On the Way to Japan (August 20, 1966)

This blog post is different from most of the 1,130+ posts I have made over the past 17 years. It is a personal narrative of life-changing events that began on my 28^th birthday, events that have greatly impacted me and June and our children from then until the present.  

SS President Cleveland

August 15, 1966, was a significant birthday party in Kansas City. In addition to my immediate family, several extended family members and a few personal friends gathered in Swope Park for the last birthday I would celebrate in the U.S. until 1971. That is because our family of four (our two other children were born later), started to Japan that day for a five-year term as missionaries.

We flew from the old Kansas City airport to San Francisco, where we had time for some much-needed rest and relaxation before boarding the President Cleveland Steamship on August 18 for a 13-day voyage to Japan. It was the best vacation June and I had ever had. The seas were calm, the meals were bountiful and delicious, and having some carefree leisure time was wonderful.

June and I married in 1957, the month we graduated from junior college. I was then a full-time student for the next eight years. Throughout the year of 1965, I was under considerable pressure to finish my doctoral dissertation. Kathy, our daughter who turned five that year, often included these words in her prayers: “Help Daddy get his thesis done so we can go to Japan.”

A few days after leaving San Francisco, the steamship stopped in Hawai’i, and we had an enjoyable and somewhat tiring day, sightseeing near and around Waikiki Beach and other places on that beautiful island of Oahu. By evening, the four of us were so tired we decided to turn in early. Because of going to bed so soon, we missed having an interesting experience.

When we arose the next morning, we found a notice that had been slipped under our cabin door the night before. It said that a famous Italian actress would be on deck for the filming of a movie scene that very evening. So, Sophia Loren was there on our ship that night, and we never even knew she had been there until she was already gone!

September 1, 1966, was a thrilling day for our family. That is the day our ship arrived in Yokohama, the harbor city not far south of Tokyo. We woke up early that morning and went up on deck, and what a wonderful view we had! There in the distance we saw Mt. Fuji, perhaps the most beautiful mountain in the world. That was a good omen, as It usually is not visible from the Tokyo area.

About a week later, we started language school and began the long, difficult process of trying to learn the Japanese language. In addition to learning English from birth on, I had studied several languages up until then (in this order): Latin, Greek, French, German, Hebrew, and even a smidgen of Danish. However, I had never studied a language in order to converse in it.

With Japanese, though, the challenge was not only learning to speak but also learning to read. In addition to the two fairly simple fifty‑sound syllabaries, one must learn around 2,000 Chinese characters (kanji) in order to read at the level of a high school graduate. I had to learn many more than that, for I was designated to become a college professor.

October 1968 was a grueling month as my teaching career began then. This was why we started on our trip to Japan more than 25 months earlier. It ended up, though, that my “career” at Seinan Gakuin University and the larger school complex involved many administrative jobs as well as teaching in the classroom.

I never sought any administrative position—and I never turned one down, as refusing to take a position to which I had been elected to or appointed for would have seemed presumptuous. Beginning in 1970, I served in six admin positions, including two four-year terms as Chancellor and one year as Chair of the Board of Trustees. Except for the last four years, I also continued to be classroom professor, .

If I had it all to do over again, I would choose with no hesitation to do exactly what we did beginning on my 28^th birthday.

_____

** I am now wondering if I have perhaps discovered when the year of my death will likely be. Since I have always emphasized balance, perhaps leaving for Japan on my 28^th birthday and being in Japan for 38 years indicates that perhaps my passing will be in the 28^th year of our retirement from Japan, which will be in 2032. Even that might be pushing it, as I would turn 94 that year.

The Year of the Fire Horse

As many of you know, in Japan and China the zodiac consists of twelve animal signs, and each year is named after one of them. This new year of 2026 is the Year of the Horse—but more specifically it is the Year of the Fire Horse, which occurs every sixty years.** 

It was 60 years ago that my family and I arrived in Japan for the first time. Even though we were told it was the Year of the Horse, I can’t remember anyone telling us it was the Year of the Fire Horse.

After two years of language study in Tokyo, we moved to Fukuoka City in southwest Japan. We lived in an all-Japanese neighborhood, and the Shibata family next door became dear friends. Mr. Shibata’s given name was Toraichirō, and since tora is the Japanese word for tiger, it was easy to discern he was born in the Year of the Tiger, the same as I was.

In 1974 when I turned 36, three times around the Japanese zodiac, Mr. Shibata celebrated his 72^nd birthday, having completed six cycles. At some point, we learned that Mrs. Shibata celebrated her birthday on January 1 even though she was born at the end of 1906, which was the year of the Fire Horse.

For the Japanese people who take the “superstitions” entwined with the zodiac seriously, it is commonly believed that “girls born in the Year of the Fire Horse will be temperamental, have bad marriages and be threats to their fathers and husbands.”

Since 1906 was the Year of the Fire Horse and thus seen as a bad year, especially for women born with that zodiac sign, Mrs. Shibata’s family registered her birth as being at the beginning of 1907. She did grow up to be a rather strong-willed woman, but Toraichirō-san was a kind, patient man, and we enjoyed having them both as neighbors during the 23 years we lived next door to them.

