In the era when the Tokugawa shogunate banned religion, Portuguese missionaries took huge risks to smuggle to Japan to preach and find mentors. For the sake of one's own beliefs, after going through hardships, this is not a spirit of giving up one's life for righteousness.
For Inoue Chikugo, as a local governor, he maintains the local public order and good customs. For political reasons, he maintains the culture of his own country. For him, it is also his duty to prevent the invasion of foreign cultures.
As far as two cultures are concerned, there is no right or wrong. Values and beliefs are diverse, and different places and people accept different cultures. And there is mutual exclusion between different cultures, which is the so-called "clash of civilizations". The original author, being Catholic, was not clearly taking sides.
Inoue's way of banning Catholicism is not simple and crude, and it does not stop at the destruction of the flesh. It is far more effective to reverse the beliefs of the culture from the spiritual and root causes.
The film is quite faithful to the original book, but at the end, the scene of the missionary's body holding a cross is added, and he does not explain his obsession with the original book. In order to save the lives of believers, he announced his apostasy. Maybe in the end, he left with a more forgiving heart.
Before I read the original book, I have a question: missionaries are banned and he is not sentenced to death, why not let him leave Japan, and missionaries can continue their careers elsewhere? In fact, missionaries are under house arrest and do not have complete freedom. The reason for this is probably to show the remaining Catholics in this country that your missionaries have abandoned the church.
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