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Silence shusaku endo quotes6/30/2023 ![]() With the waves overcoming them, crucified at sea, praying to God to help, to receive them, they called and received nothing in return. Torture, crucifixion and priests subjected to fumi-e (stamping on religious imagery) was par for the course in those days and the fact that Japan has any living and practicing Christians is testament to those very missionaries from 400 years ago. One look at Martin Scorsese’s epic 2016 adaptation of Silence and viewers are quickly faced with this deafening spiritual stillness. The faith of the Catholic missionaries that visited Japan in the 1600s was, essentially, faced with an agonizing and outstanding silence. Shusaku Endo, Silence 300 likes Like Christ did not die for the good and beautiful. ![]() 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. “I understand your pain and your suffering. Open Preview Silence Quotes Showing 1-30 of 67 Sin, he reflected, is not what it is usually thought to be it is not to steal and tell lies. The answer, or an answer, is found near the denouement of Silence when Jesus speaks to the priest Rodrigues. These words at the close of the chapter speak to Rodrigues's. to seek out and find the lonely and abandoned flock. Or perhaps, Endo posits, they were there all along. In quiet moments throughout the novel, Rodrigues. Atrocities, wars, genocide, racist attacks and hate, we live through it wondering why they are silent and that leaves humanity with a crushing feeling of helplessness. ![]() That the unconditional love of God is just as powerful as when they are silent. The silence that Endo wrote so movingly about was connected to God. It’s a harrowing story but one which stays with the reader forever. ![]() Silence documents the beginning of Christianity in Japan during the 1600s and the ordeal of European missionaries sent to convert the masses (often in secret, in order to avoid detection and torture from the local daimyo or feudal lords). Here we choose four of Endo’s greatest works.Įditorial credit: Picador Publishing Silence (1966) They approached, with deft skill, themes of spirituality, Christianity, faith, guilt, empathy, life as an outsider and a frail and crumbling humanity which reflects profound experience and a poetic vulnerability. Even if he had been silent, my life until this day would have spoken of Him. The Tokyo-native, however, has been brought back into literary and cultural consciousness partly because of the cinematic adaptation of his tour de force Silence by Hollywood great Martin Scorsese in 2016.Įndo, a Roman Catholic and Francophile due to his time studying at the University of Lyon in the 1950s, wrote some of last century’s greatest Japanese novels. Shsaku End, Silence 56 likes Like but our Lord was not silent. Sidelined, perhaps, due to the international acclaim for Japan’s Nobel laureates Yasunari Kawabata and Kenzaburo Oe and the popularity of superstar writers Haruki Murakami and Banana Yoshimoto, Endo sits quietly in the margins. The author of probably the 20th century’s most profoundly spiritual novels, Shusaku Endo is often overlooked in terms of his influence and impact on world literature. ![]()
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