Reading Japan — Kyushu Edition: The Sea and Poison by Shusaku Endo
The Sea and Poison by Shūsaku Endō (tr. Michael Gallagher) My Quick Take: This is a powerful novel that presents a short but profound examination of war, the individual during war, and the nature of complicity. Visit my home post for my Reading Japan—Kyushu Edition reading project! *** “The sea today looked dark and threatening. Brown dust swirled up from Fukuoka and seemed to soil the clouds, which were the color of old cotton wool, and even the pale sun. Win the War, lose the War–it was all the same to Suguro. The effort it cost even to think about such things weighed oppressively upon him.” This 1958 novel by Japanese writer Shūsaku Endō is set in Fukuoka, Japan during World War II and takes as its central character Dr. Jiro Suguro, a physician practicing in a small Tokyo suburb in a grimy, rundown house. He’s in mid-life when the book starts, has no bedside manner, but is brilliant at treating the unnamed narrator’s ongoing TB infection. Just who is this mysterious, odd...
