SPOILER ALERT: Plot details for Silence and The Last Temptation of Christ follow. "The silence and the emptiness is so great -- that I look and do not see, -- Listen and do not hear."-
Mother Teresa of Calcutta, Letter to Reverend Michael Van Der PeetWhy is God silent when we suffer the most?
This is the question at the heart of Shusaku Endo's
Silence, a novel that has gone on to be a classic of both Japanese and Catholic literature. Just as the silence of God is ambiguous, so too is the story. We are left to ourselves to interpret the meaning of God's silence, if he is even there at all.
The Cross Of Kyushu
Silence is set in seventeenth century Japan, during the severe persecutions of Christianity by the Tokugawa shogunate. Christianity first came to Japan by the Portuguese missionary, St. Francis Xavier, in 1549. In the Translator's Preface to the novel, William Johnston notes that Xavier developed a great love for the Japanese people, whom he called, "the joy of his heart" and said that you would never find "another race to equal the Japanese," (X). Christian missionary work in Japan is fascinating for two reasons. The first being that it was not associated with a colonial project, as was often the case in Africa or the Americas. Japan was never invaded. Even the Mongols had tried, but were twice turned away by storms many called "divine winds" or
kamikaze. So foreign interactions with Japan, while rare, stayed mostly along the lines of trade, of both goods and ideas. Ideas in astronomy and medicine caught on well with the Japanese, but Christianity suffered a tumultuous history. When the Italian missionary, Alessandro Valignano, arrived in Japan in 1579, there existed "a flourishing community of some 150,000 Christians," (Johnston). In fact, the three great unifiers of Japan, Oda Nobunaga, Totomi Hideyoshi, and Tokugawa Ieyasu, "were all on intimate terms with the Portuguese Jesuits, motivated partly by desire for trade with the black ships from Macao, partly (in the case of Nobunaga and Hideyoshi) by a deep dislike for Buddhism, and partly by the fascination of these cultured foreigners with whom they could converse without fear of betrayal or loss of prestige," (Johnston).
The Preface chronicles that this friendly relationship ended when Totomi Hideyoshi heard of a stranded Spanish pilot who boasted that the Spanish Empire was so great because of the Christian missionaries who had laid the groundwork. Hearing this, Hideyoshi ordered the crucifixion of twenty-six Japanese and European Christians in 1597 (Johnston). A prelude of the bloodletting to follow. It should be noted that Hideyoshi had earlier attempted to expel Christians in 1587, but did not do much to enforce it, because Christianity was popular with the Kyushu damiyos. Yet where Hideyoshi was flexible, his successor, Tokugawa Ieyasu, was firm. Ieyasu's shift in the Christians was influenced by his new interpreter, William Adams, an Englishman, who "lost no time in assuring the Shogun that many European monarchs distrusted these meddlesome priests and expelled them from their kingdoms," (Johnston). It should be noted that Adams, who later adopted the title Miura Anjin, was a Protestant who fought Catholic Spain during the famous defeat of the Spanish Armada in 1588, and when he first arrived on Japanese soil,
was accused of piracy by the Jesuit priests who "wanted the "heretics" executed," (Ogrisseg). He had ample reason to doubt their virtue. It is also worth keeping in mind that three unifiers, by means of bloody unification, were bringing Japan out of the Warring States period, or Sengoku, and with the establishment of the Tokugawa shogunate after the Battle of Sekigahara in 1600, it would begin two and a half centuries of prolonged peace. So it was not unusual that Ieyasu would be wary of foreigners who might divide and disrupt what he was trying to accomplish. He had good reason to be.
