The phenomenon of exploration during the 15th through the 17th centuries enabled the western world to introduce new ideas of faith and religion to areas around the globe. With explorers reaching the east, namely India, China, Indonesia, and Japan, the introduction to Christianity was established through missionary work. Shusaku Endo provides a chronicle of such missionary work in Silence, a novel written in the 20th century about a 17th century priest named Sebastian Rodrigues. The text details the daily life of Rodrigues as he prepared to, sailed to, and reached Japan to continue the missionary work of those priest before him. Along this road, Rodrigues discovers in himself, questions about his own faith and why this distant land was so opposed to Christianity, in this case Catholicism. The trials and tribulations to which Rodrigues and his partner Garrpe underwent became "symbols of Christianity, which has failed in Japan because it was so stubbornly Western." During his stay in Japan, Rodrigues developed a new sense of his own faith, one that he did not expect nor want. As life in Japan continued for Rodrigues, he discovered the conditions of Japan's political structure, the difference between ideologies of the west and the east, and his personal failure with his own beliefs. All of these support the theory of Christianity failing in Japan because it was so stubbornly Western.
When first approached to travel to Japan, Rodrigues wished to help those who came before him. Though the trip from Portugal to Japan was long and hard, he was very excited and proud to be representing his religion in this "new" area to the Europeans. Upon reaching Japan, Rodrigues and Garrpe caught a first glimpse of how hard their task might be. Having to sail into the islands under the night sky, the two made landfall and were quietly ushered to their destination. Following the Shimabara Rebellion, a revolt against oppression and taxation blamed on Christianity, Japanese officials implemented a closed-door policy on the islands.
