Rodrigues' Trampling of the Fumie

Rodrigues' Trampling of the Fumie is the climactic act of apostasy in Shusaku Endo's Silence, in which the Portuguese missionary Sebastian Rodrigues, after prolonged psychological and physical pressure, places his foot on a bronze image of Christ to save the lives of Japanese Christians suspended in the pit. This single gesture shatters his priestly identity, redefines his relationship with God, and becomes the novel's most contested symbol of faith, weakness, and love.

The Night of Decision

Rodrigues had been brought to a dark, urine-soaked cell in the magistrate's office, where he discovered the Latin words "Laudate Eum" carved into the wall by a previous prisoner—Christovao Ferreira, his former teacher and the man whose apostasy he had crossed the world to investigate. Throughout the night, Rodrigues heard what he first mistook for the snoring of a drunken guard. Ferreira, now called Sawano Chuan, appeared at the door and revealed the truth: the sound was the groaning of Christians hanging in the pit, their blood dripping from incisions behind their ears. Ferreira told Rodrigues that five people had been suspended when he himself spent that night in the same cell, and that the officials had promised him their release if he would apostatize. "I did not apostasise because I was suspended in the pit," Ferreira said. "The reason I apostasised… I was put in here and heard the voices of those people for whom God did nothing." Rodrigues, covering his face with his hands, shouted for Ferreira to stop, but the old man pressed on: "Certainly Christ would have apostatised for them." Rodrigues cried out "No, no!" but the words had entered him.

The Morning of the Act

At dawn, the bolt was shot and the door opened. White morning light flooded the room. Ferreira took Rodrigues gently by the shoulder and said, "You are now going to perform the most painful act of love that has ever been performed." Swaying as he walked, Rodrigues dragged his feet along the corridor as if bound by leaden chains, with Ferreira guiding him. At the end stood the interpreter and two guards, looking like three black dolls. The interpreter put down a box, opened it, and took out a large wooden plaque—the fumie. Ferreira repeated his words: "Now you are going to perform the most painful act of love that has ever been performed. Your brethren in the Church will judge you as they have judged me. But there is something more important than missionary work; what you are about to do."

The Fumie and the Face of Christ

The fumie was a simple copper medal fixed onto a grey plank of dirty wood, the grains running like little waves. On it was the ugly face of Christ, crowned with thorns, with thin, outstretched arms. Rodrigues, his eyes dimmed and confused, silently looked down at the face he now met for the first time since coming to Japan. He had carried that face in his heart since childhood—the face of the picture preserved in Borgo San Sepulchro, which he had first seen as a seminarian, a face filled with vigour and strength that commanded, "Feed my lambs." He had imagined that face during sleepless nights in the seminary, during his wanderings in the mountains of Tomogi, during his imprisonment. It was the most beautiful, the most precious thing in the world, living in his heart. And now with this foot he was going to trample on it. He grasped the fumie with both hands, bringing it close to his eyes, wanting to press to his own face that face trampled on by so many feet. With saddened glance he stared intently at the man in the centre of the fumie, worn down and hollow with constant trampling. A tear was about to fall from his eye. "Ah," he said trembling, "the pain!" The interpreter urged him on: "It is only a formality. What do formalities matter? Only go through with the exterior form of trampling."

The Voice from the Bronze

Rodrigues raised his foot. In it he felt a dull, heavy pain. This was no mere formality. He would now trample on what he had considered the most beautiful thing in his life, on what he had believed most pure, on what was filled with the ideals and dreams of man. How his foot ached! And then the Christ in bronze spoke to the priest: "Trample! Trample! I more than anyone know of the pain in your foot. Trample! It was 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." Rodrigues placed his foot on the fumie. Dawn broke. And far in the distance the cock crowed.

Aftermath and Transformation

After the trampling, Rodrigues was given the Japanese name Okada San'emon and sent to live in Edo, where he spent the rest of his life in the Christian Residence. He was forced to write a disavowal of his religion and to identify Christian objects for the magistrate's office. The children of Nagasaki called him "Apostate Paul" and threw stones at his window. Yet when Kichijiro, the man who had betrayed him, came to him in the night begging for confession, Rodrigues—though he knew he was a fallen priest—administered the sacrament. "There are neither the strong nor the weak," he told Kichijiro. "Can anyone say that the weak do not suffer more than the strong?" He reflected that even if his fellow priests would condemn his act as sacrilege, he was not betraying his Lord. He loved him now in a different way from before. Everything that had taken place until now had been necessary to bring him to this love. "Even now I am the last priest in this land. But Our Lord was not silent. Even if he had been silent, my life until this day would have spoken of him." Rodrigues died of illness at the age of sixty-four, thirty years after his apostasy, and was cremated at Muryoin Temple in Koishikawa. His posthumous Buddhist name was Myusen Joshin Shinshi.