The Spanish had colonized and enslaved their neighbors in the Philippines in 1571. Even Portugal, from where the Jesuit missionaries hailed, could hardly claim to have clean hands. Portugal was heavily invested in the Atlantic Slave Trade and it also colonized the African nations of Guinea-Bissau, Angola, and Mozambique. The Japanese were not exempt from this exploitation. Not long after her arrival in 1543, Portugal began to sell Japanese slaves around the world,
as The Japan Times notes, "Some slaves were captives in Japan's eternal civil wars, sold by their Japanese captors to Portuguese traders. Others sold themselves or their children into slavery to escape crushing poverty. Still others were sold by feudal lords to finance a new craving--for gunpowder," (Hoffman). Portuguese religious leaders were understandably concerned about the impact this could have on conversion, but the slave merchants defended their investment, "We have spent one million cruzeiros or more over the years to purchase slaves," (Hoffman). Hideyoshi, however, found the situation "unbearable" and lamented, "Their hands and feet are chained, and they are driven into the bottom of the ships. This is far beyond the punishment of Hell," (Hoffman). These horrors were fresh in Ieyasu's mind, when in 1613, he passed an edict of expulsion that declared, "the Kirishitan band have come to Japan...longing to disseminate an evil law, to overthrow true doctrine, so that they may change the government of the country, and obtain possession of the land. This is a germ of great disaster, and must be crushed" (Johnston).
So began the great persecution of the Japanese Christians. The Preface goes on to describe the tortures that these Christians underwent. The Englishman, Richard Cocks, narrated an immolation of martyrs on the pyre "fifty-five persons of all ages and both sexes burnt alive on the dry bed of the Kamo River in Kyoto (October 1619) and among them little children of five or six years old in their mothers' arms, crying out "Jesus receive their souls!"" (Johnston). Later, the Japanese engaged in torture that was as psychological as it was physical. Japanese Christians were often pressured into apostasy by a variety of methods. One such method was to have them step on the
fumie, or an image of Christ. Another such method was gruesomely described by C.R. Boxer, a historian of Dutch and Portuguese colonial history "The victim was tightly bound around the body as high as the breast (one hand being left free to give the signal of recantation) and then hung downwards from a gallows into a pit which usually contained excreta and other filth, the top of the pit being level with his knees. In order to give the blood some vent, the forehead was lightly slashed with a knife. Some of the stronger martyrs lived for more than a week in this position, but the majority did not survive more than a day or two" (Johnston).
There were, inevitably, Christians who tried to fight back. The Shimabara Rebellion from 1637 to 1638, led by Amakusa Shiro, and partly motivated by taxation, was a courageous, but doomed attempt to stand up to the Tokugawas. Once the Tokugawas declared victory, the long-held fears of foreign interference disrupting order were apparently realized. Thus the Tokugawas began an infamous foreign policy of "Sakoku", or isolationism, trading only with the Dutch and Chinese. Japan would not again be open until forced into trade by Commodore Matthew Perry in 1853 under orders of U.S. President Millard Fillmore. While the Meiji government of 1868 tried to reinforce the ban, the influx of traders from the West began to change their minds, as David Chidester writes in
Christianity: A Global History, "Acceding to the demands of European and North American diplomats, but also recognizing this proliferation of Christian activity, the Meiji government withdrew its prohibition of Christianity in 1873. Although never more than a small minority, Japanese Christians could freely participate in churches, schools, and religious associations" (447). Nagasaki, a center Japanese Christianity, would be the second city obliterated by the atomic bomb, bringing a tragic and terrible end to World War II. What the West brought forth the West also destroyed.
Indeed, that
Silence is a postwar novel is not all that irrelevant. While reception from Japanese Catholics was mixed, bordering on negative, it was well-received by Marxists who had suffered for their left-wing beliefs while under Hojo's fascism.
As Roy Peachy wrote in First Things, "Part of the reason for these impressive sales figures was the book's resonance among left-wing Japanese readers, who saw in the struggles of the Jesuit missionaries something akin to the situation their Marxist predecessors had faced in the 1930s" ("The Troubling Legacy of Shusaku Endo's Silence"). It needs to be said that dealing with apostates was also a problem well-known to Christians in Constantine's Rome. After the Edict of Milan was passed, Christianity was legalized throughout the Roman Empire. No more would they suffer martyrdom under a Nero or a Diocletian. Those Christians who died for their faith were immortalized as martyrs who would climb to the heights of heaven. While those who capitulated to the strong hand of Rome were left with their own shame. So the question remained, what was to be done with the apostates?
