Although Shusaku Endo’s novel Silence won the prestigious Tanizaki Prize and has been called one of the 20th century’s finest novels, I was unaware of it until I saw Martin Scorsese’s recent film adaptation.  In the publicity that accompanied the release of the film, Scorsese made the following remark in an interview: “It has given me a kind of sustenance that I have found in only a very few works of art“.  It was that comment, not so much the film itself, that drew me to the novel.

Silence tells the story of two idealistic and devout Jesuit priests who visit Japan in 1640, a time when Christians were being persecuted brutally for their faith.  The priests go in search of Father Ferreira, who is rumored to have apostatized after being tortured by the local authorities.  They arrive in Japan to find the tiny Catholic community living in secrecy and in constant fear of betrayal, exposure, torture and execution.  The two priests separate and one of them, Fr. Rodrigues, becomes the center of the story.  We follow him through his capture, imprisonment, and inevitable encounter with Ferreira.

Rodrigues is no saint.  Patronizing, conceited, and snobbish, he’s a flawed Christian, a sinner-priest, and that makes his struggle all the more real and moving.  Confronted by the suffering of the believers, and the silence of God in the face of that suffering, Rodrigues renounces his faith in a devastating act of apostasy.  It’s the extraordinary climax to an unusually powerful, complex, subtle, and sensitive novel.