Seeing the Hand of God

A Review of Watcher from the Shore by Ayako Sono | John Herreid | IPNovels.com

Novels often fall into the trap of offering easy redemption. The wayward soul sees the error of his ways, has a quasi-mystical experience, and sets off on the road to the straight and narrow. It’s what we want to happen—even if it sacrifices some of the reality of human behavior in doing so.

Watcher from the Shore doesn’t offer any of this sort of catharsis. Written by the Japanese Catholic novelist Ayako Sono, it is about as unsentimental a novel as you could imagine. Her novel offers a glimpse into a culture that can appear to be rigid and emotionally repressed to Western eyes. At the same time, the book allows the reader to view Christian morality from the outside, stepping into the shoes of an agnostic gynecologist who sees his participation in abortion as balanced somewhere between moral neutrality and a positive good for society.

Sadaharu Nobeji operates his clinic near the shores of the Pacific Ocean. In the not-so-distant past, it was common for people in this part of rural Japan to discard newborn infants if they had birth defects or were otherwise unwanted. Sadaharu tells himself that it’s a good thing that he is now there to offer the more humane alternative of abortion, yet despite his insistence upon a clear conscience he keeps bringing the topic up in conversation with his best friend, a widowed Catholic woman named Yoko Kakei. During a dinner visit, Yoko introduces him to a Catholic priest, Father Munechika.

In his first conversation with Father Munechika, Sadaharu gives one of many of his defenses of performing abortions:

“Let’s suppose I become a Christian. I borrow a cross from the church, without paying, Father, and set it up on the roof of my clinic in place of the lightning rod. My patients arrive, and when they see the cross I will say: ‘Look there! I’m so afraid of God I certainly will not perform abortions.’ Now, Father, I ask you; What will that solve? …I’ll tell you what would happen. They would skip the sermon and go to another clinic for their abortions. That’s all. And though I say it myself, if you will pardon me, I’m clever with my hands and my operations are good. Frankly, it’s better for the patients that I do their operations instead of some other doctor.”

The clinical distance Sadaharu cultivates between himself and objective morality is mirrored in his distance from his wife.

Read the entire review at www.IPNovels.com.