Brother Joseph’s apostasy and excommunication turn a Jesuit disciplinary hearing into a collision between religious obedience and Japanese samurai identity. Joseph admits to breaking his vows, but the order’s attempt to punish him exposes a deeper grievance: he and the other Japanese brothers have served the Jesuits without being ordained. When Father Martin Alvito orders him scourged, Joseph refuses, renounces Christianity, and is excommunicated. His religious rupture then becomes a matter for Toranaga and Lord Harima, his Christian uncle and the head of his family.

Background and Setting

The confrontation occurs in Yokosé while Alvito is preparing for a meeting with Toranaga. The inn is a poor, crowded lodging, its rooms occupied largely by samurai; from his room Alvito can hear Kiku singing across the river. He is already under pressure to prepare for Toranaga, but Joseph’s confession demands his attention first. The immediate setting thus brings church discipline into the same political landscape in which Toranaga is negotiating with powerful lords.

Alvito begins from the view that Joseph has committed a mortal sin and broken his Holy Oath. Joseph says he has confessed, but Alvito insists that confession does not settle the matter. He assembles the other Brothers and asks whether they have also had sex with a woman. Their denials establish the formal question before the group: whether Joseph’s conduct is an isolated breach of vows. Joseph then reveals that it was not his first encounter. He had been with another woman four nights earlier in Mishima.

The confession raises a further issue of sacramental discipline. Joseph had received the Eucharist after committing what he understood to be a mortal sin, without confessing it. Alvito treats this as an aggravation of the offense, not simply a private lapse in chastity. Joseph, however, appeals to human weakness and asks why a priest should not forgive a sinner. Alvito’s answer—that they are all priests—only sharpens the divide between the authority he claims and the status Joseph disputes.

The Hearing and the Dispute over Ordination

Joseph argues that the Japanese Brothers are not fully recognized within the Society. They are not professed or ordained, and cannot take the fourth vow available to Alvito. He points to Brother Michael, who has studied since he was twelve, is thirty-six, and has converted thousands, yet remains unordained. Joseph’s protest therefore widens the hearing beyond his sexual conduct: he questions why men who have devoted years to learning, prayer, and preaching are still denied priestly ordination.

Alvito orders Joseph to stop questioning the policy and says the Brothers will be ordained in God’s time. Joseph challenges the promise by asking whose time that means. The exchange makes the institution’s delay part of the immediate conflict. Alvito appeals to the Brothers’ vows of chastity, poverty, and obedience, while Joseph objects that years of service have not brought the promised recognition. The hearing is both a judgment on Joseph and a moment when an unresolved grievance within the Society becomes audible to the assembled Brothers.

Alvito pronounces a severe initial penance: Joseph is barred from speaking, limited to rice and water for thirty days, required to spend each night for thirty nights praying on his knees, and ordered to receive thirty lashes. Joseph accepts the restrictions and expresses remorse, but draws a line at the whipping. He says the pain itself does not frighten him; what he refuses is to be lashed like a common criminal. He grounds that refusal in his samurai standing and his membership in Lord Harima’s family. The punishment intended to enforce religious discipline instead brings his other allegiance to the surface.

Renunciation and Excommunication

As the Brothers move to seize and strip Joseph, he produces a knife and backs against the wall. Brother Michael approaches calmly and asks him to hand it over; Alvito orders Michael to stop, and he obeys. The pause leaves the conflict unresolved: Joseph has not accepted the punishment, and the assembled men cannot simply compel him without risking violence.

Alvito then declares Joseph excommunicated. Joseph responds by renouncing the Christian God, identifying himself as Japanese and Shinto, and asserting that his soul is his own. He also rejects the implication that Japan is barbarous, contrasting Japanese people, including peasants, with the outsiders he calls barbarians. His declaration is not merely a refusal of one penalty: it makes his break with the faith explicit at the very moment the Society expels him from its community.

Alvito turns away from the knife and leads the other Brothers in prayer, describing Satan as present among them. Most of the Brothers also turn away, some sadly and others in shock. Michael alone remains facing Joseph. When Joseph tears off his rosary and cross and prepares to throw them away, Michael offers to take them. The gesture does not reverse the excommunication, but it preserves a personal connection amid the formal severance: Michael asks for the religious objects as a simple gift rather than trying again to overpower Joseph.

Toranaga’s Intervention and the Aftermath

The dispute does not remain within the Jesuit community. Toranaga orders a guard to find the renegade Christian and bring him to him at noon the following day. Alvito asks Toranaga to show mercy, while recognizing that his appeal is unlikely to change a decision Toranaga has already made. He also reflects on the Society’s lack of a secular arm empowered to arrest and punish apostates, a power he believes would allow the Jesuits to enforce discipline more effectively. In Japan, Joseph’s case instead passes into the hands of the ruling authorities.

Later, Joseph is escorted toward Mishima under orders from Toranaga and is to be handed over to Lord Hiro-matsu. His swords have hilts but no blades: Toranaga has chosen a compromise because Joseph was placed in the Jesuit order as a child, leaving uncertainty about whether he should possess full swords, even though he is entitled to wear them as a samurai. The detail makes his divided status visible in an object: the outward form of the swords remains, but their blades are absent.

Toranaga’s instructions also place Joseph under Lord Harima’s authority. Yoshinaka tells Alvito that Joseph must be kept apart from everyone, especially Christians, until Lord Harima gives judgment. Lord Harima is both Joseph’s uncle and the head of his family, and had originally ordered him into Jesuit custody. Alvito tries once more to speak privately with Joseph and urge him to withdraw his renunciation, but Joseph walks away without listening. The episode therefore ends without a return to the Church or a reported judgment from Lord Harima. Its immediate consequence is a transfer of authority: a religious expulsion becomes a question of family and political jurisdiction, while Joseph’s claim to be samurai remains central to how Toranaga handles him.