Paradise

In Shusaku Endo's Silence, Paradise is the transcendent destination that gives meaning to the suffering of the Japanese Christians and the missionaries who come to serve them. It is the 'temple of Paradise' invoked in the hymn sung by the dying Mokichi, a melody filled with dark sadness that sustains peasants for whom life in this world is too painful. Yet the novel relentlessly interrogates this hope, contrasting the glorious martyrdom of legend with the wretched, miserable reality of death by water torture, and ultimately questioning whether Paradise can be reconciled with a God who remains silent while his followers are destroyed.

The Hymn and the Hope of the Weak

The most persistent expression of Paradise in the novel is the hymn 'We're on our way to the temple of Paradise,' which the Christians of Tomogi sing as they are dragged to execution. Mokichi, bound to a stake in the sea, gasps out this song to strengthen his own resolution and to signal to the watching villagers that his life has not yet ebbed away. The melody is filled with a dark sadness, reflecting the reality that for these Japanese peasants, who work like horses and cattle and die like them, only the promise of Paradise allows them to endure their earthly existence. The song becomes a lifeline, a way of asserting faith in the face of a sea that kills them and a God who seems indifferent. Later, as Rodrigues is paraded through Nagasaki, his only solace and support is the thought of that other man who also tasted fear and trembling, and the joy that he is united with Mokichi and Ichizo, who have passed on to the far temple of Paradise.

The Promise of a Different World

For the illiterate peasants, Paradise is not a theological abstraction but a concrete escape from their unbearable lives. Monica, the woman who gives Rodrigues a cucumber, explains that Brother Ishida taught them that in Heaven they will find everlasting peace and happiness, where there will be no taxes, no hunger, no illness, and no hard labor. Rodrigues feels like shouting that Heaven is not the sort of place she thinks it is, but he restrains himself, recognizing that these peasants have learned their catechism like children and dream of a Heaven without bitter taxation and oppression. He cannot bring himself to put a cruel end to their happy dream, and instead confirms that in Paradise nothing can be stolen from them and they can be deprived of nothing. This vision of Paradise as a place of rest from feudal cruelty is the core of their faith, a faith that sustains them through torture and death.

The Silence of God and the Collapse of the Promise

The central crisis of the novel is the apparent contradiction between the promise of Paradise and the silence of God. Rodrigues, watching Mokichi and Ichizo die, cannot bear the monotonous sound of the dark sea gnawing at the shore, which he interprets as the silence of God. He feels that while men raise their voices in anguish, God remains with folded arms, silent. This silence becomes unbearable when he hears the groaning of Christians hanging in the pit, and Ferreira tells him that he prayed with all his strength but God did nothing. The promise of eternal joy in return for earthly suffering is dismissed by Ferreira as a beautiful disguise for weakness. Rodrigues is forced to confront the possibility that the God who promises Paradise is either indifferent or powerless, and that the faith of the martyrs may be a delusion.

The Transformation of the Concept

Inoue, the Lord of Chikugo, argues that the Christianity brought to Japan has changed its form and become a strange thing, like a butterfly caught in a spider's web that retains only the external form while the blood and flesh are gone. He claims that the God whom the peasants of Goto and Ikitsuki secretly serve has gradually changed so as to be no longer like the Christian God at all. This echoes Ferreira's earlier assertion that the Japanese twisted and changed the Christian God, creating something different. The novel suggests that the concept of Paradise itself may have been transformed in the Japanese 'swamp,' becoming a localized hope that is both a source of immense courage and a target for the most devastating doubt. Ultimately, Rodrigues' own apostasy is framed not as a rejection of Christ, but as a painful act of love performed for the suffering peasants, a love that redefines his relationship with the divine and perhaps points toward a different kind of Paradise, one found not in escape from suffering but in solidarity with it.