It was a difficult question with difficult answers. As Chidester wrote, "After the end of official persecutions, churches in North Africa, as elsewhere in the empire, were faced with the dilemma of dealing with Christians who had lapsed from the faith by performing sacrifices or turning over copies of the scripture to the Roman authorities. In the controversy in Carthage, one faction, with some popular support, advocated strict treatment of lapsed Christians by requiring them to be rebaptized if they wanted to be accepted again within the church. Claiming to be the church of the martyrs, this group advanced Donatus as its candidate for bishop of Carthage" (96). Donatism later came to be identified by its strict puritanism towards which Christians could be included into the body of the church. St. Augustine of Hippo, who was rather doctrinaire himself,
argued against Donatism's requirements of rebaptizing for former apostates, "For the sacrament of baptism is what the person possesses who is baptized; and the sacrament of conferring baptism is what he possesses who is ordained. And as the baptized person, if he depart from the unity of the Church, does not lose the sacrament of conferring baptism. For neither sacrament may be wronged" (
New Advent).
Silence grapples with a similar struggle. How to accept a church with a body mixed with sinner and saint.
The Trials Of RodriguezThe leading men of our tale are Sebastian Rodriguez and Francisco Garrpe, two missionaries in search of Father Ferreira, a priest that has apostatized and now lives as a Japanese man. Akin to Joseph Conrad's Colonel Kurtz, he's a Westerner gone native in a foreign land. Neither Rodriguez nor Garrpe believe this claim. Theirs is a mission to investigate the truth, whilst also lending their support to the Japanese Christians under siege.
Silence is a testament to their sufferings. We witness their nobility as well as their weakness. Without a priest to guide them, the Christian communities struggle to execute the faith within the proper precepts of Rome. They are distraught and divided, but they are also sincere, and willing, to the point of death. A famously moving scene occurs when Mokichi and Ichizo, two Christians who refuse to spit on the
fumie, are tied to crosses by the shore and exhausted by the tides, "The waves, drenching the feet and lower half of their bodies, surged up the dark shore with monotonous roar, and with monotonous roar again receded" (60). A criminal crucified next to Christ asks the savior to remember him when he goes into his kingdom, and Jesus is to have said, "Today shalt thou be with me in paradise." It is with similar certitude that Mokichi sings the hymn, "We're on our way to the temple of Paradise" (61).
It would be an easy thing for Endo to allow his readers the fantasy of identifying solely with the Mokichi and Ichizo, letting them believe that they too, under similar circumstances, would behave with similar courage. Endo however, is no such writer. Rodriguez and Garrpe have a Virgil to guide them through this Hell, and his name is Kichijiro, but unlike Dante's Virgil, his character has been very much affected by it. Kichijiro is a Christian in the most banal sense. Always the first to step on the
fumie, and always the last to defend God's name. The shame of Kichijiro is that he apostatized to save his own life, while all the members of his family were martyred before his eyes. Jesus is to have said that "Whosoever will save his life shall lose it: and whosoever will lose his life for my sake shall find it." Kichijiro wishes to save his life, but also find Jesus. He is Judas Iscariot. He betrays Rodriguez into the hands of the Magistrate Inoue for coins of silver. He is also Simon Peter. After his every sin he begs Rodriguez for forgiveness. He is the average Christian. The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak. If Mokichi and Ichizo are the best arguments for Japanese Christianity, then Kichijiro is the best argument against it. So between these two lies the problem at the heart of
Silence: does the Christian religion belong in Japan?
For Rodriguez, Christianity offers the Japanese peasants a chance to be seen as equals in the eyes of heaven. Here, the faith is truly
catholic, or
universal, following the famous words of Paul to the Galatians, "There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus":
"I tell you the truth--for a long, long time these farmers have worked like horses and cattle; and like horses and cattle they have died. The reason our religion has penetrated this territory like water flowing into the dry earth is that it has given to this group of people a human warmth they never previously knew. For the first time they have met men who treated them like human beings. It was the human kindness and charity of the fathers that touched their hearts" (31).