What can we expect this Year of the Fire Horse (which has little meaning in the Western world)? At the end of each year, there are always many articles published with what is thought to be the best or worst of whatever in the past year. But I want to think only about 2026 (and beyond) rather than looking back over the past year. I don’t want to walk into the future backwards.

In the Old Testament, the writer of Second Isaiah records these words from the Lord God: “Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past.  See, I am doing a new thing!” (43:18-19a, NIV). We do need to learn from what has previously happened, but it is important not to dwell on the past. Rather, we are encouraged to focus on the future where God is “doing a new thing.”

Despite the negative aspects of the Year of the Fire Horse, especially for women, there are positive aspects also. The Fire Horse can legitimately be considered as a symbol of strong will and forward motion, encouraging individuals, families, and communities alike to pursue important changes and reforms.

 In that sense, the Year of the Fire Horse becomes a metaphor for times when intense pressures and rapid shifts do not just unsettle life but also open the way for renewal, growth, and more authentic directions.

Rather than dwelling on 2025 as a horrible year, let’s look forward to this new year being a year of positive change. I am a regular reader of “The Cottage,” Diane Butler Bass’s Substack newsletter. Her January 1 post was titled “Annus Mirabilis Everybody!”

Bass rightly notes that so many pundits labeled 2025 as annus horribilis, a “horrible year.” That, she writes, is “the 2025 consensus: Horrible. A disaster. Glad that’s done.” But, looking forward, she challenges us readers to name the new year of 2026 annus mirabilis, the “wonderful year,” the “year of miracles,” or the “beautiful year.”

She continues, “We can do this. Together. Let’s name this year Mirabilis. … If we start now, 2026 can be a year of wonder, a year of miracles, or maybe even a beautiful year.”

Among other things, with Fire Horse energy, may we USAmericans of goodwill work together to change the direction our nation is heading by voting to change the political leadership of the nation come November.

_____

** As mentioned in my previous (12/31) blog post, Japan has long used the “Western calendar,” with the new year beginning on January 1. But the traditional Chinese-style calendar (generally referred to as 旧暦 (kyūreki, “old calendar”) is still often used when referring to the zodiac, which was borrowed from China. Thus, the “Chinese” Year of the Fire Horse doesn’t begin until February 17.

Watchnight Parties

This post is being made at 9:00 a.m. CST in the U.S., but in Japan (where I long lived), it is midnight and the beginning of a new year according to the now-standard “Western calendar.”* According to the Japanese calendar, though, this is the beginning of Reiwa 8, the 8^th year of the current emperor on the Chrysanthemum Throne. 

In Japan, the new year is celebrated mostly after midnight. Many Japanese people make a hatsumōde (初詣、“first shrine or temple visit of the New Year”) after midnight on December 31, although many wait until daybreak on January 1, as seeing the sunrise in the new year is considered quite meaningful.

Years in Japan are traditionally viewed as completely separate, with each new year providing a fresh start. Consequently, all duties are supposed to be completed by the end of the year, while bōnenkai (忘年会、“year forgetting parties”) are often held in December with the purpose of leaving the old year’s worries and troubles behind.

In large Japanese cities, most younger Japanese people celebrate New Year’s Eve much the same as young people in USAmerican cities. Traditional (and especially rural) families, though, spend the evening at home for a relaxed family meal, watching TV specials, and participating in rituals to welcome the new year.

So, for most people in Japan, there are not watchnight parties such as most of us older people in the U.S. remember—and perhaps many still participate in, although it has been a very long time since I stayed up until midnight on New Year’s Eve.

Religious watchnight parties first became common in the U.S. among Methodists. In 1727, the Moravian Church was formed in Herrnhut, a village on the estate of Count Nicholas Ludwig von Zinzendorf in Saxony, Germany.

Watchnight services originated in Moravian communities around 1733 in what is now the Czech Republic, where believers held three-hour vigils on New Year's Eve, often preceded by a love feast, to reflect on the year, pray, and prepare for the future. 

John Wesley encountered a Moravian watchnight service on New Year’s Eve 1738, describing a powerful spiritual experience that influenced his ministry. By 1740, he formalized it for Methodists as “Covenant Renewal Services,” featuring singing, prayers, scripture, and communion held on New Year’s Eve as a godly alternative to drunken celebrations.

Consequently, watchnight services spread widely among Methodists in Britain and then in North America as a New Year’s Eve religious observance. As Christianity moved westward, Methodists and Baptists were the primary Protestant denominations, and Baptists didn’t have watchnight services for quite some time, as they were considered too “Methodistic.”

Gradually, though, more and more Baptist churches began to have watchnight services, and as a Baptist boy in the late 1940s and early 1950s, I remember participating in such church gatherings on New Year’s Eve. Then, in my early years as a pastor, and later even in Japan, I led and enjoyed meaningful watchnight services.

