One day, a young woman shows up at a party attended by the main character, Suguro, mentioning loudly that he has not been visiting the ill-reputed street where she works as an artist lately.
He meets a young girl, Mitsu, telling him about enjo kōsai ("compensated dating"), and Suguro decides to hire her as an assistant to help relieve his rheumatic wife from such activities.
Eventually the older woman, with whom he now has become rather close, sends him a letter inviting him to a love hotel where, she writes, the identity of the impostor will be revealed.
"[2] Publishers Weekly gave a positive review, calling Scandal a "chilling, incisive study of the secret fears and obsessions of an aging writer...This provocative, impassioned meditation manages to explore not only the nature of identity, but also the regions of sin, salvation, art and religion, all with the unerring grace that defines a novelist in the fullest command of his craft.
"[3] J. Thomas Rimer, writing for the Washington Post, likewise gave a positive review, calling the novel one of Endō's " most absorbing views to date of human spiritual darkness".