Japan, 1613: a disregarded samurai and an ambitious Spanish missionary set sail together across the Pacific toward Mexico, then Spain and Rome, on a mission to trade for Western favor. Shusaku Endo's historical novel follows their voyage through faith, ambition, and the gulf between two worlds.
When envoys are told their mission depends on converting, accepting a religion becomes a trade tactic rather than a belief. A conversion made this way leaves the person feeling violated, "like a woman must when she is forced to sleep with a man she neither loves nor trusts."
A zealous believer with worldly ambitions can sincerely treat his own plans as God's plans. He may only see the confusion afterwards, admitting, "I confused my will with the will of God."
A long journey on behalf of rulers can be made pointless by events at home that the travellers cannot see. When policy turns against what they were sent to secure, their years of hardship lose their value, and the very contacts they made can become a danger to them.
Someone who travels to the centres of worldly power to meet kings may come away remembering only the image of a humiliated, suffering man. He may still be unable to understand why others call that man "Lord."