Silence Prologue & Chapter 1 Summary & Analysis

Summary: Prologue

The narrator describes how Christóvão Ferreira, a much-revered Jesuit priest, has apostatized. His fellow priests at the Society of Jesus in Portugal and his superiors at the Church of Rome are shocked since Ferreira, who served in Japan as a missionary for over thirty-three years, enjoyed a high position and was a source of inspiration for his colleagues and students. The narrator describes how, for much of the sixteenth century, Jesuit missionaries flourished in Japan, but when Hideyoshi came into power in 1587, Christians were persecuted. Ferreira evaded capture and continued practicing underground, writing letters back home detailing the horrible tortures he witnessed. His stubborn defiance makes it even harder for his fellow priests to believe he turned his back on his faith. Three of Father Ferreira’s students—Francisco Garrpe, Juan de Santa Maria, and Sebastian Rodrigues—want to find out what truly happened with Ferreira. They head to the port city of Macao, where they meet with Valignano, a local rector. Valignano makes it clear that he refuses to send any more missionaries to Japan because it’s too dangerous. Furthermore, the last he heard on Ferreira was that the man was tortured in the pit and cross-examined by Japan’s new magistrate, Inoue. Nothing more is known about Ferreira. The year is now 1637.

Summary: Chapter 1

In a letter, Rodrigues describes how they have landed in Macao, a port city in China, and Juan de Santa Maria has fallen ill and can’t continue. Father Valignano tells them he won’t allow them to go to Japan. Valignano describes how the Japanese government has grown hostile to them ever since the recent Shimabara rebellion led by Catholic peasants. Japan has cut all trade ties with the Portuguese and prohibited their ships. Rodrigues persists, saying he needs to find out what happened with Ferreira. Valignano tells him that last they heard, Ferreira was tortured by Inoue, who Valignano says has the reputation of being as “cunning as a serpent.” Valignano says that, ironically, Inoue is a former Catholic and was even baptized.

Valignano, moved by Rodrigues’s pleas, caves and allows them to pass. The priests arrange a ship and hire a Japanese man they find wandering, a fisherman named Kichijiro. Rodrigues is disgusted by Kichijiro, who is a drunk. When they ask Kichijiro whether he is a Christian, Kichijiro remains quiet but with an anguished look on his face. After some prying, they learn that Kichijiro witnessed Christians being subjected to the notorious water punishment where Christians are hung by wooden stake at the ocean’s edge and left to die. During their first days on board the ship, Rodrigues observes how Kichijiro pretends to work when he’s being watched and then slacks off. When he is beaten for his disobedience, Kichijiro begs for mercy, which sickens Rodrigues, who finds this cowardly. Rodrigues and Garrpe wonder if Kichijiro can be trusted. At night, Rodrigues thinks about the face of Jesus, whom he calls his “beloved.”

Analysis: Prologue & Chapter 1

In the opening chapters of the novel, some of the novel’s major themes are laid out—apostasy, faith, and the political and social issues surrounding European Christian missionary work in Eastern countries during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The clash between Western and Eastern cultures has long been in place. The incompatibility between Western and Eastern cultures, specifically in the form of religions such as Christianity and Buddhism, will form much of the religious dialogue in the novel. During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, when this novel is set, European nations were sending a large number of Catholic missionaries to Japan. At first, Japan allowed these missionary endeavors to take place, not doing much to stem the flow of them into their country. Jesuit colleges sprung up in large numbers, and members of Japanese society from both the upper and lower classes started to attend them. But by the late seventeenth century, Japan’s new magistrates began to see the missionaries’ work there as an interference with their political structures and started a decades-long campaign to drive them out. The prologue sets up this problem by describing how brutal these campaigns were and the fallout for the people involved on both sides.

The prologue is told in the third person with a historical tone, which sets up the novel as a work of historical fiction. From the prologue, readers learn the background situation of the novel, which also forms the exposition of the novel: A well-respected, high-ranking member of a Portuguese Jesuit college has apostatized, and a group of his fellow priests want to follow him to find out what happened, even though the hostile political situation in Japan makes their quest risky. Readers can infer two major ideas with the establishment of these facts: One, the Jesuit Catholic Church finds the act of renouncing one’s faith a highly condemnable act; something almost unimaginable, and two, the Church views this act as a sign of weak faith. Father Ferreira, because of his high rank and exemplary behavior, is someone who is viewed by his colleagues to never be capable of such a collapse in faith. It is for this reason they consider it to be a rumor. The idea that Ferreira apostatized is so inconceivable that these priests are willing to risk their lives to go to Japan to find out what happened. This suggests that the stakes are high for the reputation of the Church and, by extension, its members; priests will risk their lives to save the reputation of the Church.

In Chapter 1, the narration shifts to the first person, in the form of a letter written by Sebastian Rodrigues, one of the Portuguese Jesuit priests who want to go to Japan to learn what happened to Ferreira. Rodrigues is the protagonist of the novel. It becomes clear in this first letter that the matter of Father Ferreira’s apostasy is more than a matter of saving the Church’s reputation or even a simple matter of curiosity for Rodrigues—it’s a matter of saving his belief in his faith itself. Father Ferreira was Rodrigues’s teacher. Though it’s not laid out yet, it’s suggested that if the rumors are true and Father Ferreira did apostatize, this would create a huge issue in Rodrigues’s faith. Back in the prologue, readers learned that Rodrigues was from a well-known mining town in Portugal, entered the seminary at seventeen, and was a diligent student. In his letter in Chapter 1, readers learn that Rodrigues loves Christ so much that he looks upon Christ’s face as if it were his “beloved’s,” suggesting that Rodrigues has a romanticized, idealistic view of the Church. Through these instances and descriptions, it becomes clear that Rodrigues is deeply invested in his idealistic notions and wants to defend them, which sets him up to be a heroic figure in the novel. The quest he is on, at least at the beginning of the novel, is to save the Church.

Next section Chapters 2 & 3