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.

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

Reiza H

A superb novel with a rich story about faith.

When the news of their mentor, Father Ferreira, had denounced his faith in Japan reached them, two young priests decided to find the truth themselves. Filled with zealots, they went into the unknown land, hoping to find Ferreira.

Instead, what they found is much scarier. Turns out, it led them to question their own faith. Is it worth sacrificing other people's lives for the sake of your faith?

With an introduction by Martin ScorseseBeneath the light of the candle I am sitting with my hands on my knees, staring in front of me. And I keep turning over in my mind the thought that I am at the end of the earth, in a place which you do not know and which your whole lives through you will never visit.It is 1640 and Father Sebastian Rodrigues, an idealistic Jesuit priest, sets sale for Japan determined to help the brutally oppressed Christians there. He is also desperate to discover the truth about his former mentor, rumoured to have renounced his faith under torture. Rodrigues cannot believe the stories about a man he so revered, but as his journey takes him deeper into Japan and then into the hands of those who would crush his faith, he finds himself forced to make an impossible choice: whether to abandon his flock or his God. The recipient of the 1966 Tanizaki Prize, Silence is Shusaku Endo's most highly acclaimed work and has been called one of the twentieth century's finest novels. As empathetic as it is powerful, it is an astonishing exploration of faith and suffering and an award-winning classic. 'One of the finest historical novels written by anyone, anywhere . . . flawless' David Mitchell'A masterpiece. There can be no higher praise' Daily Telegraph

Rodrigo Figueiredo Severino

It’s undoubtedly well written and a good reflection on religions of all sorts, their heinous crimes and it veracity. That being said, it’s just not my type of book and I wouldn’t have read it if I didn’t get it in a blind date with a book from my library, which is why I gave it such a low rating. But it’s definitely a good book!

Norma gruden

"It is precisely because truth is common to all countries and all times that we call it truth. If a true doctorine were not true to Portugal and Japan alike we would not call it true."

Dana Kraft

Not a happy story but very intelligent and thought-provoking. What does it mean to call myself a Christian? How do I live the simple tenets of faith in the complex real world? All these thoughts are swirling in my head as I close the book and am reminded that the title is 'Silence.' Maybe the question I should ask is what/who am I hearing vs what/who am I listening to?

Richie B

This is an extremely powerful book about faith taking place in 17th century Japan where Christianity is outlawed and Christians are brutally tortured and forced to renounce their beliefs. Two Jesuit priests go there to help the Christian peasants and also hope to find their former mentor who is rumoured to have renounced his faith under torture. 
 This book is not an easy read as it's very realistic and depressing and to my knowledge, mostly historically accurate to the time period. It's hard to read about innocent peasants having to die in horrible ways just because of what they believed in. Also the loneliness that Father Rodrigues experiences, physically and spiritually, in Japanese prisons as he doesn't understand why God is remaining silent in his time of misery is really depressing. 
 The first part of the book was written in letters from Father Rodrigues and the second part was a third person narrator. Usually, I'm not one to enjoy epistolary novels but this was an exception as I thoroughly enjoyed it; the writing did not become lazy as it sometimes can when writing in letters. As usual, I enjoyed third person narration more but the epistolary didn't take anything away from my enjoyment of the novel.
 I think anyone could read this and appreciate the beautiful writing of Shusaku Endo but it will particularly strike a chord in Christian readers. The ending to this book is amazing and I think it could be interpreted differently depending on the reader, which is very interesting. There's a lot to take away from this book and it could warrant a few rereads.

5 stars

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.

Esteban

Ralston Hough

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

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.

Hux Sessa

Shusaku Endo's classic novel of enduring faith in dangerous times, soon to be a major motion picture directed by Martin Scorsese, starring Andrew Garfield, Liam Neeson, and Adam Driver "Silence I regard as a masterpiece, a lucid and elegant drama."-The New York Review of Books Seventeenth-century Japan: 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. Shusaku Endo is one of the most celebrated and well-known Japanese fiction writers of the twentieth century, and Silence is widely considered to be his great masterpiece.