Deep River [Hardcover]

There is great significance in each of the characters. Ostu being a Christ figure, the Sanjos representing the "Westernized" Japanese who are almost ignorant of the Indian culture and religion. Although I cannot agree with some of the worldviews discussed in the novel, it's a great book and the most symbolistic book I have read in years.

It is no accident that Ostu gave God the name of "Onion." An onion has several layers to it. Ostu believed that the God of Christianity was also the God of Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam, etc. This is where I give this book 4 stars instead of 5. The God of the Old and New Testaments cannot be the same as the ones of Buddhism, Hinduism, etc.

First we meet Isobe, an elderly man who recently has lost his wife to cancer. Although skeptical at first, he now has hope that his wife has been reincarnated, and he has evidence he might find her in India. Then there is Mitsuko, a woman who, when in college, seduced a pious Christian student named Otsu just for fun, to see if she could lure him away from his God; after an unhappy marriage she devoted her time to charitable hospital work and is now searching for Otsu, who she has heard is now a Catholic priest living in India. Numada is a children's story writer who gets his inspiration from imagined communications with animals; recovering from tuberculosis, he comes to believe that a bird his wife bought for him as a pet died in place of him. He has come to India to see the bird and animal sanctuaries. Kiguchi is an ex-soldier who suffered horrible near-death experiences in World War II Burma; he has come to India to memorialize his fallen war comrades.

My feelings about this novel are divided. On one hand, Endo's descriptions of Indian scenery and customs from the Japanese vantage point and the culture clash are excellent; he writes poignantly, if a little too sentimentally; and his hope for peace between the religions of the world is certainly noble. (Repudiating Christianity's Eurocentrism, Otsu believes God can be found among all nations and religions.)

On the other hand, the simplicity with which Endo presents his protagonists and their situations implies that the author is more interested in conveying his personal religious convictions than in pure narrative invention. His symbols of the divine (Otsu as a Christ-like savior, Gaston the hospital volunteer as an angel) are so transparent, they seem less like literary devices than arbitrary miraculous avatars, especially towards the end, where the novel's tone becomes increasingly didactic. Case in point: The tour group includes a young married couple named the Sanjos, whose selfish, insensitive, and materialistic attitudes seem to represent the modern affluent Japan and what Endo feels is an arrogant, godless society. Their speech and actions are too unrealistically annoying, too unconvincing, as though Endo were manipulatively trying to make his readers hate them and see his point. This is some of the most contrived characterization I've seen in any novel meant to be read by adults.

"Deep River" is a nicely written novel of good intentions, but it is more craft than art, and it ultimately reads more like a laundry list of conventional religious platitudes than an enduring piece of literature.