Fascinating, chilling, and inexplicably uplifting novel

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	• Silence Shusaku Endo Taplinger Publishing Company, 1980 - 201 pages average customer review:based on 58 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Strongly recommended for World History students

I found this book by accident while looking for novels by Maria Amparo Escandon. Since I was teaching Tokugawa Japan to ninth graders at the time, this seemed like a worthy and pertinent read. What I discovered is that this novel would have made an excellent companion in English class to what the students studied in history. They would have learned much about the landscape and lifestyles in Japan and just how "closed" to Westerners the islands became under Tokugawa Ieyasu.

The best part is that for adolescents the teacher can pose some thought-provoking discussion and essay questions on moral dilemma:

What would you have done in Rodrigues' place?
Is there anything you believe in enough to suffer for? Given Rodrigues' lifestyle, do you think he did the right thing?
Was it wrong for the Portuguese priests to enter Japan after the ban on missionaries? Was the shoganate right to punush them?
Write a memoir from the point of view of another character in the book.

I highly recommend this book to any World History/Literature teacher who is looking to expand her/his curriculum beyond the West.

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Hilarious Take on Christianity's Introduction to Japan

I thoroughly enjoyed Shusaku Endo's hilarious portrayal of the introduction of Christinanity into Japan. His satirical powers are on a par with Jane Austen, or, to invoke a more modern example who has also written about the Church, Peter De Vries. I will certainly want to pick up more books by this author.

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A Must Read for Followers of Jesus

Silence is a novel set in 17th century Japan. The feudal system in Japan had welcomed missionaries for a few decades but had turned against the Christians, both foreign and Japanese, at that time. The narrator is a missionary priest who sneaks into Japan during this time of persecution in search of a former teacher who was rumored to have apostacized.

For a translation, the prose is good. It wasn't difficult to read and captured my attention, two problems I've encountered with some modern translations. The writing passes muster, but I wouldn't read the book for it alone. It's worth reading because it deals in such a gripping and insightful way with the questions, "What is apostacy?" and "What does it mean to be a pastor?" Every Christian ought to read it at some point in their lives. It does contain accounts of violence, but they are not gratuitous, and it doesn't dissuade me from recommending it, even for the faint at heart. (10/10, borrowed from the library.)

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Fascinating, chilling, and inexplicably uplifting novel

I am now reading this book for the third time and I can't think of another book I've read three times (if you don't count the my daughter's favorite children's books which I read to them many, many times.)

I am a Catholic and this is my go-to book during times when I experience those periods of doubt and despair. This may surprise people who know that this is not a happy-ending book and the spiritual lessons in it are harsh and stand in sharp contrast to the smug blathering that characterizes so much of American Christian life ("We're not perfect, just forgiven." "God doesn't give us anything we can't handle," etc.) And the question that haunted Endo--whether the fate of a religion is bound up in the culture and history of a given land--is fully fascinating and goes to the very nature of the whole of missionary endeavor. (And, in these times, one wonders if there is a parallel in the political questions related to the applicability of democracy to any land and any people.) "Silence" is a painful read, but an indispensable masterpiece.

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A man of sorrows and acquainted with grief

I don't really have much to add to all the other glowing reviews which this gem of a novel rightfully deserves. It is a starkly told, heart-wrenchingly laconic depiction of the trial of faith and the slow, painful journey of an idealistic young priest to discovering a true theology of the cross. He has to learn the hard way that the power of Christ is not in displays of supernatural force or lightning and thunder, but in self-abdicating love Who chose to suffer with those who suffer, allowing Himself to be trampled in order that we might come to understand the true meaning of love. There are words on every page which pierce you to the depths of your soul, but none more so than when the Christ of the bronze fumie calls to the reluctant apostatizing priest: "Trample! Trample! I more than anyone know of the pain in your foot. It was to be trampled on by men that I came into the world. It was to share in men's suffering that I carried my cross." Suddenly, a whole new picture of Jesus forms in your mind, and one suspects that it is closer to the truth than many of us triumphalist Christians may be comfortable with.

On the level of style, however, Endo is also a master craftsman. I have not read such a well-written novel in a very long time. Never have I been struck before by such an unusual, quiet authorial voice which nevertheless demands that you pay attention. I can see why Philip Yancey holds Endo in such high esteem. He stands in the grand tradition of Christian doubters who produced masterworks of world literature (along with Grahame Greene, Fyodor Dostoevsky, etc.) and every critically thinking Christian owes it to themselves to read this book.

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reviews: 1, page 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11

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