An early novel written some thirty years ago, the Japanese writer Shusaku Endo's The Girl I Left Behind is now presented in the U.S. for the first time.<BR>Prefiguring themes of his later work, Endo here writes of choices made by young adults learning who they are and what they want in life. Yoshioka Tstomu is a student, not much interested in his studies, short on cash and long on sexual desire. Eventually he will settle down in a career and marry the boss's niece. Yet he won't be able to entirely set aside the memory of Mitsu, a plain, naive country girl he once took callous advantage of during his college days. The episode meant nothing to him at the time; to her it meant the world.