★ 03/14/2016
"My friend Mako Fujimura is one of the most thoughtful, sensitive and eloquent artists of this generation. Like his otherworldly and luminous paintings, his book Silence and Beauty is at once glorious and profound, an exquisite exploration of truth and beauty, silence and suffering. Give yourself and others the immeasurable gift of this gentle, inspiring treasure."
"Shusaku Endo's novel Silence makes us eyewitnesses to the brutality of Japan's seveneenth-century persecution that forced Christians to choose between silence and death. In his reflection Silence and Beauty, Makoto Fujimura masterfully appropriates that painful history for the challenges Christians face in this time between times—whether it be death in Syria and Iraq or increasing hostility in the West. Fujimura asks us to face our own silences and emerge understanding both the suffering and the beauty that silence calls forth."
"Mako Fujimura offers us a moving and illuminating series of reflections on one of the most powerful novels ever written. He helps us to understand how Endo's tale of martyrdom lives in the tensions between East and West, faith and doubt, trust and betrayal. Above all, Fujimura enables us to sense that grace can live—and inspire new life—even in the midst of suffering."
"When I read Shusaku Endo's Silence for the first time, I vowed that I would refuse to ever read anything written about it. I wanted to preserve the profound sense of mystery and beauty that the novel evoked in me. I am so happy now that I broke that vow by reading this wonderful book by Makoto Fujimura. Mako not only enhances and deepens the sense of mystery, but—as he has done so consistently in his visual works of art—he adds significantly to the beauty!"
"Silence and Beauty is an astounding work, a gift and challenge to all of us as well as a deeply felt love letter to Japan."
"Silence and Beauty is a classic work of art. The book is a call to the world for reconciliation, understanding, and a depth of intimacy that can heal us and return us to each other and to a humble seeking of God in both the silence and beauty that surround us daily and attend us in the wake of our continual Ground Zeros."
"Fumi-e, for Fujimura, encapsulate the soul and struggle of modern Japan. The author paints a vivid portrait of Japanese cultural identity, especially Japanese concepts of beauty exemplified by hiddenness and silence. The story does not end there, though, for, as the author points out, what was revealed to him in Endo's work—namely, that God is in the silence."
"Makoto Fujimura's Silence and Beauty (IVP, 2016) artfully probes Shusaku Endo's famous novel Silence, and in doing so shows how God's truth bores through silence and darkness."
"This year marks both the 50th birthday of Shusaku Endo's novel Silence and release of Martin Scorsese's film about this story of martyrs. Artist Makoto Fujimura used this to pen one of the most elegant nonfiction books in recent memory. We enter the world of Silence, and cannot help but be transformed by the beauty and suffering of those who have gone before."
"Fujimura—a renowned visual artist and writer whose paintings hang in top world museums—has illuminated the Gospels to commemorate the 400th anniversary of the King James Bible. He features the ideal of beauty—particularly the beauty born of sacrifice— believing that art 'can heal as well as confound.' With these reflections, he explores the overlap of sacrifice and redemption, those ways faith lives in contemporary circumstances of pain and suffering. His pensive writing invites us to interrogate our own silences in the face of truth. Fujimura's journey is woven with Endo's, who demonstrates 'how powerfully God speaks through silence,' how 'in the mystery of silence and beauty,' God is revealed to 'speak through our broken lives.'"
"In the foreword to Silence and Beauty, Philip Yancey writes, 'Only Mako Fujimura could have written this book.' Truly, the book seems written by a Providence that moved Fujimura through Japan and America at significant moments in history and gifted him with particular talents and insight that allowed him to piece together the tragedy of Nagasaki and 9/11 with the fictional apostasy of Endo's Father Rodrigues and the persecution of a 16th-century tea master. 'My writing seems refractive in nature,' Fujimura writes at the start of his book, preparing us for the book's layers of narrative, research, and reflection that remind us of his nihonga paintings. Because of its entangling of multiple pieces—literary and art criticism, sociological and psychological explorations of Japanese culture, and personal narrative—Fujimura's book is best read both forwards and backwards. It should not be read once and put back on the shelf; rather, it should be drunk like a tonic, like the antidote or innoculative drug that he claims Endo's Silence itself is for our culture."
"Makoto Fujimura is a remarkable artist and writer, and his engagement with the writings of the great Shusaku Endo—and Silence in particular—is deep and impassioned, as you will discover on every page of this book. By way of response to a great artist, Fujimura has created a quietly eloquent meditation on art and faith, and where they converge."
"It is the details that make the text an experience of beauty. They will also make Endo's Silence all the more wondrous."
"Mako proposes that Japan is a Christ-hidden culture, haunted by a past that has left indelible historical marks, like the blackened footprints on the wooden frame of a fumi-e. Apostates may step on the fumi-e in public, but what goes on internally? Not just apostates, but all of us: How do we deal with the dissonance of betraying the One who died for us? Our only hope is the forgiving gaze of the betrayed Savior, the still point of Endo's novel. Martin Scorsese, director of movies such as The Wolf of Wall Street and The Last Temptation of Christ, has in his old age chosen this picture of Christ as his subject. When Mako Fujimura spoke on 'Silence and Beauty' at Hiroshima City University, a professor who stands as one of Japan's greatest painters commented, 'Fumi-e is the best portrait of Christ I've ever seen.'"
Adapted from the foreword by Philip Yancey
"Only Mako Fujimura could have written this book. Bicultural in upbringing and sensibility, he understands the nuances of Japan, and his knowledge of the language sheds light on Endo's original source material. . . . Informed by both East and West, Mako guides the reader on excursions into Japanese art, samurai rituals, the tea ceremony and Asian theology, even while relying on Western mentors such as Martin Luther King Jr., Nelson Mandela, J. S. Bach, Vincent van Gogh and J. R. R. Tolkien. Much like Shusaku Endo, Mako feels caught between two worlds, conversant with both though not fully at home in either.In Silence and Beauty, Mako is not so much presenting a thesis as he is following the strands of Endo's writing that intimately engage him. From his experience as an academic, an artist, and especially as a Japanese-American Christian, Mako identifies with the sense of an "alien" identity that plagued Shusaku Endo all his life. . . . Beauty and death, honor and shame, pain and stoicism, ritualism and disbelief—Mako has lived with these ambiguous Japanese pairings and he helps Endo's readers untangle them."
From the foreword by Philip Yancey
"Only Mako Fujimura could have written this book. It sheds light on a wealth of topics—a classic novel, Japanese culture, Martin Scorsese's filmmaking, the fine arts, theology, the enigmas of East and West—and leaves the reader with a startlingly new encounter with Christ."
"Fujimura's Silence and Beauty is a truly remarkable spiritual, theological and intellectual autobiography for our time. It will be of interest to a broad readership, not least of all those who still hear the disorienting and potentially transformational call to intercultural mission in the way of Jesus. Fujimura's musings on the Christ-hidden culture of Japan, his own story and contemporary culture are revelatory, and his layering of the Ground Zero theme functions like a Rembrandt primer out of which a sublime beauty and grace emerges."
"How can we live in a world where we encounter suffering every day? Where is the voice of God when we doubt his goodness? It takes a very specific perspective to write beautiful prose about these questions, but in this book, Mako does just that—exploring the themes raised by Endo's novel and their continuing resonance across our difficult, anxious times. Silence and Beauty is a gift for us as we try to be the fragrance of Christ in a suffering world."
"Fujimura's book is a brilliant blend of investigation and reflection. The reader learns about the compelling history of Christianity in Japan and its strangely enduring influence there, while at the same time being led into a profound meditation on the relation of Christian faith to contemporary culture. A truly impressive achievement."
