["Volcano" is a] detailed, matter-of-fact confrontation with matters of ethics and guilt….

Akadake, the volcano of the title, is sited in Kyushu, one of Japan's two large southern islands. Is it dormant, dying or about to erupt? (p. 15)

The novel builds up pressure and suspense on the strength of its subject, and at one level it can indeed be read as a thriller. But it is also another variation on Endo's theme (seen most starkly in "Silence") of "the mud swamp"—his image of Japan as a country that absorbs everything, changes everything, destroys everything. That is why, he seems to suggest, no imported faith or ideology can take root there. In his "Life of Jesus" … Endo makes the point that "the Japanese tend to seek in their gods and Buddhas a warmhearted mother rather than a stern father." The jealous, avenging Hebraic-Christian God is thus alien to...