Perhaps it would be an error to suggest that Japan had no religion for the poor until Francis Xavier came along. "Amida", or "Pure Land" Buddhism, which was popularized in Japan by Honen in the twelfth century, and taught that anyone could reach enlightenment by chanting the
Amida nembutsu. Such a concept of universal salvation appealed to the lower classes of Japan. Confucianism also offered the poor relief, with its emphasis on reciprocal relationships, particularly those between ruler and governed. Confucius carried a philosophy of self-cultivation that should be the aim of all, regardless of their place in society,
as The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy wrote, "Confucius most admired the person who cultivated himself to such a point that he embodied a host of virtues associated with royal birth. Confucius had little use for the person who was born to that station but neglected the task of self-cultivation" (Tucker).
His student, Mencius, similarly argued the government needed to work in favor of the people's best interests, "In this context, the ruler was characterized as the parent of the people, and his subjects as his own children, emphasizing the importance that he should attach to their welfare" (Tucker).
As with many religions, however, the Japanese variants could also work in favor of feudal class structures. While anyone could practice Shinto by paying ritual to the
kami, it held set of ethics that argued for a just society. Further, the lineage of the sun
kami, Amaterasu, established the imperial family, giving Japan its own "divine right of kings." Shingon Buddhism, introduced in the eighth century by Kukai, emphasized the reciting of mantras in order to become one with Dainichi, the cosmic Buddha. Paul Varley, emeritus professor at Columbia University, wrote in
Japanese Culture that the Shingon sect, with its fixed hierarchy of deities under the Dainichi, from whom all the great courier families could claim descent. The esoteric nature of Shingon also appealed to the rich, as only priests of leisured aristocrats could hope to master the complex rituals (52-53).
Of course, the Christian religion has hardly been exempt from abandoning the poor, either. While Martin Luther is credited for sparking the Protestant Reformation against the authoritarian abuses of the Catholic Church, he opposed the German Peasant's Revolt of 1525, in which 100,000 peasants were killed, because his vision of liberty was strictly spiritual. Nor did the Japanese peasants require Christianity in order to revolt against the aristocracy, lest we forget the debt cancellation uprisings of Shocho in 1428 and Kakitsu in 1441, or the Jokyo uprising against excessive taxation in 1686. Even so, Rodriguez's point stands. Christianity, while a minority religion, did gain a rapid rise in popularity among the Japanese people, and one can't help but think that the Gospel's constant elevation of the poor played an important role.
Inoue doesn't oppose Christianity out of any personal malice, but out of a dislike of foreigners imposing their beliefs on Japan. It is to him a soft colonialism. He compares Christianity to a persistent woman who wishes to be a wife, but is both ugly and barren. Inoue proposes that Japan's wife be "a woman born in the same country, a woman who has sympathy with his way of thinking" (131). This critique attacks the arrogance of Christian evangelicalism, a belief system that cannot see morality or salvation outside of its narrow purview. While the evangelical may well recognize the good teachings in other beliefs, they insist that unlike Buddha, Muhammad, or Zarathustra, Christ alone rose from the dead. When put into the context of world mythology, this does not make Christ special, as Osiris of Egypt and Dionysus of Greece have also been slain and resurrected, but since Jesus existed, evangelicals take everything written about him to have existed as well. Yet for as arrogant as we may find evangelicalism, it cannot be said to be anti-Christian. Christ himself orders his followers in Mark to "Go ye into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature. He that believeth and is baptized will be saved; but he that believeth not shall be damned." This being said, I think that a great deal of evangelicalism comes from a place of compassion, not malice. If one truly believes that lacking the grace of Christ, one's soul will burn in hell, then they will be desperate to save as many souls as possible. While many modern Christians don't think evangelizing or even conversion are necessary to this end, in the 17th century, such interpretations were at the fore. So while the missions to Japan may seem intrusive today, they saw themselves as committing the greatest act of altruism on behalf of their fellow humans. Needless to say, such religious fervor is not exclusive to Christianity. Buddhism, a religion now taken for granted as "Japanese", was evangelized to them from Korea, which in turn had been evangelized from China which had been evangelized from India. A central pillar of Japanese culture is also a product of evangelism. This irony is lost on Inoue.
