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Chapter 5
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
Rodrigues is carried onward towards Nagasaki until their entire procession stops to rest, and the samurais discuss amongst themselves. Another band from Nagasaki arrives, and the priest’s former captors hand him over. Under their escort, the priest arrives at small prison built into the hillside, apparently newly-constructed; he is the only occupant until other prisoners are brought days later. Time passes uneventfully; he is fed twice a day, and thinks and prays as he waits. Oddly, the priest is struck by the tranquility of at all, and realizes that this is the first time since arriving in Japan that he has truly felt at rest and at peace. He thinks that perhaps this strange tranquility is a sign that he will soon die.
Rodrigues’s imprisonment is marked by a distinctive lack of physical suffering, which subverts his own expectations, and potentially the reader’s expectations, of what it means to be persecuted. Although the priest interprets this new tranquility to mean his end is coming, the tranquility instead foreshadows the tranquility the priest will feel after he apostatizes, when he is no longer under threat or pressure to break.
Themes
Nine days later, the captors move Rodrigues into a different cell near the guardhouse, and through the wall he can hear the guards struggling to bring new prisoners into the compound. As they draw near, the priest hears the new prisoners praying the Lord’s Prayer. The priest petitions God to finally break His silence. The following day, the guards put the new prisoners to labor and allow the priest to visit them. He realizes the prisoners are the one-eyed man and Monica, whom he’d met when he was captured. The guards allow the priest to visit the other prisoners morning and evening from then on—knowing the prisoners will be more docile with a priest present—so that he can pray with them and hear confession. Rodrigues notes that for the first time in Japan, he is able to fulfill his priestly duties.
Once again, the guards’ willingness to allow Rodrigues to function as a priest in prison—where the religion cannot spread—reveals a general lack of antagonism or animosity to Christianity itself or the people who practice it. Although one could argue that the Japanese officials are attempting to lull the priest into a false sense of security, what seems more likely is that since the religion cannot be spread, since the influence of foreign missionaries is now contained, the Japanese officials are largely indifferent to its practice. This suggests that their opposition to Christianity is more pragmatic than ideological.
Themes
One day, the prison guard delivers a set of red cotton robes for Rodrigues to wear, the same clothing that the Buddhist monks wear. The priest initially refuses even though his own clothes are tattered, but the guard tells him to hurry because new officials are arriving to meet him and the priest obliges, though some part of him feels humiliated for acquiescing to the request of the Japanese magistrates. Rodrigues, prepared for his cross-examination, kneels in the courtyard and a group of samurais and officials arrive. Five of them are seated, and Rodrigues is placed before them, positioned so that his apostasy will be clearly audible to the Christian peasants. In the middle of the five, a kind and portly old man with large ears is seated, gazing sympathetically at the priest.
Rodrigues’s donning of the Buddhist garb represents a change of uniforms, which foreshadows his gradual change of identity away from the Christian priesthood. His initial resistance to wearing the clothes followed by his quick, but slightly humiliated acquiescence reflects Rodrigues’s own waning will to fight and resist the forces at play.
Themes
The examination begins, and an interpreter and one of the samurais explain that they are not refuting the doctrine of Christianity, only arguing that it has no value for Japan. Rodrigues posits that if something is true, it is universally true, but his examiners disagree, saying that Christianity might be true in Spain and Portugal, but not here.
Starting with this examination, the author begins to seriously explore the question of whether Western Christianity is at all compatible with an Eastern culture. Rodrigues’s wrong assumption that all people believe in a universal truth suggests that many of the presuppositions made by Western Christianity are simply not held by the Japanese.
Themes
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Rodrigues asks why they are having this conversation, since certainly he will be punished regardless of his answers. When the man with large ears gently tells the priest they will not punish him without reason, the priest remarks that they must not speak on behalf of Inoue, since Inoue certainly would punish. The officials laugh and reveal that the man with big ears is himself Inoue, Lord of Chikugo, which confuses the priest, since he had thought that Inoue would look like a devil, not the kind, meek man before him. The examination concludes for the day and a guard leads the priest back to his cell. He is confused, but satisfied that he did nothing cowardly or treacherous in front of the Christian peasants.
In addition to the priest’s religious and ideological presuppositions being challenged, so too is his belief that Inoue, the “architect of Christian persecution” must necessarily be an evil and devilish man. That Inoue is rather meek and kind suggests that despite what one may believe, religious persecutors are not necessarily monstrous people in and of themselves, merely ordinary people who hold different ideals. Even though this is the case, however, it is worth remembering that under Inoue’s leadership, thousands of people are tortured and killed.
Themes
Three days after arriving, the guards make several prisoners dig three holes in the middle of the courtyard. One of the prisoners dies from exhaustion, and the guards allow Rodrigues to pray over him and give him a Christian burial. The priest finds it strange that the guards allow him to operate in his vocation. The following afternoon, Kichijiro arrives at the prison, yelling to the priest for forgiveness and yelling to the guards that they must arrest him, for he is Christian. The priest tries to ignore him, but when he visits the other prisoners in the evening, Kichijiro is in their cell with them. Kichijiro again begs his forgiveness. Though the priest thinks of Christ’s face and considers that Christ died for pitiful men such as Kichijiro, he cannot forgive the treacherous man, and is filled with shame.
The priest’s shameful realization that he cannot live up to Christ’s example and forgive his betrayer, Kichijiro, marks an important milestone in the priest’s character development. Where once his arrogance drove him to view himself like Christ, Rodrigues is beginning to become aware of his own limitations as a human being. Although this does not mark the end of the priest’s arrogance by any means, it is a critical step towards coming to terms with his own human weakness. Once again, the guards allowance for Rodrigues to pray over the dying men subverts the priest’s and the reader’s expectation of a persecutor.
Themes
“The day of the fumie arrive[s].” All of the prisoners except for Rodrigues—who watches through the barred window of his cell—stand in a line in the courtyard, a fumie sitting on the ground before each of them. The officials and the guards gently, even personably, attempt to convince the peasants to apostatize, reassuring them that all they want to see is a symbolic renunciation. Then, the peasants will still be free to believe whatever they want. When none apostatize, the officials and guards seem unbothered and unsurprised. They herd the prisoners back to their cells, except for the one-eyed man, with whom one of the officials wants to speak.
The officials’ attempts to ease the Christians’ consciences yet again subverts expectations of a persecutor, suggesting that their persecution is not motivated by religious animosity or ideological hatred but a pragmatic goal. The author, himself both a Christian and a Japanese man, characterizes the antagonist persecutors with far more nuance than is normally afforded to such a role.
Themes
After the one-eyed man speaks amiably with the official for a few minutes, the official draws his sword and decapitates the Christian with no warning. The official shouts that such is the fate of any person who values their belief more than their life. A guard brings Kichijiro, sniveling, out into the yard, and Kichijiro promptly steps on the fumie and is told to leave the camp. Rodrigues is struck by it all, but especially by the ease and silence of death. A man died and the world did not change. God did not move, as if nothing happened at all. With sorrow, the priest asks himself whether what he once sought was a “true, hidden martyrdom” or merely a “glorious death” and the honor it confers.
In spite of the officials’ apparent kindness, the one-eyed man’s casual execution suggests that, at least in part, such kindness is also a calculated move to encourage the other Christians to apostatize. More striking than the beheading, however, is the simplicity of it all, the lack of grandeur and glory. The realization that a man could be martyred and the world remains the same prompts another critical development for Rodrigues, causing him to question his own desire for martyrdom for the first time and begin to see the arrogance of it.
Themes
