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Title: An Indictment of Japan's Prewar Nihilism
Review: Endo creates a haunting portrait of characters caught up in the vivisection of an American prisoner of war during the latter days of the Pacific War and their reactions to their crime. Through the separate narrations of each character, we see how the nihilism that swept Japan's prewar intelligentsia prepared each character for his or her role in the vivisection. Evocative of the understatement in Camus's "The Stranger," Endo's characters relate their stories in straight line, cinematic narrations which reveal the desensitivity to life and suffering that Japan's prewar society had conditioned them to, and in doing so Endo offers readers a sober warning of the dangers of living in a moral vacuum.
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