, tất nhiên là mình vẫn biết sông Hằng hay đạo Bà La Môn nhưng những khái niệm này như ở chiều không gian nào khác trong đầu mình í… Sau khi đoàn du khách đi đến sông Hằng thì mình cũng lên google để chiêm ngưỡng con sông một cách trực quan nhất, nhưng đáng buồn rằng toàn hình ảnh sông mùa covid với quá nhiều thi thể được thả sông và sự ô nhiễm ở mức báo động. Thật sự nếu không có Enami - người hướng dẫn viên cho đoàn khách Nhật thì mình chắc cũng như cô vợ của Sanjou chê bai và thảng thốt trước những việc lạ lùng ở nơi đây quá, mình có chăng sẽ trở thành loại du khách đáng chán nhất của anh chàng này - một người Nhật đem lòng mến mộ một Ấn Độ đau thương và hỗn độn. Ừ thì mỗi người có một đức tin riêng.

Qua trang sách, Ấn Độ còn đọng lại trong tâm trí mình là cái nóng hầm hập của mùa hè, sự nhầy nhụa của mồ hôi bên dưới lớp áo, mùi con người đầy ắp trong không khí và sự u minh tịch mịch của những khu rừng, của những lớp bóng đêm chất chồng lên nhau hết lớp này đến lớp khác, như những khổ sở cùng cực chất chồng lên số phận của người mang thân phận tiện dân sống trong đất nước này vậy.. Những khổ sở, đau thương đó sẽ được dòng sông sâu thẳm nhận vào mình, sẽ mang đi hết? (này cũng do tác giả dẫn đi đâu thì mình đi đó :3)

Thêm một điều nữa là các nữ thần trong Ấn giáo không phải đúng như nghĩa của từ “nữ thần” mà ta có thể hình dung “đầy mẫu tính và dịu dàng”, đó là những người phụ nữ với gương mặt dữ dằn, mang trên mình đau thương, bệnh tật, họ gầy gò ốm yếu, trơ xương, nhưng vẫn “ cho loài người những giọt sữa từ bầu vú héo hon”. Hóa ra có một cách gọi khác của các nữ thần Ấn Giáo trong tiếng Việt, thay vì gọi nữ thần Chamunda, có thể gọi là Bà Chằng Chamunda :v Thì ra từ bà chằng còn mang sắc thái ý nghĩa như vậy :3

Sau tất cả, Mitsuko thật là một người phụ nữ khó hiểu, và mình cũng thấy rằng, không có một sự nhiệt tình, không có một sự yêu thích đặc biệt với bất cứ gì, không hiểu rằng mình muốn gì cũng là một loại đau khổ nhở?

Ừ thì sống trên đời, ai ai cũng cần một cái gì đó, một ai đó để nương tựa, để bấu víu, để tin tưởng và để yêu thương, dù đó là bất cứ điều gì đi nữa. Mình tin vậy!

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Erin

107 reviews · 4 followers

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December 13, 2008

This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.

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Heather

1,245 reviews · 52 followers

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January 6, 2016

Shusaku Endo’s novel Silence is my favorite book. I’ve read his short stories in Stained Glass Elegies, which got kind of repetitive, and his novel Scandal, which had some similar themes, but was harder for me to get into.

I like Silence more than Deep River—the scope is epic, the plot is faster-paced, and it bowled me over with its ultimate revelation. Deep River, however, helped me to get the themes in Silence more, and in my opinion is also an excellent book. There are books that people understand, but Silence and Deep River are books that understand me.

Deep River takes us through several chapters covering the background of each character, then unites them all in a tourist group visiting the Ganges River in India. Some reviewers found the novel to be boringly optimistic, or only saw a theme of all religions being one, but there is more here. All of the characters experience some sort of emptiness (Isobe with his wife dying of cancer, Mitsuko trying to fill her life with relationships with men, Numada who’s never been able to confide his deepest problems to another human being, Kiguchi who lived through the Highway of Death in Burma and his friend Tsukada who survived by eating human flesh, Otsu who is rejected by his peers both in college and in seminary and seeks God).

First, there is that theme of emptiness and seeking. We see each character seeking and trying to fill themselves, then see what each of them ultimately finds as they meet up in India. It makes for a slow pace, but is an interesting structure that works.

Then there is what the characters find. Mitsuko finds meaning in a statue of the Hindu goddess Chamunda, with her withered breasts and diseased body, who somehow still manages to feed people with her milk. She contrasts her with the Virgin Mary, whom she sees as a sort of mother goddess of the Western world, perfect and immaculate. To me, this is symbolic of what love has to look like in the real world versus the ideal love in “religion,” which on the outside can look like supposedly more “perfect” people deigning to help those “other people.” In reality, however, we are all suffering. We suffer because we’re alive. In order to love others, we have to put aside our own suffering long enough to focus on them.

