Can an act of betrayal be considered beautiful? Maybe if it was done a thousand times, 400 years ago, in an exotic Asian country, and preserved in a trampled bronze image of Jesus Christ.

Hi, my name is Terence, and I’m your host for Reading and Readers, a podcast where I review Christian books for you. Today I review “Silence and Beauty: Hidden Faith Born of Suffering” by Makoto Fujimura. 263 pages, published in April 2016 by Inter-Varsity Press. Available in Amazon Kindle for USD19.94 and in Logos for USD 16.19.

I got mine for USD 9.99 during Logos monthly sale. In fact, I got this book, read the first few pages, and realised that this book is the author’s reflection on another book, the novel “Silence” by Shusaku Endo. So I needed to read Endo first then Fujimura, which I did and you can listen to my spoiler free review on Endo’s book two episodes back.

Now I can read Fujimura’s reflection and analysis on Endo’s book. So there will be spoilers because we need to talk about the ending and what it means.

Fujimura is an American-Japanese artist, a big, big cheese in the arts scene. He was the first foreigner to join the prestigious Tokyo University of Arts nihonga doctoral program.

Let me read this from the book:

The nihonga process, which flows out of a thousand-year refinement, overlaps as a metaphor for the journey of faith that is refining me. Malachite and azurite are strikingly beautiful in the form of rock, but to use them for nihonga one must pulverize them, shatter them into small, prismatic pieces. They are to be layered, sometimes over sixty layers, to create a refractive surface. It is a laborious, slow process—I like to call nihonga “slow art.” The layers take time to dry, and in the act of waiting an image is revealed.

His book, like his art, is a multi-layered book. One layer is his commentary on Shusaku Endo’s novel, “Silence”, another layer is his analysis on the life and theology of Shusaku the author, another layer is the historical development of Japanese art, another layer is the psychology of the Japanese mind, we also have a theology of missions, all these interfused with Fujimura’s growing up years, growing up as a Japanese, growing up as an American, growing up as a Christian.

I have never read any book like this. It’s no wonder that on its publication, it won multiple awards, eight counted, on the Amazon page.

Every great artist must have an insufferable art critic. I will do my best for Fujimura here.

My critique will be harsh. You will think I hate the book. You are wrong. I love the book. I happily recommend the book the anyone. If you have the tiniest interest in art, literature, theology, culture, or just enjoy a good story, you should give this multi-layered book a chance.

Fujimura is honest, reflective and so earnest. He wrestles with giant themes and arrives at conclusions that I appreciate but utterly reject.

If you haven’t read Shusaku Endo’s novel, “Silence”, you should turn away now. The best way to enjoy Makoto Fujimura’s book, “Silence and Beauty” is to finish Endo’s novel first. You have been warned.

I will present my critique in two parts: Apostasy and Ambiguity.

Let’s begin.

In Endo’s novel, set in the 17th century, the priest Rodriguez travels to Japan to find out, once and for all, whether his mentor, the missionary theologian Ferreira, had truly committed apostasy. Halfway through the book, Rodriguez is betrayed by his guide, Kichijiro, and finds himself before the magistrate Inoue. Inoue was the mastermind behind the tortures and apostasies of many foreign missionaries and local Christians. He was responsible for Ferreira’s apostasy. And he has sent Ferreira to make Rodriguez, his former student, apostasise.

Will Rodriguez step on the fumi-e, the bronze image of Christ? Will Rodriguez apostasise?

Let me read Fujimura’s summary of the event.

A fumi-e with a picture of Christ is given to Rodrigues, and as he prepares to trample it he recalls all the times he has meditated on Christ’s face, until it seems to him that the face at his feet tells him to “Trample! It was to be trampled on by men that I was born into this world! It was to share men’s pain that I carried my cross!” As Rodrigues tramples the fumi-e, dawn breaks and the cock crows.

Rodriguez apostasises. He is given a new name, a new wife and home, and a new mission: to write a book against Christianity. The end.

“What??”

