The CWR Blog
When
threatened with petty political correctness, American Catholics should
bear in mind Endo’s depiction of heroic Christian witness.
September 25, 2014 09:25 EST
“Plunged into the boiling waters
of Unzen, they hung on, believing this was the way to Paradise. Even when they had huge rocks tied to them
and were dropped into the middle of the sea, with their last breath they sang
out their prayers … This is true fealty.
Even as a samurai, I have never to this day seen so great a fealty.” – Lord
Tomonoga, Shusaku Endo’s The Golden Country
In 1633 Jesuit missionary
Christovao Ferriera was captured by agents of the Japanese shogunate, which had
recently turned against Christianity. As a representative of the prohibited
foreign religion Ferriera was then condemned to “the Pit,” a procedure
described in grisly detail by scholar and priest Francis Mathy, SJ:
The victim’s
body and arms and legs were tightly tied with rope and he was suspended head
first into a pit filled with offal. A hole was drilled in his temple to permit
the blood to fall one drop at a time, thus preventing rapid death from
circulatory obstruction. This torture could be made to last several days and
even an entire week before death took place.
Ferriera did not last a week. After
a few hours he emerged alive—and broken. In exchange for his life he had
renounced the Faith.
Ferriera was not, of course, the
first Christian or even the first priest to deny Christ due to threats or pain.
Such failures have an extensive lineage, stretching all the way back to St.
Peter. But his case is rendered striking by the fanaticism he directed against
the Church following his fall. Renouncing his baptism, Ferriera adopted the
name of a recently executed criminal (“Sawano Chuan”) and then put his
keenly-trained intellect to work constructing polemics against the Church and
plots against the Christian underground. He had once been Superior General of
the Jesuit order; now he became the order’s archenemy, and the author of
anti-Christian works like A Clear Exposition of the False Doctrine.
All this will be familiar to
those who have encountered Shusaku Endo’s The Golden Country. A somewhat
conflicted Japanese Catholic, Endo used his 1966 play to highlight the Faith’s
multi-dimensional interaction with Japanese culture. “If I have trust in
Catholicism,” he once explained, “it is because I find in it much more
possibility than in any other religion for presenting the full symphony of
humanity. The other religions have almost no fullness; they have but solo
parts. Only Catholicism can present the full symphony.” In the case of The Golden Country, Endo’s longstanding
desire to make this “full symphony” more accessible has formed the basis for a
classic work of dramatic art.
The action begins in Nagasaki,
where we are quickly introduced to Lord Tomonoga—middle-aged samurai, closet
Christian, and one of the play’s foremost protagonists. Using his position as
an official in the shogunate’s dreaded Bureau of Investigation to assist his
persecuted co-religionists, Tomonoga falls under the suspicion of said Bureau’s
Chief Investigator—a keen-witted, self-hating apostate by the name of Inoue. Intent
on capturing Father Ferriera—who has, up till now, evaded the authorities by
moving stealthily from village to village—Inoue decides to use the samurai as
bait. Cornering Tomonaga, Inoue orders him to perform the fumi-e—a
ritual of apostasy whereby Christian faith is denied by trampling on an icon of
Christ.
As expected, Tomonaga refuses,
thus outing himself. He is thrust into the pit, and Inoue publicly proclaims
that his life will be spared if Father Ferriera turns himself in. After much
soul-searching, Ferriera does just that, but Inoue goes back on his word,
leaving Tomonaga in the pit until the samurai finally dies. Ferriera’s own turn
in the pit comes, and he shocks the Christian community by giving in and
performing the fumi-e for all to see. “You see,” crows Hirata, a petty
Bureau official who detests all spiritual ideals, bushido and Gospel alike, “we
are stronger than your God.”
Hirata feels doubly triumphant
because he has entrapped Gennosuke, a young samurai who loves Tomonaga’s
daughter Yuki. Though a pagan, Gennosuke has developed a soft spot toward
Christianity for the sake of his devout beloved—and so treasures a crucifix she
has secretly given him, even though he does not quite understand what it means.
Of course crucifixes are strictly forbidden, so when Hirata discovers it he seizes
the opportunity to denounce Gennosuke as a Christian sympathizer. Tied to
stakes in the ocean, Gennosuke and Yuki sing hymns together until they are
drowned by the incoming tide; in contrast the two apostates Ferriera and Inoue
remain alive to contemplate their degradation. The play closes with the
chanting of martyrs in the background, while word arrives that a new team of
missionaries has infiltrated the country. By the time the curtain closes, it is
evident that not even the Bureau can wipe out the Church completely.
As Lord Tomonoga most exemplifies
the marriage of the Faith with Japanese culture, it is worth pointing out that
the Catholic samurai is no invention of Endo’s but is rather an idealized
representation of historical figures like Takayama
Ukon and Bl. Melchior
Kumagai Motonao. Thanks to his submission to the Gospel, Tomonaga sees the
inner significance of the samurai code—the word samurai literally
meaning “service to the master.” Nobility entails not privilege but duty,
Tomonaga muses shortly before his death; the true aristocrat does not exploit
his people, but instead seeks to set a good example for them.
