Another essay, this one for my history class "Modern History of the World and the West." The prof includes a lot of original source material as well as more literary readings, which is refreshing compared to the usual rut of textbooks and workbooks. This particular essay was an analysis of the historical fiction novel "Silence" by Shusaku Endo. It tells the story of a Jesuit priest who sneaks into Japan as a missionary during the period when Japan was shutting itself off from the West, especially from Christianity. The book has caused quite a stir, especially among Japanese Christians or those who are interested in the way that Christianity spreads across cultural boundaries, at times fusing to or at other times displacing the native culture and its religion.
It's really a powerful novel, in spite of what seems to be some problems with the translation and editing, and even some more glaring problems with the writing itself. Endo is considered Japan's leading novelist, and "Silence" is greatly comparable to Graham Greene's "The Power and the Glory." In fact, "Silence" takes at least one key phrase directly from 'The Power and the Glory," and the critical acclaim on the back of "Silence" features a quote from Greene praising it as one of the finest books of the 20th century.
“Rags and Tatters in the Terrible Swamp”
In the novel “Silence,” author Shusaku Endo raises many theological issues. He addresses, perhaps most prominently, God’s silence in the presence of evil, but he also struggles with God’s sovereignty and love in relation to the apostle Judas’ betrayal of Jesus and the nature of true Christian faith in regards to martyrdom, apostasy, and the silence of the persecuted church. Most of these issues are resolved powerfully by the book’s end. However, Endo also raises another question: how can Christianity fit into Japanese society without one of the two being compromised? To answer this difficult question, Endo tells us the tragic but redemptive story of Sebastian Rodrigues. By focusing on Rodrigues’ transformation from a Portuguese priest into the truly Japanese man Okada San’emon, Endo asserts that Westernized, European Christianity--what translator William Johnston terms “Hellenistic Christianity” (xvii)-- must be rethought before it can enter Japanese society.
At the beginning of the novel, Father Rodrigues is the embodiment of this Hellenistic Christianity, bearing also the ethnocentric, colonizing spirit of Western Europe. He has a naivety of Japanese culture that leads him to remark to Garrpe that all Japanese people look the same. Rodrigues also maintains a sense of absolute assurance in the rightness of his own beliefs and those of his church. In his first encounter with Inoue and the daimyo, he tells them, “According to our way of thinking, truth is universal” (108), betraying his foundational conviction that not just Christianity, but the Portuguese way of doing Christianity, is the only and absolute truth.
Both Rodrigues and his faith have been transplanted into Japanese culture, and at first they seem to flourish. His work as priest to the impoverished peasants of Tomogi seems to go exceedingly well, just as the initial introduction of Christianity to Japan led to numbers of converts estimated in the hundreds of thousands. “Everything had worked out beyond our wildest expectations,” he writes (45), describing the seeming effortlessness, assuredness, and safety of their work. However, just as the authenticity of the multitudes of Japanese conversions later came into question, Rodriguez begins to see problems in the assimilation of Christianity into Japanese culture. There seems to be “some error in their outlook” and “their whole attitude makes [him] uneasy” (45). As the novel progresses, and especially after encountering Ferreira, Rodrigues will begin to see the deeper issue that is at hand.
The novel’s central conflict, that is the question of how Christianity can fit into Japanese culture without destroying the integrity of one or the other, is enunciated as both the apostatized Ferreira and the political leaders of Japan, representative of Hellenistic Christianity and imperial Japanese society, respectively, insist that Christianity cannot fit into Japan. Ferreira insists that Christianity can only become trapped in the culture of Japan like a butterfly in a spider web. The external skeleton of the religion may remain intact, but the form of the body is sucked clean of its true inner life. The Japanese, on the other hand, see Christianity as a tree that cannot take root in the swamp-like culture of Japan or a pushy woman whose affection Japan does not desire. The tree produces no fruit, and the woman is barren. Initially, Rodrigues is likewise trapped by these pictures of the conflict between Christianity and Japanese society. The two seem irreconcilable. And yet, through the course of Rodrigues’ stay in prison, as he witnesses executions and apostasies and experiences God’s silence, he discovers an unforeseen means of reconciliation between them that is more radical than he ever could have expected.
Through what Rodrigues experiences in prison, his understanding of religion and faith, of the Church and missionary work, are drastically altered. He sees ways in which his own Christianity, embedded in a net-like culture of its own, resembles the butterfly trapped in the web of Japanese culture, sucked clean of its inner life. His idea of Christianity as a prospering and triumphant ideology melts into a deep comprehension of the death that true Christianity requires, expressed perhaps as a literal martyrdom or in his case the total sacrifice of one’s culture, one’s independence and security in the world, and even one’s name. He realizes that the pity he had previously felt for the Japanese “was not action. It was not love” (135). In the end, Rodrigues is forced to undertake a new task “more important than the Church, more important than missionary work” (170): that is, to give up his priesthood, his self-assurance, and his righteousness in the eyes of the world in order to truly love others and Christ by, of all things, apostatizing.
Likewise, the face of his Savior Jesus begins to change. It is no longer the idealized, attractive, commanding, or healthy countenance he often imagined in the past. He begins to see the face of Christ in the one-eyed gaze or servile smile of his fellow man. Christ is downtrodden, unsightly, abused and suffering. Indeed, this is what He reveals to him as Rodrigues holds his foot above the fumie: “Trample! Trample! It was to be trampled on by men that I came into this world” (171). It is in this that Rodrigues understands the reconciliation of his faith to Japanese culture. He must abandon himself wholly to it, just as Christ abandoned himself, giving up his livelihood, his rights, and even his name, in order to truly “live the same life as the Japanese Christians” (188), to “become a Japanese” (189).
Rodrigues acknowledges that his beliefs have changed. He tells God, “My faith in you is different from what it was; but I love you still” (189). He also sees that he has parted ways with the Hellenistic Christianity with which he began: “I know that my Lord is different from the God that is preached in the churches” (175). And yet in this position, he administers the sacrament of confession to his weak brother Kichijiro, a fellow apostate and Judas-like betrayer of Christ, and finally hears the quiet voice of Christ spoken through his own life.
By the novel’s end, Father Rodrigues has begun to understand the truth that has since become powerfully evident to Christians: that is, that the evangelization and the Westernization of a society are not, or at least should not be, the same thing. Instead, the truth of his faith must mature beyond the doctrines and practices of his Hellenistic Christianity to become the living, incarnating Truth that is the person of Jesus. Rodrigues is the novel’s example of this as he gives up everything to show love to those “wasted like rags and tatters” (116) around him. Thus, “Silence” demonstrates that although the roots of the Westernized European church cannot take hold in Japan’s cultural swamp, the incarnating spirit of Jesus, betrayed, trampled upon, and soft-spoken to the end, enters Japan “like water flowing into dry earth” (32).
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