Name: Silence
Rating: 4.09375 (48 reviews)

Shusaku Endo

周作·遠藤

Silence

Marek Hnatiak

'The mud swamp Japanese in me'. ... Japan is a swamp because it sucks up all sorts of ideologies, transforming them into itself and distorting them in the process. It is the spider's web that destroys the butterfly, leaving only the ugly skeleton.

Shūsaku Endō

Sustained by dreams of glorious martyrdom, a seventeenth-century Portuguese missionary in Japan administers to the outlawed Christians until Japanese authorities capture him and force him to watch the torture of his followers, promising to stop if he will renounce Christ.

I needed a couple days to process the book cause it was simultaneously so depressing and… interesting??? But, I’m still conflicted on how I feel about that ending. After Rodrigues’ first reunion with Ferreira, I realised there were only 3 ways it could end for him and I realised it was a lose-lose situation no matter what happened. AND WHY DID KICHIJIRO KEEP COMING BACK!?!? I understand that he resembles the human cowardice and that in the end you should realise, like Rodrigues did, that we are all like Kichijiro whether we like it or not. That even the best of us are cowardly and selfish in the face of punishment. BUT HE REALLY PISSED ME OFF!!! Anyway, loved it, super interesting and the ending of him still being in a prison of sorts because although he trampled on the fumie, he never renounced his faith. It’s also a really interesting perspective on missionaries in countries that already have a native faith. It’s usually a lot more black and white from the imperialism point of view, saying that they want to save these people who are fine the way they are, wanting to indoctrinate them into a western and european way of life because otherwise they aren’t “civilised”. But at times I felt awful for him. He may not have thought that he wanted to “save” them or convert people but in some of his actions and his naive ideas at the beginning of the book conveyed that that’s what the missionaries are taught to do without even realising. He went there to save his teacher and the rest of the japanese christians when in reality, he couldn’t.

And the realisation that God’s silence was so that Rodrigues could speak for him felt like the self deception he speaks about in the appendix. Hes justifying his actions and his ‘final’ act as a priest because he betrayed the one thing he kept sacred. His faith, his position as a father, and his society (i think this was mostly symbolised by Garrpe and his unwavering black and white views of peoples actions e.g. Kichijiro).

Amelia Reed

I needed a couple days to process the book cause it was simultaneously so depressing and… interesting??? But, I’m still conflicted on how I feel about that ending. After Rodrigues’ first reunion with Ferreira, I realised there were only 3 ways it could end for him and I realised it was a lose-lose situation no matter what happened. AND WHY DID KICHIJIRO KEEP COMING BACK!?!? I understand that he resembles the human cowardice and that in the end you should realise, like Rodrigues did, that we are all like Kichijiro whether we like it or not. That even the best of us are cowardly and selfish in the face of punishment. BUT HE REALLY PISSED ME OFF!!! Anyway, loved it, super interesting and the ending of him still being in a prison of sorts because although he trampled on the fumie, he never renounced his faith. It’s also a really interesting perspective on missionaries in countries that already have a native faith. It’s usually a lot more black and white from the imperialism point of view, saying that they want to save these people who are fine the way they are, wanting to indoctrinate them into a western and european way of life because otherwise they aren’t “civilised”. But at times I felt awful for him. He may not have thought that he wanted to “save” them or convert people but in some of his actions and his naive ideas at the beginning of the book conveyed that that’s what the missionaries are taught to do without even realising. He went there to save his teacher and the rest of the japanese christians when in reality, he couldn’t.

And the realisation that God’s silence was so that Rodrigues could speak for him felt like the self deception he speaks about in the appendix. Hes justifying his actions and his ‘final’ act as a priest because he betrayed the one thing he kept sacred. His faith, his position as a father, and his society (i think this was mostly symbolised by Garrpe and his unwavering black and white views of peoples actions e.g. Kichijiro).

Shusaku Endō's classic novel of enduring faith in dangerous times. Two Portuguese Jesuit priests travel to a country hostile to their religion, where feudal lords force the faithful to publicly renounce their beliefs. Eventually captured and forced to watch their Japanese Christian brothers lay down their lives for their faith, the priests bear witness to unimaginable cruelties that test their own beliefs.

