As I was walking home today I saw a Japanese man dressed warmly holding some books standing outside the Yamasa Student Village/Residence Hane. I noticed that he recognised me as a foreigner from a distance and he made his way to intercept my path. I began speaking to him and he handed me a tract and I saw the biblical references on it and asked what denomination he belonged to. In typical Jehovah’s Witness style, it took a bit of asking before he finally admitted to being with the Witnesses. His name is Kiyo, in his 30s, spent a year in the US and worked in an English church for a while so his English was very good. I’d spoken to the Jehovah’s Witnesses in Ireland (one guy, John, came to the house for 3 weeks in a row before giving up) so I’m pretty familiar with their teachings. I spent almost an hour standing outside the apartment just now (seeing as it’s a nice day, why not!) trying to explain to him how Jesus is God, the Holy Trinity is true, and that Jesus isn’t just some super-angel. He showed me some verses trying to tell me otherwise but they actually seemed to just support my point of view more than his.
It was a pretty interesting conversation, and as I expected, it pretty much ended up with us agreeing to disagree. I made plenty of good arguments and made lots of points he agreed with, but disagreeing on the identity of Christ is a pretty big thing when under the banner of Christianity.
While on the subject, there were a couple of American guys having trouble ordering food in the Zig Zag recently and I helped them order. They said they’d been studying Japanese for 3 days now and were planning to spend a year here before heading to Tokyo in order to start a church.
Japan is often seen as the final frontier in “The Great Mission”. When the Buddhist monks in Japan started getting too powerful, many hundreds of years ago, Japan welcomed the Catholic missionaries to Japan, but once they realised that Christianity teaches a power higher than the Emperor, they quickly banned it and did their best to purge the country of Christians, using some very extreme measures. They actually threw Christians into volcanos!!
Japanese friends have said to me that with horrible actions committed under the banner of faith, such as Shoko Asahara’s sarin gas attacks on the Tokyo subway, that it’s just better to stick to the Shinto and Buddhist way where everyone gets along. A central theme of Japanese society is harmony, and things such as general indirectness and ambiguity, keigo, and the idea of tatemae have been born from this wish for harmony. I think it was in Nagoya Castle in some presentation or something where they were discussing how the Tokugawa shogunate’s many wars were all in the name of peace. Enemies who presented a threat to peace were eliminated so that the country could move to a harmonious state, and it generally is quite harmonious. Our teacher today said that there are no classes in Japan. This can be argued and it’s obviously not so black and white as “there are no classes”, as there are issues such as Zainichi Koreans, and taboo subjects such as Burakumin, which demonstrate Japanese people being “outside” (外) of the mainstream and therefore not being given the same rights as the “real” Japanese (“inside”, 内). “People like us” sort of thing. Zainichi and Burakumin are different enough to be “not like us”.
Wow, that was a bit more in depth than I had anticipated. I need to get some washing done: the only clean thing I’m wearing right now is my tshirt.
An Interesting day!
Read in one of the JW Mags a while back (delivered to my office) how one of their senior members was a chosen member of an Native American Tribe and had been groomed since childhood in the ways of that tribe culture and beliefs by their Shamen, so that upon the death of the elder he would become the Shamen and then pass on those beliefs to the next chosen youth. This was commonly used in cultures where the written word was not prevalent. That was until the JWs came a-knockin’. The Shamen-to-be signed up with the JWs. As it took half a lifetime of learning to fill that role and this person was effectively irreplaceable, the Indian Tribe lost its link to its past and (what I found to be utterly unblievable and unforgiveable) the JWs CELEBRATED his conversion to the true faith from the paganism and idolatry of his tribe. Took some kindly JW Yorkshireman who landed to my door a while back with a couple of African missionaries and he denied all knowledge. Told him to read up on some back issues of “Watch-your-back Tower” where it would be glaringly apparent. Yep. JWs always know best (as well as their Evangelical proslytising buddies), and globalisation and the “one-size-fits-all” philosphy fits well with their small brains. OK. I’m done with my rant for the day! Have a Good Weekend Daniel
I was ambushed twice in Sapporo by them aswell, the first time I surprised myself with how polite I was explaining to them why I was an atheist and in the end we agreed to disagree. The second time happened about a week later, so I just said “すみません、ボクは無心論者” and kept walking.
To be honest I’m going to have to disagree with you a bit here. The lack of monotheism in Japan is one of the reasons why Japan is so brilliant. It’s not a coincidence that the most harmonious and peaceful nation in the world is full of people that don’t believe in God. I went to a shrine with Chisa, have to say it was the first time I’ve ever thought something good about a religion, though I’d consider it more a pleasant spirituality and culture than a religion at all, but that could just be because of my negative feelings towards the word. I’ve plenty more to say on this but I think I should respect your views on your blog. In saying that I strongly disapprove of trying to convert Japanese people.
Tilmitt: you’re right that it’s no co-incidence. Anything, religion or political system, which posed any threat to peace was removed from Japan by the Tokugawas. The peace of Japan came at the price of many wars, but it did actually come. I’d describe Japan as having a very soft religious system, which isn’t much more that a few ceremonies for births, weddings, funerals, etc. There’s also that soft spirituality that you mentioned, where everyone kinda sorta thinks its nice that there are spirits everywhere and that we can get to Nirvana, but no one really thinks about it a whole lot unless they’re in a shrine. It works really well to have a frictionless and harmonious nation (or at least as close to that as I’ve ever seen) and I’d love to see a way of preserving that at the same time as seeing Japanese people become Christians but looking at every other country in the world it’s doubtful that that could happen.
Jim: the globalisation/one size fits all point is very true. I read a book before, Bruchko, and it described Evangelicals going to South American tribes and making them wear western clothes and building western-style buildings for the churches. They had the Indians walking around the jungle wearing buttoned shirts! These missionaries has this idea of what Christianity is and just put it straight on these people, changing their culture where necessary to make the square peg fit into the round hole.