Japan is “the delight of my heart,” he declared, “the country in the Orient most suited to Christianity.” Encouraged by local daimyo, or barons, who enlisted the support of Christians in their struggles for political control, the ranks of the believers swelled over the next 40 years to roughly a quarter million.īy the end of the century, however, quarreling missionaries from England, Holland, Spain, and Portugal further threatened the stability of a country already torn apart by the warring daimyo. Francis Xavier, one of the leaders of the newly founded Society of Jesus, arrived in 1549, and within two years he won a thousand converts. Soon traders and merchants gained a foothold, and missionaries inevitably followed in their wake. Europeans first set foot on Japanese soil in 1543 when a Portuguese trading vessel heading for China was blown off course and landed on the coast of Kyushu. Since this melancholy tale of martyrdom is little known in the West, a bit of historical background may be useful. But nowhere are these questions more probing nor their answers more disturbing than in Chinmoku, which won the coveted Tanizaki Prize in 1966 and which William Johnston translated three years later into the taut, heart-breaking novel called Silence. Until his death in 1996, the Catholic Endo, Japan’s own Graham Greene, explored these issues in nearly two dozen novels. Set in 17th-century Japan at the height of its persecution of Christians, this harrowing account of the Portuguese priest Sebastian Rodrigues ultimately asks the big questions: How should Christians engage a culture when that culture is foreign? And what does the word “engage” mean, exactly? Conquest? Marriage? Accommodation? A suit or a kimono? These are some of the questions that the Japanese Christian novelist Shusaku Endo asks in his spare and elegant novel Silence, long a staple in the University Scholars program at Seattle Pacific University. If a gardener were to uproot a Christian sapling from its Western soil in order to transplant it into Japan, would its branches still bear Christian fruit? If a tailor were to disassemble a Western suit in order to fashion a Japanese kimono, would it still be a suit?

We’ve republished it here because of the recent release of Martin Scorsese’s film, based on the same novel. Professor Emeritus of English Luke Reinsma reflects on Endo's great novel.īy Luke Reinsma, Professor Emeritus of EnglishĮditor’s Note: This article first appeared in the Autumn 2004 issue of Response. Novelist Shusaku Endo sought a Christianity that speaks to the Japanese soul.

Silence by shūsaku endō