Even so, Inoue's suggestions sting. It acknowledges the limits of cultural exchange, that some ideas cannot ever truly be
universal, "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?" (117). Rodriguez cannot accept this, not when it comes to the truth. If the truth isn't true everywhere and to every person, then it isn't true at all. As he tells Inoue, "If a true doctrine were not true alike in Portugal and Japan we could not call it "true"" (116). Of course, it would not be hard for Rodriguez to disregard Inoue. He was a persecutor and further, not a Christian. It was in his interest to believe in its failure, but what of a fellow Christian priest? This is what happens when he encounters at long last, Father Ferreira. The rumors about him proved true. He, like Colonel Kurtz, has gone native, and even plans to write a book exposing the "falsehoods" of Christianity.
Ferreira, who has been defeated by twenty years of missionary work, tells Rodriguez, "This country is a swamp. In time you will come to see that for yourself. This country is a more terrible swamp than you can imagine. Whenever you plant a sapling in this swamp the roots begin to rot; the leaves grow yellow and wither. And we have planted the sapling of Christianity in this swamp" (158). Ferreira's argument is similar to Inoue's, that Christianity can never thrive in Japan because it can never be understood by Japan. Yes, even the fervent Japanese Christians who suffered and died in Jesus name, did not know Jesus as the West knows him. They had to distort him in order to make palatable to their cultural language. As Ferreira says, "The Japanese are not able to think of God completely divorced from man; the Japanese cannot think of an existence that transcends the human" (161). This conflict is rooted in the fact that Japan's three major religions: Shinto, Buddhism, and Confucianism, are very far apart from Christianity in form and shape.
Christianity was successful in pagan Greco-Roman culture, because its theology could fit well into their traditions and philosophy. While it is true that Greco-Roman religion was polytheistic, it also held fast to the Platonic traditions of a singular Logos, or divine law behind all things, as well as that of ideal forms behind real ones. Logos is Greek for "word", so when John describes Jesus as "the word", it was not hard to conceive of Jesus as this divine law in the flesh. Further, the concept of Christ, a figure both god and man, was not alien to them, either. Many of the Roman emperors were also considered to be gods. Another significant factor was the minimizing of Christ's Jewish origins. The Gospel authors downplayed Rome's role in the crucifixion, going so far as to make Pontius Pilate a sympathetic figure, while exaggerating crowds of Jews calling for the messiah's death. Paul also made the faith more open to Gentiles, abandoning Peter's prescription that converts needed to be circumcised. This separation would become politically convenient for Christianity, given the failed Jewish rebellion against Rome in 70 A.D. Of course, the Japanese religions also had a similar traditions of men becoming divine, with many a kami once being human, and many a faithful Buddhist becoming a bodhisattva. A figure of Christ would not be unique to them, and thus, not necessary to single out for particular divine favor. Belief in Christ necessitates a belief in the Fall, that human nature in evil and in need of salvation. This could be paralleled in Greco-Roman culture to the opening of Pandora's Box, which brought evil into the world. All people are born pure in Shintoism, with any pollution easily cleared by a ritual. Buddhism teaches that anyone can overcome suffering by following the Eightfold Path. Confucianism taught that anyone could educate themselves into a well-cultivated being. Blood lineage in fallen human beings, which was popularized by St. Augustine, did not exist in Japan. While there was the imperial line under Amaterasu, it did not imply wholesale that those outside of it were impure. Separation between the secular and the spiritual is a rather recent concept, so religion was, for many years, the chief means of understanding ethics. Whatever ethical gaps left by Shinto had already long been filled by Buddhism and Confucianism for many centuries. So for the Christian religion to come in several centuries into Japan's religious history in an attempt to supplant this, was a Herculean task to say the least.