If this was Star Wars, in the final scene, Emperor Palpatine invites Luke Skywalker to join the Darkside, and now Luke says, yes. The end.

Was the novelist, Shusaku Endo, an atheist? Is it because he finds the Christian faith a farce that he gets his priestly protagonist to deny Christ?

No, Endo by his own account, and Fujimura’s assessment, is a man of faith. Endo is not saying, “Faith is a farce”, he is saying, “Those who fail can be faithful.”

Here is Fujimura’s analysis:

He [Rogriguez] is the image of Endo’s ideal leader: one who has fallen and lost all his credentials and respect from the institution of the Christian church, but who nevertheless has kept his personal faith and continues to minister without any reward or credit. Behind the veil of secrecy, delicate trails of misinformation and the fog of history, Father Rodrigues not only survives the seventeenth-century persecution, he perseveres through the cruel mind game of Inoue, and dares to minister as an underground priest—not only to Kichijiro but to many.

I don’t have a problem with how Endo and Fujimura portray and sympathise with spiritual weakness. But for the grace of God, I could see myself pitifully step on the fumi-e and in shame forsake my Lord Jesus who saved me. I could see myself curse Christ under torture. And so, I don’t sit in judgment over Rodriguez’s apostasy. I am weak. I am not as strong as others.

But I hope to be.

My critique is how the fumi-e is not described as a symbol of failure and shame but as something beautiful. And because the fumi-e is what people step on to publicly deny Christ, both book almost seem to suggest the act to be praiseworthy.

Fujimura writes:

Its worn-smooth surface may now capture Christ’s true visage more than any paintings of Christ done in the West.

Or consider this, in another passage, I quote Fujimura:

Throughout my journey as an artist, I have heard the whisper of Christ through my work, though I did not identify that voice until I reached the age of twenty-seven. What Father Rodrigues experiences in hearing the voice of Christ at the end of Silence is also, in a much more severe way, a move from the form of religion to the essence. Father Rodrigues hears the voice of Christ through the essence of fumi-e, the invisible substance of things unseen, rather than through a mere appearance of the katachi, the outward shape. Only through the defaced, what one might call abstract, reality of a Savior is Christ’s true visage revealed, and it proves to be a face of forgiveness and liberation. As he steps on the fumi-e, Father Rodrigues steps into an essentiated reality of Japanese aesthetics, beyond silence—and the terrible beauty opens up to him.

I reject the verisimilitude of Endo’s story, that doesn’t sound like the Jesus I know. And so, I reject Fujimura’s interpretation of the story.

The big question is whether Jesus would ever say, “Trample! It was to be trampled on by men that I was born into this world! It was to share men’s pain that I carried my cross!”

There is some truth because Jesus did carry the cross and was crucified for our sins.

But consider Stephen the first martyr. Why did he die? He proclaimed Christ before the Jews. What did he see just before he died?

Acts 7:56

And he said, “Behold, I see the heavens opened, and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God.”

God approves of Stephen. Would God have approved if Stephen, in order to escape the stoning, had recanted his faith?

When Stephen faced his accusers, it’s possible he remembered the words of Jesus Christ. From the Gospel of Matthew 10:28-34, from the mouth of Jesus Christ.

And do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell. Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? And not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your Father. But even the hairs of your head are all numbered. Fear not, therefore; you are of more value than many sparrows. So everyone who acknowledges me before men, I also will acknowledge before my Father who is in heaven, but whoever denies me before men, I also will deny before my Father who is in heaven. “Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I have not come to bring peace, but a sword.

You may argue, “Isn’t the fumi-e the same as the cross? They both symbolise Christ’s willingness to be downtrodden, his forgiveness and redemptive love?”

I say to you, it is categorically different. Let’s imagine a church was so overwhelmed by what Endo and Fujimura has written and has decided to replace the cross with the fumi-e. Fujimura has never in his book suggested this, but I am just using this as a mental exercise to show how different the cross is to the fumi-e.

