Society of Jesus

The Society of Jesus, the Catholic religious order whose members are known as Jesuits, was the primary agent of the Christian mission to Japan during the 16th and 17th centuries. Its missionaries, including the Basque Francis Xavier who first arrived in 1549, established a flourishing community that by 1614 numbered some 300,000 converts. The Society's efforts, however, were met with increasingly brutal persecution under the Tokugawa Shogunate, culminating in the apostasy of its most senior figures and the eventual suppression of the visible Church. The Society's fate in Japan became a central symbol in Shusaku Endo's novel Silence of the conflict between Western Christianity and the Japanese cultural 'swamp' that could not absorb it.

Origins and Mission in Japan

The Society of Jesus was the architect of the Japanese mission. The Italian Alessandro Valignano, who first visited Japan in 1579, was the real organizer, uniting Xavier's enthusiasm with a vision of a totally Christian island in the north of Asia. He founded seminaries, colleges, and a novitiate, and dispatched to Macao Francisco Cabral, who opposed the plan of an indigenous Japanese clergy. The Society's missionaries enjoyed a privileged position at the court of the Bakufu from 1570 until 1614, and their letters and reports became the chief source of information for that period of Japanese history. The Society's work was initially so successful that Valignano's optimism seemed justified, with daimyos in Kyushu embracing the faith and bringing their subjects with them.

The Crisis of Persecution and Apostasy

The persecution that began under the regent Hideyoshi and intensified under the Tokugawa Shoguns eventually broke the Society's record of resistance. From the beginning of the mission until 1632, no missionary had apostatised despite crucifixions, burnings, and water-torture. The blow finally fell when Christovao Ferreira, the Portuguese Provincial of the Society of Jesus, after six hours of agony in the pit torture, gave the signal of apostasy. His defection was a cruel shock because he was the acknowledged leader of the mission, and it became known that he was collaborating with his former persecutors. The Society in Rome could not believe that this man, however terrible the torture, could be induced to renounce his faith. The news of Ferreira's apostasy wounded the honor of the Church and prompted four priests in Rome, including Father Rubino, to plan a secret mission to Japan to atone for it.

The Last Missionaries and the 'Swamp' of Japan

Three of Ferreira's former students—Sebastian Rodrigues, Francisco Garrpe, and Juan de Santa Marta—were among those who could not believe their teacher had grovelled before the infidel. They were Portuguese and had studied under him at the monastery of Campolide. After overcoming the reluctance of their Superiors, they set sail for Japan in 1638. The Society's administration of the Japanese Province had been entrusted to Valignano, who was in Macao and who opposed sending more missionaries to a country fraught with such dangers. He reported that all news from the underground mission had come to an abrupt end in 1633, and that the only thing known with certainty was that Ferreira had been cross-examined by the newly-appointed magistrate Inoue. The Society's mission in Japan was effectively over; the last priests were captured, and Rodrigues himself, after witnessing the martyrdom of Japanese Christians and the drowning of Garrpe, was brought to apostatise by Inoue's methods.

The Society's Legacy and the Thematic Significance

The Society of Jesus's failure in Japan is presented in Silence not merely as a historical defeat but as a theological and cultural one. The novel's central thesis, articulated by the apostate Ferreira and the magistrate Inoue, is that Japan is a 'swamp' that cannot absorb the type of Christianity propagated by the Society. The Japanese, it is argued, twisted and changed the Christian God into something different, creating a 'skeleton' of the faith. The Society's missionaries, with their Western, Hellenistic Christianity, failed to adapt to the Japanese cultural tradition. The novel suggests that the tree of Hellenised Christianity cannot simply be pulled out of Europe and planted in the swamp of Japan; the fresh young sapling will wither and die. The Society's experience in Japan thus becomes a symbol of the broader conflict between East and West, and the need for Christianity to find a strain that fits the Japanese tradition and touches the Japanese heart.