The god of silence: Shusaku Endo's reading of the Passion - critique of the Japanese novel 'Silence'

Commonweal, March 13, 1998 by William T. Cavanaugh

A tree which flourishes in one kind of soil may wither if the soil is changed. As for the tree of Christianity, in a foreign country its leaves may grow thick and the buds may be rich, while in Japan the leaves wither and no bud appears. Father, have you never thought of the difference in the soil, the difference in the water?

Shusaku Endo's Silence

The difference in the soil, the difference in the water, are what haunt the life and writings of Shusaku Endo, the great Japanese novelist who died in 1996. Endo was seared by the terrible homelessness of being a Christian in Japan, and most commentary on his work focuses on the awkward encounter of Christianity and Japanese culture. However, Endo is misunderstood if this struggle is limited to a Japanese context. What Endo was really after, I think, was nothing less than a glimpse of a homeless God.

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Endo's work can be read as a profound exploration of the twisted logic of the Incarnation - the journey of God from heaven to be emptied into earthly flesh and the assumption of weakness by omnipotence. Endo's personal struggle as a Christian in Japan was the setting for his investigation of the paradox central to the lives of all Christians: the paradox of a crucified God. Thus Endo weaves together the spiritual anguish of his characters with an embattled and paradoxically orthodox theology. Here I want to examine Endo's theological search in his novel Silence and invite other Christian voices - including that of John Paul II's encyclical Veritatis splendor - into the novel's strange moral universe.

Lean and spare, the prose of Silence captures the most harrowing anguish with a stark restraint. Suffering, sacrifice, and God's own silence lie at the heart of the novel. A deep moral ambiguity suffuses the story and opens a wound that endures long after the reader puts the book down. Moreover, I think Endo would argue that this wound is not one created by the writer, but belongs to the one who returned to his disciples after the Resurrection, asking his disciples to probe his unhealed wounds. It is this God who refuses to close the wound. He has chosen not to eliminate suffering, but to suffer with humanity. It is this Jesus who haunts Father Sebastian Rodrigues, the main character of Silence.

Rodrigues is a Portuguese Jesuit. He risks his life by going to Japan at a time when the small Japanese Christian minority is being fiercely persecuted. Rodrigues is motivated by a missionary concern for peasant Christians who have persevered in their faith in a clandestine church without priests. But he has a more personal motivation as well. His Jesuit mentor, the great provincial Cristovao Ferreira, the man who imbued Rodrigues with a fiery passion to spread the gospel in the face of every danger, has apostatized under torture. Rodrigues goes to Japan to face probable martyrdom, in part to discover the truth about Ferreira, and in part to offer himself as atonement for the unspeakable affront of apostasy.

Ferreira's apostasy is a historical fact. Francis Xavier had brought Christianity to Japan in 1549. In a mere thirty years a community of 150,000 Christians was flourishing. However, the unification of Japan under a central governing power in the late sixteenth century was accompanied by an increasing suspicion toward foreigners. Persecution erupted periodically, culminating in an edict of expulsion for all foreign missionaries in 1614. In the following years priests and ordinary Christians were ruthlessly suppressed. At first, Christians were publicly executed, but the blood of such martyrs, to paraphrase Tertullian, proved to be the seed of the church's persistence. At its height, the Japanese Christian community numbered 300,000. Eventually, however, the magistrates hit upon a sinister torture designed to change the public spectacle from one of a heroic acceptance of death to an ignominious public renunciation of faith. The torture, called the ana-tsurushi, consisted of hanging the victim upside down in a pit. A small incision made on the victim's forehead allowed blood to drain, thus intensifying the agony. Still, no missionary apostatized until 1632. But when Cristovao Ferreira, leader of the mission in Japan, did so under torture, the blow to the remaining Christians was devastating.

In Silence, Endo's fictional Ferreira serves as a goad to Rodrigues's pride. It is Rodrigues's pride, hidden behind his self-abnegating journey toward martyrdom, that sets up the climactic scene in the novel. As he sets his face toward Japan, Rodrigues writes in dread-filled yet fascinated tones of the perils that await him. Rodrigues is haunted, and feels himself pulled toward Japan, by a vivid vision of the face of Christ. Endo compels us to admire the Jesuit's willingness to face up to any torture for the sake of the gospel, and we have no doubt that he has the strength to die for Christ. But the novelist subtly lets Rodrigues overplay his courage until it touches on pride. In the end, the Jesuit risks violating the church's stern admonition that a Catholic must never seek martyrdom.

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The god of silence: Shusaku Endo's reading of the Passion - critique of the Japanese novel 'Silence'

Commonweal, March 13, 1998 by William T. Cavanaugh

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