Travel Letter …

FROM THE LAND OF THE MIKADO

It really isn’t the land of the Mikado anymore, Mikado referring to the emperor. So when you see President Reagan meeting with the emperor of Japan, you know that it is only protocol. The worship of the Mikado, which runs deep in Japanese antiquity, ended with World War 2 and the American Occupation when the emperor god was left out of Japan’s new constitution. So ended Shintoism as the nation’s official religion. But Christian missionaries in this land of 120 million souls, with hardly 1% of them even nominally Christian, will tell you that it is at least possible, if not probable, that the constitution will be re-written, that emperor worship will be reestablished, that Shintoism will again be the official religion, and that Christianity will be outlawed.

Since Francis Xavier came to Japan 400 years ago missionaries have struggled to make this a Christian nation, with comparatively little result, even with the influx of hundreds of missionaries and millions of dollars since World War 2. While nearly everyone is nominally a Shintoist or a Buddhist, even these religions are not taken seriously. Japan appears to be a-religious, with little or no interest in religion. It is as if religion did not exist. When I asked my host, in whose home in old Tokyo I now sit, Moto Nomura, a Japanese national and a Church of Christ minister, what the Japanese worship, he replied, Money! Their main interest is in money and the things that money will buy. They are of course strongly family-oriented, as they have been for centuries. In fact there is a family-like feeling about the country, which provides the standard of right or wrong, more than any religion does.

My friend Moto explained that while the Japanese have no concept of sin they do have a concept of shame. They are shamed if they depart from the recognized standards of society. Group thought or national pride thus provides a certain kind of humanistic ethic. It is difficult for any Japanese to go contrary to that standard, which may explain why they are reluctant to accept the Christian faith, for being a Christian conflicts with basic Japanese traditions.

And yet there are many admirable qualities. about these delightful people. They are hard-working, progressive, courteous, humble, intelligent, and fiercely competitive. In our country the Japanese Americans are the most prosperous of all our minority groups. They haven’t the slightest interest in welfare programs or handouts. They only want a chance to work and work they will. In their own nation they have risen from the humiliation and devastation of war to become the most prosperous state in Asia and one of the most prosperous in the world, all within a generation. Their streets are safer than our own and they seem to have both crime and poverty under control. One missionary from the States told me that his children were safer here than back home. Another, who has been here over 30 years, told me that he planned to die and be buried here. “This is my home now,” he said, pleased with his adopted country, though not a citizen. Naturalization is a very difficult process for any foreigner.

I preceded the President to this “land of the Sun” by only a few days. His coming placed Tokyo under virtual martial law with some 20,000 policemen on security. As Moto and I watched the event on TV, with U.S. and Japanese flags waving side by side and the heads of state shaking hands and conferring, my Japanese friend, who suffered terribly during the war, sighed: “There would have been no way to have imagined any such thing in the 1940’s.” But now, a few decades later, Japan and the U.S. have an opportunity to work together in bringing peace and prosperity to all of Asia if not to all the world.

I was interested in the attitude of the Japanese toward Reagan’s visit, not from the perspective of the media, but from the rank and file where I had contact. One Japanese Christian told me, “You come for peace but your President comes for war.” This reflects a gnawing fear of these people. They strongly distrust “the big Bear” who lurks not far from their island nation, and they trust the U.S., but they have had their fill of war and want no more of it. They fear Reagan is out to get them involved in a massive defense program, and they don’t want to get that close to war. And yet they are realists and know that defense makes sense. One gets the impression that they don’t want to think about it. They are presently more prosperous than ever before in their history — Tokyo bristles with business and economic vigor — and they do not want that threatened. They also want the U.S. and the rest of the world to keep on driving their automobiles and consuming thousands of other of their products.

One gets the impression that these folk can do most anything that is technologically possible. Their bullet trains are the envy of the world, zipping along easily at 120 miles an hour in super comfort. They already have the know-how to make the trains go even faster, much faster. Their problem is finding out how to stop them! They expect soon to have a magnetic train that will zip along without even touching the tracks.

When one thinks of Church of Christ preachers coming from Texas and Tennessee to this non-Judeo-Christian culture, one rooted in Buddhistic and secular humanism, it is another story. One fact alone tells much of the story: non-instrument Churches of Christ have sent about 200 Japanese to Christian schools in the U.S. to prepare them to serve the church in their native land, which would appear to be the way to do it. Of that number only two are still in the church, my host being one of those.

We are not to be surprised to find a transplantation of our hideous partyism. Unfortunately a few hours on Japan Air Lines is no cure for sectarianism. So we have the same ugly divisions here among our people as back home. There are about 50 Christian Church missionaries here, the largest contingency of any Protestant group, and they enjoy fellowship with each other, including occasional rallies. The missionaries from the Church of Christ are much fewer, and they do not seem to offer much support to each other, representing as they do persuasions from “moderate” to right wing. Hardly any of them, save Moto, who is supported largely by “premill” churches in the States, has any workable relationship with the “instrumental” missionaries.

There are a number of Japanese preachers in this picture. The missionaries referred to above, beside Moto, are Americans. The party spirit has been passed along to the nationals, so the lines are about as firmly drawn in this pagan land as back in Tennessee and Texas. Moto, who has labored for Christ in his native land for 22 years, says the great mistake the Church of Christ missions has been a failure to cultivate Christian character in its leaders. Some of the American missionaries have been dogmatic and pontifical, and he names a Japanese or two who ought to be in the penitentiary. Many American dollars have done more harm than good, with some Japanese lining their pockets and acquiring church property as their personal property. He named four instances where a “Church of Christ” became the property of a Japanese national who has no interest in “church” business.

Moto admires the “instrumental” missionaries for holding control of property and not allowing this to happen. He also says they have something very important that “we” don’t have: they love each other, and, he adds: they smile at each other.

