What do formalities matter?...Only go through with the exterior of trampling." Of course, the act of trampling on the fumie can also be interpreted two ways: one can assume that Father Rodrigues agreed to step on the fumie because of the soundness of the said argument, although for the Japanese society, which takes actions as the embodiment of an individual's thoughts and feelings, this action simply and ultimately signifies the priest's renunciation of his faith. Gessel (1999) explicated that Father Rodrigues's gesture of putting his foot on the fumie is a symbol of setting aside all the religious debates that lead only to conflict and is performing an act of compassion...By "losing his life" as a Catholic priest, Rodrigues found the meaning of his mission to Japan, which is simply to make the lives of the humble and the powerless bearable (45).

This analysis also reflects the contradiction between Father Rodrigues as a European Catholic priest and another character, the Japanese Kichijiro, as a Japanese Christian-turned-traitor in the novel. Unlike Father Rodrigues, Kichijiro chose to become a traitor rather than experience suffering by sacrificing and admitting that he is a Japanese Christian. Rodrigues and Kichijiro represent the opposite sides of the religious spectrum in Japan, wherein Rodrigues' mindset required him to make a sacrifice based on his faith, while Kichijiro remained loyal to his Christian faith. In the novel, truth and faith is equated with unconditional love, the ability of the individual to look beyond the superficial in life, and create meaning and purpose in the "ragged and dirty":
No, no. Our Lord had searched out the ragged and the dirty. Thus he reflected as he lay in bed. Among the people who appeared in the pages of Scripture, those whom Christ had searched after in love were the woman of Capharnaum with the issue of blood, the woman taken in adultery whom men had wanted to stone -- people with no attraction, no beauty. Anyone could be attracted by the beautiful and the charming. But could such attraction be called love? True love was to accept humanity when wasted like rags and tatters...

Bibliography

Anderson, G. (2000). With Christ in Prison: Jesuits in Jail from St. Ignatius to the Present. NY: Fordham UP.

Gessel, V. (1999). "The Road to the River: The Fiction of Endo Shusaku." In Oe and Beyond: Fiction in Contemporary Japan. S. Snyder and G. Philip (Eds.). Honolulu: Univ. Of Hawaii Press.

Snyder, S. And G. Philip. (1999). Oe and Beyond: Fiction in Contemporary Japan. Honolulu: Univ. Of Hawaii Press.