hour of the boar

The hour of the boar is the late-night time period during which Sebastian Rodrigues, after his traumatic meeting with the apostate Christovao Ferreira at the Saishoji temple, is transported back to his prison in Nagasaki, marking the beginning of his final psychological collapse and the decisive turn toward his own apostasy.

The Meeting at Saishoji and the Return Journey

After the devastating encounter with Ferreira at the Saishoji temple, where the former provincial had argued that Christianity could not take root in Japan and had shown the scar from the pit torture behind his ear, Rodrigues was placed in a palanquin and escorted by officials and guards back through the streets of Nagasaki. It was now the hour of the boar, deep in the night, and the officials gave the priest permission to raise the blind of the palanquin, unconcerned that casual passers-by might see him. The road was terribly narrow and twisted; though the guards told him they were already within the town, there were still clusters of farmhouses that looked like huts, and beyond them the long fences of temples and groves of trees. Nagasaki had not yet taken on the shape of a city. The moon rose up beyond the dark trees and together with the palanquin seemed to move ever toward the west.

The Prison Cell and the Engraved Letters

Arriving at the prison, Rodrigues uttered a word of gratitude to the guards and the officials, then went inside. He heard the dull sound of the bolt being shot. It had been a long time since he had been there, and now at last he was back. It seemed such an age since he had heard the intermittent singing of the turtle-dove in the grove. In comparison with his ten days in prison this one day had been long and painful. That he had at last met Ferreira was scarcely a reason for surprise, and the changed features and manner of the old man were something he had expected since coming to this country. The emaciated figure of Ferreira as he came tottering along that corridor from afar was not so terrifying. Now it did not matter. But to what extent was all he had said true? The priest sat staring at the blank wall while the rays of the moon pierced through the bars, bathing his back with light. Hadn't Ferreira talked in this way just to defend his own wrong and weakness? One part of him kept insisting on this; but then quite suddenly a gust of fear would seize him and he would wonder if what Ferreira said were not perhaps true. Ferreira had said that this Japan was a bottomless swamp, that the sapling decayed at its roots and withered, that Christianity was like this sapling: quite unperceived it had withered and died.

The Struggle with Ferreira's Argument

Ferreira's words, uttered slowly syllable by syllable, pierced the priest's ears: "It's not because of any prohibition nor because of persecution that Christianity has perished. There's something in this country that completely stifles the growth of Christianity." The Christianity they believed in, Ferreira had said with blazing eyes, was like the skeleton of a butterfly caught in a spider's web: it contained only the external form; the blood and the flesh were gone. And somehow in his words there was a certain sincerity unlike the self-deception of a defeated man. The footsteps of the guards could be heard in the distance; when they faded out, the only sound was the hoarse rasping of insects in the blackness of the night. Rodrigues did not have enough missionary experience to refute Ferreira, but to accept the other's word was to lose everything for which he had come to this country. Banging his head against the wall he kept murmuring monotonously: "It cannot be so. It is impossible." Yet he recalled that in the course of their conversation Ferreira had said not one word about the poor Japanese martyrs; he had deliberately avoided any thought of people who were stronger than himself, people who had heroically endured torture and the pit. Ferreira was trying to increase, even by one, the number of weaklings like himself — to share with others his cowardice and loneliness.

The Night of Solitude and Self-Reflection

In the darkness he asked himself if now Ferreira was sleeping. No, he could not be asleep. The old man, in some part of the same city, was sitting in the darkness like himself, his eyes open, staring in front of him, biting at the depths of his solitude. And this loneliness was much colder, much more terrible than that which he endured in this prison cell. In order to pile weakness upon weakness he was trying to drag others along the path that he himself had walked. Rodrigues prayed: "Lord, will you not save him? Turning to Judas you said, 'What thou dost, do quickly.' Will you number this man, too, among the abandoned sheep?" And so, comparing his own loneliness and sadness with that of Ferreira, he felt for the first time some self-respect and satisfaction — and he was able quietly to laugh. Then, lying down on the hard, bare floor, he waited for the onrush of sleep.

Narrative Significance

The hour of the boar marks the threshold of Rodrigues' final crisis. It is the moment when Ferreira's arguments — that Japan is a swamp that cannot absorb Christianity, that the Japanese have twisted the Christian God into something unrecognizable — lodge themselves in Rodrigues' mind with a sincerity that cannot be dismissed as mere self-justification. The night journey through the dark streets of Nagasaki, the return to the prison cell, and the long hours of solitary reflection create the psychological pressure that will, within the same night, lead to the interpreter's confident prediction that Rodrigues will apostatize before dawn. The hour of the boar is thus the temporal frame for the collapse of Rodrigues' resistance, the point at which the silence of God and the suffering of the Christians become unbearable, and the prelude to the moment when, at dawn, he will place his foot on the fumie.