Silence, however, is as much an exploration of Rodriguez's Christian faith, than it is of Christianity writ large. His
via dolorosa is from a faith that is ephemeral, to one that is visceral. He is a great parallel to Father Karras in
The Exorcist, who initially cannot bear to see Christ in the wretched, before taking on the flesh of the most wretched of all. Rodriguez also struggles to embrace the wretchedness of faith. When he witnesses the martyrdom of Mokichi and Ichizo, he becomes clear to him just how stark their death was from the romanticized imagery of martyrdom he had been raised on,
"They were martyred. But what a martyrdom! I had long read about martyrdom in the lives of the saints--how the souls of the martyrs had gone home to Heaven, how they had been filled with glory in Paradise, how the angels had blown trumpets. This was the splendid martyrdom I had often seen in my dreams. But the martyrdom of Japanese Christians I now describe to you was no such glorious thing. What a miserable and painful business it was! The rain falls unceasingly on the sea. And the sea which killed them surges on uncannily--in silence" (62).
God failed to offer a sign. Death, even in the name of God, is still death. Christianity has a habit of making martyrdom about to be a beautiful thing. Painted depictions of St. Stephen's stoning or Joan of Arc at the stake are often quite detached from the sordid brutality of these acts. Belief in God in the face of such evil is not merely a trial, it is irrational. This all brings to mind the apocryphal Riddle of Epicurus: "If God is willing to prevent evil, but is unable, then he is impotent. If God is able to prevent evil, but unwilling, then he is malevolent. If he is neither willing nor able, then why call him God?" God would not raise his hand to save his only begotten son. Why should he step in now? One reason that Mel Gibson's
Passion of The Christ was so provocative is that it restored brutality of the crucifixion. While brought Christianity back to its blood-soaked origins on aesthetic terms, the theology underlying the suffering was rather shallow. Jesus suffered for a purpose. Gibson understood that purpose on a literal level, but not in any thoughtful or intimate way. Not that anyone should be surprised by this. Gibson, a racist misogynist, does not impress me as a thoughtful or intimate Christian.
The progression of Rodriguez's faith is crystallized through the face of Jesus, a face that can be anything to anyone. Anglo-Americans often depict Jesus as a white man with flowing locks and blue eyes. African-Americans often depict Jesus as a black man out of Africa. The Chinese depict Jesus no differently than they would Confucius. Few are interested in Jesus the man, an average Jew from Palestine. They want Jesus the God, whom they can fashion into their own image. This is why Rodriguez is so fascinated by his face, it can be whatever he wants it to be: "I am so fascinated by his face because the Scriptures make no mention of it. Precisely because it is not mentioned, all its details are left to my imagination. From childhood I have clasped that face to my breast just like the person who romantically idealizes the countenance of one he loves. While I was still a student, studying in the seminary, if ever I had a sleepless night, his beautiful face would rise up in my head" (44).
When he said this, Rodriguez compared the faces of the Japanese Christians hearing his words to those faces which first heard the Sermon on the Mount. Inevitably, he starts to believe that his mission, his
via dolorosa, is parallel to that of his Savior. So when Rodriguez again sees the face of Christ in waters, the face that "for so many centuries had given inspiration to artists" was now "heavy with mud and with stubble; it was thin and dirty; it was the face of a haunted man filled with uneasiness and exhaustion" (71). This is Christ deprived of all his bells and decoration. This is the man Jesus. The last time that Rodriguez confronts the face of Christ is when he is made to step on the
fumie. Here, Christ is his most downtrodden, "Before him is the ugly face of Christ, crowned with thorns and the thin, out stretched arms" (182). Even now he values Christ, this humbled Christ, he begs for a sign from above during this trial, a sign not to have defame what is most dear to him,
"Lord, since long, long ago, innumerable times I have thought of your face. Especially since coming to this country have I done so tens of times. When I was hiding in the mountains of Tomogi; when I crossed over in the little ship; when I wandered in the mountains; when I lay in prison at night...Whenever I prayed your face appeared before me; when I was alone I thought of your face imparting a blessing; when I was captured your face as it appeared when you carried your cross gave me life. This face is deeply ingrained in my soul--the most beautiful, the most precious thing in the world has been living in my heart. And now with this foot I am going to trample on it" (183).
