CY@CY Says Welcome to my dreamscape. Where a Lim is also a Ling.
Silence (沈黙 Chinmoku) by Shusaku Endo is regarded as one of the finest novels of our time. The Guardian hailed it as a compelling historical fiction, a potent distillation of the paradoxes and ambiguities of faith and, from a Christian author, a daring challenge to religious orthodoxy. It is an amazing novel contemplating the age old question: “Why in times of distress, sometimes God remains Silent.”
Silence by Shusaku Endo
It is the story of Jesuit missionaries sent to 17th century Japan during the time of Kakure Kirishiotan (“Hidden Christians”) that followed the defeat of the Shimabara Rebellion (click on Shimabara Rebellion to learn more about it). The theme of a silent God who accompanies a believer in adversity was greatly influenced by the author’s experience of religious discrimination in Japan, racism in France and a debilitating bout with tuberculosis.
Father Sebastião Rodrigues and Father Francisco Garupe received the heartbreaking news that their former teacher, Father Ferreira, has committed apostasy after being captured and tortured by the Japanese government. Christianity has been banned by the Japanese authorities and Christians are severely persecuted and forced to verbally renounce their faith and to stomp and spit on religious figures.
Despite the grave dangers facing them, the two fathers decide to go to Japan accompanied by Kichijiro, a Japanese expatriate they meet in Macau. After a perilous journey, they arrive in Japan where Kichijiro introduces them to a group of devout Japanese Christians in a village. The local Christian population has been driven underground. To ferret out hidden Christians, security officials force suspected Christians to trample on a fumi-e, a carved image of Jesus Christ. Those who refuse are imprisoned and killed by anazuri (穴吊り), which involves being hung upside down over a pit and slowly bleeding to death..
Unfortunately, the government catches wind of their arrivals and decides to execute several villagers as punishment. Kichijiro is only able to escape by renouncing his faith.
Garrpe and Rodrigues split up to evade the authorities. While wandering, Rodrigues encounters Kichijiro once again, who tells the priest that he’ll lead him to more Christians. Unfortunately, he sells Rodrigues out and turns him over to the authorities.
Rodrigues spends the next several months in a cell. He eventually discovers that Garrpe had been captured as well. Garrpe refuses to renounce his beliefs and ends up dying as a martyr. Rodrigues also learns that Ferreira is alive, having been integrated into Japanese society after his apostasy.
Rodrigues fears capture and torture but assumes his faith is strong enough to withstand it, as Christ did. He soon worries about losing his faith and that Christianizing the Japanese has offered them nothing but suffering and death. He thought he has come to Japan to lay down his life for the Japanese Christians but in fact, the Japanese Christians are laying down their lives for him.
Rodrigues understands suffering for the sake of one’s own faith; but he struggles over whether it is unmerciful to refuse to renounce his faith when doing so will end another’s suffering. At the climactic moment, Rodrigues hears the moans of the Japanese Christians who have recanted but are to remain in the pit until he tramples the image of Christ. As Rodrigues looks upon a fumi-e, he seems to hear Christ saying: “You may trample. You may trample. I more than anyone know of the pain in your foot. You may trample. It was to be trampled on by men that I was born into this world. It was to share men’s pain that I carried my cross.” Rodrigues puts his foot on the fumi-e, thus renouncing his faith. It is the only way he can prevent more Japanese Christians from being brutally executed. Like his former teacher, the disgraced Rodrigues lives out the rest of his days with a Japanese name—Okada San’emon—and as a Japanese citizen with a Japanese wife.
Silence forces everyone to reconsider his or her own ideas of traitors and heroes, or strong and weak Catholics. It is all about self-doubt and how quickly the radiation of bitterness can magnify your doubts and trample on your faith. Don’t pass judgements on others when you yourself have not been put to extreme tests of your faith. Both Rodrigues and Kichijiro may have betrayed Christ; yet in spite of their treachery, they somehow cling to him in their hearts.