the Christian century

The Christian century designates the roughly one-hundred-year period beginning with the arrival of the Basque missionary Francis Xavier in Kagoshima in 1549 and ending with the systematic eradication of visible Christianity under the Tokugawa Shogunate by the 1640s. This era forms the historical backdrop of Shusaku Endo's novel Silence, and its legacy of martyrdom, apostasy, and cultural conflict is the novel's central preoccupation. The term itself is used by historians and by Endo's translator to describe the 'troubled period of Japanese history' during which Christianity first took root and was then crushed, leaving behind a legacy of crypto-Christians and a profound question about the compatibility of the faith with Japanese soil.

Origins and Flourishing

The Christian century began with Xavier's enthusiastic reports, in which he called the Japanese 'the joy of his heart' and declared them 'the best who have as yet been discovered.' The mission was consolidated by the Italian Jesuit Alessandro Valignano, who arrived in 1579 and found a community of some 150,000 Christians. Valignano envisioned a totally Christian island in the north of Asia and worked to establish a local clergy, founding seminaries, colleges, and a novitiate. During the Sengoku Period, when Japan was torn by strife among warring daimyos, the missionaries found relative freedom, as they could move from one fief to another when persecuted. The architects of national unity—Nobunaga, Hideyoshi, and Ieyasu—were all on intimate terms with the Portuguese Jesuits, motivated by trade and, in some cases, a dislike of Buddhism. By 1614, there were about 300,000 Christians in Japan, along with colleges, seminaries, hospitals, and a growing local clergy. The missionary effort was so successful that C. R. Boxer noted it would be difficult to find another highly civilized pagan country where Christianity had made such a mark.

Persecution and the 'Swamp'

The period of toleration was shattered by a series of xenophobic outbursts. In 1587, Hideyoshi ordered the missionaries to leave the country, though the decree became a dead letter. A more decisive blow came in 1597, when twenty-six Christians were crucified in Nagasaki. Under the Tokugawa shoguns, especially Iemitsu, the persecution became systematically ruthless. The most effective torture was the 'ana-tsurushi,' or hanging in the pit, which induced apostasy in even the strongest. The first missionary to apostatize was Christovao Ferreira, the Portuguese Provincial, after six hours in the pit. His defection was a shock to the Church. The Shimabara Rebellion (1637-1638), a peasant uprising with Christian overtones, was brutally suppressed and led to the final sealing of the country. In Endo's novel, the character Inoue, the Lord of Chikugo, articulates the official view that Japan is a 'swamp' that cannot absorb Christianity. He tells the captured priest Sebastian Rodrigues, 'Father, you were not defeated by me. You were defeated by this swamp of Japan.' This metaphor of the swamp is central to Endo's thesis: that the 'tree of Hellenised Christianity' cannot simply be planted in a Japan with a completely different cultural tradition.

Legacy and Significance in Silence

Despite the persecution, Christianity's roots had gone too deep to be eradicated. Thousands of crypto-Christians kept their faith, handing down baptism and catechism through secret organizations. They complied with the order to trample on the fumie (the sacred image), but their hearts ached with pain. When Japan was reopened in 1865, these hidden Christians emerged, asking for statues of Santa Maria and speaking about Christmas and Lent. Endo's novel Silence was written while he lived among these communities in Nagasaki. The Christian century thus serves as the historical crucible for Endo's exploration of the conflict between his Japanese sensibility and the Hellenistic Christianity he inherited. The novel's central problem—the silence of God in the face of suffering—is a direct consequence of this historical trauma. The interpreter who debates Rodrigues in the novel dismisses Christian doctrine as something the Japanese do not want, saying, 'We have our own religion; we don't want a new, foreign one.' Ferreira, the apostate priest, tells Rodrigues that the Japanese have never had the concept of God and never will, and that the Christianity they believed in was a butterfly caught in a spider's web, retaining only the external form. The Christian century, therefore, is not merely a historical period but a symbol of the enduring cultural and spiritual struggle that defines the novel's meaning.