The response is baffling. Rodriguez hears the Lord himself speak through the bronze
fumie, "Trample! Trample! I more than anyone know of the pain in your foot. Trample! It was to be trampled on by men that I was born into this world. It was to share men's pain that I carried my cross" (183). This sounds like a rather contradictory thing for Jesus to order. Did he not say in Matthew 10:22, "And ye shall be hated by all
men for my name's sake: but he that endureth to the end shall be saved"? Christ requesting a Christian to apostatize, along with the suggestion that Christianity isn't suited for Japan, were what probably caused
Silence's initial reception among Catholics to be so controversial. Some have interpreted the voice Rodriguez hears as not God's, but either Satan's or his own. He either imagined the voice to come to terms with his own weakness or was deceived by the adversary. Many note the cock crowing, a reference to Peter's denial of Jesus, as sign of this. Professor Yanaibara of Protestant Doshisha University, argued that Japan was not a 'swamp' for Christians, "In that Christian era there were many Japanese who sincerely believed in Christ, and there are many who do so today. No Christian will believe that Christianity cannot take root in Japan. If the Japanese cannot understand Christianity, how has it been possible for Mr. Endo to write such a novel?" (XXI). Daniel McInerny, a PhD in philosophy from the Catholic University of America,
in his piece "The Sinister Theology Of Endo's Silence" asks, "What is faith if it does not express itself in action? What is love if it is not, despite its falls, willing to die for the beloved? If Endo is speaking for himself through Rodrigues, then he is defending the indefensible" (
The Catholic Thing).
Bishop Robert Barron echoed similar sentiments in his review of the Martin Scorsese adaptation, "I wonder whether Shusaku Endo (and perhaps Scorsese) was actually inviting us to look away from the priests and toward that wonderful group of courageous, pious, dedicated, long-suffering lay people who kept the Christian faith alive under the most inhospitable conditions imaginable conditions imaginable and who, at the decisive moment, witnessed to Christ with their lives. Whereas the specially trained Ferreira and Rodrigues became paid lackeys of a tyrannical government, those simple folk remained a thorn in the side of tyranny" (
Word On Fire). A common thread in these criticisms is the abhorrence in renouncing faith. To deny Christ is to betray him.
The other perspective, that his trampling was an act of faith, requires an unorthodox viewpoint. To understand this viewpoint, we must return to the meaning of the crucifixion. Why was Christ's death so shocking to those around him? Christ came as the last in a long Jewish prophetic tradition that included larger-than-life figures like Moses and David. Unlike either of those figures, Jesus did not come with any great armies to overthrow Rome. He surrendered himself to execution in the most humiliating way conceivable. Pride is the worst of the seven deadly sins. The crucifixion was a refusal of pride, it humbled God, and by this would man learn humility. In the years since, however, the manner of Christ's death became more emphasized, fetishized, than his reason for death. The crucifixion had become its own vanity, its own glory. To die for Christ became a greater virtue than to live for him. All that is lost on earth is lost in heaven, but now heaven is all there is. Rodriguez aspires to suffer and die for Christ, for that would be a higher glory than to renounce him. Christ, however, denies him this glory and humbles him. He makes Rodriguez into Peter, the closest disciple who inevitably betrayed him. Christ seems to offer a faith more about pragmatism than pronouncement. He once advised his followers to pray quietly and not trumpet their prayers openly like the hypocrites, they have their reward. What you do in secret your father in heaven will reward in secret. Jesus prayed in Gethsemane alone, while only his father knew the torment of the cup that would not pass from him. By making Rodriguez into Peter, he also makes him Christ. God becomes man, so that man might become God. It is an internal salvation, a Buddhist enlightenment. The critics may ask, what good is a Christianity that does not trumpet itself in the streets? What good is a Christianity without the Vatican or the Megachurch? What profiteth a man if he gain the world but lose the soul? Rodriguez is, in humiliation, closer to the Lord than any pontiff in the Sistine Chapel or any evangelist who preaches in an amphitheater. If Buddhism is about the elimination of suffering, then Christianity is about finding significance in it. He knows Christ's love, because he knows Christ's pain. Rodriguez reflects on this in the book's final pages, "Everything that had taken place until now had been necessary to bring him to this love. 'Even now I am the last priest in this land. But Our Lord was not silent. Even if he had been silent, my life until this day would have spoken of him'" (204).
