Silence by Shūsaku Endō

First published:Chimmoku, 1966 (English translation, 1969)

Type of work: Novel

Type of plot: Historical realism

Time of plot: 1632-1644

Locale: Japan

Principal characters

• Sebastian Rodrigues, a Portuguese Catholic missionary, later renamed Sanemon Okada
• Francis Garrpe, Rodrigues’s religious associate and companion
• Christovao Ferreira, a Jesuit priest who is renamed Sawano Chuan
• Kichigiro, a weak Japanese convert to Christianity
• Inoue, an infamous Japanese inquisitor

The Story:

Rumor has it that the respected Portuguese Jesuit missionary Christovao Ferreira, the leader of the small, underground Christian community in Japan, has renounced his faith under torture and has cooperated with Japanese officials to expose the faithful. As a result, seven priests (three of them Portuguese and former students of Ferreira) decide to enter Japan secretly in order to exonerate the hero who had inspired them. Juan de Santa Marta, Francis Garrpe, and Sebastian Rodrigues travel to Goa, India, where they meet a timid, hesitant Japanese named Kichigiro; they seek his help in entering Japan. Juan de Santa Marta contracts malaria, however, and has to be left behind.

After a sea voyage, Garrpe and Rodrigues are left at midnight in the fishing village of Tomogi, near Nagasaki. There Christian Japanese hide them, introduce them to Christians from nearby areas, and receive from them church rituals forbidden in Japan. Rodrigues, disturbed at the plight of priestless Japanese Christians, travels to Goshima to meet more of the faithful; upon his return, however, he learns that Japanese officials have discovered the presence of Christians and that he and Garrpe must hide. The Tomogi villagers deny their Christianity, but the guards take hostages anyway; Kichigiro is among them. The hostages stamp on the fumie, an engraving of the Virgin Mary, as proof that they are not Christians, but the guards notice their hesitation and make them also spit on a crucifix and call the Blessed Virgin a whore. Kichigiro does so, but two villagers (Mokichi and Ichizo) refuse and, consequently, are subjected to the water punishment and die as martyrs. The prolonged torture of their deaths, as the tides rise to drown them where they are staked, is not what the two young Portuguese priests had imagined martyrdom to be like.

A further search by guards forces Rodrigues and Garrpe to separate. During this period of hiding, Rodrigues begins to fear that God’s silence means his nonexistence. Eventually, Kichigiro offers to lead Rodrigues to safety but instead turns him in. The discussions that Rodrigues has in jail with Japanese prisoners (Juan and Monica) reveal their misunderstanding of church doctrine, but when the Christian prisoners are transferred to Chizukano, Rodrigues has an opportunity to perform some humble religious rituals for them.

At Chizukano, Rodrigues is led before the infamous Japanese inquisitor Inoue, whose kindness and mildness defy expectations. Kichigiro is responsible for Rodrigues being in prison, yet Kichigiro begs Rodrigues’s forgiveness for his betrayal. Rodrigues, expecting immediate torture and martyrdom, is lulled by the delay and is, therefore, caught unaware when the guards take him to a hill near the sea where he and Garrpe are told that three prisoners will be executed unless they renounce their faith. Rodrigues watches as the three prisoners are rolled up in mats, put on boats, and dumped into the sea to sink like stones. Garrpe runs into the sea screaming, “Lord, hear our prayer,” and drowns while trying to rescue the victims.

Inoue continues to use subtle psychological torture to undermine Rodrigues’s faith because Inoue is certain that Christianity is dangerous for Japan, and he believes that Christianity can be stamped out only if the European missionary priests can be exposed as unfaithful to their own teachings. He sends Rodrigues to the Saishoji temple to meet Ferreira, who has adopted the Japanese name Sawano Chuan, has accepted a Japanese wife, and is writing a book denouncing Christian teachings as erroneous. Ferreira explains that the Japanese Christian converts are simply confused because the Latin word Deus sounds to them like the Japanese word Dainichi, which refers to the ancient Japanese sun god. The ultimate test of Rodrigues’s faith, however, comes when he hears a sound like snoring and learns that it is the moaning of Christians who are hanging upside down in manure pits, with slits behind their ears to allow blood to drain into their eyes and noses. At this point, Ferreira reveals his secret: His recanting of his faith was not because of personal suffering—he had been in such a pit—but because of the suffering of others for him. He argues that Christ, too, would have apostatized in such a situation. Finally, Rodrigues steps on the fumie, justifying his act by imagining Christ saying, “Trample! Trample! . . . It was to share men’s pain that I carried my cross.” As he does so, a cock crows, as it did when Peter betrayed Christ.

Later, in letters, Rodrigues is revealed as becoming more and more a tool of Inoue, taking a Japanese name and a Japanese wife and aiding the Japanese in their search for Christians and Christian symbols. Rodrigues’s faith persists despite his repeated betrayals, however; like Kichigiro, he understands that the mystery of faith endures and that God’s silence does not negate God’s existence or mercy.

Bibliography

Bussie, Jacqueline Aileen. “Believing Apostates: Laughter in Shūsaku Endō’s Silence.” In The Laughter of the Oppressed: Ethical and Theological Resistance in Wiesel, Morrison, and Endo. New York: T&T Clark International, 2007. Focuses on the laughter of the persecuted Japanese Christians in the novel and asserts that their ability to find humor in their fate provides them with a means of resisting their oppression.

Higgins, Jean. “The Inner Agon of Endō Shūsaku.” Cross Currents 34 (Winter, 1984-1985): 414-426. Discusses Endō’s shift from Buddhist to Christian perceptions and his resultant identity crisis. Addresses Silence as the confrontation of Japanese and Western views, with the Japanese discovering their spiritual insensitivity and Westerners exchanging a patriarchal for a maternal image of God.

Hoekema, Alle G. “The ’Christology’ of the Japanese Novelist Shūsaku Endō.” Exchange 29, no. 3 (2000): 230-248. Examines Endō’s life and several of his works, including Silence, within the context of his Catholicism.

Mase-Hasegawa, Emi. Christ in Japanese Culture: Theological Themes in Shusaku Endo’s Literary Works. Boston: Brill, 2008. Analyzes Silence and some of Endō’s other works from a theological perspective, demonstrating how Christian doctrine has been adapted by the Japanese. Charts the development of Endō’s thoughts on this adaptation (or “inculturation”) during his career.

Netland, John T. “From Resistance to Kenosis: Reconciling Cultural Difference in the Fiction of Shūsaku Endō.” Christianity and Literature 48 (Winter, 1999): 177-194. Discusses Endō’s translation of the polemics of cultural difference into art and argues that his works replace a simple binary postcolonial tension with a three-dimensional configuration of Christianity, Easter, and European perspectives.

Ribeiro, Jorge. “Shūsaku Endō: Japanese Catholic Novelist.” America 152 (February 2, 1985): 87-89. Discusses the moral issues raised in Endō’s canon and the conflicts between the interpretations and assumptions of Japanese and Western critics, with the Japanese missing the spiritual implications in Silence and Westerners projecting their own cultural values into the novel.

Williams, Mark. Endō Shūsaku: A Literature of Reconciliation. New York: Routledge, 1999. Interesting examination of Endō’s fictive technique includes analysis of all of his major novels. Williams takes exception to the common characterization of Endō as the “Japanese Graham Greene” and locates the cultural and political contexts that differentiate Endō’s work. Chapter 4 is devoted to an analysis of Silence.