Silence is heavy

I started reading Silence by Shūsaku Endō with a weird mix of reluctance and curiosity.  I’m not usually drawn to literature with strong Christian themes, and this book is all about  Christian missionaries to Japan in the 1600s, during the period that Japan was actively suppressing the teaching and spread of Christianity by deporting, torturing, and killing missionaries and converts. Just as I am horrified by such physical violence and cruelty, I have often felt that  missionary work, i.e., conversion, is a culturally violent practice in itself. It seemed like a lose-lose thesis for me, and I was ambivalent about reading it. But my family is from Kyushu, where the book is set, so I was curious as well.

At one point, there were thousands of Christian converts in Japan. The preface explained that the priests found the Japanese among the most receptive people to conversion that they’d ever encountered. Even powerful Japanese lords converted, and it seemed that Christianity had an unstoppable foothold until the Tokugawa shoguns centralized power. Fearing that the missionaries’ interest in Japan was more political than religious, the shogun issued a “no Christianity” edict and expelled all foreigners, slaughtered thousands of Japanese Christians, and captured/tortured/killed any priests found hiding or sneaking into the country.