March 25, 1638

On March 25, 1638, the Indian fleet sailed out from the River Tagus to a salvo of guns from the fortress of Belem. On board the Santa Isabella were the three missionaries who, after receiving a blessing from the Bishop, Joao Dasco, had boarded the commander's ship. As they reached the mouth of the brown river and plunged into the blue noonday sea, they leaned against the side of the ship watching the promontory and the mountain gleaming like gold. There were the red walls of the farm houses. The Church. From the church-tower the tolling of the bell which bade farewell to the departing ships was carried out into the sea.

The Voyage and Its Hardships

The journey around Africa to India was immediately fraught with peril. Three days after departure they hit up against a terrible storm on the West coast of Africa. On April 2nd they reached the island of Porto Santo; some time later Madeira; on the 6th they arrived at the Canary Islands where they encountered ceaseless rain pouring down from a sky which contained no breath of wind. In the utterly windless calm, the heat was unbearable. And then, in addition to everything, disease broke out. On the Santa Isabella alone more than one hundred victims lay moaning on the deck and in the bunks below. Rodrigues and his companion together with the crew hastened around tending the sick and helping to bleed them. July 25th, the feast of Saint James, the ship at last rounded the Cape of Good Hope. On this day a violent wind again arose so that the mast of the ship was broken and crashed down on the deck with a rending sound. Even the sick and Rodrigues and his companions were summoned up to rescue the foresail from the same peril. But scarcely had they succeeded in their attempt when the ship ran on a rock. If the other ships had not been there to help, the Santa Isabella would probably have sunk there and then. After the storm the wind again calmed down. The sail lay lifeless; only its pitch black shadow fell upon the faces and bodies of the sick who lay like dead men on the deck. And so the days passed one by one with the glaring heat of the sun beating down upon a sea which had not so much as a swell of the waves. All these mishaps prolonged the journey so that food and water became scarce; but at last on October 9th they reached their destination: Goa.

The Missionaries' Purpose and the Context of Persecution

The three young priests set about preparing their long and arduous journey with a specific, urgent purpose. They were driven by the need to investigate the fate of their revered teacher, Christovao Ferreira, who had reportedly apostatized after undergoing the torture of 'the pit' at Nagasaki. For these three men, Francisco Garrpe, Juan de Santa Marta and Sebastian Rodrigues, it was impossible to believe that their much admired teacher, faced with the possibility of a glorious martyrdom, had grovelled like a dog before the infidel. They would go to Japan; they would investigate the matter with their own eyes. Their departure was part of a broader historical context of severe persecution. From 1587 the regent Hideyoshi, reversing the policy of his predecessor, had initiated a frightful persecution of Christianity. The Shogun Tokugawa pursued the same policy, ordering the expulsion of all the missionaries from Japan in the year 1614. The Tokugawa Bakufu was not slow to see that such 'glorious martyrdoms' were not serving the desired purpose; and bit by bit death was preceded by torture in a tremendous effort to make the martyrs apostatise. Among these tortures was the 'ana-tsurushi' or hanging in the pit, which quickly became the most effective means of inducing apostasy.

The Swamp of Japan and the Clash of Cultures

The journey of March 25, 1638, is not merely a physical departure but the beginning of a profound cultural and spiritual collision. The novel's central thesis, as articulated by the translator, is that Japan is a 'swamp' that cannot absorb the type of Christianity that has been propagated in these islands. The missionaries' arrival is the first step in a confrontation between a Hellenistic, Western Christianity and a Japanese sensibility that fundamentally alters the faith. The interpreter who later confronts Rodrigues embodies this clash, arguing that Christian doctrine is something forced on people who don't want it, and that the missionaries' 'selfish dream' has caused the blood of Japanese peasants to flow. The very concept of God is contested; the interpreter argues that the Japanese cannot think of an existence that transcends the human, and that the God the Japanese believed in was not the Christian God but their own distortion. This is the swamp that Ferreira later describes: a place where the sapling of Christianity rots at its roots, where the God of the missionaries becomes like a butterfly caught in a spider's web, only the external form remaining.

The Significance of the Departure

The departure on March 25, 1638, is the decisive moment that sets the entire tragic narrative in motion. It is the point of no return for Rodrigues, Garrpe, and Santa Marta, launching them into a world of persecution, moral compromise, and spiritual crisis. The date marks the beginning of a journey that will lead to the martyrdom of Mokichi and Ichizo, the drowning of Garrpe and three Christians, the apostasy of Rodrigues, and his eventual life as the Japanese Okada San'emon. The voyage itself, with its storms, disease, and near-shipwreck, prefigures the spiritual tempest that awaits them in Japan. The tolling bell from the church-tower as they depart Lisbon is a farewell not just to their homeland but to the certainties of their faith, which will be tested to destruction in the silent, swampy land they are about to enter.