Otsu confronts this in his religious peers who are so focused on what is the “right” doctrine that they refuse to advance him further in his seminary program. At one point, Otsu says something about other religions being valid, but that he still follows Christ. Sometimes this is exactly how I feel. I don’t pretend to know exactly how God deals with people or what is going to happen to whom after we die, or whether there isn’t some truth in other religions. I just know that there is something about Jesus above other religious figures that draws me.

The jist of this theme is that putting others above oneself is contrary to human nature. Human nature is to fight over who’s right and over each other’s basic resources. Otsu’s “Onion,” as he calls God so as not to offend Mitsuko in the book, flips that upside-down. Otsu discovers that the only way to fight the horror of our world is to cast himself into it, and, if necessary, to let it swallow him whole. Is that hopeful? I guess so. Is that sweet? As a Christian and a human being, I find it pretty horrific actually, but also true. Will I actually ever be in a situation requiring me to sacrifice myself for someone else? The human in me says, “God, I hope not.”

Another theme is the consumption of human flesh, which is a metaphor for the Last Supper and the acceptance of Christ’s sacrifice. Kiguchi’s friend Tsukada suffers horribly over having eaten human flesh to survive in Burma and only feels better when abusing alcohol. It’s only on his deathbed that he’s absolved. A foreign hospital volunteer named Gaston tells him a story of some plane crash survivors whose dying companions begged them to eat their bodies. They did, and lived because of it. Knowing that he is not the only one to have committed what he sees as such an abomination brings Tsukada peace at last before he dies. The tourists’ visit to the Ganges also reflects this theme in a sense. The Japanese people are appalled at the Hindus coming to the Ganges to die, and their ashes being scattered in the river where people bathe to purify themselves. Towards the end of the book, Mitsuko also bathes in this river full of the ashes of human corpses and finds meaning in it.

Isobe and Numada’s stories are more subtle. Isobe’s wife dies begging him to find her reincarnated self, which leads him to India. He doesn’t find her—he only finds this river that carries away so much humanity and wonders if she was reborn. Numada remembers a myna bird who saved his life in the hospital by listening to him talk about his suffering, which then died when his wife accidentally left its cage on the roof. He buys a myna bird in India and releases it into the forest, considering this payback for the original bird’s sacrifice and thinking that he will continue to write his lighthearted animal stories as a way of combating the darkness of life.

Sanjo, a photographer, and his wife don’t get their own chapter, but Sanjo plays the part of the unworthy asshole whom Otsu jumps in the way of a mob to save. Otsu imitates his Onion to the end, and his ultimate survival is doubtful.

All of that, ultimately, is my only understanding of true Christianity—to accept the fact that a long time ago, a person was brutally murdered by the very evils of the world that we often find ourselves engaging in (desire for power, status, wealth, and being right). In that sense, we too killed him and continue to do so (a.k.a. sin, or doing and thinking things with selfish motivation). If we honestly accept that, then the only appropriate thing to do is to do our best to renounce those things, which can quite possibly mean our own social, material, and in some places in the world, physical destruction. Really accepting Christ in this way yields no prospect of fame, fortune, or personal happiness, but Endo reveals in his writing that this strange love can save individuals and the world, even if it’s in the futile-seeming act of carrying one corpse at a time to burn and dump into a river flowing as deep as the human spirit.

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Hang

2 reviews

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September 12, 2020

Những con người đến bên dòng sông Hằng để tìm kiếm một điều gì đó mà chính họ cũng không cất thành lời được. Gấp cuốn sách lại tôi cũng tự hỏi: Điều mình mong mỏi nhất là gì? Mình sẽ tìm thấy nó chứ?

Cuốn sách như một buổi trà đạo kiểu Nhật, không dành cho những người dễ sốt ruột và vội vã. Bạn không nên đọc cuốn sách này nếu không cảm thấy thiết tha với việc ngồi xuống và đọc sách một cách thư thái.

Phần tôi thấy mình như bị cuốn vào từng trang sách, đi quanh vài nơi ở Nhật Bản hơi sắc u buồn rồi chu du qua Ấn Độ nhộn nhịp, lộn xộn mà đầy sức sống.

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Hải

263 reviews · 61 followers

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April 13, 2022

Với những cuốn sách nghiêng về tâm linh, huyền bí như vầy, mình đọc chủ yếu chỉ vì thói quen thích đọc. Những câu chuyện, sự kiện... được viết và giải thích theo kiểu: "à, như thế, ai tin thì tin...". Sở dĩ mình cho điểm 3/5, không phải vì mình không tin nên đưa ra điểm thấp thế, mà vì, tuy có những đoạn tác giả gây cho mình sự hứng thú, tò mò, nhưng nhìn chung kết cấu truyện khá rời rạc, lỏng lẻo.

