Silence in Never too Late to Read Classics

Oct 15, 2024 Faraaz rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

"From the time I first began to write novels even to the present day, this confrontation of my Catholic self with the self taht lies undeneath has, like an idiot's constant refrain, echoed and reechoed in my wokr. I felt that I had to find some way to reconcile the two."

Like most people, it was Martin Scorsese that introduced me to Shusaku Endo's Silence. Scorsese is a man of deep faith, so for me, wanting to read the book that had such a profound impact on his understanding of faith was a no b "From the time I first began to write novels even to the present day, this confrontation of my Catholic self with the self taht lies undeneath has, like an idiot's constant refrain, echoed and reechoed in my wokr. I felt that I had to find some way to reconcile the two."

Like most people, it was Martin Scorsese that introduced me to Shusaku Endo's Silence. Scorsese is a man of deep faith, so for me, wanting to read the book that had such a profound impact on his understanding of faith was a no brainer.

I'm not a Catholic or a Christian. I have my own faith so I did not expect to find a real resonance with the theological question at the heart of Endo's novel.

Endo described his Catholic faith as an ill fitting suit in Japan, and yet as a Japanese man, he was just as much of a misfit in the Christian West.

This quandary is what fascinated me on a personal level - being born in a land that's seemingly foreign to my faith. This idea, unresolved to this day continues to hold sway. Islam's arrival in South Asia and it's place in South Asia is at the heart of three modern 21st century states grappling with it's identity, history and nationalist narratives.

"The problem of the reconciliation of my Catholicism with my Japanese blood has taught me on thing: that is, that the Japanese must absorb Christianity without the support of a Christian tradition or history or legacy or sensibility."

Shusaka Endo's conclusion on the place of Catholicism in Japan is in someway the same conclusion I reached at a subconscious level of my own faith. Endo goes on to say "Only Catholicism can present the full symphony. And unless there is in that symphony a part that corresponds to Japan's mud swamp, it cannot be a true religion. What exactly this part is - that is what I want to find out."

"Anyone familiar with modern theology in the West will quickly see that mr Endo's thesis is more universal than many of his Japanese readers have suspected. For if Hellenistic Christianity does not fit Japan, netierh does it (in the opinion of many) suit the modern West; if the notion of god has to be rethought for Japan, (as this novel stresses), so has it to be rethrought for the modern West." - Willian Johnston (translator).

Not only did Endo find out, he shared it with us through his masterwork. And in doing so, he showed so many of us, from Scorsese to myself, the universal nature of our qests. So universal that countless Muslim Sufis have over the centuries, grappled with, addressed and written about this very thing.

I have consciously not addressed the book's central story directly for it should be experienced by the reader on their own. This review was to summarise my own thoughts and personal observations to come back to at some time in the future.

Reading Silence was a profoundly spiritual experience for me and I thank Martin Scorsese for introducing this to us.

"On the face of it, believing and questioning are antithetical. Yet I believe that they go hand in hand. One nourishes the other. Questioning may lead to great loneliness, but if it coexists with faith-true faith, abiding faith-it can end in the most joyful sense of communiion. It's this painful, paradoxical passage-from certainty to doubt to loneliness to communion-that Endo understands so well, and renders so clearly, carefully and beautifully in Silence.

I am now very keen to see Scorsese's adaptation of Shusaka Endo's A Life of Jesus ...more

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