The older Japanese workers have tasted the bitterness of our partyism in their visits to the States. In one of our meetings one of them, speaking in Japanese of course, told of how he was in a southern city with no place to go. He searched out a Church of Christ but there was no one around. A Mormon lady saw that he was forlorn and took him to her home. Finally locating the address of an elder in the Church of Christ, the kindly Mormon delivered him to the man’s home. Seeing that he was Japanese, the elder questioned him as to what kind of Church of Christ he belonged to in Japan. Learning that he had an organ in his church, the American then and there turned his Japanese brother from his door.

It was the kind of sin that crucified our Lord. We can be thankful that many, if not most, of our Church of Christ people are no longer as sinfully sectarian as that. But we have not yet overcome. It was a sad story to hear, by translation, from a brother who only wanted what we all want, to be received as an equal. And all alone in a foreign land. It is unthinkable, and it gives us pause to ask what we have done to our people to lead them to be so grossly rude, in the name of Christ!

I was pleased to be a part of one of the first gatherings ever of all three major wings of our people, and we now count the old Disciples who have now more or less disappeared into a union of denominations, dating from 1940. A few of them who are old enough to touch the beginnings of the Movement in Japan were on hand and gave testimony to their conviction that they have lost something vital in the merger that swallowed up some sixteen Disciple churches and 666 members in what is now known as Kyodan (United Church of Christ of Japan).

It must have been with pathos when a number of these old Disciples gathered around the tomb of Charles E. Garst on Oct. 19, 1983 to celebrate the 100th anniversary of his arrival in Yokohama, having been sent forth by the old Foreign Christian Missionary Society. The Disciples thrived in Japan for a time, due largely to the fact that they preached the gospel after the tradition of Charles E. Garst, a West Pointer who gave up a military career to be a missionary. The old Disciples still around, some of whom were baptized by Disciple missionaries, will tell you they once had a church at every major railroad stop between Tokyo and Sendai, 200 miles to the north. But no more.

As part of the Kyodan they can now call only Kyodan-appointed ministers, open membership is required, and there appears to be little if any connection with their past, though they still immerse new members. Around the grave of their fallen missionary, who died within 15 years after coming to this pagan land, they appeared to be a “cut flower” people, the remnant of a church bereft of its historical roots.

It is a scene that might be viewed by American Disciples of Christ with profit in their passion (“official” at least) for union with the United Church of Christ. Union in the Kyodan and the UCC might not be what Barton Stone had in mind when he spoke of “sinking into union with the Body of Christ at large.” In any event, people need to know who they are and where they are going. Roots have meaning.

Folk from the other two wings were kind enough to wait on me for their memorial at the Garst tomb, so the celebration was a few days late. Mark Maxey, longtime missionary in Kanoya, spoke on Garst’s work at the old Aoyama cemetery, and I addressed a dinner gathering of 60 of our people on the values of our heritage at the nearby Aoyama wedding hall, where the expensive specialty was (believe it!) raw fish, and this on our knees before low Japanese tables. Maybe it was because we started on our knees that it went so well! It was a beautiful fellowship.

The next day, Nov. 7, we met all day at the Ochanomizu Church of Christ, non-instrumental, which is sometimes called “brother Bixler’s old church,” which has been visited by hundreds of American Church of Christ folk through the years, including me in 1963. They chose to allow their facility to be used, which is elegant and adequate, without actually “sponsoring” the event, but their people attended, including the present minister, Shiro Obata, and they tendered every courtesy. What else in Japan!

I wrote home to Ouida that it was one of the greatest days of my life; and others were equally extravagant in their estimates, with one seasoned missionary saying, “We’ve waited a hundred years for this!”

Missionaries who had been in Japan for years met together, sat together, prayed together, sang together, ate together, studied together for the first time. And they were all shades of persuasion, some having studied at Sunset School of Preaching in Lubbock, which is generally viewed as rather “right wing,” as well as Harding Graduate School. Some of the more “moderate” brethren thought these might have a problem in adapting to such a gathering, but they were as delighted with it as the rest of us and proved themselves to be Christian gentlemen. There was not one untoward incident. This did not surprise me, for I meet so many who do not fit the mold that others make for them that I assume we all want to “receive one another even as Christ has received you.”

I gave two addresses on the catholic principles of our heritage, showing how our pioneers based unity and fellowship on those universals on which all Christians can agree, and I warned against exporting our sectarianism like we do other American products. There appeared to be general agreement that there is no way to be serious in our plea for unity so long as we demand precise uniformity of doctrine and practice.

I was pleased to visit the campus of Ibaraki Christian College and speak in chapel on “Ghandi, Socrates, and Jesus: their Commonality as Great Teachers.” While longtime known as a “Church of Christ” college, ICC has largely gone the way of most church-related schools and is more secular than it is Christian. The same day I was in the home of Masao Suzuki and his wife Mitsue in Mito and spoke at the non-instrument Church of Christ next door, where Masao faithfully ministers, on the meaning of the gospel.

While in Tokyo I was also in the home of Harold and Lois Sims, longtime missionaries to Japan, supported by Christian Churches. Harold has the reputation of being unusually articulate and literate in Japanese, and I felt I was in good hands when he interpreted for me at our gatherings.

I was delighted to be in the homes of nationals as much as I was, which are usually quaint, small, sparsely furnished with “beds” on the floor , and hospitable. Tea is frequent and inevitable and at all hours, part of the hospitality. The women are quiet and obedient. I could not get used to the women walking behind us men out on the streets. It is not that I don’t trust them behind me, but that I wasn’t raised that way.

But I have written to Ouida that she is going to have to change her ways! —the Editor, from Tokyo and Chiang Mai