Religious and Economic Missions

Paper Summary:

This paper explains that both Shuzaku Endo's novel "Silence" and Rolfe Joffe's film "The Mission" suggest that European trade and religion, which had seriously conflicting objectives, came into contact with the peoples of Japan and the Americas respectively. The author points out that these forces, including those of the Catholic Church, were disruptive and invasive; however, in the film "The Mission", the Catholic Church was shown as bringing about some tangible benefits in terms of shelter and safety to the indigenous peoples they sought to convert. The paper relates that, on the other hand, in "Silence", the Portuguese missionaries and those who had come before them, seriously misunderstood the inherent reasons for the non-acceptance of Christianity by the Japanese.

From the Paper:

"This is a far different sort of opening than Roland Joffe's film "The Mission", in which we see, first-hand, the enormous initial fear in the Colombian Indians' eyes when the first of the Jesuits arrives, but then, subsequently, how the Indians come to trust and even love the Jesuits. In this region, the Jesuits eventually come to represent a benevolent force against the Portuguese and Spanish tradesmen who would hunt and capture the Indians, and sell them for slaves. "The Mission" explicitly contrasts the conflicting interests of the Jesuits and the other European groups of tradesmen who come to the area, and shows how the Jesuits sought to convert, but also to protect the lives of the Indians of Colombia, while the tradesmen who hunted them sought only to exploit them for profit."

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