CHINMOKU

   Chinmoku (1966; tr. Silence, 1969), for which author Endo Shusaku received the Tanizaki Jun’ichiro Prize, is an epistolary novel that portrays a young Portuguese Jesuit, Rodrigues, in early 17th-century Japan. The priest voyages to Japan in search of a former mentor who has left the faith and now works as an antiChristian propagandist for the Tokugawa government. His discovery along the way of the blind faith of hidden Christians and his own inner doubts underscore the profound differences between passive and active belief. Rodrigues finds his own faith challenged as God remains silent to the cries of believers who suffer brutal persecution. The work mirrors Christian Endo’s own struggles with his faith in the face of postwar religious discrimination.

   See also CHRISTIAN LITERATURE; KAKURE KIRISHITAN.