Silence( book)

S

I read the book called Silence written by Endo Shusaku.

I have read the book long time ago when I was  a college student in Japan. This novel is written by Japanese who was Christian and I thought I remembered about the book most,but also had some unsure part of the plot,and more than anything, I was curious that how it is translated into English.

The book is about faith and martyrdom,torture and life in Japan during time period,when idea of Christianity was introduced to country of Japan for the very first time.

In our text book taught history in Japan,western people arrived part of Japan for commercial trade,and that is how Japanese obtained guns(firearms) and idea of Christianity.  The book is about when western knowledge was introduced for the first time although as a country part of Asia, there was long history of communication between neighborhood countries.

And Japanese text book teaching of history state that the   Christianity was strictly banned and missionaries, and Christians were persecuted by feudal rulers of the time in those days.  The reason they banned Christianity was because it  teaches the existence of power   other than governmental authority, it was viewed as threat affecting people's  loyalty to the   rulers of where  people lived.     the teaching was considered to be very harmful and people who believed Christianity received surveillance and severe tortures until they abandon their religion. As a result of the principle, many newly taught Christians were hunted down, tortured and rooted out. This book asks questions about tortures,and what is real  martyrdom and role of  religions.

It describes two kind of martyrdom. One is holding religious belief and end up  losing  life as receiving tortures being unable to be apostate,losing life, killed for the religious belief. Another kind is to keep asking questions and as going through similar experience in order to hold onto the faith as it receives tortures,mentally and physically,and at the end decide to apostate just to save life and people,and also experiences spiritual martyrdom as result.

In this story, it questions what is faith, and what is meaning of mercy,and questions who get most benefit having religions.

In this story, the part of regions of Japan were described as poor and no life energy in people,being oppressed physically and emotionally. The priest first saw fast growing of Christianity because of it,but the fact was for the people who live with nothing,live for nothing,anything could accepted as better,and to live dream of the life, death eventually became  life's salvation,and it just keep creating idealize view of Christianity God and deceptive view of the religion and the death and martyrdom just became glorified as losing more and more lives as result.

When the Priest finally saw the big picture from inside and out,they saw no joy, they saw consequences of their teaching. The priests who teaches Christianity started seeing the country as bottomless swamp where no hope of Christianity to grow. More they plant the seeds, the were killed,rooted out by tortures.

Irony is that both people who practice torture and receive the torture argues the meaning of mercy. when religious belief became pain of life, both are in similar position and argue what is being generous,what is meaning of helping each other,meaning of  abandoning  religious belief just to to live happily ever after.

There is two kind of people in the world, those with strong in faith and understanding and those who are weak in faith and understanding. When everybody is following their heart, the God they both thought believing remained silence. This story addressees what faith really mean,and what is meaning of religion, what is real “help” for life means.

Somewhere in the book it state that its easy to die for good and beautiful,the hardest things is to die for the miserable and corrupted. However,when it justified martyrdom,it also show some contradiction of life and love here on earth.

I just thought hat sometime, it is good thing just let go things away from perfection or the ideal. I am not perfect. I cry,we all cry,make mistake, fear death,and fear life as much. People who believe power in wrong way are to be scared,but anyone could impose such torture to self, torture to anyone,not knowingly,sometimes.

There is no right or wrong answer.

Belief is always strong when it is believed something to be good. And probably the opposite is just as same. We all are holding the power whether called love or destruction.

I hope many people lean about Japan and this Author. I herd that this novel is going to be released as movie in few years by martin Scorsese.

I am sure that Japan's history is interesting to many. I saw news about Dr. Donald Keen, American famous scholar is decided to move to Japan recently. I think I saw him giving speech at my College once. My English was so bad that I didn't understand much.

I am not good at English,but this is not my primary language..

some break please??
I hope many people enjoy this book first handed away from my opinion.


沈黙、遠藤周作

http://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E6%B2%88%E9%BB%99_%28%E9%81%A0%E8%97%A4%E5%91%A8%E4%BD%9C%29

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silence_%28novel%29