Black Christians held a meaningful watchnight service on December 31, 1862.** On that night, enslaved and free African Americans gathered, many in secret, to ring in the new year and await news that the Emancipation Proclamation had taken effect. 

On September 22, President Lincoln had issued an executive order, declaring that enslaved people in the rebelling Confederate States were legally free. However, the decree would not take effect until the clock struck midnight at the start of the new year. Thus, that New Year’s Eve, came to be known as “Watch Night” or “Freedom's Eve.”

According to Perplexity AI, many Black churches today hold watchnight services, reflecting on slavery's history and emancipation. Sermons often recount the 1862 gatherings, framing the night as  “Freedom's Eve” while blending it with broader themes of hope and justice.

Initially meant to welcome emancipation, the watchnight services now encourage reflection on the history of slavery and freedom, as well as reflection on the past year—both its trials and triumphs—while also anticipating what the new year will have in store. It is a continuation of generations of faith that freedom and renewal lie ahead.

_____

  * In November 1872, the Japanese government decreed that the old calendar, derived from Chinese models, would be replaced by the Gregorian calendar.​ Under that reform, the day after December 2, 1872 (lunisolar), was designated January 1, 1873. Thus, since 1873, the official Japanese New Year has been celebrated on January 1, rather than on the variable late-January/February date of the old lunisolar year.​

** This section is based on “The Historical Legacy of Watch Night” as found at this website: https://nmaahc.si.edu/explore/stories/historical-legacy-watch-night. Much of the same content is found in What does Watch Night mean for Black Americans today? It dates back to the Emancipation Proclamation, posted by Religious News Service on January 1, 2024.

On Having and Celebrating Life, Real/Eternal Life

Life ◈ Love ◈ Light ◈ Liberty: These are the “4-Ls” about which I wrote in my March 9 post. Today I am focusing on Life, the first of those four. Over the next few weeks, I will write about the other three.

Real life is more than physical life. As I said in the March 9 post, the foundation of my emphasis on life was Jesus’ words as recorded in the tenth chapter of the Gospel of John: “I came that they may have life and have it abundantly” (v. 10, NRSV).

Having abundant life focuses on the quality of life, not just its quantity. Physical life is something that people either have or don’t have. That is, they are either alive or dead. But living abundantly means living with meaning, purpose, and joy.

The emphasis on life, real life, was prominent in the Christian Studies courses I conducted at Seinan Gakuin University in Japan. In 1975, I taught a required course for second-year Economics Department students. Horiuchi Akira-san was one of the students enrolled in that class.

On his 70^th birthday in January, Horiuchi-san posted the following comments (in Japanese) on Facebook: “When I was a second year university student, a missionary teacher of Christian Studies said, "The purpose of Christianity is to help people to have life and to have it abundantly."

In a personal exchange on Facebook Messenger, Horiuchi-san (whom I should call sensei since he has been a Christian pastor for most of the years since he finished his theological education in 1981) wrote, “I am who I am today because of my encounter with you. Thanks.”

Real life includes valuing and protecting physical life. Even though it is more than physical life, having real life leads to more than just enjoying the richness of one’s own life. It also seeks life for groups of people, robust physical life as well as meaningful societal life.

This generates opposition to war, to violence of all kinds, to capital punishment, to ecological destruction, and to all exploitation and/or degradation of people because of race, nationality, gender, sexual orientation, religion, or anything else.  

Conservative Christians of the present have preserved the important emphasis of evangelicalism on real life for individuals by faith in God through Jesus Christ, but so many have largely failed to emphasize the equally important matter of helping marginalized groups to have vigorous physical life also.

The New Testament term eternal life is basically the same as what I call real life. I have used the latter term because of the misunderstanding or ambiguity of the word eternal, which was long expressed as everlasting in English.

For centuries, the majority of Protestants (including most Anglicans) read the King James Version of the Bible, which dates back to 1611. Many of us older people memorized John 3:16 in the KJV:

For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.

That was the basis for the widespread belief in unending life, which was generally understood as life after physical death.

But beginning with the American Standard Version, published in 1901, the Greek words previously translated as everlasting life began to be translated as eternal life. This became more widely the case after the Revised Standard Version was published in 1952.

Bible scholars increasingly began to emphasize that eternal, especially in the Gospel of John, primarily refers to the quality of life, not its quantity. Thus, eternal life is the type of life that we can have and enjoy now, not just life after physical death.

Life (real life) is the theme of Easter, which Christians around the world will be celebrating tomorrow.

It is because of the resurrected Jesus that all can receive new life = eternal life through him. That is the life that Horiuchi-san received the year after he heard about real life in my Christian Studies class in 1975.

His kind words of gratitude were primarily for my sharing the Gospel of life with him and his classmates, most of whom never accepted that message. He did and that made all the difference.

Happy Easter!

Too Many People, or Too Few?

This blog post is about the human population of the world. Are there too many people, or are there too few? 

(A slightly inaccurate graph of the world's population growth, but the point is well made.)

