Japanese Jesuit brothers’ exclusion from ordination

Japanese Jesuit brothers’ exclusion from ordination is a conflict over who may exercise religious authority within the Society, not simply a question of how long its Japanese members must study. Brother Joseph’s protest makes the contradiction visible: Japanese brothers preach, debate, and convert, and some speak Latin and Portuguese, yet none has been ordained. The Society’s explanation emphasizes preparation; Father Alvito’s private judgment reveals a deeper distrust of Japanese clergy.

Institutional Position

The brothers occupy a consequential but subordinate place in the Jesuits. Brother Joseph says they are neither professed nor ordained and cannot take the fourth vow available to fully admitted members. He contrasts their position with that of brothers in other religious orders, who may be ordained, and argues that the Jesuits’ arrangement leaves Japanese members serving the institution without access to its priesthood.

The distinction is sharpened by the brothers’ work. Joseph says that he and his fellow brothers do much of the preaching and disputation with Buddhists and other people the Jesuits seek to convert. He also insists that they know prayers, catechisms, and hymns exceptionally well, and that he and Brother Michael speak Latin as well as Portuguese. Their exclusion therefore persists alongside substantial religious service and learning; the question is not whether they participate in the Society’s mission, but whether that participation will count toward authority within it.

Joseph’s Protest

The dispute breaks into the open after Joseph, gray with shame, admits to Father Alvito that he has broken his vow of chastity. He describes this as his first failure, occurring four days earlier, and pleads for forgiveness. Alvito answers by insisting that they are all priests, turning the exchange toward the discipline Joseph has violated. Joseph rejects that description: in his view, the brothers are not real priests because they have not been ordained and cannot take the fourth vow.

Joseph then redirects the accusation into a demand for institutional recognition. He points to Brother Michael, who has studied since he was twelve, is now thirty-six, and, Joseph says, has converted thousands while remaining unordained. Joseph describes his own training as sixteen years and cites the long formation of Brother Matteo and Juliao as well. Their labor, competence, and years of service make the promise of future ordination difficult for him to accept as an adequate answer.

The protest becomes personal as well as institutional. Joseph recalls that he, Michael, and Juliao traveled to Rome and met the Father-General and the Pope, while Alvito had not done so. Alvito turns that experience against him, saying it should have taught him obedience. Joseph counters that the brothers spent eight years traveling and returning, and that ordination had been promised after their learning, prayer, preaching, and waiting. The argument ends not in a resolution but in Joseph’s defiant question about whose time determines when the promise will be fulfilled.

The Society’s Explanation and Alvito’s Position

When Toranaga asks Tsukku-san why there are no ordained priests within the Society, Alvito gives a formal explanation: no Japanese acolyte is yet sufficiently trained. He identifies Latin as essential because Jesuits may be required to travel anywhere in the world, and says that none is ready. Toranaga tests that explanation against Joseph’s claim, asking whether two or three of the apprentice priests speak both Latin and Portuguese and, if so, why they have not been selected. Alvito answers that the Society’s General does not consider them sufficiently prepared and offers Joseph’s lapse as an example.

That rationale is not the whole of Alvito’s view. The narration makes clear that he believes the training argument sincerely, but also that he strongly opposes Japanese-ordained Jesuits. He has argued to the Father-Visitor that Japanese members are unreliable, that their pride and Japaneseness will prevail over their obedience, and that they would not be dependable servants of the Society or the Pope. The contrast between Alvito’s public standard of preparation and his private distrust matters: even if Latin is presented as a universal qualification, his judgment casts Japanese identity itself as a barrier to trust and advancement.

Political Background and Significance

Toranaga connects the present dispute to an earlier journey. He remembers the three young men sailing from Nagasaki in a Black Ship to visit the Spanish king’s court and the court of the Christian High Priest. They returned nine years later after their time abroad had been carefully controlled and monitored. In Toranaga’s judgment, the journey had wasted an extraordinary opportunity: the boys returned as narrow-minded and almost as ill-informed as when they left. Their travel, offered as evidence of unusual service and experience, thus becomes part of a political failure as well as Joseph’s appeal for recognition.

That history also recalls Goroda’s choice. When Toranaga urged him to consider a long-term plan, Goroda rejected the idea of a ten-year strategy and treated the promotion of Christianity chiefly in relation to Buddhist power. His preference for encouraging Christians against Buddhist institutions helps explain why the young men were sent abroad, but it does not establish that their formation was designed to open the priesthood to Japanese members. The episode leaves the exclusion unresolved: Joseph’s question exposes the distance between the work entrusted to Japanese brothers and the authority withheld from them, while the Society’s appeal to training and obedience keeps that distance in place.