Silence

Yesterday I finished reading Silence, by Shusaku Endo. It is amazing. Written in the 1960s by a Catholic Japanese author, thought of by some as a Japanese Graham Greene. It is so thoughtful, and beautifully written, simply drawing pictures with just the sparest phrases and details. Just like in art, the negative spaces make it meaningful.

The story is of two Portuguese missionary priests who travel via Goa to Japan in the early 1600s, to support the Christians in Japan who are being severely persecuted. Several hundred thousand people had become Christians through the missionary work of priests back in the 1500s. For a while Christianity was accepted but then the shoguns began to turn against it because of its connection with the west; they saw it as an insidious attempt at colonialism. So Japanese Christians and missionaries were tortured,   and when they didn't apostasize, killed, often by crucifixion, or by being tied to stakes in the sea. Tens of thousands were killed, and many more apostasized, but it is thought that many lived on as hidden Christians.

Word had got about that an older Portguguese priest, Ferreira, had apostasized and had taken a Japanese name and even a wife, and was now writing tracts against Christianity. The main character of the book, Rodriguez, wanted to track down Ferreira, whom he had known and admired as his tutor in seminary, in order to make sure this tale wasn't true - because he was unable to accept it.

Eventually Rodriguez himself is captured and has to face the torturers himself. His thought processes, his questioning, and his final coming to terms with his fate and with God are fascinating to follow.

Among the threads which run through the book, one of the most interesting to me was the challenge frequently given by Rodriguez's antagonists, who claim that Christianity has failed to take hold in Japan because the Japanese had never understood God in the Christian sense, but that all along they had made their own version of the Christian God. The whole study of contextualization I find very interesting. What's wrong with a Japanese version of Christ? Rodriguez is convinced that there are true Christians here, since they are willing to endure tortures and die for their faith. In fact he sees many of them as better Christians than himself, and he their priest. This dynamic is so interesting, as is the way his understanding of himself grows through the book.

Another thread is the use of sounds and silence. The silence of the title is the apparent silence of God in the face of the persecution of those who love him. Rodriguez is constantly calling on God to break this silence, to no avail, but he hears God speak towards the end of the book,  - apparently commanding him to deny him. But if he apostasizes, will he not be rejected by God for ever, a shameful creature despised by all, like Ferreira? All through the book, sounds are described, the sounds of the sea especially, and of birds in the night, and of voices heard in the dark.

The main character sometimes narrates and sometimes is described. He is a sympathetic and very human figure. I was touched by how his relationship with Jesus is so real, and by how the image of the suffering Jesus helps him deeply throughout the events of the book. Many times he calls on memories of pictures of Christ's face, and describes it as a face he loves dearly. It comforts him tremendously. (He only sees a physical image of Christ's face once in the book, because all Christian artifacts have been destroyed or hidden away - and it is when he is being commanded to trample on it in apostasy.) This devotion, in the sense of deep love for a person, Jesus, is lacking in our sometimes rather dry wordy evangelical faith, I feel. I am going to try for more devotion.

I can't give away what happens, but it gives the reader a huge amount to think about. What does come out in the end so powerfully, is the unconditional love of God for all his people both weak and strong. It is a beautiful message coming from quite a shocking tale, a tough book to read, but incredibly worth it.

I am interested in this story of Christianity in Japan because my own great-grandparents and grandparents were missionaries with CMS in Japan, from the late 1800s to 1938. I have so far never managed to look into it very much, but this book has made me much more aware than before, that they were part of a very fascinating story.