SOURCE: "Japan Bitten by Europe," in Los Angeles Times Book Review, May 13, 1990, pp. 3, 11.

[In the following review, Eder discusses how the stories of Endo's Foreign Studies dramatize the painful relationship between the East and West.]

Who is this Japanese traveler, wearing a beret and thick glasses, standing outside the airline terminal in Paris, drenched by the freezing rain and too wretchedly shy to hail a taxi?

He is Tanaka, that's who. Tanaka: lecturer in literature at the university back home, protege of the powerful Professor Ueda, and owing to this and to his foresight in selecting a specialty not already spoken for (the works of the Marquis de Sade), conqueror of one of those intermediate positions of vantage on the academic chess board: a year or two of research in France.

Tanaka has it made, in other words, or temporarily made. He has bested his fellow players; particularly...