SOURCE: "A Long Way from Tokyo," in The New York Times, May 6, 1990, p. 34.

[In the following review, Billington states that Endo's "Foreign Studies does not show Mr. Endo at his most intricate and brilliant, but it adds a further dimension to his later great works."]

Shusaku Endo is a writer who replays a small repertoire of a strong themes. As a Japanese Roman Catholic with a close experience of Europe, he has always found an audience in the West. He writes about the possibility of true understanding between East and West. In a particularization of this theme, he questions the effect and strength of Christianity in an Oriental society. And, in a personalization of the same ideas, he examines the psyche of a Christian and the nature of the unconscious mind in which sin, as defined by a believer, or evil, as defined by someone without faith in...