The county of my birth is very small; it could be argued that there are too few people there. I was born in Worth County, Missouri, which is the youngest of the 114 counties in the state. It is also the Mo. county with the smallest land area and the smallest population.**

According to the U.S. census records, the peak population of Worth Co. was in 1900 when the number of residents reached nearly 10,000. But in the 2020 census, the population had dropped to under 2,000.

It can be argued, with good reason, that there are now too few people in Worth Co. for it to be viable still, and the same is true for many rural counties across the nation.

The population of some nations is decreasing, and some people in those countries are worrying about there being too few people—especially too few of the “right” kind.

I have long been concerned about the rapid increase of the world’s population. When I was born in 1938, there were about 2.2 billion people living on this earth, but by 1998 (just 60 years later) that number reached six billion—and this year it topped eight billion!

If my home county had grown by the same percentage as the world’s population between 1900 and 2020, it would have a population of around 49,000, not fewer than 2,000.

But already by the early 2000s, there was serious talk about the declining population in Japan and the need to encourage more Japanese women to marry and for couples to have more children.

And it is true, many of the wealthy countries of the world are losing population, and even some in China, until this year the world’s most populous country, are increasingly concerned about the current population decline there.

The cover story of the June 3^rd-9^th issue of The Economist was “The Baby-Bust Economy,” and they highlighted the problem of the declining population growth in most of the world’s wealthiest countries: “The largest 15 countries by GDP all have a fertility rate below the replacement rate.”

Thus, they project that before the end of this century “the number of people on the planet could shrink for the first time since the Black Death.”

The unchecked growth of the world’s population has long been a concern of some scholars, and others. It was 225 years ago when Thomas Malthus published the first edition of An Essay on the Principle of Population as It Affects the Future Improvement of Society (1798).

Malthus (1766~1834) was an English economist and demographer and is best known for his theory that population growth will always tend to outrun the food supply and that betterment of humankind is impossible without stern limits on reproduction.

Malthus was the first to write publicly about carrying capacity and overshoot, which are central themes of William Catton’s book that I introduced in my March 23 blog post, and that perceptive author refers to Malthus several times.

Malthus didn’t know of the coming industrial revolution in the 19^th century or the “green revolution” that began in mid-20^th century. But as Catton clearly explains, the extension of the carrying capacity of the earth was primarily based on the exploitation of depletable and non-renewable fossil fuels.

It was quite disappointing that the concluding paragraph of The Economist’s recent cover story states, “Unexpected productivity advances meant that demographic time-bombs, such as the mass starvation predicted by Thomas Malthus in the 18th century, failed to detonate.”

True, such time-bombs haven’t detonated yet. But why do they think that those time bombs are not still ticking in this world with its continual global warming, ongoing over-consumption of non-renewable resources, and increasing inequality and strife between the “haves” and “have nots”?

Because of the current, but insufficiently understood, ecological crisis, there will most likely be a drastic, and catastrophic, decline in the world’s population long before the end of this century.

Fortunately, rather than being a problem, the current decline in population pushes the coming catastrophic decline further into the future.

_____

** You might also find it interesting that the land area that became Worth County in 1861 was the most northwestern corner of the United States after Missouri became a state in 1821. 

Francis Xavier, an Extraordinary Missionary and Saint

The Feast of St. Francis Xavier will be celebrated in Goa, India, this Saturday. That special yearly observance commemorates and honors Xavier and his remarkable Christian missionary activity (see this link). He died 470 years ago, on December 3, 1552.

I have mentioned Xavier several times in my blog posts through the years, the first being on Aug. 15, 2009, my twelfth post on this blog started the previous month. 

Francis Xavier was born in 1506 in what is now northern Spain. When he was 19, he enrolled in Paris University, the world’s premier university at the time.

While a student in Paris, Xavier became friends with Ignatius of Loyola, and he became one of the seven original members of the Society of Jesus (the Jesuits) started by Ignatius on August 15, 1534.*

Xavier became one of the most famous Jesuits of all time in spite of his early death only eighteen years and a few months after the formation of that new Roman Catholic order. Further, he became one of the most effective Catholic missionaries of all time, even though he served only 10½ years.

Xavier’s missionary work began on May 6, 1542, when after a treacherous sea voyage of several months he disembarked in Goa, the center of Portuguese activity in the East. He worked there with considerable success for about three years.

For the next three years, Xavier engaged in missionary work in what now is the country of Malaysia. It was there that he met Anjirō, a Japanese fugitive, who accompanied him when he returned to Goa.

Xavier was the first Christian missionary to reach Japan. With Anjirō as his interpreter and guide, Xavier left Goa in April 1549, and exactly four months later, on August 15, set foot in Kagoshima at the southernmost part of the Japanese island of Kyushu.

For a little over two years, Xavier engaged in energetic missionary work—and struggled with the Japanese language, which he reportedly called the “Devil’s language,” designed to keep the Gospel out of Japan.

His contact with the Japanese Emperor in Kyoto proved disappointing, but he then had considerable success in what is now Yamaguchi Prefecture at the southern tip of the major island of Honshu. He also enjoyed a measure of success in what are now Nagasaki and Oita Prefectures on Kyushu.