What is the historical act recorded? In the cross, it is the act of Jesus sacrificing himself for us. In the fumi-e, it is the act of many, believers and non-believers, publicly denying Christ.

The cross is evidence that Christ stood against evil and died for those he loved, he died for the truth. The fumi-e is evidence that the people sided with evil and lived by betraying those who loved them, they lived for a lie.

Christ is the husband to the church; the fumi-e is the marriage bed defiled.

My second critique is on Ambiguity.

I quote Fujimura:

For Endo, as well as for me, fumi-e is a mystery, a question mark embodied. It is different from Western theism that seeks to provide clear answers. Fumi-e turns the normative assumptions of Japanese culture and our Western cultural assumptions quite upside down.

I don’t think only Western theism wants clear answers. Every doctor, teacher, policeman, judge and parents wants a clear answer.

The Sanhedrin asked Jesus, “Are you the Son of God?” John the Baptist asked Jesus, “Are you the one who is to come?”

But in Japan, Fujimura tells us it is different. I quote:

Clarity about matters of faith will make one stand out. Staking out a clear position may result in a Japanese person being ostracized—and to a Japanese that may feel more threatening than even the fate of death. Such is the mud swamp of the Japanese culture of ambiguity.

Now, if that was only a description, we can agree that the Japanese mind is impenetrable to outsiders. But Fujimura offers not just a description but also a prescription.

In the mystery of silence and beauty God speaks through our broken lives facing our Ground Zero. In the layers revealed through the worn-smooth surface of a fumi-e is a true portrait of Christ; Japan’s unique hidden culture offers it as a gift to the world.

A gift to the world? The truth is hidden because it was forced to. Would any of the people confronted with the fumi-e choose hiddenness if they could proclaim their faith in the open? Don’t they wish they could just say openly, “Jesus is Lord”?

Japan’s unique hidden culture is a symptom of being unable to speak freely. For believers living in countries hostile to Christianity, how they wish they did not have to hide.

Do you know what is the opposite for fumi-e? Baptism. Baptism is a public ceremony declaring faith in Christ. That is exactly the opposite of fumi-e.

But there is something that Fujimura describes about hiddenness and mystery that is clearly attractive. While Japan has succeeded in creating beauty out of hiddenness, I suggest that every culture in the world has something to offer to the world because every culture, at its best, expresses what God has already put into humanity.

Instead of tracing Japan’s creative power in hiddenness from its torturous history and shameful necessity, I suggest seeing hiddenness and mystery as an outgrowth of God’s word and work.

Jesus taught using parables. Parables are not clear. Yes, but Jesus eventually explains what the parables mean.

The Bible is full of unexplained mysteries. The Trinity. Jesus is truly God, truly Man. And have you read Revelation?

Instead of setting the conversation as a culture clash between masculinity vs. feminity or East vs. West, or North vs. South or any other tribal conflict, why don’t we search what the Bible says. And where the Bible affirms clarity, we rejoice. And where the Bible affirms hiddenness, we rejoice.

I just find it impossible to affirm hiddenness because it expresses beauty. Pagan idols can be beautiful things but the Christian response includes some sadness at how they have deceived people away from God. We should not linger at the beauty of the idol, no matter how beautiful it may be.

In conclusion, there is much to love over Fujimura’s book. When I reviewed Endo’s novel “Silence’, I commented that I wish we had a book written by someone who has read enough of Endo’s work to explain to us what the author is thinking. In this book, I got this and more! If you love Shusaku’s Endo’s “Silence”, which is a gripping novel, you will appreciate Fujimura’s commentary.

While I fiercely reject Fujimura’s, and Endo’s, view on apostasy and ambiguity, they have both given the reader so much to ponder on. Japanese art, culture and soul. Mission to the lost and postmodern cultures. Biography and theology. The book explains so much. I just disagree with the love given to apostasy as represented in the fumi-e and ambiguity.

This is a Reading and Reader’s review of “Silence and Beauty: Faith Born From Suffering” by Makoto Fujimura. Thank you for listening.