Giuseppe di Chiara (1602 – 24 August 1685) was an Italian

Jesuit The Society of Jesus (; abbreviation: S.J. or SJ), also known as the Jesuit Order or the Jesuits ( ; ), is a religious order (Catholic), religious order of clerics regular of pontifical right for men in the Catholic Church headquartered in Rom ...

missionary active in 17th century

Japan Japan is an island country in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean off the northeast coast of the Asia, Asian mainland, it is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan and extends from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea ...

.Reclaiming the Universal: Intercultural Subjectivity in the Life and Work of Endo Shusaku
, uky.edu; accessed 15 January 2017. Chiara was born in

Palermo Palermo ( ; ; , locally also or ) is a city in southern Italy, the capital (political), capital of both the autonomous area, autonomous region of Sicily and the Metropolitan City of Palermo, the city's surrounding metropolitan province. The ...

Kingdom of Sicily The Kingdom of Sicily (; ; ) was a state that existed in Sicily and the southern Italian peninsula, Italian Peninsula as well as, for a time, in Kingdom of Africa, Northern Africa, from its founding by Roger II of Sicily in 1130 until 1816. It was ...

. He entered Japan at a time when Christianity was strictly forbidden, in an attempt to locate fellow priest Cristóvão Ferreira who had apostatized his Christian faith due to torture by Japanese authorities in 1633. After the

Shimabara Rebellion The , also known as the or , was an rebellion, uprising that occurred in the Shimabara Domain of the Tokugawa shogunate in Japan from 17 December 1637 to 15 April 1638. Matsukura Katsuie, the ''daimyō'' of the Shimabara Domain, enforced unpo ...

in 1638, Chiara arrived on the island of Oshima, but was arrested in June 1643 and then incarcerated at a prison named Kirishitan Yashiki (, Christian Residence) in

Edo Edo (), also romanized as Jedo, Yedo or Yeddo, is the former name of Tokyo. Edo, formerly a (castle town) centered on Edo Castle located in Musashi Province, became the '' de facto'' capital of Japan from 1603 as the seat of the Tokugawa shogu ...

."Bones of 18th-century Italian priest shed new light on Japan's Christian past", Agence France-Presse, June 02, 2016
/ref> He also was tortured and eventually became an apostate as well. He later married a Japanese woman, taking the name of her late husband, Okamoto San'emon ( Japanese: 岡本三右衛門), and lived in Japan until his death on 24 August 1685 in

, at the age of 83. His remains were cremated.

In popular culture

Chiara was the historical basis for the lead character of Sebastião Rodrigues in the novel ''

Silence Silence is the absence of ambient hearing, audible sound, the emission of sounds of such low sound intensity, intensity that they do not draw attention to themselves, or the state of having ceased to produce sounds; this latter sense can be exten ...

'' by Shūsaku Endō. He was portrayed by David Lampson in the 1971 film version and by

Andrew Garfield Andrew Russell Garfield (born 20 August 1983) is an English and American actor. After his breakout role in '' Boy A'' (2007), he came to international attention with the supporting role of Eduardo Saverin in the drama ''The Social Network'' ...

in the 2016 film version.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Chiara, Giuseppe 1602 births 1685 deaths Italian former Christians Italian people imprisoned in Japan 17th-century Italian Jesuits Italian Roman Catholic missionaries Jesuit missionaries in Japan Kingdom of Sicily people Burials at Zōshigaya Cemetery