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By Margaret Ritchie
PILGRIMAGES have an honoured place in Japanese culture. Our family trip to Japan
this summer took on aspects of pilgrimage as we visited and worshipped in
Christian churches all over Japan, including some pastored by my parents, who
were missionaries there for 35 years.
Christians make up less than one percent of the population, so we were surprised
to discover the generally good reputation Christianity enjoys, and the number
and variety of churches throughout Japan: Lutheran, Baptist, Catholic,
Orthodox, Anglican and nondenominational, in storefronts, in cathedrals, in all
kinds of neighbourhoods.
None of my family members had ever been to my homeland. We spent the first week
using our Japan Rail Passes, heading via Shinkansen (bullet train) to the ‘heartland’ of Japan: Kurashiki, Shikoku, Hiroshima and Kyoto.
Friends from our book club had told us about their former congregation in Kyoto.
St. Agnes’ Episcopal Church was warm and welcoming. The English service was truly
international, and we made unexpected personal connections.
Later that week, on a hike in the hills of eastern Kyoto above the stunningly
beautiful Kiyomizu and Nanzen Temples, we came across a hidden Christian
cemetery, where we were moved by inscriptions like ‘Together with Jesus’ and ‘There will be no more grieving.’
Our second Sunday, we attended a church around the corner from our house in the
outskirts of Tokyo. Simply named Tama Church after the area, it was
well-attended and seemed to have a lively youth program with recent converts.
While still in Tokyo, Lutheran pastor George Oshiba informed me that an
evangelist, Mesaki-san, who had worked with my parents, was going into the
hospital for surgery.
Even after 45 years, we recognized each other immediately across the lobby. Over
the next hour and a half, she talked about the course her life had taken (at 80
years of age, she still taught sociology at a Buddhist university; Christian
ones hadn’t allowed women teachers), and how my parents had “rescued” her. I knew how much my parents had respected her and her work, and told her
so.
The next day, Naito-san, who is a celebrated jeweler, came to dinner, along with
some of his family. I remembered him fondly from the autumns he allowed our
little Shimizu congregation to pick oranges freely in his orange grove.
He had gone to a Lutheran Seminary, but now meets with Christians in private
homes to study the scriptures, eschewing organized religion.
Our family had such a sweet time with him and his family, playing with his
grandchildren, joking, catching up on romances and job history, and talking
about the heart of our faith – a relationship with God.
Our third and fourth Sundays were spent at Lake Nojiri, near the Nagano of
Olympic fame, where I had vacationed as a child every August. The community had
been completely made up of missionaries; even now the Sunday morning services
and Sunday evening ‘hymn sings’ carry on.
Our song leader had been born in Japan in 1926, and his grandparents had come
over as missionaries in 1861.
What a joy it was to sing the old favourites, sitting on the dock at the edge of
the lake as the sun went down. The last song always was, and still is: “Day is dying in the west; heaven is touching earth with rest . . .”
We then travelled to Hakodate in Hokkaido (the most northerly of Japan’s four main islands), where the influence of missionaries was obvious: one
intersection boasted Anglican, Catholic and Orthodox cathedrals.
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We knew of Ando Tada’s ‘Church on the Water’ through Judith Dupre’s beautiful coffee table book Churches, and determined to see it, although it was off the beaten track in central
Hokkaido.
Once there, we found that it was actually a wedding chapel, part of a large
resort well known throughout Asia. The chapel hosts hundreds of weddings each
year; such westernized wedding chapels have become popular in Japan.
The songs in the basic wedding program I picked up were ‘What a friend we have in Jesus’ and ‘Amazing Grace.’
In Nikko, not far from Tokyo, we breakfasted in the elegant old Kanaya Hotel,
which exists thanks to the suggestion of the 19th century missionary, James
Curtis Hepburn, whose picture still graces the front desk of the hotel lobby.
That night, returning to the coast south of Tokyo, where my parents had planted
churches, we stayed with Yoshimi-san, a dear friend of my mother’s who is now housebound, caring for her 90 year old mother.
In the morning, our fifth Sunday, we left in the driving rain for a church I had never seen. When we lived in Shimizu, services were held in
our living room.
We arrived one hour late; the congregation was leaving, but they invited us in
for tea. “Who are you?” “My parents were Oliver and Judith Bergh, and I am Margaret.”
“Margaret?!” It was an astonished cry from a 70 year old couple, the Takis. Forty-five
years, and we felt like long-lost brothers and sisters. We went together to
Pastor Akehi’s second service in Shizuoka, and shared communion. Taki-san sang a song (which
the national broadcasting corporation has since recorded and played).
A few hours later, we were met in Nagoya by my first babysitter, Oiwa-san, now
75 years old. He was just 16 when he began to care for many of the young
missionary children.
He had gone to a Lutheran seminary, and been a pastor for nine years. Although
he no longer attends the Handa church (my father’s first congregation) – saying that Lutherans are too sectarian – his wife still plays the organ there.
Returning to Tokyo, we spent our last night at my old high school, the Christian
Academy in Japan. A close friend from those years is now their business
administrator. How precious to rediscover a dear friend who continues to serve
God faithfully, cheerfully and effectively.
This is the final impression I was left with: that of a country where both
Japanese and expatriate Christians have struggled to not merely survive in
their peculiar context – but also to be faithful.
September 2009
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