While we can relate to Christianity's virtue of finding dignity in suffering, many can struggle to relate to the tendency in the religion to elevate the afterlife over the current one. Christ asked his followers to take no thought for the morrow, to consider the lilies of the field, who neither toil nor spin, yet your father in heaven takes care of them. Is not life more than food and the body more than clothing? There
is more to life than food and clothes, but without food and clothes one cannot live. Make does not live on a bread alone, but still he lives on bread. Christianity came to reconcile with these realities by the time St. James wrote his epistle, "If a brother or sister be naked, and destitute of daily food, And one of you say unto them, Depart in peace, be
ye warmed and filled; not withstanding ye give them not those things which are needful to the body; what
doth it profit? Even so faith, if it hath not works, is dead, being alone." The Christian faith could never be spiritual to the point of ephemeral, not if it was to survive. It had to reckon with the body, the material, the earth. Was this not the nature of Christ himself? Think back to 2006, when two Fox News journalists, Olaf Wiig and Steve Centanni, were kidnapped by a radical Palestinian group, the Holy Jihad Brigades. They were forced to convert to Islam at gunpoint. Would anyone call these men cowards for not resisting conversion, for not trampling the
fumie, even at the cost of their lives? Are they weak because they wanted to survive? Are they now apostates who have done the indefensible? If God values life as much as Christians claim he does, then perhaps he values life more than he does his own name. Man was not made for the Sabbath, but the Sabbath was made for man. This is why Rodriguez can forgive Kichijiro, a Judas, because he knows now the value of life, as well as the value of weakness. Christ suffers alongside the weak, he does so silently. He knows their desire to live, and he allows it. Who is holier, the martyr or the survivor? Both are holy, both suffer, both bear witness.
Bishop Barron may have been onto something when he suggested that Endo may be asking us to look at the faith of the Japanese more so than the faith of the Jesuits. Inoue is more than content to leave Rodriguez in his destitute state because, as far as he's concerned, the roots have been cut off. Rodriguez is the last priest in Japan, and no others will come for him. Inoue will even end his persecution of the Goto and Ikitsuki Christian communities, because their God has changed into one foreign from that of Christian scripture. He tells Rodriguez that, "The Christianity you brought to Japan has changed its form" and that "Japan is that kind of country; it can't be helped" (201). Yet if there are any lessons to be grappled with from
Silence, it is that the truest faith is not always the most orthodox. The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. It telling that Barron, in his review of Scorsese's adaptation of
Silence, did not mention Scorsese's
other important film on faith,
The Last Temptation of Christ. It is a film that, even to this day, many Christians consider blasphemous. They did not want to see a Christ who struggled with lust, anger, and doubt, an imperfect man pushed towards perfection. They did not want to see Judas made a hero, as were it not for Judas, there would be no crucifixion, and thus, no salvation. A Christianity that privileges orthodoxy over humanity cannot survive. It must needs be like water; fluid, shapeless. Scorsese understands this. Endo understood it, too. The Japanese Christians may not follow the faith in the same way European Christians did, but still, they are faithful. Inoue thinks he cut off Christianity, when in truth, he gave it new life. Endo himself has reflected,
"For a long time I was attracted to a meaningless nihilism and when I finally came to realize the fearfulness of such a void, I was struck once again by the grandeur of the Catholic faith. This problem of the reconciliation of my Catholicism with my Japanese blood...has taught me one thing: that is, that the Japanese must absorb Christianity without the support of a Christian tradition or history or legacy or sensibility. Even this attempt is the occaision of much resistance and anguish and pain, still it is impossible to counter by closing one's eyes to the difficulties. Now about this is the peculiar cross that God has given to the Japanese," (XIX).
By breaking the law, he fulfilled it.
Christianity and Art"The Exorcist"
https://sansuthecat.blogspot.com/2017/02/communion-with-pazuzu.html"Piss Christ"
https://sansuthecat.blogspot.com/2015/02/in-defense-of-piss-christ-je-suis-andres.html"A Wrinkle In Time."
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