“Sin, he reflected, is not what it is usually thought to be; it is not to steal and tell lies. Sin is for one man to walk brutally over the life of another and to be quite oblivious of the wounds he has left behind.” Japanese Painting by an unknown artist of the Christian Martyrs of Nagasaki.The Jesuit priest Francis Xavier born in SPAIN, but representing PORTUGAL arrived in Japan in 1543 to save souls. The Japanese were Buddhist, not “heathens” without a proper religion. The Spanish Francis...

This is a historical novel about the early years of Christianity in Japan. It is a fictionalized account based on real historical characters. It’s set in the late 17th century. Two Portuguese priests get into Japan by ship from Macao at a time when Japanese officials had banned Christianity and were killing priests and torturing suspected Christians to apostatize (give up their faith). They are forced to verbally renounce their faith and to stomp and spit on religious figures. The main character...

Painful and deep book about the religionsI think this book change me and makes me more respectful to other religions even if you religion different than what I believe I should respect you because this what you believe too

"Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent."-- Wittgenstein, Tractus Logico-Philosophicus 7 The novel starts off a bit slow, but once it hit its pace it's almost Dostoevskian in its depths. Endō, a Japanese Catholic, uses the story of two Jesuit priests in search of an apostate Jesuit to explore issues of faith, circumstance, religous colonialism, belief, sin, courage, suffering, martyrdom, etc., especially during periods when God is "silent". He examines Christ and Christianity and t...

This is an intense - rather grim - epistolary novel written mostly from the vantage point of a Roman Catholic priest, a missionary to Japan, early in the 17th century. The events are based on historical facts and the characters on actual people. The succinct introduction by translator William Johnston reveals that the novel begins after the period when daiymo Toyotomi Hideyoshi, who had once allowed the Christian missionaries much privilege, had twenty-six Japanese and European Christians crucif...

A worthwhile read even for a non-Christian like me who, nonetheless, has a deep and abiding intellectual interest in religion and spirituality. But VERY Christian. You have to have some empathy for that side of the story in order for it to be a satisfying read. If you're an atheist, not for you. No no no...

It is easy enough to die for the good and beautiful; the hard thing is to die for the miserable and corrupt. The context of the above line is based on the sacrifice Jesus made for sins of humanity. Now I am going to revise this line to explain the story of Silence.For priests of Japan, it was easy enough to die as good and beautiful; the hard thing was to die as miserable and corrupt.Hailed as one of the best novels of the twentieth century, Endo's Silence creates a fascinating as wel

What a devastatingly brilliant novel about faith, fanaticism, love, suffering, and ultimately, the silence of God. Why does God allow pain to flourish in the world? Why does God stand silent while the world burns? This novel, about Jesuit Portuguese missionaries in Japan in the 17th Century is gorgeously rendered, asks the hardest of hard questions, and is simply one of the greatest novels I've ever read. Very excited to see the upcoming film adaptation by Martin Scorsese.

106th book of 2021.4.5. Brilliant. I bought this in London last weekend visiting my old university housemate and began reading it at once on the Tube journeys back out of central London towards his home. Despite the throng of passengers, sometimes heat, and sometimes those awful screeching sounds, I was completely absorbed when reading on the Tube and often worried about missing our stop. Like other Japanese writers, Endō's prose is sparse and sharp. As a setting, 1640 Japan is utterly compellin...

Had it not been for the reviews I had seen from my friends whose tastes and opinions I respect, I probably would not have read this book. Reason being that I hesitate to read religious and atheist books because of the preaching, a condescending tone that is normally vehicle for the rant that boils down to: we are in the right, they are in the wrong and these couple of hundreds of pages will be dedicated to proving my point. And given the short description that accompanied the story I thought tha...

Silence is a modern classic by Shusaku Endo. On the cover a crucified Jesus hangs from Japanese writing characters. My friend, Carol, recommended this book to me awhile back and I've had it sitting on my bookshelf. Then during Holy Week while I was finishing Fr. Neuhaus’ Death on a Friday Afternoon, he mentions the heroic struggles of the European missionaries who gave their all to travel around the world to share the Gospel message. Sometimes it just seems appropriate to leave off one book and

This was a very disturbing book for me. One that I probably won't forget for awhile.

Endo addresses the question that so many ask - why does God stay silent in the face of human suffering? I was brought up in the church (of Scotland) and had a deep faith as a child but I started to question my faith in my late teens, eg the irrationality of believing in a supernatural being who watches and judges us throughout our lives; the irrationality of praying to or believing in a concept; that other world faiths have gods so there cannot be just one God, and to believe that there is and t...

Set in the 17th century, a pair of Portuguese Catholic priests, Rodrigues and Garrpe, set off to the remote and mysterious island kingdom of Japan to spread Christianity and track down their mentor, Father Ferreira, who is rumoured to have committed apostasy (renounced his faith). But the Japanese government are not friendly to foreigners (this xenophobic attitude actually continues to this day!) and are particularly hostile to this new religion - is Ferreira simply dead and does a similar fate

This book ruined my life. Sorta true. It's the catchiest review intro I'm going to come up with. I'm afraid to review this book and remember why it set me off to feeling hopeless and stupid. Band aid scenario. Pull it off!I don't have the religion or spiritual kinds of faith. I'm dyslexic when it comes to religion, maybe. My mind jumbles the meanings and I just don't speak that language of KNOWING what you can't see and this is good and this is always bad. I don't look at someone who does have i...

This is certainly one of the most difficult books I have ever reviewed, I find myself really unsure in the face of this reading.The plot is truly shocking, it is about the missionary journey of two Portuguese priests who, at the end of 17° century will embark for Japan with the desire to bring the word of Christ among these brothers. Father Rodrigues and Father Garrpe will find different destinies, the latter will still remain to a living faith dying in martyrdom together with other Catholic Jap...

This is a very impressive historical novel set in 17th century Japan. I have not seen the Scorsese film but my edition does contain an introduction by Scorsese so there is a link to it.The book is primarily about the difficulties in maintaining faith in a hostile environment, and specifically the trials undergone by Portuguese Catholic missionaries, whose work in Japan flourished in the 16th century but was brutally suppressed. This is a little difficult to understand for those of us who never h...

2.5*The premise of a story of Catholic missionaries trying to spread Christianity in Japan really caught my interest because I have fond memories of reading Shogun, which featured a similar premise as a side-story. Although, if any of you have read Shogun "fond" may not be the best way to describe the reading experience as there lots - and I do mean LOTS - of gory descriptions of cruelty and violence.Obviously, I must have forgotten about that when I gleefully signed up to the group read of Sile...

Mind-blowing. It tells about the 17th century Japan when the Tokugawa shogunate was in power. During this time, practicing Catholics were called Kakure Kirishitan ("Hidden Christians") because they had to do their religious rituals underground. This was also the time of "fumie" a metal plate bearing the images of Jesus and Mary. The religious police asked the families suspected to be Catholics to trample this fumie to prove that they had not converted from Buddism. It was also during this time w...

This slim book by a famous Japanese author, currently being adapted into a movie by Scorsese starring the dude from Girls, is about a missionary sent to Japan in the 1600s. Christians were terribly persecuted back then; it was called the time of "Kakure Kirishitan", or Hidden Christians. Christians were forced to trample on the image of Jesus (called a fumie) or they were horribly tortured to death.And the thread of torture and death hangs over every page, so this is a tough book to read. It bri...