Rome is not presented through an on-the-ground scene so much as through people who have travelled there and news that reaches Japan from its religious and political networks. In Brother Michael’s memory, it is a city of physical discomfort and institutional disillusionment, yet also a place where he encountered genuine faith. For Alessandro dell’Aqua, Rome is the distant seat of a Jesuit authority suddenly threatened by Spanish influence. These accounts make the city at once a difficult destination, a contested religious center, and a source of consequences felt far beyond its walls.

The City as Remembered

Brother Michael recalls being one of four acolytes sent to Rome by Father-Visitor dell’Aqua. He was thirteen; Uraga-noh-Tadamasa, who travelled with him, was twelve. Michael says that the journey there and back took eight years. His account gives the city no picturesque grandeur: he remembers its food, filth, and ugliness, and compares its inhabitants to the eta, a Japanese outcast class. That comparison conveys how alien and repellent Rome seemed to him, but it also reveals the cultural terms through which he describes a foreign society.

The physical city and the long journey are inseparable in his recollection. Michael says that he blessed the Madonna when he finally returned. The detail points not to an easy pilgrimage but to an arduous experience whose endpoint brought relief. Rome is consequently associated with estrangement as well as with the religious purpose that sent the acolytes there. Michael’s fluent Portuguese and Latin are also linked to this journey: when Blackthorne asks where he learned the languages, Michael explains his Roman mission.

Faith and the Church

Michael’s judgement of Rome extends from the city to the churchmen he encountered there. He condemns many of the Fathers for mistresses, greed, pomp, hypocrisy, poor manners, and the double standard separating the shepherds from their flock. His account refuses to treat ecclesiastical authority as proof of moral integrity. The institution that claims to guide believers is, in his experience, populated by fallible and often objectionable men.

Yet his rejection is not total. Michael says that he found God and truth among some of the Fathers, in cathedrals and cloisters, although such glimpses were rare. He remains committed to Christianity and specifies Catholic Christianity as the path to everlasting life. His remembered Rome therefore holds together institutional disappointment and religious conviction: the failures of churchmen do not, for him, disprove the faith itself.

When Blackthorne asks whether Michael witnessed the Inquisition, prisons, or witch trials, Michael confirms that he saw terrible things. He distinguishes evil done in God’s name from evil that comes from God, and describes earthly life as a vale of tears in preparation for everlasting peace. His response broadens the memory of Rome beyond personal distaste. The city is part of a religious world in which sacred institutions coexist with human cruelty, without making cruelty divine. Michael’s final willingness to acknowledge that even heretics can be good further complicates a simple division between religious belonging and moral worth.

A Contested Center of Authority

Rome also appears in the political crisis surrounding Alessandro dell’Aqua and the Jesuits in Japan. Friar Perez argues that the old arrangement has changed: what had been Portuguese and Jesuit territory, he says, is now subject to a Spanish ascendancy. He claims that the King of Spain has overthrown the Jesuit General in Rome, and predicts a Spanish Bishop of Japan, a Spanish Viceroy, and a Spanish captain of the Black Ship. Perez presents these appointments as expected under a Royal Warrant, citing letters from Manila; they are forecasts and claims in a tense exchange, not outcomes confirmed in the scene.

Dell’Aqua does not dismiss the threat. He has heard troubling reports over the preceding year from delegates at the Court of Philip of Spain in Madrid about the growing influence of the Society’s enemies. After Perez leaves, Dell’Aqua stares ahead while his secretary, Soldi, responds anxiously and offers him brandy. Dell’Aqua touches the Papal Order and considers how much could change if the Pope, the General, or even the King of Spain were dead. The passage leaves those possibilities unresolved; what matters is that the institution’s leaders cannot rely on stable authority or timely communication.

Rome’s Reach Beyond the City

The two accounts give Rome different kinds of reach. In Michael’s recollection, it is a lived place measured by an adolescent’s years abroad, the conditions of the journey, and the mixed evidence of corruption and faith. In Dell’Aqua’s political crisis, it is an institutional center whose leadership and jurisdiction are being contested by powers operating across Europe and Asia. The city itself is distant from the Japanese scenes, but changes attributed to authority in Rome threaten to alter who may direct the Catholic mission and control its offices in Japan.

That reach remains uncertain rather than absolute. Perez speaks with confidence about Spanish appointments, while Dell’Aqua recognizes that reports and warrants may be overtaken by events. His response is practical: prepare for the worst, pray for help, do what can be done, and summon Kiyama. Rome thus matters not simply as a symbol of unified church power, but as the imagined source of decisions whose consequences must be managed locally. Its authority travels through messengers, letters, and contested appointments; its effects arrive before certainty does.