Any
discussion of this novel should involve its most recurring motif, silence. Silence comes up in many ways in the
story. First, there are some basic
natural silences. There is the “eerie”
silence of the empty village (p. 64) and the silence that hangs when Ferreira
is first brought into Rodrigues’ cell (p. 141).
There is the silence of a village when the interrogating guards
investigate: “Not a sound could be heard…Why was there no sign of life? Even
the barking of the dogs had suddenly come to an end, and Tomogi was like an
ancient, abandoned ruin. Yet I could sense the awful silence that enveloped the
whole place” (p. 50). It is interesting
to note that Japanese aesthetics tend to be lean and sparse, where more is said
by saying less, and the silence motif seems to be attuned to that
aesthetic. You can also see how the plot
is lean and direct and absent of any embellishments. Think of Haiku or other Japanese poetic
forms. They are lean and evocative. Silence, the absence of sound, fits right
into that aesthetic.
Second,
there is the inherent silence of peasants under interrogation:
The peasants stood erect,
silent. Men, women, children—all were silent. And so the seconds passed. It was
as if enemies were staring at one another. Looking back on it now, I realize
that it must have been precisely at this time when everything became silent
that we looked down on the village from the mountain. (p. 51).
Here
silence is the unuttered profession one’s identity. If apostatizing requires spoken expression,
silence is the shrewd alternative.
Third,
there is the silence of not revealing your fellow Christian to the
authorities. 'No, father, we didn't say
a word about you,' said Mokichi, hands on knees, 'and if they come again, we'll
still say nothing. No matter what happens we'll stand by you.' (p. 50). Betrayal requires some form of
articulation. Not volunteering or
withholding information is a form of silence.
Fourth,
and perhaps most important, there is Rodrigues’ exclamation on the silence of
God in the face of the peasant’s suffering.
When Kichijiro questions why God has put this suffering on his people,
Rodrigues contemplates:
I suppose I should simply
cast from my mind these meaningless words of the coward; yet why does his
plaintive voice pierce my breast with all the pain of a sharp needle? Why has
Our Lord imposed this torture and this persecution on poor Japanese peasants?
No, Kichijiro was trying to express something different, something even more
sickening. The silence of God. Already twenty years have passed since the
persecution broke out; the black soil of Japan has been filled with the lament
of so many Christians; the red blood of priests has flowed profusely; the walls
of the churches have fallen down; and in the face of this terrible and
merciless sacrifice offered up to Him, God has remained silent. This was the
problem that lay behind the plaintive question of Kichijiro. (p. 55)
But
that’s not exactly what Kichijiro brings up.
He questions why God is allowing this and what “evil” they may have
done. But he does not question God’s
existence. Rodrigues surmises it, and
it’s in his mind. Rodrigues brings up
God’s silence repeatedly. We see it
again when Mokichi and Ichizo are crucified by the shore.
What do I want to say? I
myself do not quite understand. Only that today, when for the glory of God
Mokichi and Ichizo moaned, suffered and died, I cannot bear the monotonous
sound of the dark sea gnawing at the shore. Behind the depressing silence of this
sea, the silence of God....the feeling that while men raise their voices in
anguish God remains with folded arms, silent. (p. 61)
What
is interesting is that around this silence is a wealth of sound. There is the sung hymn, “We’re on our way,
we’re on our way,/We’re on our way to the temple of Paradise…” There is the sound of the rain, the sound of
the waves (“it broke upon the ears,” and the sound of the Mokichi moaning, a
“dark moaning” (p. 59).
The moaning sometimes
ceased. Mokichi had not even the strength to encourage himself with a hymn like
that of yesterday. Yet after an hour of silence the voice was again brought to
the ears of the people by the wind. Hearing this sound, like that of an animal,
the peasants trembled and wept. In the afternoon the tide gradually comes in
again; the black, cold color of the sea deepens; the stakes seem to sink into
the water. The white foaming waves, swirling past the stakes, break on the
sand, a white bird, skimming over the surface of the sea, flies far, far away.
And with this all is over. (p. 59)
While
Rodrigues insists on the silence, we see otherwise. Another example is when Rodrigues is on the
run. He hears “the hoarse cawing of
pursuing crows,” sees his face in a pool of water, which he imagines to be a
face of Christ crucified, and hears the cicadas “singing hoarsely” in the woods
(p. 67-8). Rodrigues again questions
God’s silence.
But now there arose up
within my heart quite suddenly the sound of the roaring sea as it would ring in
my ears when Garrpe and I lay alone in hiding on the mountain. The sound of
those waves that echoed in the dark like a muffled drum; the sound of those
waves all night long, as they broke meaninglessly, receded, and then broke
again on the shore. This was the sea that relentlessly washed the dead bodies
of Mokichi and Ichizo, the sea that swallowed them up, the sea that, after
their death, stretched out endlessly with unchanging expressions. And like the
sea God was silent. His silence continued. (p. 68)
What
silence? There are sounds all over. And here we arrive at one of the central
ironies in the novel. Rodrigues is of
the Jesuit orders. The Jesuits are known
for their discernments. The spiritual
exercises of Ignatius of Loyola—the founder of the Society of Jesus—are meant
to be a means of discernment of God in our lives. That a Jesuit cannot discern God is meant to
be an irony. Right in front of him in
the water is the face of Christ and he doesn’t discern it. And, by extension, the sounds of animals and
nature can be seen as God’s voice.
