A Review of Shūsaku Endō’s “Silence”
The Last Temptation of a Missionary
I have to apologize to the publisher of this book for taking so long to get to this review. This reprint of a translation of Japan’s Shūsaku Endō’s Silence came out sometime in 2016 — and I’ve had the book for perhaps nine months — and was meant to tie into the fact that Martin Scorsese had a film adaptation that came out some time ago. However, I put off on this review — even though the book has Christian themes — because I was concerned that it was a heavy book (even though it’s short at just more than 200 pages). I thought there was a great deal of torture in the book (there is, but it’s mostly psychological — which, in a way, makes it worse). So, sorry Picador for taking my time with this. I wanted to be of a sound constitution to stomach this.
However, the timing of this review is actually apt as this is a good book to read over Lent. While Endō has been compared to a Japanese Graham Greene (whom I like, and have to read more books by), Silence comes across in many ways as a deeply layered Heart of Darkness. The story concerns two Portuguese Jesuit missionaries in the early 1600s that travel to Japan — which, by this time, had outlawed Christianity — to find out what happened to a fellow missionary who had failed to return. Once there, however, their lives are seemingly put in peril. It turns out that the Japanese are killing off all of the Christians unless they apostatize, or renounce their religion, by trampling on a picture of the Virgin Mary and the child Jesus. The same fate of execution seemingly beckons these two Jesuits. Or worse.
It’s the worse part that makes this book the spiritual counterpart to George Orwell’s 1984. Indeed, the ending of Silence may just be heavier than 1984. While one of the Jesuit priests, at least, has a romantic ideal of being martyred, by the end of Silence that would have been an easy way out. The fate of at least one of these priests is far, far worse than death — a never-ending, enduring torture of the soul that makes this book, in many ways, an unqualified masterpiece of modern Japanese literature.
I was struck by at least one thing: the novel is set in Nagasaki. You may recall that that was one site of the atomic bomb drop on Japan in 1945. Silence was originally published in Japan in 1966 and first appeared in English in 1969. Definitely, based on those publication dates and the close proximity to the end of World War II, you can say the book is about the colonial influence of outsiders and Japanese nationalism, and how nationalism manifests. But this title is beyond that. Endō, it turns out, was a Christian himself (and I never knew there was such a thing as Japanese Christians until I read this book) and the book is partially a way to reconcile the fact that he believes in the faith while wanting to be true to Japanese culture and the country’s heritage. That must have been an incredible trying and painful path to walk. Silence is the result of that push and pull.
Silence is both easy to read and hard to read. It’s easy because the narrative just sweeps you along as it is propulsive. I read the book in one sitting, easily. It’s hard, again, because of the subject matter: Christian persecution and torture. The book does raise some interesting theological points, though, such as whether or not Jesus accepted and loved Judas even though He probably knew the minute He made him an apostle that he was going to betray Him. This is stuff I’ve never thought about, even though I can certainly have my own crises of faith.
So there’s much food for thought with Silence, even though it’s somewhat of a flawed masterpiece. For instance, it starts out being told in the first person singular through an epistolary form. Then it abruptly changes over to the use of the third person. The effect is jarring. Also, the book suffers from having one too many endings, which, perhaps, might be the result of trying to bulk it up so that it would run more than 200 pages.
Still, even with these flaws, Silence is a captivating and enthralling read. While some of the shock value may be lost on modern day atheists, one can easily put their feet into the shoes of people with deep spiritual beliefs — beliefs that are so ingrained that renouncing them would be a form of punishment, and a lifelong punishment at that. Silence is a painful work. One can only imagine how it must have been rendered by Scorsese (I have yet to see the movie) as that director frequently brings up matters of faith in his own, violence-drenched work. (I always think of Harvey Keitel’s hand over an open flame at the beginning of Mean Streets as a means of testing his faith.)
Silence is a twisty novel that shows that true sacrifice may not lie necessarily in dying, but in the living. And that is a terrifying thing to think about. To that end, Endō crafted a work that deserves to read and savoured as much as it might be absolutely terrifying to read. This is a novel of supreme horror at the heart of the human and spiritual condition, all the more frightening due to the psychological tone of the work. Should a Christian read this? Yes, but it won’t necessarily reaffirm your faith. Silence is a thoughtful meditation on what it means to be a Christian in a culture that doesn’t value Christianity — with even its overtures of the same sort of Islamophobia that plagues today’s society — and is a shocking relevant work even in 2017. So sorry that I took so long getting to this, again. This is a pretty important title, and I’m glad to have had the chance to experience it.
Shūsaku Endō’s Silence was published by Picador Modern Classics in 2016.
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Zachary Houle is a resident of Ottawa, Canada, and was the recipient of a $4,000 arts grant from the City of Ottawa for emerging artists. He has been a Pushcart Prize nominee, too. He also is a music critic, with music writing publishing credits in SPIN magazine and the Ottawa Citizen, among others. He is a member of First United Church in Ottawa, Canada, and has been so for the past two years. Houle is interested in anything having to do with deepening his newfound faith in God, so, if you’re an author, feel free to get in touch. Contact: zacharyhoule@rogers.com.