Surprisingly, Xavier didn’t think he was particularly successful in Japan, but he established the work for other Jesuit missionaries there and scholars have estimated that more than 300,000 people in Japan converted to Christianity over the next fifty years.

Xavier is widely known and respected in Japan to this day. I have been to the St. Francis Xavier Memorial Church in Yamaguchi (see here for a picture) and have seen the statue of Xavier in downtown Oita City (pictured below). 

Xavier’s impressive legacy is well worth noting. While still in Japan, Xavier longed to go to mainland China and to evangelize there.

After a short visit back in Goa, in April 1552 Xavier set off for China. In late August, he arrived at Shangchuan Island, less than nine miles from the mainland, but he was not allowed to enter the country that was closed to foreigners. As he waited and waited, he grew ill and then died on Dec. 3.

His remains were taken back to Goa where they are preserved in a silver casket within Bom Jesus Basilica there.

Xavier’s dream of entering China and meeting the Emperor was fulfilled by the Italian Jesuit Matteo Ricci, who was born less than two months before Xavier died.**

Xavier was canonized 400 years ago, in March 1622, and in 1927 he was named the Roman Catholic patron saint of all missions.

He is justly credited for his idea that missionaries must adapt to the customs and language of the people they evangelize, and for his advocation of an educated native clergy.

Partly because of Xavier’s emphasis on education, the Jesuits founded many universities around the world.

In the U.S., currently there are 29 Jesuit universities, including Xavier University in Cincinnati and Rockhurst University here in Kansas City, where I had the distinct privilege of teaching for 17 semesters from 2006 to 2014.

_____

* See my Oct. 25, 2013, blog post titled “In Appreciation of Ignatius and the Jesuits.”

** See my blog article about Ricci posted last month on Oct. 10.

Note: While teaching at Rockhurst U., I sometimes showed my classes part of a DVD titled “Xavier: Missionary & Saint.” That 2006 PBS documentary is now available for viewing (here) on YouTube. 

Contextualizing Christianity: In Memory of Matteo Ricci

On March 31 last year, The Economist published an article about “Sinifying Christianity,” that is, seeking to make Chinese Christians more “Chinese.” The article begins by referring to James Hudson Taylor, the famous 19th-century Protestant missionary. They could have looked back much further.

Italian Jesuit missionary Matteo Ricci sought to Sinicize (=to change or modify by Chinese influence) Christianity in the 16^th century. His pioneer evangelistic activity is noteworthy even now, and there are Protestants as well as Catholics who remember his missionary work with deep appreciation.

Christianity Today, the flagship moderate evangelical Christian magazine, published an article in June of this year with praise, and a picture, of Ricci. 

Ricci and Chinese scholar Xu Guangqi

Ricci was born 470 years ago, on October 6, 1552. He was ordained to the priesthood in 1581, and the next year he arrived in Macao and prepared for entering China. He did enter the mainland in 1583 and remained there until his death 27 years later, in 1610.

As Baptist missiologist Justice Anderson wrote in 1998, “to win the favor of the Chinese, Ricci adopted their culture and appeared in the guise of a Confucian scholar.” He was quite successful: by 1650, forty years after his death, there were some 250,000 Christians in China.*

According to the article in The Economist, since 2018 the Chinese government has encouraged churches “to use Chinese architecture and Chinese tunes for hymns, as well as Chinese-style painting, calligraphy and other ‘popular cultural forms.’” All this would have pleased Ricci.

The Catholic Church, though, was not pleased with Ricci’s emphasis. Ricci and his successors “permitted converts to engage in ancestral and state rites regarding those as social and civil rather than religious in character.”**

That led to what is known as the Chinese Rites controversy (which is summarized well in Wikipedia). It was settled by the Pope in the early 1700s—against the Jesuits and to the great detriment of the continued expansion of Christianity in China.

I first learned about Ricci when I was a graduate student in the 1960s. Dr. Hugo Culpepper, a Missions professor at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, stressed the importance of what was then often called accommodation.

Later the terms indigenization, inculturation, or contextualization became more common. The emphasis was the same, however: effective mission activity must seek to relate intentionally and positively to the culture in which the missionary is located. That is certainly what Ricci sought to do.

Even now, and perhaps now even more than in past decades, there are many who criticize missionary activity as being a form of imperialism.

The critics think that Western missionaries were intentionally linked to the Western powers that sought to gain political and economic control over Asian and African countries.

Unfortunately, that was often the case in the 19^th and early 20^th century. Missionaries sought to make Christians and churches in non-Western lands look much like the Christians and churches of the West. Converts were given “Christian” names, and church buildings exhibited Western architecture.

My first Japanese pastor was an elderly man who was born into a samurai family in 1890. When he was baptized as a young man, he was given the name Timothy. (Fortunately, he was not using that name when I first met him in 1966.)

As the article in The Economist notes, “long before the Communist Party seized power in 1949, people used to say, ‘One more Christian, one fewer Chinese.’ Officials in China still mutter this phrase today.”