And
here I want to digress. Silence is a Japanese novel written by a
Japanese author. It is unfortunate for
me that I do not know Japanese culture well.
I think one should to fully appreciate this novel. It’s not just the history, which no doubt is
very important in an historical novel, but also the aesthetics, the literary
allusions, the cultural memes, especially inherently the symbols. There is a high degree of allusiveness in
Japanese literature and art, probably due to its very leanness. Less is said, but what is said is amplified
by cultural and literary allusions and symbols.
In addition, the ancient Shinto and imported Buddhist religions
naturally supply imagery and allusions.
Both Shinto and Buddhism have an element of animism in it, meaning that
animals and nature are infused with spirits.
From Shinto, Kami https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kami are
spirits in nature and they can be deities, dead people, or apparently natural
forces. Insects for instance are
typically symbols for the spirits. In
the novel we recurring patterns of ocean and mountains and trees and frequently
we see cicadas, flies, butterflies, and even a cockroach. Endo is placing these right in front of
Rodrigues. These form the supernatural
right in front of Rodrigues, God’s voice calling. There is a single moment where Rodrigues
almost discerns it, when he is in prison.
At night, as he sat in
the dark listening to the sound of the turtle-dove in the trees, he felt the
face of Christ looking intently at him. The clear blue eyes were gentle with
compassion; the features were tranquil; it was a face filled with trust. 'Lord,
you will not cast us away any longer,' he whispered, his eyes fixed upon that
face. And then the answer seemed to come to his ears: 'I will not abandon you.'
Bowing his head he strained his ears for the sound of that voice again; but the
only thing he could hear was the singing of the turtle-dove. The darkness was
thick and black. Yet the priest felt that for one instant his heart had been
purified. (p. 106)
A
dove is the symbol for the Holy Spirit!
That is about as clear an indication that nature and its sounds are
voices from God. And we know that God
has been speaking to Rodrigues all along because he tells us in hindsight at
the end of the novel:
Everything that had taken
place until now had been necessary to bring him [Rodrigues] to this love. 'Even
now I am the last priest in this land. But Our Lord was not silent. (p. 191)
It’s
at the climax of the novel we see God speaking with His loudest voice. Rodrigues in a new cell hears what he thinks
is snoring, and after a while it grates on his nerves. “That’s not snoring,” Ferreira tells
him. “That is the moaning of the
Christians hanging in the pit” (p. 160).
The moaning links back to the “dark moaning” of Mokichi being
crucified. Notice there the other
peasants try to relive his suffering as best they can. At the climax Rodrigues is placed in a
semi-existential circumstance, and here is where I think Existentialism comes
in the novel. He is willing to die for
his “glorious martyrdom,” an act of egotism, but that is not the option placed
before him. What his soul most resists
is apostatizing. What is placed before
him is the suffering voice of the tortured peasants, and he has to apostatize
to relieve them. Years before Ferreira
was faced with the same situation.
'I, too, heard those
voices. I heard the groaning of men hanging in the pit.' And even as Ferreira
finished speaking, the voices like snoring, now high, now low, were carried to
their ears. But now the priest was aware of the truth. It was not snoring. It
was the gasping and groaning of helpless men hanging in the pit. (p. 167)
The
voices of the suffering is the voice of God.
That is what Rodrigues realizes later when he concludes “God had not
been silent.” It was for him to answer
the call. It is one thing to lose one’s
faith, but where does Rodrigues get the notion that God will come out of the
sky and alter the situation? In an
almost parallel historical situation Christians had to face persecution and
hide secretly in the catacombs for almost 250 years under ancient Roman
rule. God doesn’t work that way, and
it’s naïve to think He would. Of all the
martyrs in the world (and we have almost daily today in the Christian world)
God has never stepped out of the sky directly.
I am reminded of the great prayer of St. Teresa of Ávila:
Christ has no body now
but yours. No hands, no feet on earth but yours. Yours are the eyes through
which he looks compassion on this world. Yours are the feet with which he walks
to do good. Yours are the hands through which he blesses all the world. Yours
are the hands, yours are the feet, yours are the eyes, you are his body. Christ
has no body now on earth but yours.
That
is the lesson that Rodrigues had to learn.
He has to listen to God’s call and work His work. The peasants inherently knew this at Mokichi’s
crucifixion. Rodrigues finally learned
it at the pit.
In
one of the novel’s many ironies, we see that the Japanese peasants intuitively
know Christianity better than Rodrigues the priest. When Mokichi and Ichizo are dying on the
cross and they let out their moans, the Christian peasants come out to relieve
their suffering. When Kochijiro
questions God, coward though he may be, it never leads to a loss of faith. Even until the end he is a believer, though
he apostatizes many times. Rodrigues is
the only one who loses faith. When
Rodrigues is captured and placed with several other Christian prisoners, the
woman, though they are all haggard and starving, offers the priest a cucumber
to eat, and she doesn’t pull it from a pocket; she pulls it from her bosom (p. 81),
that is to say she takes it from her heart.
This is an allusion to John 15:5, where Christ says, “I am the vine, you
are the branches.” Cucumbers are fruits
of a vine, and here the woman is the branch stemming from Christ the vine and
the cucumber is the fruit of Christian charity.
What a touching scene. The woman
is doing the work of Christ, the very thing Rodrigues has to learn to do. Since the cucumber is pulled out of her
bosom, Rodrigues must feel her body warmth—Christian love—as he eats it.
