Mitsuko’s Search for Meaning in Endo’s Deep River: An Anthropological Approach

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  • 『深い河』における美津子の人生の意義への探求 -- 人間学的アプローチ

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Naruse Mitsuko in Endo Shusaku’s Deep River journeys in search of meaning. As a college student in Tokyo in the 1970’s when apathy prevails following the Student Movement, she suffers a severe sense of emptiness. She is not satisfied with her life. She feels alienated and craves the radical meaning of life. Mitsuko visits her former boyfriend Otsu in Lyon while on her honeymoon and in Varanasi, India after her divorce, pursuing him as he has pursued God. During her tour in India, she exposes herself to her companions in deep sorrows of the past, helping them settle their serious troubles. She enters the Ganges in saree with the local people, and finally finds herself praying to someone, whom she can scarcely identify, in harmony with herself. This paper examines Mitsuko’s journey from an anthropological approach with the help of philosophical ideas (Pascal’s divertissement, Walker Percy’s anthropological ideas of Homo Viator and castaway, Viktor Frankl’s human search for meaning, Kamiya Mieko’s human experience of transformation, Francis Newman / William James’ twice-born, Augustine’s human restless state on earth, and Psalmist human thirst for God) and reveals Endo’s literary techniques and anthropology.

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