A Novel

ikkychan

This is a short book, only 200++ pages but it deals with one of the most confounding question humanity ever face. Imagine you are in a position where someone threaten you to give up your life to save your family. If you don't give up your life, your family will be slaughtered right in front of your eyes. What would you do? This is a glimpse on what this book is about. In 17th century's Japan, local government has undergone a massive persecution against the Christian. Every follower caught with a single article with a hint on Christianity would be indubitably thrown to jail and tortured, even possibly killed. What could possibly save them? Apostasy; that is renounciation of their faith. Declare to the whole world that they are no longer a Christian. Or, in another word, give up their life. In the face of this most gruesome, abhorrent, unspeakable cruelty, Father Rodriguez, who sailed from Macao to Japan in search of Father Ferreira, can't help but feel utterly hopeless. Confronted with the harsh living in strange place with its strange people, constant fear of persecution, starvation, and persistent feeling of sticking out like a sore thumb, he seek Christ's approval in anything he does---most of the time by mimicking His undertaking at his best---thinking himself as trading on Christ's foot with his very own version of Judas: the unwilling Kichijiro. As a man of god, the dilemma is eating him alive; whilst struggling to keep his faith alive, the relentless sense of abandonment is ever-presence. In the face of dreadful evil, why has the God stayed silent? You don't need to be a Christian to read this book any more than you need to be a woman to understand women, since the story talks about the essential struggle of so many of us.

It heats up, starts burning, and then… submerges? Not sure. 

Christopher McCaffery

Simon Elliott Stegall

I read this book shortly after the release of the movie, and I believe this was a mistake. Silence had already been severely hyped to me by friends, and the noise about the film aggrandized this. Thus, I had high expectations going in, and perhaps I have nothing to blame but my expectations for how little I enjoyed Silence. 

Silence was described to me as a harrowing account of a priest's encounter with apostasy and doubt. This put me in mind of the 2014 movie Calvary, which addresses similar themes. Alas, I was disappointed, as Silence lacked any of the mastery and skill that made Calvary such an incredibly powerful story.

Silence does not have a good plot. Two priests from Portugal sail to Buddhist Japan in search of their old teacher, Father Ferreira, who is rumored to have apostatized under the abuse of the Japanese authorities. This is a good premise, but in fact the priests spend most of their time hiding from the authorities instead of trying to locate Ferreira. When they do find him, it is entirely by accident. Thus the putative premise of the book, as advertised by the blurb on the back, is either badly utilized, or is not the actual thrust of Endo's tale. 

The thrust of the tale is the crisis of faith that the priest Rodriguez undergoes when he beholds the poverty and abuse that the Japanese peasantry suffer. This crisis of faith is the real point of the book, which is why the story is marginal. The emotional power of this topic is expected to justify the book's existence, and carry the reader through the boring prose. (I understand that Endo was not a native English speaker. But neither was Ayn Rand, Vladmir Nabokov, Joseph Conrad, or Judith Kerr, and they all wrote great English prose. There's no excuse.) For some reason that still remains inexplicable to me, Endo's treatment of the topic of faith and doubt stirred no emotion in me. 

There's no doubt that Endo was dealing with a topic that was deeply personal to him, and it's clear by the book's success and fame that he succeeded in moving thousands of readers; but I was not one of them. I was left cold by both the book and its film version. I think it is partly because the book smells vaguely of gimmickry, and partially because the writing itself simply lacks efficacy. Furthermore, the events Endo chooses to use to approach the theme of silence simply don't interest me. I don't have to deal with the silence of God in the face of slaughter and abuse. I have to face his silence in my scrambled eggs every morning. It might be the same silence, but it is a different battle. That battle, the one that most Christians in this part of the world are actually engaged in, is discussed brilliantly elsewhere by authors like Greene and Dillard, to name a couple. In film, Calvary, or Terrence Malick's To The Wonder are brilliant works in this vein. But even Scorcese couldn't make Silence interesting to me.

The one redemptive part of the book is the character Kichijiro, the faithless Christian who keeps returning to Rodriguez for the sacrament of confession, despite denying his faith over and over again through the course of the book. Kichijiro is an example of a compelling character- one that the audience can see themselves mirrored in, and thus can be shaped by. For Kichijiro, and out of respect for the place this book holds in the esteem of people much smarter than I, I give Silence three stars rather than two.

Jake Vermillion

Daniela

Ralston Hough

Celina Gacias

Miguel

Gabe Cortez

A Japanese Catholic, Endo tells the story of two 17th-century missionaries attempting to shore up the oppressed Japanese Christian movement. Father Rodrigues has come to Japan to find the truth behind unthinkable rumors that his famous teacher Ferreira has renounced his faith. But after his arrival he discovers that the only way to help the brutally persecuted Christians may be to apostatize himself. Translated from the Japanese by William Johnston, this special edition is issued in celebration of the release of Martin Scorsese's film adaptation of the novel.

Silence

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