Following on from our review of Martin Scorsese’s film Silence (2016), here we’re covering the 1966 novel of the same name by Japanese Catholic author Shūsaku Endō (1923-1996).

Silence is a fine historical novel, but it does cover difficult subject matter. Also, its unusual structure, written partly as a letter by its main character, makes it an unusual read. It’s also very sombre and has a major focus on religious suffering, which has made it appeal to the pious over the last 60 years since its publication.

Much Suffering in Endō’s Classic Silence

“No matter what the circumstances, no man can completely escape from vanity.”

The story is based on the anti-Christian purges of 17th-century Japan. The real life Jesuit missionary Cristóvão Ferreira (1580-1650) is used as the basis for the plot.

In Portugal, the young priest Sebastião Rodrigues learns that Ferreira has apostatised and heads out to Japan to find out what’s happened. Rodrigues is based on the real life figure Giuseppe Chiara (1602-1685).

When Rodrigues reaches Japan, he discovers a nation battling to maintain its identity. The government takes a violent stance against Christian ideology and seeks to eradicate it, often by brutally forcing Christians to commit apostasy.

Endō’s narrative structure was to use significant portions of Rodrigues’ journal to detail his journey. The rest of Silence then uses a standard third-person tone of voice. But then there are other segments focus on letters sent by other notable characters. This is probably the most confusing narrative approach we’ve had since reading Jean-Paul Sartre’s The Reprive (1945).

In Martin Scorsese’s film adaptation, it’s notable the journal elements are removed entirely (we guess it would be boring to see Rodrigues there onscreen writing in his diary).

For the book, it takes a bit of getting used to, but once you’re along with it then the full force of the story kicks in. And as with the film, this is a brutal time of it. The core themes are:

• Death
• Suffering
• Punishment
• Omnipotent silence

And on that final point, it’s the focus on God’s silence in the face of immense human suffering. Prayers are unanswered and people are left to die. Rodrigues battles with these issues, his faith tested to the limit, until psychological torture by the Japanese leads to apostasy.

Endō forces Rodrigues through a hellish time of it.

“Man is a strange being. He always has a feeling somewhere in his heart that whatever the danger he will pull through. It’s just like when on a rainy day you imagine the faint rays of the sun shining on a distant hill.”

Rather than being allowed to enjoy a glorious martyrdom, Rodrigues is left to watch as Christian converted Japanese peasants (kakure kirishitan) are put to death.

Rodrigues is warned the suffering ends if he renounces his faith and, within his personal dilemma, is the core of the book. The tension between ideology and human empathy:

“I, too, stood on the sacred image. For a moment this foot was on his face. It was on the face of the man who has been ever in my thoughts, on the face that was before me on the mountains, in my wanderings, in prison, on the best and most beautiful face that any man can ever know, on the face of him whom I have always longed to love. Even now that face is looking at me with eyes of pity from the plaque rubbed flat by many feet. Trample! said those compassionate eyes. Trample! Your foot suffers in pain; it must suffer like all the feet that have stepped on this plaque. But that pain alone is enough. I understand your pain and your suffering. It is for that reason that I am here.

‘Lord, I resented your silence.’ – ‘I was not silent. I suffered beside you.'”

The second line is, supposedly, God speaking to Rodrigues to highlight joint suffering. The American Catholic theologian William T. Cavanaugh noted that in Silence the deity:

“Has chosen not to eliminate suffering, but to suffer with humanity.”

This brings us back to a point we raised in our film review, where we noted all these people had to do was not go to Japan and force their ideology on the country.

Historically, it’s nothing new. Alongside religious wars such as the Crusades (between 1095 and 1291), there’s the likes of Over the Edge of the World (2003) about Ferdinand Magellan. Europeans heading out on boats to convince other nations their religion is the only one was fairly common behaviour.

And that’s what was fascinating to us here in reading this book. The clinical, detached focus on incompatible cultural paradigms set alongside state survival and foreign encroachment.

It’s quite a slight work as just under 300 pages, so Endō doesn’t linger on his themes extensively. We should imagine some people could struggle with the book, but if you’re intrigued by its concept then it explores some alarming issues with human nature.