Chokichi

Chokichi, a one-eyed Christian peasant also known by the baptismal name Juan, is a minor but pivotal figure in Shusaku Endo's Silence. His sudden execution in the prison courtyard, carried out with bureaucratic indifference, shatters Sebastian Rodrigues' idealized vision of martyrdom and forces the priest to confront the unbearable silence of God in the face of innocent suffering.

Identity and Background

Chokichi is one of the Christian prisoners Rodrigues meets after his own capture. He is first identified by the woman Monica, who tells the priest that the one-eyed man's name is Mozaemon and his Christian name is Juan. When Rodrigues asks which father baptized him, Monica replies that it was not a father but a brother: Brother Ishida, who was later killed at Unzen. Chokichi is a poor peasant, and like the other Christians Rodrigues encounters, he lives a life of crushing poverty and oppression. When the priest first sees him among the prisoners, Chokichi is described as having a decaying eye and a face that, along with the others, is "like a bunch of ignorant beasts." He shows his decaying yellow teeth and laughs with a touch of nostalgia when he recognizes Rodrigues.

Life in the Prison

After Rodrigues is moved to a prison near Nagasaki, he finds Chokichi and the other Christians there. The priest is permitted to visit them twice daily, hearing their confessions and reciting prayers with them. Chokichi is among those who dig holes in the courtyard under the blazing sun, a task the guards claim is for a privy. When one of the Christians, Hisagoro, collapses from sunstroke and later dies, Chokichi helps carry him back to the prison. The Christians protest the guards' order to burn the body, insisting on burial in the earth according to Christian tradition, and the next day the man is buried in the copse behind the prison.

The Fumie Test and Execution

The crisis comes when the officials bring out the fumie. Four Christians—Chokichi, Monica, and two others—are herded into the courtyard and ordered to trample. The officials insist it is only a formality, that putting a foot on the image will not hurt their convictions. But the four sit vacantly, refusing to move. When the guards push Chokichi, he falls forward and crouches to the ground but makes no effort to step on the plaque. The officials, seemingly expecting this, withdraw to the guards' hut, leaving the Christians in the sun. Then one of the officials calls out that all may return to prison except the one-eyed man, Chokichi. Moments later, Rodrigues hears a sharp sound and a thud. Looking through the bars, he sees the official sheathing his sword: the execution is over, and Chokichi's dead body lies prostrate on the ground. A guard grabs the body by the feet and drags it slowly toward the hole the Christians had dug, leaving a trail of black blood across the courtyard.

Consequences and Thematic Significance

Chokichi's execution is a watershed moment for Rodrigues. The priest had steeled himself for his own torture and death, but the casual, almost administrative killing of the one-eyed man shatters his composure. What he cannot bear is not the violence itself but the world's utter indifference to it: the cicada continues to sing, the flies buzz around his face, and the courtyard falls back into stillness as if nothing has happened. "A man had died; yet there was no change," he thinks. This silence of the world—and of God—becomes unbearable. Rodrigues cries out in his heart, "Why are you silent? Here this one-eyed man has died—and for you." The idealized martyrdom he had imagined, with darkness covering the earth and the temple veil rent in two, is replaced by the wretched reality of a peasant killed in the noonday sun, his body dragged away like garbage. Chokichi's death, along with the earlier martyrdoms of Mokichi and Ichizo, erodes Rodrigues' faith in a God who intervenes and prepares the psychological ground for his eventual apostasy. The one-eyed man becomes a silent accusation, a proof that the priest's presence in Japan has brought only suffering to those who sheltered him.