Water-Senior-Rat

Water-Senior-Rat is the East Asian sexagenary cycle designation for the Twelfth Year of Kanbun, corresponding to 1672 in the Western calendar. In the context of Shusaku Endo's Silence, this year marks the chronological frame for the official diary of the Christian Residence in Edo, the document that records the final years of the apostate Portuguese priest Sebastian Rodrigues, who by then bore the Japanese name Okada San'emon.

The Sexagenary Cycle and the Japanese Calendar

The Water-Senior-Rat year belongs to the traditional Chinese sexagenary cycle, a system of sixty combinations formed by pairing one of ten Heavenly Stems (here, Water) with one of twelve Earthly Branches (here, Rat). In the Japanese calendar of the Edo period, this system was used for official record-keeping alongside era names. The diary entry for the Twelfth Year of Kanbun, Water-Senior-Rat, states that Okada San'emon was granted the ration of ten persons, while other residents such as Bokui, Juan, Nanho, and Jikan received rations of seven persons each. The document also lists six relatives and associates of San'emon's wife, including a cousin named Seibe, a ship's carpenter from Fukagawa, and a nephew named Sannojo who lived with Seibe.

The Diary's Evidence of Rodrigues' Final Years

The diary provides the only surviving official record of Rodrigues' life after his apostasy. It notes that on 17th June of the Water-Senior-Rat year, a report was submitted to Totominokami, the magistrate overseeing the Christian Residence. The document lists the names, ages, and occupations of San'emon's wife's relatives, including Gen'emon, a servant to Doi Oinokami, and Shokuro, a workman at Esashi-cho. The diary also records that Adachi Gonzaburo was reported to be an apprentice to Bokui, the handicraftsman, and that Jin'emon, an uncle to Juan's daughter, had come to visit Juan on 26th April of the Year of the Rat. These entries establish that Rodrigues, now known as Okada San'emon, lived under constant surveillance but maintained family connections through his wife's relatives, who were permitted to visit the Residence.

Thematic Significance: The Swamp of Japan

The Water-Senior-Rat year, as the temporal setting for Rodrigues' final documented years, embodies the novel's central metaphor of Japan as a swamp that absorbs and transforms foreign ideologies. The diary's bureaucratic language—recording rations, family visits, and the names of guards—contrasts sharply with the spiritual drama of Rodrigues' earlier letters and his agonized decision to trample the fumie. The magistrate Inoue had told Rodrigues, "You were defeated by this swamp of Japan," and the diary's mundane entries confirm that Rodrigues had been absorbed into Japanese society, given a Japanese name, a Japanese wife, and a fixed ration. The sexagenary cycle itself, a Chinese-derived system of timekeeping, represents the cultural framework that the novel argues Christianity could not penetrate. The diary's notation of the Water-Senior-Rat year, alongside the era name Kanbun, demonstrates how Rodrigues' life was now measured by Japanese rather than Christian time. The interpreter who had debated with Rodrigues on the island had argued that "Christian doctrine is something like that here. We have our own religion; we don't want a new, foreign one," and Ferreira had told Rodrigues that "this country is a swamp. In time you will come to see that for yourself." The Water-Senior-Rat year, as the temporal marker of Rodrigues' integration into that swamp, represents the novel's conclusion that the sapling of Christianity could not take root in Japanese soil, and that the missionary's dream had been absorbed into a system that reduced him to a name on a ration list.