Silence: Chapter 7 Summary & Analysis

Five days later, Rodrigues meets Inoue once again. The magistrate explains to the priest that though he does not think Christianity is evil, Japan is harassed by the four Christian countries (England, Holland, Spain, and Portugal) trying to proselytize and gain leverage within it, like one man with four persistent, jealous mistresses. When the priest answers that the man should content himself with only one “wife,” Christianity, Inoue answers that the Japanese do not like having love forced upon them and do not see any value in Christianity from which that they can benefit. Finally, the magistrate rises to leave, but asks the priest to think over what he has told him.

During the night, Rodrigues considers the parallels between Christ and himself: both had been chased and arrested, both had been sold out by one close to them. However, the priest realizes that he has never known such physical suffering as Christ did—he’s never even been hit since living in the prison. The lack of this physical suffering disturbs him, especially since he’d expected it for so long. He wonders if it is one of Inoue’s plots, that perhaps he will be softened by good treatment and then suddenly tortured. In any case, the priest feels as if the physical safety and relative comfort weaken his resolve to resist and suffer for the faith.

Ten days later, the guards march the other prisoners out of the courtyard for forced labor. They do not return in the evening. The following morning, guards take Rodrigues out of his cell at “the wish of the magistrate” and bring him to an overlook outside of Nagasaki, where a stool is waiting for him from which he can see the peninsula, the beach and the sea. As the priest sits, the first interpreter he’d met after his capture arrives and tells him that Inoue, though he himself won’t be there, has arranged for the priest to meet someone. The priest assumes this will be Ferreira, but looking down towards the trees near the water, he sees Garrpe, led by armed guards and accompanied by Monica and the other prisoners.

Guards lead Garrpe and the Christian prisoners to a spot on the sand where several straw mats await them. Leaving Garrpe free, the guards wrap the straw mats around their other prisoners so that their arms and legs are entrapped and only their head exposed atop the roll. As Rodrigues watches the scene, the interpreter explains that all three prisoners have already apostatized the day before, but unless Garrpe does so as well, they will not be spared. The priest is incensed that even the apostatized will be executed, but the interpreter explains that the magistrate is only after the priests. With horror, the priest realizes that Garrpe came to Japan to give his life for the Japanese, but instead it is the Japanese who will die for his sake. In his heart, he yearns for Garrpe to apostatize. God is silent.

The guards climb into a waiting boat and drag the prisoners with them, rowing out to the deep. Rodrigues begs God to intervene. Garrpe, shouting, “Lord, hear our prayer,” plunges himself into the sea and attempts to swim after them, but quickly disappears beneath the waves. Laughing, the guards on the boat push the prisoners wrapped in straw into the sea as well, where they sink straight downward. The interpreter remarks that it is a horrible business, what happens here, but then turns on the priest and exclaims that all that blood is on the missionaries’ hands. As a final insult, the interpreter remarks that Garrpe at least showed bravery, but Rodrigues himself is “weak-willed,” unworthy of the title “father.”

Days pass, and Rodrigues passes them by staring at the wall of his prison cell, mumbling to himself as the interpreter’s insults and Inoue’s arguments echo in his mind. The priest was unable to save the Christians, and unlike Garrpe did not even have the strength or opportunity to die with them. The priest had hoped to lay down his life for the Japanese Christians, and now they are laying theirs down for him. No, he tells himself, they chose their own death for the sake of their faith, but “this answer no longer had the power to heal wounds.” As the days pass, the priest overhears an official remark that “everything is proceeding to the Lord of Chikugo’s plan.”

One day, the interpreter enters Rodrigues’s cell and tells him that he will go to meet someone today, someone whom the priest himself probably wants to talk to. A palanquin arrives to carry the priest into Nagasaki with the blinds drawn, so that sight of him will not cause a stir. The palanquin-carriers remark that he is “big and fat.” As they walk, Rodrigues hears the sounds of the city and smells the animals, people, and foods. He finds himself wishing to simply be a normal person, to live as a man among men. He wants to give up all the hiding in the mountains—the fear, terror, and fatigue of it all. But still, he knows that he became a priest “to aim at one thing, and one thing alone.”

