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Silence by Shūsaku Endō6/26/2023 What Japanese authorities had taken to be a curious adjunct of trade with Western nations was now considered a lethal threat to the nation’s cultural patrimony. And by the time the two Portuguese priest-heroes of Shūsaku Endō’s 1966 novel, Silence, came to Japan in 1639, an additional 206 had been killed for being Kirishitan. Then beginning in the following year and continuing into the 1630s, another 205 were martyred throughout the country. In 1597, twenty-six Christians were crucified in Nagasaki. Yet hundreds of thousands did convert, and the Japanese Church flourished for more than a generation, until the persecutions began. He died just three years into his mission. Xavier struggled to learn Japanese, and initially relied on imagery, usually illustrations of Christ, Mary, and the saints to tell the Christian story. Francis Xavier brought Catholicism to Japan in 1549, conversions were hard to come by.
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