The Gift of Rain

Philip is a lost youngster whose complicated life is given new meaning through his relationship with Endo. While Philip wishes to find a more straightforward, cohesive sense of himself and his place in the world, his links with Endo ultimately introduce new complications. Throughout the novel, Philip must thus navigate the tension between conflict and harmony.

Philip first tries to reconcile conflict and harmony through his study of martial arts. At numerous points in the novel, Philip fights his grandfather, Kon, Uncle Kim, and Tanaka not out of a desire for conflict, but as a means to better understand them. These relationships achieve a measure of harmony through the use of ritual conflict. The martial arts, Endo explains, implicitly contain this tension: Endo teaches Philip how to hurt people, but preaches that the truest expression of these techniques is their non-use. Aikido, like the other martial arts, seeks harmony as much through the lack of conflict as through conflict itself. Learning to navigate this tension helps Philip to understand himself and others.

A similar tension is found in Endo’s suggestion that he and Philip are linked by fate and a cyclical conflict that has bound them through their previous lives. They are bound to find each other, wherever they may be, so that they can—ideally—resolve this disharmony.