SILENCE SHUSAKU ENDO BY THE SAME AUTHOR Volcano When I Whistle The Sea and Poison Silence by SHUSAKU ENDO Translated by William 'Johnston Taplinger Rjblishing Company New York Fifth Paperback Printing First published in paperback in 1980 Copyright © 1969 by Monumenta Nipponica Translated from the Japanese Chinmoku This translation first published in 1969 by Monumenta Nipponica, Tokyo Printed in the U.S.A. All rights reserved For information, address inquiries to Taplinger Publishing Company 132 West 22nd Street New York, New York 10011 Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 78-27168 ISBN 0-8008-7186-3 Contents Translator’s Preface vii Prologue 7 Chapter 1 21 Chapter 2 37 Chapter 3 48 Chapter 4 72 Chapter 3 121 Chapter 6 155 Chapter 1 185 Chapter 8 234 Chapter 9 260 Chapter 10 268 Appendix 287 Translator's Preface Shusaku endo has been called the Japanese Graham Greene. If this means that he is a Catholic novelist, that his books are problematic and contro­ versial, that his writing is deeply psychological, that he depicts the anguish of faith and the mercy of God—then it is certainly true. For Mr. Endo has now come to the forefront of the Japanese literary world writing about problems which at one time seemed remote from this country : problems of faith and God, of sin and betrayal, of martyrdom and apostasy. Yet the central problem which has preoccupied Mr. Endo even from his early days is the conflict between East and West, especially in its relationship to Chris­ tianity. Assuredly this is no new problem but one which he has inherited from a long line ofjapanese writers and intellectuals from the time of Meiji; but Mr. Endo is the first Catholic to put it forward with such force and to draw the clear-cut conclusion that Christianity must adapt itself radically if it is to take root in the ‘swamp’ of Japan. His most recent novel, Silence, deals with the troubled period of Japanese history known as ‘the Christian century*—about which a word of introduction may not be out of place. I C h ris tia n ity was brought to Japan by the Basque Francis Xavier, who stepped ashore at Kagoshima in the year 1549 with two Jesuit companions and a Japanese interpreter. Within a few months of his arrival, Xavier had fallen in love with the Japanese whom he called ‘the joy of his heart*. ‘The people whom we have met so far’, he wrote enthusiastically to his companions in Goa, ‘are the best who have as yet been discovered, and it seems to me that we shall never find ... another race to equal the Japanese.’ In spite of linguistic difficulties (‘We are like statues among them,’ he lamented) he brought some hundreds to the Christian faith before departing for China, the conversion of which seemed to him a neces­ sary prelude to that of Japan. Yet Xavier never lost his love of thejapanese ; and, in an age that tended to relegate to some kind of inferno everyone outside Christen­ dom, it is refreshing to find him extolling the Japa­ nese for virtues which Christian Europeans did not possess. The real architect of the Japanese mission, however, was not Xavier but the Italian, Alessandro Valignano, who united Xavier’s enthusiasm to a remarkable fore­ sight and tenacity of purpose. By the time of his first viii visit to Japan in 1579 there was already a flourishing community of some 150,000 Christians, whose sterling qualities and deep faith inspired in Valignano the vision of a totally Christian island in the north of Asia. Obvi­ ously, however, such an island must quickly be purged of all excessive foreign barbarian influence; and Valignano, anxious to entrust the infant Church to a local clergy with all possible speed, set about the founding of seminaries, colleges and a novitiate—promptly despatching to Ma­ cao Francisco Cabral, who strongly opposed the plan of an indigenous Japanese Church. Soon things began to look up: daimyos in Kyushu embraced the Christian faith, bringing with them a great part of their subjects; and a thriving Japanese clergy took shape. Clearly Valignano had been building no castles in the air: his dream was that of a sober realist. It should be noted that the missionary effort was ini­ tiated in the Sengoku Period when Japan, torn by strife among the warring daimyos, had no strong central government. The distressful situation of the country, however, was not without advantages for the mis­ sionaries who, when persecuted in one fief, could quickly shake the dust off their feet and betake themselves else­ where. But unification was close at hand; and Japan was soon to be welded into that solid monolith which was eventually to break out over Asia in 1940. The architects of unity (Nobunaga, Hideyoshi and Ieyasu) were all on intimate terms with the Portuguese Jesuits, motivated partly by desire for trade with the black ships from Ma­ cao, partly (in the case of Nobunaga and Hideyoshi) by a deep dislike of Buddhism, and partly by the fasci­ nation of these cultured foreigners with whom they could converse without fear of betrayal and loss of prestige. Be that as it may, from 1570 until 1614 the missionaries held such a privileged position at the court of the Bakufu that their letters and reports are now the chief source of information for a period of history about which Japanese sources say little. All in all, the optimism of Valignano seemed to have ample justification. Yet Japan can be a land of schizophrenic change; and just what prompted the xenophobic outburst of Hide­ yoshi has never been adequately explained. For quite suddenly, on July 24th 1587, while in his cups, he flew into a violent rage and ordered the missionaries to leave the country. ‘I am resolved’, ran his message, ‘that the padres should not stay on Japanese soil. I therefore order that having settled their affairs within twenty days, they must return to their own country.’1 His anger, how­ ever, quickly subsided; most of the missionaries did not leave the country; and the expulsion decree became a dead letter. So much so that C. R. Boxer can observe that within four short years there was ‘a community of more than 200,000 converts increasing daily, and Hide­ yoshi defying his own prohibition by strolling through I See C. R. Boxer, The Christian Century in Japan, University of California Press, 1931, p. 148.