"Yet One Priest Remaining in This Country Has the Same Significance as a Single Candle Burning in the Catacombs"

Silence by Shūsaku Endō (1966)

When Europeans came to Japan in the 16th century, they were initially welcomed. They bore new, unusual things: guns, books, medicines—and above all, Christianity. Although this strange religion, neither Shinto nor Buddhist, won hundreds of thousands of converts, it was distrusted by the Shogun; having just won a civil war for control of the country, he saw it as a form of covert influence from foreign powers, and a threat to political stability. The faithful, as they had once done in Roman times, went underground. Anyone suspected of Christianity was rounded up and brought to Nagasaki, where they were made to trample on a fumi-e, a stone image of Jesus Christ. Any who refused were put to death.

This is the setting for Shūsaku Endō’s novel Silence. It is the story of Father Rodrigues, a Portuguese Jesuit who goes to this hostile land in order to plant the seed of Christianity. It has been decades since Christianity was outlawed, and only a few remote mountain villages keep it alive in secret. They are in need of someone who can offer the sacraments and provide theological guidance. In his mission, Father Rodrigues follows in the footsteps of his teacher, the venerable Father Ferreira, whom no-one has heard from in years, but who is still presumed to be out there somewhere.

The first section of this book is told in epistolary format, through the letters and diary entries of Father Rodrigues. By framing the initial journey to Japan in this way, Endō reinforces it as a place both alien and hostile to Christianity. Nature is described with breath-taking starkness; rugged and indifferent to human comfort, its beauty is tinged with an ominous danger. The sound of waves breaking resembles “a black drum” (101), while birds of unknown species and mysterious songs elude the Father’s attempts to categorise them.

What few believers the Father encounters eke out lives of miserable poverty:

Even the more wealthy among them, the upper class, only get the taste of rice about twice a year. Their usual fare is potatoes and radishes and such-like vegetables, while their only drink is warm water. Sometimes they dig up roots and eat them… The roofs of the houses are made of thatch. The houses are filthy, and their stench is unbearable. (79)

The standard of living shocks and disgusts the Father, who contrasts it with happy seminary days of red wine and baroque splendour. Unlike the learned priests back home, who are capable of intellectualising and rationalising their belief, the hidden Christians of Japan have a stubborn, superstitious streak. They recite hymns in broken Latin with no understanding of what is being said. Their wretched nature, both mental and physical (Father Rodrigues often notes their malnourished bodies and reeking teeth) deepens his sense of purpose. During a baptism he realises the true scope of his mission:

As the water flowed over its forehead the baby wrinkled its face and yelled aloud. Its head was tiny; its eyes were narrow; this was already a peasant face… it, too, would live like a beast, and like a beast it would die. But Christ did not die for the good and beautiful. It is easy enough to die for the good and beautiful; the hard thing is to die for the miserable and corrupt… (64)

This almost parasocial relationship—where Father Rodrigues imagines himself as the enlightened saviour of benighted peasants—steadies him to the task at hand. While he looks down upon his flock and obviously believes himself to be their intellectual and theological superior, the firmness of their beliefs in the face of persecution surprises him. Two of his comrades, Mokichi and Ichizo, are taken away by soldiers and lashed to crucifixes at low-tide. Still they refuse to renounce Jesus Christ. The black sea closes in and drowns them.

If Mokichi and Ichizo are the best kind of Christian—steadfast in their faith unto death—then Kichijiro, the party’s pathfinder and guide, is the worst. A cowardly, repulsive alcoholic, Kichijiro has apostasized in the past, and likely betrayed his fellow Christians to the government, for which he repeatedly attempts to atone for in the Father’s presence. Ignorant, stupid, ugly, morally and physically weak, Kichijiro’s perpetual unhappiness is nevertheless that of the guilt of the true believer. Despite his failings, he will be saved.

Kichijiro forces Father Rodrigues to confront his own vanity. “Am I looking for the true hidden martyrdom,” he writes in his diary, “or just for a glorious death? Is it that I want to be honoured, to be prayed to, to be called a saint?” (186-7) Although he has lived a life in service to God, and gathered around him every symbolic proof of his faith, his heart ultimately remains at a greater distance to God than those of the peasants he presumes to save. He despises Kichijiro because he suspects, deep down, that he might be more like him than the martryrs Mokichi and Ichizo:

Kichijiro was right in saying that all men are not saints and heroes. How many of our Christians if only they had been born in another age from this would never have been confronted with the problem of apostasy or martyrdom but would have lived blessed lives of faith until the hour of death. (123)

Father Rodrigues finally meets his former teacher, Father Ferreira, towards the book’s end. He is shocked to learn that he has apostasized. “This country is a swamp,” declares Ferreira. “Whenever you plant a sapling in this swamp the roots begin to rot….” (229) He compares the hollowed-out Christianity of the peasants, which has mingled with indigenous superstition, to a butterfly liquefied by a spider: “In Japan our God is just like that butterfly… only the exterior form of God remains, but it has already become a skeleton.” (232) He rationalises this decision as essentially good. By preserving his status as a learned clergyman—this time of the Buddhist faith—he is able to make himself useful to the people, while maintaining the dignity of his own intellectual and aesthetic stance towards God.

Is Christianity a truly universal religion? Or is it just the outgrowth of the culture of a particular time and place, something fundamentally incompatible with the Japanese mind and spirit? Are the differences between these cultures incommensurable? And is this ultimately worth dying for? This is a novel about belief, and the trials of the believer. You don’t have to be Christian to appreciate the tension at the heart of its story. Just how far are we willing to live out and uphold the meaning of our beliefs?

The novel builds up this conundrum in a fascinating way. We know from the beginning where things are headed. When the hour comes, will Rodrigues live by Christ’s example and die a martyr? If he repents, the torture will stop, but in doing so he turns against everything Christ said and promised. He becomes like the thief on the cross who taunted Christ for not simply repenting. The face on the fumi-e has already been worn smooth by the feet of thousands of apostates. Its pitiful glance entreats Father Rodrigues to surrender. And in this hopeless dilemma, God—almighty God—refuses to make Himself known. Only silence answers the Father’s prayers.