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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 crucified. Apparently there "stands a monument to commemorate the spot where they died" to this day. Although missionary work continued, there began a savage effort to exterminate Christianity from Japan. The first executions created too many martyrs, so the Japanese officials attempted to force the Christians to apostatize by stamping or pressing their foot on a depiction of Christ or the Virgin, a fumie. If not, they were wrapped tightly and hung upside down in a pit filled with excrement until they signaled their apostasy (with their one free hand) or died.

The novel opens with two priests willing to risk capture and death to keep Christ's flame burning. They are Sebastian Rodrigues and Francisco Garrpe, both Portuguese. Crossing the "leaden sea," they entrust themselves to Kichijiro, a Japanese Christian who wears a "servile grin." Pax Christi. What happens to these men in Japan is beautiful and terrible. The letters of Rodrigues are testament to the powerful writing of Endō and show the priest's anguish as God remains silent in the face of so much suffering. He writes: "I knew well, of course, that the greatest sin against God was despair; but the silence of God was something I could not fathom." Rodrigues is plagued by his inability to understand. His journey to Japan parallels the suffering of Christ, his dealings with Judas, as well as his interviews with Roman officials. It is not a good outcome, but the ending blew me away.

Here's an important question to the faithful: If you could save men and women from slow torture by stepping on the fumie and apostatizing, would you do it? Or would you hold your ground while listening to their agonizing moans? Does God want you to help the suffering of human beings or does God want you to keep your foot off His image? What a terrible situation for a Christian priest. At one point Rodrigues is forced to watch the death of Japanese Christian martyrs as they are wrapped alive in matting and dropped into the sea. He cannot shake the vision of it, and he sees the "sea stretched out endlessly, sadly; and all this time, over the sea, God simply maintained his unrelenting silence.[. . .] 'Eloi, Eloi, lama sabacthani!' The priest had always thought that these words were that man's prayer, not that they issued from terror at the silence of God."

If you grew up Roman Catholic, as I did, this book will strike a strong chord in you. The questions that Rodrigues asks are the questions we all wanted to ask. My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Like Dostoyevsky, Endō shows the existential condition of man as alien in the world, lonely, and horribly in need of comfort. More than anything else, Silence is food for thought.