The betrayal of Christ began with Peter, the film version seemed to say. Indeed, even in Scorsese’s film version, a cock crows three times at the very moment Father Rodriques betrays Christ, a subtle gesture to orthodoxy many Catholic critics in America failed to notice.

Silence can of course be read in a manner consistent with orthodoxy, as the Catholic Japanese scholar Michihiro Yamane has demonstrated. Nothing highlights this fact more clearly than the reality that whereas in the West it is Silence that defines Endo’s reputation, Japanese readers have preferred Endo’s 1980 historical novel Samurai. In short, the interpretive tradition that sees Endo as leading a dissenting movement in Catholicism took on a history that was quite independent of how Endo’s primary audience of Japanese readers interacted with his work. The Euro-American explosion of Endo studies and translations was led primarily by mainline Protestants who have been joined by a few Catholics of a more liberal bent including: The Sea and Poison, Gallagher, 1972 Wonderful Fool, Mathy, 1974 Volcano, Schuchert, 1978 Samurai, Gessel, 1982 Scandal, Gessel, 1988 Foreign Studies, Williams, 1989 The Girl I Left Behind, Williams, 1994 Kiku’s Prayer, Gessel, 2013. William Johnston’s English translation of Silence appeared in 1969, just one year after the annus horribilis that saw wide-spread dissent among Catholic theologians over Humanae Vitae.Įver since, the Anglosphere’s literary applause for Silence has been tied to a positive view of Rodrigues’s apostasy.

But for Japanese readers, Rodrigues’ apostasy was not a recommendation, it was simply a fact of Japanese history. Yes, Silence was controversial in 1966 among some Japanese Catholics, mainly among old Catholic families who felt that Endo was not respectful enough of the sacrifices their ancestors had made. has noted, the impact of Vatican II was not really felt in Japan until the mid-1980s. But at that time, Japan was not yet swept up in the tumult of liturgical and doctrinal dissent that spread across the Euro-American world. To me, this is a strange case of cultural misappropriation, driven largely by scholarship and circumstances in the West.Ĭhinmoku (“Silence,” in Japanese) was published in 1966, only one year after the closing of the Second Vatican Council. Many faithful Christians accepted at face value the interpretation that Endo (and Scorcese) approved of the apostasy of Fr. And Endo’s reputation in America and Europe, for better or worse, has largely rested on that 1966 historical novel about the apostasy of a Jesuit missionary in early seventeenth century Japan. So, let me say in Japanese, “ irasshai”: Welcome to the adventure!Įven before Martin Scorsese’s 2016 feature film Silence, Endo was widely known as the Graham Greene of Japan. Chesterton called for-looking for substantive Truth in unlikely places. And there is no place better to test the universal Truth of the Catholic faith than Japan-a culture extraordinarily ancient, rich and yet also quite distinct from the West or Near East in which Christianity long flourished.įor Americans and other Westerners to journey into Catholic Japanese culture requires a nuanced sensitivity, and the kind of open mind that G.K. If the Truth is universal, then surely Catholics mustn’t barricade ourselves exclusively in the corridors of Western literature. Yet some of these great artists are still living, and some can be yours, in translation. In the 20 th century a whole circle of Japanese Catholic writers flourished, few of whom are known outside of Japan in either literary or Catholic circles. But to me, what was missed in the ensuing brouhaha was a more important point: Endo is not the only Japanese Catholic novelist. Martin Scorsese’s 2016 film version of Silence drew renewed scrutiny to the famed Catholic Japanese novelist Shusaku Endo: Were Endo and Scorsese attempting to applaud apostasy?

Endo meaning japanese