But to cite the same 4/3/21 source again, in 1867 the prominent English missionary Hudson Taylor (1832~1905) “wrote a letter home defending his policy of encouraging fellow preachers in China to wear Chinese robes and the Manchu-style pigtail.”

Taylor’s emphasis was quite similar to what Catholic missionary Ricci had advocated 275 years earlier.

While the specifics changed, the central point of Ricci (and Taylor) was adopted more and more in the last half of the 20^th century.

Along with many of my missionary colleagues, during my 38 years in Japan I intentionally sought to practice accommodation/indigenization as much as possible—and have bristled some when accused, directly or indirectly, of fostering Western (Christian) imperialism.

_____

* “Medieval and Renaissance Missions (500-1792),” Missiology: An Introduction to the Foundations, History, and Strategies of World Missions (1998), p. 192.

** R. Pierce Beaver, “The History of Mission Strategy,” Perspectives on the World Christian Movement: A Reader (1981), p. 194.

What about Nuclear Energy?

Tomorrow, August 6, is the 77^th anniversary of the first time a nuclear weapon was used in warfare. That morning at approximately 8:15 a.m. (local time), a U.S. Boeing B-29 Superfortress bomber dropped an atomic bomb on the Japanese city of Hiroshima.

As I have made several posts regarding the bombings of Hiroshima and then Nagasaki three days later (see here, for example), this article is mostly about the later use of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes. 

President Eisenhower made a significant “Atoms for Peace” address to the United Nations in December 1953, eight years after the nuclear destruction of the two Japanese cities. That began a period of high hope that nuclear energy could be used for the great benefit of the human race.**

From the beginning, however, the U.S. President’s proposal was partly propaganda and an excuse for building additional nuclear weapons for national security. That led to the Cold War era, and during Eisenhower’s time in office, the number of U.S. nuclear weapons rose from 1,005 to 20,000.

But Eisenhower’s seminal speech also led to the establishment of the International Atomic Energy Agency in 1957, which was set up as the world’s “Atoms for Peace” organization within the United Nations—and as their website shows, it is still quite active.

There have been three major reasons for widespread opposition to the development of nuclear energy.

1) The fear of nuclear weapons being used again in warfare, perhaps by a rogue nation or by terrorists. This was long my main reason for opposing the further development of nuclear energy. I wrote an anti-nuclear article 30~40 years ago for a local publication in Japan.

2) The possibility of accidents. Indeed, there have been three major nuclear accidents: Three Mile Island (Penn.) in March 1979, Chernobyl (Ukraine) in April 1986 (the world’s biggest nuclear accident), and Fukushima (Japan) in March 2011.

The first of those caused a dramatic shift in the enthusiasm for the development of nuclear power in the U.S. Large anti-nuclear demonstrations were held in Washington, D.C., in May 1979, and then in New York City that December.

This is an issue that must be carefully considered, and, indeed, in Atoms and Ashes: A Global History of Nuclear Disasters (2022), Serhii Plokhy, a Ukrainian historian at Harvard,

holds that the inevitability of accidents is one of several reasons to encourage nuclear power to drift into disuse, rather than give it a new role in the fight against climate change (from the June 25 issue of The Economist).

3) The high cost of building nuclear reactors and disposing of waste materials. According to this website, “the minimum cost per megawatt hour to build a new nuclear plant is $112, compared to $46 for utility-scale solar . . . and $30 for wind.”

And then, disposal of nuclear waste is a major challenge, both in terms of methods and cost.

So, what about now? In recent years, because of increased awareness of the seriousness of global warming, there has again been a growing movement favoring the use of nuclear energy.

The Russian war on Ukraine this year has also once again increased the appeal of the development and use of nuclear power, especially in Europe. Countries that were phasing out nuclear reactors are now postponing those plans.

In Japan, twenty-one nuclear reactors were decommissioned after the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake, but now ten of those reactors have been restarted and plans are in place for more restarts in the years ahead.

It seems to me that in spite of the risks (and the cost), the industrial countries of the world must make plans immediately for the increased construction of nuclear reactors for the energy needs of the world.

True, destructive nuclear accidents are possible, but more widespread destruction of the world as we know it is quite certain if global warming is not controlled. Nuclear energy is one of our best hopes for significantly slowing the crisis of global warming.

What do you think?

_____

** “How The Atom Changed The World” is an informative 55-minute video (available here on YouTube) regarding the use of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes; it begins with Eisenhower’s emphasis on Atoms for Peace and deals with the pros and cons of nuclear energy up through 2021.

++ Some of you may be interested in exploring this link to “Nuclear Prayer Day” tomorrow (Aug. 6); it is especially to pray for a world free of nuclear weapons. 

Do You Have Ikigai?

The Japanese word ikigai (pronounced “ee key guy”) is an important word/concept that has long been common in Japan, and it is becoming more widely known in the English-speaking world. 

The Oxford English Dictionary defines ikigai as “a motivating force; something or someone that gives a person a sense of purpose or a reason for living.” Its meaning is similar to the French expression raison d'être, and shares much in common with Viktor Frankl’s concept of logotherapy. 

