Why the oppression of Christians in the Japan of Endo's novel Silence?

S Endo's great novel Silence builds the tension and the ethical-religious struggle that drives the narrative right through to the last chapter, in which the Jesuit missionary to Japan (17th century) is held captive and transported to an isolated prison near Nagasaki. We experience his captivity and humiliation almost viscerally: in his mind, Fa Rodrigues keeps finding comparisons between his preaching, betrayal by a Judas-figure, march through the streets of Japan on the back of a donkey, the crowd of onlookers hostile and violent, finally the dark, reeking prison cell where he spends the night, expecting to be tortured and killed in the morning. He thinks of all the Japanese Xtian martyrs he has seen in his time in the country, peasants who faced their torture and executions bravely, and he questions his own bravery and most of all wrestles with the silence of his god: Why, throughout all this torture of those who refuse to renounce their faith, has the Xtian god been unable or unwilling to send a sign or offer any consolation? At last, he reconciles himself to torture and death, when the Japanese captors present him with his terrible fate: Unless he renounces his faith, they will continue to torture three Japanese Christian prisoners; if he renounces, they will end the torture and release the prisoners. I'll leave it there rather than get into spoilers. Any reader of this frightening and complex novel will wonder why the eradication of the Christian sects was so important to the Japanese government at the time. The translator touches on this in his preface: when the first European missionaries arrived and set up various Xtian churches (not only Catholic communities), Japan had no centralized government and was wracked by internecine battles among the various shoguns and other rulers. Over time, the central government consolidated, and as it became strong the Xtian community - about 300,000 out of a population of several million, was a threatening minority that the rulers believed had to be eradicated. This obsession built over the course of a few generations of rulers, particularly as Japan became more isolate and less welcoming to European trading partners - so it was all about a consolidation of power and a demonstration of ruthless power and authority. By the early 17th century, the setting for this novel, all trade and correspondence with Europe was suspect and closely monitored and controlled by the central government. Some of this is touched on in the last chapters of Silence and in the concluding segments of Scorsese's movie.

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