The palanquin arrives at its destination and a guard leads Rodrigues up a flight of stairs into a large building flanked by corridors. When the priest hears footsteps approaching from the corridor, he begins to tremble, finally realizing who he is meant to meet. A Buddhist monk enters followed closely by Ferreira, wearing a black kimono. The monk, though much smaller, walks proudly while Ferreira looks like a beaten animal. He only glances at Rodrigues before sitting on the floor. He does not speak. Rodrigues wishes he could tell Ferreira that he does not judge nor condemn him, but feels he cannot.

Rodrigues begs Ferreira to speak. Slowly and painfully, they make conversation. Ferreira reveals that he has been living in Nagasaki for the past year, helping to translate books on astronomy and medicine to spread such knowledge in Japan as well. He carefully points out multiple times that he is making himself of use to Japan, that his work is a help to the Japanese people, and Rodrigues understands that the man is imprinted with the need to serve others from his decades as a priest. But when Rodrigues asks Ferreira if he is happy, Ferreira has no real answer.

The Buddhist monk accompanying Ferreira remarks that Sawano Chuan—Ferreira’s given Japanese name—is also writing a book of his own, a refutation of Christianity in Japan. Ferreira looks ashamed, and Rodrigues can see that he’d hoped it would not be mentioned. A tear forms in Ferreira’s eye. To Rodrigues, the transformation that seems to have been forced upon Ferreira seems extraordinarily cruel and torturous, worse than any other devisable punishment.

The interpreter asks Ferreira to proceed to the point of the meeting, and Ferreira’s stature seems to shrink before Rodrigues. Ferreira announces that his task is to convince Rodrigues to apostatize. The former priest shows the younger a small scar behind each ear, and explains that it is the mark left by the pit, one of Inoue’s inventions. When one hangs upside down in the pit, ropes bind their arms and legs and a small incision behind each ear ensures that too much blood does not gather in one’s head, killing them. Instead, the sufferer slowly bleeds for days. That the kind face of Inoue could invent such a wretched scheme confuses Rodrigues.

The interpreter encourages Rodrigues to think over his decision; after all, even the work that Sawano Chuan now does is a service to the Japanese people. He has learned to abandon the self, rather than seek the conversion of others or his own glorious death.

Gently, Ferreira whispers that after 20 years of missionary work, he has discovered that Christianity cannot grow in Japan, referring to Japan as “a swamp” that rots “the sapling of Christianity.” Rodrigues counters that Christianity grew at one time, but Ferreira insists that it was not truly Christianity; the Japanese Christians do not even worship the same God. Rather than worship a transcendent being, the Japanese Christians praised the sun in the sky. They have no concept of a transcendent being or deity, they only praise what exists in the world. The external form might have resembled Christianity, but the essential elements were all lost, even when 400,000 Japanese called themselves Christians.

This notion horrifies Rodrigues, not the least because if Ferreira is right, then all the martyrs died for nothing. Ferreira, however, is firm, going on to say that they have no concept of a transcendent deity and thus can’t even understand Christ, picturing Him instead as only a beautiful and good human being, not as God. When Ferreira finally realized this, “the mission lost its meaning.” Rodrigues, overwhelmed, seethes that the man sitting before him is not the Ferreira who trained him in seminary. Ferreira remarks that the priest is right; the magistrate gave him the name of Sawano Chuan, and the man’s house, wife, and children as well, since the original Sawano Chuan was executed.

The conversation ends and the palanquin-carriers bear Rodrigues back to his prison cell. On the journey, Rodrigues notes that he could escape at this point—he is hardly guarded—but he no longer has the spirit. The priest is haunted by Ferreira’s words, by the idea that Christianity may simply be incompatible with Japan. Yet he feels that Ferreira may be only justifying his own weakness, and the martyrs’ conviction seems to speak to the truth of Christianity. Sitting alone in his cell, the priest is overwhelmed by loneliness until he considers that Ferreira’s own loneliness and despair are far worse than his, and “he felt for the first time some self-respect and satisfaction—he was able to quietly laugh.”