One of the first popularizers of ikigai in the U.S. is Dan Buetter whose TED talk “How to live to be 100+” in 2009 referred to how ikigai is one reason for the remarkable longevity of people who live in Okinawa, Japan. (The video of that talk has now had more than 630,000 views.)

Marc Winn is an entrepreneur and a “business coach” who in May 2014 posted “What is your Ikigai?” He presented his ideas with a Venn diagram that has become quite popular. (Some of you have probably seen it on Facebook.)

Winn’s “Ikigai Venn Diagram” has now been presented in various colorful ways, but I like this simpler one: 

Although it is translated from Spanish, Ikigai: The Japanese Secret to a Long and Happy Life (2016, 2017) by Héctor García and Francesc Miralles is an “international bestseller,” and I read a copy from my local library in 2020. (Here is a link to a review of that book, including “the 10 rules of ikigai.”)

Winn’s Venn diagram and the “marketing” of ikigai in the Western world is not liked by some Japanese, however. I won’t try to explain that criticism here, but if you are interested, please access this website.

Just because the Japanese use the wonderful word ikigai, that doesn’t mean everyone actually possesses it. The Japanese suicide rate has been, and remains, high—for many reasons. But the absence of ikigai is one of the major reasons, especially among for younger Japanese.

Neither is obtaining ikigai, perhaps wrongly appropriated by Western entrepreneurs, something that can be quickly achieved. Still, having a strong purpose for living is of great importance for all people, whether you call it ikigai or not.

But how does one obtain ikigai? There is no “one and only” way, but I am convinced that a strong religious faith is a primary means, although that is not a way common among Japanese people. But consider this example of one Japanese Christian who exhibited a strong sense of ikigai.

It was about 50 years ago that I first met a Japanese professor/scholar by the name of Sakakibara Gan. He was translating Arthur Gish’s book The New Left and Christian Radicalism, which I wanted to use in an upcoming Christian Studies course that I was going to teach.**

Sakakibara-sensei was born in 1898, so he was 74 or 75 when I first met him—and I thought he was quite old since he was 40 years older than I. When he told me about his plans for the years ahead, I understood his strong sense of ikigai.

The “old” professor said, “I can’t die for a few years yet; there are too many books I still want to write and to translate”—and he did go on to write three books (the third of those published in 1991) and to translate four more books after that. He died in 1994, about two weeks after his 96^th birthday.

Although I haven’t often used the term ikigai, I am deeply grateful for having had it from my teen years. My 38 years in Japan were so meaningful because of ikigai—and having had the privilege of helping a number of Japanese people discover their ikigai was and remains gratifying.

Even though I no longer need the bottom part of the Venn diagram, I am still invigorated by the top three circles.

I hope that you readers, too, have a sense of ikigai—or at least that you will acquire more and more ikigai in the months/years ahead.

_____

** I have previously posted blog articles about Gish and his book; see here and here. And here is the link to an article about Sakakibara (and his wife) in the Global Anabaptist Mennonite Encyclopedia Online.

The Power of Pictures

“Use a picture. It’s worth a thousand words.” Arthur Brisbane (1864~1936), a high-profile New York journalist and editor, penned those words 111 years ago in a 1911 newspaper article. That seems to be the origin of the much-used expression that you have heard repeatedly. 

This post is about two specific photos that were made public fifty years ago rather than about the power of pictures in general.

One of those images is now generally titled “Napalm Girl.” It is the photo of Phan Thi Kim Phuc, a nine-year-old Vietnamese girl, taken in 1972 by Associated Press photographer Nick Ut (who was born in Vietnam in 1951).

“The Girl in the Picture” was the title of my 7/10/11 blog post, which includes a reproduction of the photo, so I will not write more about that powerful picture here.*

The second picture, and the main subject of this article, was also made public in 1972. Different names have been used for it; the one I prefer is “Tomoko and Mother in the Bath.”**  

Kamimura Tomoko was born blind and paralyzed with congenital “Minamata disease” in 1956 and was 15 at the time the picture of her and her mother bathing was taken. She died in December 1977 at the age of 21.

“Minamata disease,” a type of mercury poisoning, was the name of the malady suffered by those who were born with various deformities in and around the small city of Minamata in Kumamoto Prefecture, Japan. Tomoko was just one of nearly 3,000 people who contracted Minamata disease.

American photojournalist W. Eugene Smith took the picture of Tomoko being bathed by her mother in late 1971. Smith (1918~78) was widely known because of the outstanding photos he took during World War II. But many commentators regard “Tomoko” as Smith’s greatest work.

The iconic photograph was first published in the June 2, 1972, edition of Life magazine as the centerpiece of a short Minamata photo essay.

The movie Minamata, which premiered in Berlin in 2020, was released in the U.S. in February of this year. It features Johnny Depp, who does an outstanding job of portraying the not-so-likeable Smith. 

