Lisbon

Lisbon, the capital of Portugal, serves as the point of departure for the novel's central missionary journey and the spiritual home of Sebastian Rodrigues, whose memories of the city shape his identity and faith throughout his ordeal in Japan. From the River Tagus, the Indian fleet sailed on March 25, 1638, carrying Rodrigues, Francisco Garrpe, and Juan de Santa Marta, who had received a blessing from the Bishop before boarding the commander's ship. The city's monastery of Saint Xavier's, where the three priests had studied under Christovao Ferreira, represents the European Christian tradition that they carry with them into the hostile environment of Japan. Lisbon is thus the symbolic origin of the missionary enterprise and the standard against which the Japanese 'swamp' is measured.

Departure and the Missionary Ideal

The departure from Lisbon is described with vivid sensory detail: as the ship reached the mouth of the brown river and plunged into the blue noonday sea, the three missionaries leaned against the side, watching the promontory and the mountain gleaming like gold, with the red walls of farmhouses and the church tower whose tolling bell bade farewell to the departing ships. This scene encapsulates the romantic, heroic vision of missionary work that the young priests hold. In his letters, Rodrigues recalls the life they led in the monastery of Saint Xavier's at Lisbon, where they had bottles of wine and pieces of meat, a stark contrast to the fried potatoes and boiled vegetables they receive from the peasants of Tomogi. The memory of Lisbon sustains him during the early, hopeful days of his mission, when he feels that all is well and that God will protect them.

The Face of Christ and the Lisbon Seminary

Rodrigues's spiritual formation in Lisbon is intimately tied to his vision of Christ's face. As a seminarian, he first saw the picture preserved in Borgo San Sepulchro, which depicts Christ with one foot on the sepulchre, holding a crucifix, his face filled with vigour and strength. This image becomes his ideal, a face he loves 'just like a man fascinated by the face of his beloved.' In his moments of solitude in Japan, whether in the charcoal hut on Tomogi Mountain or in the prison near Nagasaki, he repeatedly conjures this face, which he had memorised in Lisbon. The face of Christ as he preached the Sermon on the Mount, as he passed over the Lake of Galilee, and as he carried his cross—all these images, learned and internalised in Lisbon, become his source of courage and his measure of beauty. The Lisbon seminary is thus the crucible where his faith is forged into a personal, almost romantic attachment to the person of Christ.

The Lisbon Standard and the Japanese Reality

The contrast between Lisbon and Japan becomes a measure of Rodrigues's disillusionment. He recalls the time when missionaries in Japan were frequently invited to meals at the houses of feudal lords and samurai, when Portuguese ships came regularly to harbours like Hirado and Yokose-no-Ura, and when the missionaries were never in want of bread and wine. They had sat at clean tables, said their grace, and leisurely eaten their repast. In his own experience, he finds himself forgetting even to pray, pouncing upon food for dogs, and feeling that his prayer is not one of thanksgiving but of complaint and resentment. The memory of Lisbon's order and dignity intensifies his sense of degradation. When he is dragged through the streets of Nagasaki on a bare-backed horse, he thinks of another man who entered Jerusalem riding a donkey, and he tries to preserve the expression of a Christian among the infidel, a lesson learned from the Christ of Lisbon. Yet the faces of the Japanese crowd, stamped with hostility or curiosity, offer no mirror for that ideal.

The Final Apostasy and the Lisbon Christ

In the climactic moment of his apostasy, Rodrigues faces the fumie, a copper medal on which a Japanese craftsman has engraved Christ's face. This face is different from the one he had gazed upon in Portugal, in Rome, in Goa, and in Macao. It is not a face filled with majesty and glory, nor made beautiful by endurance of pain, nor filled with the strength of a will that has repelled temptation. It is sunken and utterly exhausted, worn down by the constant treading of many feet. Yet this concave face speaks to him: 'Trample! Trample! It is to be trampled on by men that I was born into this world. It was to share men's pain that I carried my cross.' The Christ of Lisbon, the ideal of beauty and strength, is replaced by a Christ who identifies with the suffering and the trampled. This transformation marks the final rupture with his European formation. After his apostasy, he is given the Japanese name Okada San'emon and lives in Nagasaki, never to return to his native land. Lisbon becomes an inaccessible memory, the symbol of a faith he has lost and a self he can no longer inhabit.