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Kathleen

133 reviews

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October 31, 2020

I love Endo’s writing and storytelling. What else can I say.

Dhanaraj’s review, on the other hand, says it all. ❤️

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Anh Vũ

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January 19, 2023

a rich story

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RayleneD

58 reviews · 1 follower

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June 28, 2022

This book was so good!

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Anh Nguyen

64 reviews · 3 followers

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March 29, 2023

Một quyển sách khá hay. Mình thích những đoạn miêu tả về Ấn Độ và Sông Hằng lắm lắm lắm. Ước gì tác giả viết nhiều hơn về Sông Hằng!

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Laurel Hicks

1,161 reviews · 96 followers

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July 5, 2019

Amazing writer.

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Quỳnh Giang

108 reviews

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April 10, 2021

Đúng kiểu văn học Nhật, chầm chậm nhẹ nhẹ. Cũng không quá ấn tượng bởi cả kiểu hình nhân vật hay cấu tứ nội dung khá quen thuộc.

Cho 4* vì thích Ootsu.

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Maru

441 reviews · 50 followers

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October 21, 2019

Há há đọc xong không hiểu sao lại được nhiều người khen như vậy luôn đó =))

Mình thích câu chuyện của Ottos nhất. Hành trình đi tìm bản ngã của Mitsuko đang gắn liền với Ottos. Đúng hơn thì Ottos là người dẫn đường, là kim chỉ nam mà Mitsuko vô định đang dựa vào. Cũng có thể là Củ Hành trong Ottos.

Còn có thể đã chai lì, nên câu chuyện của những con người khác không đủ sức khiến mình ngẫm nghĩ.

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John Benson

1,251 reviews · 11 followers

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February 6, 2021

Shusaku Endo was a Japanese Christian novelist, known best for his book, SILENCE. Like that book, he once again explores religious issues. This book tells the story of four Japanese spiritual searchers who end up on a tour to visit the Ganges River at the time of Indira Gandhi's assassination. Each of their spiritual backstories are brought out well and all are very different, seldom falling into the confines of one religion. While he brings out some Christian spiritual issues, the other major religions of India and Japan are also explored, but mostly he uses these four people to explore the intertwining of religions. This is a good book about humanity's search for spiritual ideals within the lives of these different characters.

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Edward

150 reviews · 8 followers

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December 14, 2016

Maybe it's because I just read "The Sea and Poison," and re-read "Silence" (both of which are amazing novels), but I found this later work by Endo somewhat dissatisfying. I had no issue with the subject matter; a story blending ideas and beliefs from different religions, mainly Christianity, Hinduism, and Buddhism. There are frequent references to reincarnation, and the Ineffable Spiritual Quest that drives many humans. It's just that Mishima already wrote this story much more effectively in the "Sea of Fertility" books (particularly "Temple of Dawn").

I'm not trying to be a snob. I still enjoyed this book, and many of themes from Endo's other stories reappear here. Endo spent his entire life wrestling with the incongruity of his Catholic faith and his Japanese cultural background. The character of Otsu is a stand-in, I suspect, for Endo himself. Through his dialogue it's possible to identify the evolution of Endo's beliefs as he approached the end of his life ("Deep River" was published in 1993, three years before he died). The message is one of tolerance and acceptance of all faiths--that every religion partakes in the divine to some degree, and that your relationship with other human beings matters more than your relationship with a god or gods. Rather, your relationship with other human beings IS your relationship with the sacred.

I agree with the conclusion, but the narrative tried too hard to enforce it. Instead of the gracefully effective, indirect presentation of his earlier novels, it felt clumsy and unfinished. Some of this might be attributable to poor translation, but not entirely. The story really shines when it focuses on Otsu and his wanderings, his struggle to reconcile a "western" faith with his "eastern" mind. Are religious beliefs determined mostly by place of birth, by what one's parents and surrounding society believe? If so what does that say about the supposed universality of truth?

Endo's perspective on these issues is unique since his religion, Christianity, is a minority within Japan. As Christianity continues to erode in the West, where it once reigned supreme, Christians of European/American background would do well to read his works and consider these same questions. What is it about Christianity that is true once all the trappings of power and influence are stripped away?

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Derek

26 reviews · 9 followers

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December 14, 2014

Deep River is an existential and theological exploration through the stories of the lives of four Japanese tourists to India. The stories are straight forward and compelling, but the existential conflicts are almost overwhelmingly complex. These stories all converge in Varanasi, a Hindu holy spot on the sacred Ganges; the "Deep River" of the title.

