午夜剧场

Shusaku Endo's life spanned 73 years, but for the last nearly two years, I never saw him laugh. We tried several times to make him laugh, but it never worked. He would always just look down, appearing to be in pain or troubled.

Until then—that is, before he entered his life of fighting illness—he laughed often. Although he had already started artificial dialysis, his habit of lying, joking, and playing pranks never ceased. Those days were truly worthy of the name Korian. For example, he held an event called "Pierre Jardin (not Cardin) Fashion Show and Musical Evening," where housewives and students were asked to walk the runway in their finest fashionable clothes. Then, Mr. Jardin (who for some reason was an American) would give a greeting in English.

Or again, the "Dinner Party for the Headmaster's Wife and the Female Boss." From the amateur theater troupe "Kiza" that he led himself, he cast a beautiful member with a somewhat intimidating presence as a female boss from Hakata, and invited a refined headmaster's wife to the dinner. Then, everyone would make a point of only talking to the wife, until finally the female boss's patience snapped. "I've been sitting here listening quietly, and you lot are doing nothing but fawning over that lady over there! What do you think you're doing to my reputation, Endo-shan!" she would shout, and for some reason kick over the man playing her subordinate. Then, blood would gush from the subordinate's leg (actually a hidden bag of Mercurochrome), and seeing this, the headmaster's wife would start trembling, turn pale, and run for the door, leaving her handbag and cardigan behind...

It was around the age of 70, during the period when he was struggling to write his final long novel, "Deep River," that he repeated such pranks, even going so far as to hold rehearsals.

Shortly after the professor's death, I wrote a somewhat long memoir asking why he tried so hard to play at such a time ("My Mentor Shusaku Endo," Bessatsu Bungeishunju), and that book is now being republished for the first time in 28 years.

Perhaps it is proof that Endo's literature has not grown old with the passage of time. That "jest and sorrow," which can be called the essence of Endo's literature, moves the hearts of readers across centuries. This publication was realized by adding a new chapter that supports this fact.

Muneya Kato

Kawade Shobo Shinsha

244 pages, 2,310 yen (tax included)

*Affiliations, job titles, etc., are those at the time of publication.