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Chapter 1
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Silence, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Apostasy
Religious Arrogance
Faith
Western Religion vs. Eastern Culture
Persecution
Summary
Analysis
Eight days into their sea voyage, the priests’ ship is caught in a terrible storm. Rather than helping the sailors control the sails, Kichijiro hides amongst the baggage and vomits on himself, and the sailors’ and the priests’ contempt of the Japanese man grows. However, in his fearful mumbling, Garrpe and Rodrigues hear him say “gratia” and “Santa Maria,” both Christian words. Though it seems impossible that Kichijiro is a Christian—“Faith could not turn a man into such a coward”—they suspect he may be, though he still denies it. Days after the storm, a sailor spots land. They are in Japan.
The revelation that Kichijiro may be a Christian seems to bother Rodrigues, since in his mind faith ought to make a man strong, not weak. This, too, reflects an arrogance and sense of denial. He seems to believe that Christ and faith must necessarily make one noble and brave. Rather, the fact that Kichijiro utters Christian phrases in the depths of his fear suggest that it is not strength which roots his faith, but weakness and fear.
Themes
Careful to remain hidden, the ship makes its way into a cove between two mountains. At midnight, Kichijiro, Rodrigues, and Garrpe wade ashore. The priests hide while Kichijiro leaves to survey the area, though the priests fear that “like Judas, he had gone to betray us.” However, after several hours, Kichijiro and several peasants arrive who address the priests with the Portuguese “padre,” proving that they are indeed Christians, children of the Portuguese missionary movement. The men hide the priests in a charcoal hut, high on a mountain overlooking their fishing village of Tomogi, situated some distance from Nagasaki.
Rodrigues’s fear that Kichijiro will betray them not only foreshadows Kichijiro’s numerous acts of betrayal, but explicitly establishes Kichijiro as a parallel to the biblical figure Judas Iscariot. This is important to Rodrigues’s development, since he will spend much time pondering Christ’s relationship to Judas, his betrayer, before ultimately making such a betrayal himself.
Themes
The priests give the men wooden crucifixes, which the Japanese press to their foreheads in reverent adoration. One of the young men, Mokichi, tells the priests that they have been without priest or religious guidance for six years, since the two Jesuit missionaries who kept secret contact with them died. They do not know if there are other Christian villages, since villages do not have good relationships amongst themselves and if any are discovered as Christians, they will be killed. However, the villagers of Tomogi have carried on the religious practices as best they can without a priest, electing ministers and prayer leaders from amongst themselves. Mokichi ask Rodrigues if that is permissible. Rodrigues assures them that, under the circumstances, they have done right.
The villagers’ veneration of wooden crucifixes, which are only physical artifacts and hold no power in themselves, foreshadows Ferreira’s eventual argument that the Japanese have no concept of a transcendent reality beyond their physical world, and thus worship what is around them in the natural world. Even so, the villagers’ maintenance of their covert Christian faith for six years without a priest suggests that regardless of their distortion, their convictions are incredibly strong.
Themes
Rodrigues is thrilled with the Japanese Christians’ struggle to keep their faith alive, and wants to spread word to other villages that priests are amongst them once more, “crucifix in hand,” though it is dangerous to do so. By night, Rodrigues and Garrpe quietly administer the sacraments and rites to Japanese villagers in their charcoal hut—only one or two at a time, so as not to draw suspicion—and by day, they hide, silent as can be lest any passerby suspect that the hut is not abandoned as it seems.
Rodrigues’s vision of himself as symbol of renewed faith and the return of Christianity to Japan is somewhat merited, on one hand—there have been no priests in the region for years. On the other, it once again belies a supreme religious arrogance. Rodrigues’s mention of “crucifix in hand” recalls his vision of the painting of Christ, suggesting that he views himself either as an extension of Christ or a second Christ.
Themes
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