Geneviève Pastre’s Article about Her Sister, Francoise

Abstract

Genevieve Pastre’s article as translated into Japanese and published in Mitabungaku was not complete but had been edited by the translator, Professor Tetsuo Takayama, who omitted various parts of the author’s comments as they were, in his view, not relevant to the theme of Francoise Pastre’s personal life. However, when I interviewed Genevieve Pastre in Paris in August 2000, she gave me the complete original version in French (subsequently translated into English by N. W. Gill, in the wake of an initial translation by Jacqueline Sheldon), which is a much more striking and articulate version than the edited one, especially in its accounts of Francoise’s personality, her views of Japanese life and culture, her students, and her work in Japan (which consisted mainly of her translation of Endo’s novel The Silence). Her difficulties in her relationship with Endo, stemming mainly from differences and discrepancies between Western and Japanese culture, especially the fundamental, if implicit, concepts of Western individualism versus Japanese groupism, are clearly delineated.