Silence

The Nagasaki coast in the 1640s, during the shogunate's campaign to stamp out Christianity. Two Portuguese Jesuits land in secret and shelter with the hidden Christians of the Sotome fishing villages and the offshore Goto Islands, before capture carries them to the city, its magistrate and the fumie. The map runs from the Sotome shore north of the city, out to the Goto Islands, and into Nagasaki itself.

Sebastião Rodrigues

The village of Tomogi, on the Sotome coast

Chapters 1-2

After landing in secret, the two priests are hidden by a poor fishing community that has kept its faith alive for decades without any clergy. The village stands in for the real Christian settlements strung along the Sotome shore, a stretch of steep coast and hidden coves that made it easier to worship out of sight of the authorities.

Chapters 1-2

explicit Tomogi is a fictional name, but Endo drew it directly from the real hidden-Christian fishing villages of the Sotome coast north of Nagasaki; this marks Shitsu, one of those villages and the site today of the museum that overlooks the sea he described.

Google Maps ↗ Street View ↗

Sebastião Rodrigues

The hut in the hills above Tomogi

Chapters 1-2

To keep the priests from being seen, the villagers move them to a crude charcoal-burner's hut up in the hills, where they watch the coast for patrols and come down only under cover of dark to hear confessions. The setting reflects the terraced, forested slopes that rise steeply behind the Sotome coast.

Chapters 1-2

inferred The novel puts the priests' hiding place in a charcoal hut on the mountainside above the village, but names no spot; this marks a representative point on the wooded slope behind the Sotome villages.

Google Maps ↗ Street View ↗