The book drips with symbolism, and the deep river seems to be a place deep enough for the Hindu, the Buddhist and the Christian to find comfort there. "There are many different religions," Endo quotes Mahatma Gandhi, "but they are merely various paths leading to the same place. What difference does it make which of those separate paths we walk, so long as they all arrive at the identical location?"

If the commonality of religions is a significant theme, then I think too many pages dote on Christianity. The Pierrot/clown that signifies Christ (Endo so much as tells us this) shows up as the priest-candidate Otsu, as Gaston the hospital volunteer, and as Namuda's treasured pet bird. This leads to the cringe-worthy comparison between Jesus and Namuda's bird because of the nuisance "Jesus had been to the rabbis of his day." There are a lot of awkward moments like this and a lot of heavy-handed coincidences and symbols, but it becomes easier to accept as you realize that this book is often more symbolic portrait than literal narrative.

But, you really see that Endo has done something masterful as the stories converge at Varanasi. Within four simple and straight-forward stories, Endo has introduced many complicated moral and theological conflicts and concepts. In Varanasi, those conflicts begin to mix and swirl with the traditions of Buddhism, Christianity and Hinduism, like the swirling tributaries to The Ganges. At the foot of the ghats, Endo blends the questions and answers to our deepest mysteries with the vast array of colors, odors, and sounds that make up the unlimited aspects of humanity.

It should be noted that while Endo's book is a colorful tapestry of three religions, it is not an exhaustive comparison. Most notably Islam is not included. Even so, Endo has done much here, and Deep River is bold, enlightening and often beautiful.

09-after-goodreads

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Tranhieu0410

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April 7, 2019

Những con người với những hoàn cảnh và câu chuyện khác nhau cùng đi trên một chuyến hành hương đến đất nước Ấn Độ và đặc biệt là thành phố Varanasi với con sông Hằng chứa đựng đầy bí ẩn. Những người Nhật mang trong mình những bí mật khác nhau trải qua các thế hệ của Nhật. Như tượng trưng cho sự bí bach, u ám của xã hội Nhật. Nhưng ở tác phẩm này mình thấy nhẹ nhàng hơn vẫn có một chút gì đó ánh lên ở cuối truyện.

Tác giả kể truyện hay và dễ cảm nhận các nhân vật nhưng cảm giác vẫn thấy thiếu một chút, cần đi sâu hơn nữa vào các nhân vật theo cảm cảm nhận của mình.

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Jahn Kuiper

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March 27, 2019

There is such a divisive spirit to Endo's books, and never has that been more the case than in Deep River. You can tell the man has held the question, seeping from every pore, how can I reconcile my Christian faith with my Eastern identity. To explore this, the book shares characters deeply and maniacally at odds with faith, characters deeply steeped in other faiths of the world, and characters who don't give a thought to faith. But with each of these sects, known or unkown there is a deep, deep river calling them to something they cannot describe, something viscerally felt amiss in their lives. While there are very brutal portrayals of Christianity here, it would be wrong to think it is subversive of Christ. Some might say it's tolerance or even admiration of Buddhism and Hinduism pushes some universalism agenda, but that is a very poor and shallow reading. Most characters are Japanese travelers to India, each making their journey for a different reason. For each, we can see how God meets them where they are at, the spirit giving words through language they can puzzle through. In fact, it is this challenge to the status quo of normalized Christianity which is at the heart of Endo's question: how can I reconcile my Christian faith with my Eastern Identity. The result of which is a richer, more diverse way of thinking about our relationship with God--a way that should help give voice to those on the fringes of faith looking for where they might fit in.

books-owned-read

 

literary-fiction

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Jukka

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September 10, 2016

This month i've got a twin read:

Deep River (1993) - Shusaku Endo

-AND-

Deep Rivers (1958) - José María Arguedas

When you pair reads you can never be sure what will result, but it never has failed to add dimension.

These two with same name (OK almost), have a certain surface similarity. Both are from writers from outside of Europe and North America. They are also outside the dominant cultures where they grew up.

Endo born 1923 of Japanese parents lived until age 10 in Japanese controlled northern China, when his parents divorced and he returned to Japan and became Catholic.

Arguedas (b 1911) was of Spanish and Quechua descent raised in large part by Quechuan family servants. Arguedas strongly identified with the indigienous Peruvian culture, and wrote in his own idiosyncratic style where he mixed the two languages freely.

Deep River is set in India and follows a group of Japanese tourists.

Deep Rivers looks at the conflict in a young boy between his Indian and the Spanish cultures.

This should be fun.

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