Almost as intriguing is the
conflicted Chief Investigator Inoue, who calls to mind Dostoevsky’s Grand
Inquisitor. When Tomonaga refuses to perform the fumi-e, Inoue is not so
much angry as sad. Convinced that Christianity is truly a glorious, enlightened
teaching, Inoue is equally convinced that this teaching is incompatible with
the Japanese temperament. If so, all the blood heroically shed for the sake of
Japanese Christianity has been a tragic waste. Japan is not really the golden
country of noble pagans described by St. Francis Xavier, Inoue tells Tomonaga
with a hint of bitterness, but “a mudswamp,” one wherein “God’s shoots would
not grow.” Far from being a source of triumph, Tomonoga’s eventual death only
makes the Chief Investigator even gloomier, for he knows Tomonaga to be of an
increasingly rare breed, a “samurai among samurai.” Now low-minded sadists like
Hirata are the only people left working at the Bureau.
Except for Gennosuke, that is. An
idealist, Gennosuke devotedly takes care of his widowed mother, looks up to
Tomonaga, and dreams reverently of the girl he loves, and through him we get a
sense of the best that pre-Christian Japan has to offer. At first he intends to
carry out the fumi-e ritual to clear
himself—he is not, after all, a Christian, so why shouldn’t he trample on the
crucifix? But then Yuki speaks up at his trial, and in the ensuing exchange the
pagan youth helps clarify the meaning of Christian martyrdom:
YUKI:
Gennosuke, if you step on the fumi-e, the bond that binds our two hearts
together will snap forever. This may have been made by an unknown craftsman in
Nagasaki, but to me it has been all my life the most precious of all things. All
my life I have adored it. If you step on it, you will go completely out of my
life. Instead, step on me.
HIRATA: Oh,
this is very interesting. I like nothing better than to throw mud at what is
beautiful and spit on what is noble. This kind of perversion the officials of
the Bureau must all have to some degree. Gennosuke, this lady is asking you to
step on her face instead of on the fumi-e.
YUKI: Hirata-dono,
will you be satisfied if Gennosuke steps on me? Will that clear up your
suspicions?
HIRATA: It
most certainly will.
YUKI: Then,
Gennosuke, please step on me. Everything that’s happened has been my fault. Step
on me.
(She pauses as she waits for
Gennosuke to step on her. But he cannot.)
GENNOSUKE: I don’t know anything about the teaching of
Christ. But now I see this clearly. If Yuki is to be hung in the pit, I want to
be hung there too. If she is to be burned, I want to die with her.
Note that Gennosuke is hardly
motivated by a commitment to love in the abstract. It is not his right to love which occupies his mind,
but his commitment to his actual beloved. Likewise, Yuki could care less about
some hypothetical right to practice Shinto or Buddhism or Taoism. What inspires
her is not her religious freedom, but rather Christ.
As for Father Ferriera, following
his apostasy he seeks comfort, oddly enough, by comparing himself to Judas—who
in Ferriera’s skewed theology was a martyr, too, insofar as Judas both suffered
greatly for his actions and played a key role in bringing Christ’s work to
completion. Yet Inoue will have none of it. Although deeming it his duty to war
upon Christianity, the Chief Investigator is secretly disappointed by Ferriera’s
failure. Hence Inoue has no patience for the rationalizations of “Sawano
Chuan,” and acts as an unexpected voice of orthodoxy: “You are wrong. Stop
deceiving yourself […] you are just bending the teachings of Christ to suit
your weakness, trying to disguise your misery even from yourself.” Unlike the
metaphysically passive Buddhist, Inoue insists firmly, the Christian
acknowledges God’s gift of free will—a gift necessarily accompanied by
responsibility.
Unlike Endo’s earlier
controversial work Silence—a novel which dealt with
much of the same material, albeit in a problematic fashion—The Golden
Country offers us a vision of a robust and spiritually powerful Japanese
Christianity. This comes as no surprise, given the historical source material
that inspired Endo. Until the latter half of the 19th century, when authorities
finally lifted their ban, the Japanese church kept alive by operating
underground, patiently awaiting the day when the legendary fathers would return
again from across the sea. Cut off from Rome and under constant threat of
death, Japanese Christians baptized their children and taught them what they
could via precious fragments of Scripture and doctrine. Need I point out the
stark contrast with modern American Catholicism, which possesses far greater
resources, opportunities, and liberty, yet has in most of its schools and
institutions proven incapable of instilling even a minimum of respect for the
Magisterium?
For that matter, when all
is said and done maybe we should even be careful about passing too harsh a
judgment on Ferriera. After all, he only yielded to anti-Christian forces after
having been put through torture as brutal as anything featured in a modern-day
horror movie. Far milder forms of persuasion have proven effective in getting
countless American Catholics to compromise with the enemy—and even, like
Ferriera, to actively aid that enemy. Every time some mandarin of
political-correctness tries to intimidate us with name-calling, or fines, or
the prospect of getting fired, we should, instead of cowering, think long and
hard of the boiling waters of Unzen, of the crucifixions at
Nagasaki, of the pit where so many of our co-religionists breathed their
last. Then, without rancor, we should laugh at him.
About the Author
Jerry Salyer
Catholic convert Jerry Salyer is a philosophy instructor living in Franklin County, Kentucky.
Catholic convert Jerry Salyer is a philosophy instructor living in Franklin County, Kentucky.
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