PhD Title

The Problem of Evil in the Works of Endo Shusaku: Between 'Reading' and 'Writing'

Supervisors

Professor Mark Williams and Dr David Platten (Dept of French)

Research Study

My research investigates the problem of evil in the works of a Japanese writer, Endo Shusaku. In order to adequately comprehend Endo's complex and diverse perceptions of evil, it is necessary to investigate and scrutinize his essays and non-fiction works, as they seem to have profoundly contributed to the process of his formation, not only as a contemporary writer, but also as thinker and an intellectual. The necessity of such an approach is further corroborated by the fact that most research on Endo's literary output so far has offered only one angle of analysis of the problem of evil by limiting their scope to the subject matter of novels. No account was taken of the wide and equally important essayistic body of works created by Endo in parallel to the fiction.

I attempt to demonstrate how the major ideas presented in his critical works and essays were turned into the fiction, that is to say, how the issue of evil is undertaken in his novels as the product of reflection and creative transformation of the thoughts, intuitions, and judgements made by Endo in his non- fiction works. I apply a methodological construct to explain in an orderly way the relations obtaining on the axis: biography/fiction in confrontation with evil. I intend to base this construct on concepts that are generally termed as the hermeneutical method – as understood by followers of Paul Ricoeur. I have decided to employ this method, as I recognized Endo's own writing as a kind of hermeneutics.

My explanation should lead me to the conclusion that the questions that Endo asks about evil take shape of aporical dilemmas with no unequivocal statements. In this domain, Endo clearly participates in what characterizes modernity shaped by wartime experience, with its highly actual consequences. Nevertheless, he expresses his ideas in a specific and extremely personal way by reinterpreting them on the foundation of strong confessional implications.

Background

November 2006 - MA in Japanese Studies, Oriental Institute, Department of Japanese Studies, University of Adam Mickiewicz in Poznan, Poland. MA dissertation's title: Master of the Noh Stage. The Vision of the Way of the Actor according to Zeami Motokiyo, written under the supervision of Professor Estera Zeromska. Awarded the Japan Foundation Fellowship Grant (12 months) for 2008-2009 to conduct the PhD research activities in Japan. From September 2008 to September 2009, Visiting Researcher at the Institute of Comparative Culture (Sophia University, Tokyo) under the supervision of Professor Angela Yiu.

Email: mljwk@leeds.ac.uk