Abstract EN:

A bearer of moral values, the foreigner allows Endo to interrogate Japanese psychology. Starting from the uneasiness of a Japanese living in the Occident, he clearly opposes the French sinner to the Japanese who lacks a sense of guilt. He describes the Japanese having difficulties in communicating with others, and he confronts the occidental missionary pharisaic and zealous with the inert Japanese preacher. He also depicts a French person who acts like a paragon for Japanese having bad conscience. Moreover, he describes France which signals for the Japanese their split. After having laid the weakness in the heart of the Japanese religious sensibility, mixed with the feeling of guilt, he pictures the encounter of Japan with the Occident. At last, he offers the image of the Ganges starting a salutary change in one Japanese woman. If the occidental missionary reveals the immorality or the amorality of the Japanese, the pagan foreigner contributes to the apparition of moral conscience in the last one. When the missionary no longer has vigour, he Japanizes Jesus, man of pain.