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영어

This study aimed to examine the marine routes that were followed by missionaries shown in this work for the Christian evangelism in Japan. Especially, this study examined the relation between introduction process of Christianity in Japan and ‘sea area’ by comparing the marine travel route of Francis de Xavier who introduced Catholicism for the first time to Japan in 1549. Moreover, this study understood the meanings of ‘ocean’ and ‘sea area’ shown in this work. Recently, the ‘sea area’ are defined as ‘loose connection of lands surrounded by ocean’. The ‘sea area’ not only refer to the marine travel route, but also mean the background region and the world after moving to land through the maritime. The lives and acts of missionaries who introduced Christianity for the first time in Japan were the ‘history of sea area’ in the Christian missionary work. It fully contains all the hopes and frustrations of Christian missionaries who landed on the southern tip of Japan through the Cape of Good Hope in Africa, Goa in India, and Manila or Macau after departing from Europe. Moreover, the 『Silence』 which was the subject of this study showed more detailed image of ‘ocean’. The silence of ‘God’ reflected in the main character’s heart was reflected in the silence of ‘ocean’. In addition, despite a historical novel, it was not faithful to historical records when comparing with the missionaries’ routes in the past. Even though most of the existing preceding researches viewed the silence of ‘God’ as a ‘companion Jesus’, it is not good enough to fully agree on the preceding researches because of the change of Rodrigo’s mental state reflected in the silence of ‘ocean’. It is unavoidable to have a question about if it would be good to equally regard ‘God’ on the ‘dark gray ocean’ that swallowed the martyrs to death and ‘the man in the woodblock’. It might be ‘the man in the woodblock’ that was justifying the main character who had an apostasy at hand. The third-person narrator of the omniscient viewpoint did not say ‘God’, but say ‘the man’.