PLOT
At St Paul's college, Macau, Portuguese Jesuit priest Allessandro Valigano receives news that Father Cristovato Ferreira in Japan renounced his faith after being tortured. Ferreira's pupils, Father Sebastiao Rodrigues and Father Francisco Garupe, disbelieving he would commit such apostasy, set off to find him. Kichijiro, an alcoholicfisherman who has fled japan, offers to guidethem. At the Japanese village of Tomogi, the priests find the local christian population driven underground. A Samurai searching for suspected Christians, whom the villagers refer to as the "inquisitor", straps some of the villagers to wooden crosses and places them in the Ocean, which eventually kills them. The bodies are then cremated on a funeral pyre so that they cannot be given a Christian burial.
Garupe leaves for Hirado, believing that the presence of the priests in, Japan forces the shogunate to terrorize the village. Rodrigues goes to Goto, the last place Ferreira lived only to find it abandoned. Wandering around Goto he struggles over whether it is self-centredmand unmerciful to refuse to recant when doing so will end another's suffering. He eventually reunites with Kichijiro, and while drinking from a stream, Rodrigues becomes delirious and sees religious iconography in the pool of water. He is then captured by samurai, and finds that Kichijiro had turned him in. An old samurai, who had earlier accompanied the inquisitor to Tomogi tells Rodrigues that other captured Christians will suffer unless he commits apostasy.
Rodrigues is taken to Nagasaki, where he is imprisoned with the captured Christians from Goto. At a tribunal, he is told Catholic doctrine is anathema to Japan. Rodrigues demands to see the governor , Inoue Masahige, who he learns to his dismay is the old samurai. When Rodrigues is returned to prison, Kichijiro arrives, explains that court officials threatened him to give up Rodrigues, and then says he is a christian and asks to be imprisoned. He later is released after agreeing to walk over a crudely carved image of Christ.
Rodrigues is brought to meet a famished Garupe and three other Christian prisoners. Garupe has been told that if he doesn't apostatize, those three will die, but he refuses. Two prisoners are drowned, and Garupe, trying to rescue the third, drowns as well. Later, Rodrigues is taken to a Buddhist temple where he meets Ferreira, who now goes by the name Sawano Chuan. Ferreira says he commited apostasy while being tortured, and states tat after 15 years in the country and a year in the temple, he believes Christianity is a lost cause in Japan. He now also believes humans find their original nature in Japan and that perhaps this is what is meant by finding God. Rodrigues calls him a disgrace, but Ferreira is unmoved.
Later that night, in his prison cell, Rodrigues hears what Ferreira tells him is the sound of five Christians being tortured. He says the only person who can end their suffering is Rodrigues, not God. Rodrigues tells the christians to apostatize, but Ferreira says they already have and that now Rodrigues must. As Rodrigues looks upon a fumie, he hears the voice of Christ telling him its alright to do so. Rodrigues puts his foot on the sumie.
One year later, Ferreira and Rodrigues sort through religious iconography gathered from suspected Christians. Watching all of this is Dutch trader Dieter Albrecht, who narrates his encounters with the fallen priests. Albrecht states in his journal that Ferreira eventually passed away, and that a now-married Rodrigues goes by the name Okada San'emon. Kichijiro, now a servant, asks Rodrigues for forgiveness, but Rodrigues refuses, saying he is no longer a priest. Kichijiro later is caught with a religious amulet he claims to have won while gambling, but never bothered to look inside the pouch. He is taken away and never heard from again.
Many years later, Rodrigues has died. He is placed in a large round wooden casket, and his body is cremated. Yet Rodrigues's hands hold a tiny cross that was given to him when he first came to Japan.
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