| Posted March 5, 2018 | By Rev. Thomas John Hastings, PhD, OMSC Executive Director; IBMR Editor | Categorized under Missiology and Media |

I have an attitude about this film. That's because I can't view Scorsese's faithful and haunting cinematic rendering of Endo's 1966 novel apart from my twenty years in Japan as a mission co-worker.¹ Because of my long experience of working with Japanese Christians, I do not read Silence or any of Endo's works as theology, which may put me at odds with many who teach the book or show the movie in courses in North America.

It is worth recalling that Endo wrote for an audience where only 1-2% of the people are Christian. Further, we should be careful not to ascribe to him some evangelical motive. In fact, Endo faced searing criticisms from many of his fellow Japanese Catholics, especially for the famous fumie scene, which has so riveted the attention of Western readers. I see Silence as literary art, which was the author's intent and also how it is viewed by most Japanese readers.

As for Scorsese's interpretation, I felt uncomfortable only once early on in the film by the depiction of the Inquisitor Inoue, who comes off at first as a grinning and patently evil bureaucrat. But later on, when he personally interrogates Rodrigues, Inoue shows a more pragmatic side that somehow makes him more human. He taunts the young priest, "The price for your glory is their suffering." Adding, "You are not a good priest because you are not concerned about the Kirishitans... Korobu! Apostatize!" While never sympathetic, he is seen as a military man following orders.

While the story's background is a particularly agonizing chapter of mission history with natural interest to members of the ASM, the novel and film draw attention to universal human themes of faithfulness, betrayal, doubt, forgiveness, love, suffering, beauty, and hope. While Endo did careful historical research for Silence, he depicts Japan's early encounter with Christianity through the lens of his own life, which by all accounts was a rocky journey through pre and post-WWII Japan, a time of study in France, various illnesses, and an ambiguous relationship with the Christian faith into which his mother or aunt had baptized him. And it seems Scorsese brought his own existential struggles to the film, which is why it took him so many years to complete. In the story's sensitive portrayal of the motivations, experiences, struggles, and evolving identities of the characters-foreign priests, converts, and local authorities-I can also recognize myself and many others I met in Japan, as well as certain enduring features of Japanese cultural, social, and political life.

Silence beautifully weaves together contextual, personal, and universal concerns. But I think it is the story's universal themes that have enabled it to achieve the status of a classic. For example, in the Jesuit priests, we can see a range of possible responses to the encounter with a new culture or a stranger, from 1) remaining faithful to one's tradition and self no matter the cost (Garupe), to 2) being forced by circumstances (or love?) to adapt (Rodrigues), to 3) rejecting one's tradition and self in order to survive (Ferreira). Among the Japanese converts, Jiisama and Mokichi embody rare loyalty and courage in the face of horrific oppression, while Kichijiro is perhaps the more familiar, hapless character who muddles through life but never gives up, falling down and bouncing back up time after time like a Daruma doll.² It is even possible that Endo may have meant these depictions as types, as Silence was written before deconstruction came to dominate literary theory. Yet, ever more the novelist than the preacher or teacher, Endo never takes the cheap moralistic or didactic shot, refusing to idealize any particular type.

If there is a theological gem to be gleaned from the wreckage of this tragedy, it is the nuanced, virtually silent suggestion that God does not abandon any of these characters, in spite of the relative depth of their deficiencies. So, after all, there may be good news to be heard in the sometimes-deafening silence.

¹ For the last 13 of those 20 years, I was a professor teaching practical theology, in Japanese, at Tokyo Union Theological Seminary (TUTS), founded by Uemura Masahisa, a first-generation Protestant leader. I want to acknowledge that TUTS helped support my sabbatical for my doctoral coursework.

² A Daruma doll is commonplace in Japan.  It is constructed in such a way that it is weighted at the bottom so that it always returns to an upright position when pushed over. It is a symbol for perseverance and resilience.