|PIC1|Martin Scorsese is planning to make a film version of a novel based on the persecution of Christians in Japan during the 17th century.

The novel “Chinmoku” (Silence) by Shusaku Endo, was written in 1966 and tells the story of a young Jesuit priest from Portugal in Nagasaki, which was at the time the only region open to foreigners.

The novel talks about the extreme persecution Christian converts faced in Japan. Many of those who converted were poor villagers who subsequently went into hiding.

This week Dante Ferretti, an Academy Award-winning art director, and producer E Bennett visited the Nagasaki Museum of History and Culture to research the film.

Koichiro Nishijima, a spokesman for the museum said, "They are going to make a movie and so they visited to research Japanese Christian history."

Nishijima said that the two men studied a “fumie”, a metal plaque showing Christ or the Virgin Mary. The Japanese authorities would force people to step on the “fumie” in order to find out who was Christian.

The Asahi Shimbun newspaper said that Daniel Day-Lewis, Gael Garcia Bernal and Benicio Del Toro are being considered to star in the film.

Scorsese plans to start filming in New Zealand this year and expects the film to be released in 2010, according to the Asahi Shimbun.

Once completed, it would be the first major film on the subject by a non-Japanese.

Christianity was bought to Japan in 1549 by the Spanish Jesuit Francis Xavier. The religion was banned for centuries until the 1860s when Japan came out of its self-imposed isolation.

Around 30,000 Japanese are believed to have been persecuted for their faith during that period. Last year, the Roman Catholic Church beatified 188 Japanese martyrs, mostly lay people who were tortured to death.

Even today, Christians constitute only a small fraction of the Japanese population, although some high profile Japanese are openly Christians, including Prime Minister Taro Aso.