Although there are various historical inaccuracies and other defects in the movie, it pictures well the suffering of so many families in Minamata and the culpability of the Chisso Corporation, the Japanese chemical company which for 34 years polluted the water supply near Minamata.

The climax of the film is Smith’s photographing Tomoko and her mother. And, in actuality, upon its publication in 1972 the photo became world-famous, significantly raising the international profile of Minamata disease and the struggle of the victims for recognition and compensation.

Minamata is about 120 miles due south of Fukuoka, the city to which June and I (and our two children at the time) moved in 1968. Although the tragedy of children born with Minamata disease was known, in part, since the 1950s, I don’t know when we first began to hear about it.

In the summer of 1971, shortly before Smith arrived in Minamata, we came back to the U.S. for a year, so perhaps we didn’t become aware of the dire situation in Minamata until after Smith’s photo essay in Life, including “Tomoko and Mother in the Bath,” was published the following year.

In February 1988, I went to Minamata with a group of Japanese Christians who wanted to learn more about the situation there and to consider how to do more to not only help the victims but also to help stop the polluting practices of companies such as Chisso.

While there are lingering effects of Minamata disease, that sad episode is largely over. But the fight against industrial pollution, in all countries including the U.S., is an ongoing one.

The Trump administration did away with a great many restrictions established by the Environmental Protection Agency. And if (when?) the GOP gains political dominance this year or in 2024, industrial pollution will likely be a problem that will again have to be addressed more actively.

Powerful pictures protesting pollution may become imperative again.

_____

* If you want to read even more about this picture, check out “'Napalm Girl' at 50: The story of the Vietnam War's defining photo,” a CNN article posted last month.

** Although Tomoko’s surname was “Kamimura,” because of the misreading of the first Japanese character of the family name, the photograph has sometimes been erroneously known as Tomoko Uemura in Her Bath. 

How Will You Observe May Day?

The title of this post may seem rather senseless to most of you, for in all likelihood you have no plans to observe May Day at all. But there are people in countries around the world who will be observing May Day with great earnestness. 

In the U.S., May Day in the past was often observed with May Day baskets of flowers hung on the doorknobs of family/friends and with dances around a Maypole—but I won’t be writing any more about that. (If you want to reflect on that type of May Day observance, click here.)

Observing May Day in 1967

On May 1, 1967, I had lived in Japan exactly eight months. Even though it was a Monday, since it was an unofficial holiday in Japan, June and I had the day off from language school where we were students. That gave me the chance to see May Day observed as I had never seen it observed before.

The mission house into which my family and I moved in September 1966 was 20-minutes by foot from the Yoyogi National Stadium that was part of the venue for the 1964—and the 2020—Olympics. On that May Day, I decided to walk over there and see what was going on.

Before reaching the Stadium, I encountered masses of people—largely blue-color laborers—holding rallies and protesting what they considered injustices in Japanese, and world, society.

While the rallies were mostly related to domestic labor issues, there were also protests against the Vietnam War and against the presence of U.S. bases in Okinawa which were supporting that war. There were also appeals / demands that Okinawa be returned to Japan.

I don’t think I saw one other gaijin (foreigner) at those May Day rallies, and I was later told by gaijin friends that I was foolish for going there as I might have been accosted/injured. But it was a most interesting experience, and I am still glad that I learned some about that type of May Day then.

International May Day 2022

Although I didn’t know it then, in many countries around the world May Day is also known as International Workers' Day or Labour Day. The reason for May 1 being chosen as a day of advocacy for workers of the world goes back to 1886.

Two years earlier, a convention held by the organization of labor unions that later took the name American Federation of Labor (AFL) unanimously set May 1, 1886, as the date by which an eight-hour workday would become standard.

On that fateful Saturday, thousands of workers went on a general strike in support of the eight-hour workday, and rallies were held throughout the United States. The strike in Chicago led to the deadly Haymarket Riot on May 4.

Because of those events in Chicago, a few years later in Europe, advocates for laborers there and across the world chose May 1 as International Workers' Day. It is now a public holiday in some 80 countries around the world.

Here is a link to a 4½-minute video showing how six countries (beginning, interestingly, with Ukraine and including Russia and France) observed International May Day in 2017.  

And here is a link to a 2-minute video titled “Join the 2022 International May Day Online Rally this May 1!” It is by David North, an American Marxist theoretician who serves as the national chairman of the Socialist Equality Party (SEP) in the United States.

SEP opposes both “the ruthless imperialist ambitions of NATO,” and “rejects the national chauvinism with which the Putin regime defends its desperate invasion of Ukraine.” The online May Day rally will also be advocating for greater equality for the workers of the world.

Despite strong opposition to socialism by many USAmericans, why shouldn’t we, especially those of us who claim to be followers of Jesus Christ, be more concerned about the suffering and even exploited workers of the world?

Let’s observe May Day this year by at least giving some thoughtful consideration to how we might help working people struggling because of low-paying jobs that are inadequate for meeting their basic needs.

_____

** For a closely related viewpoint, I encourage you to read Celebrating Labor Rights, on May Day and Beyond, an article by Adam Russell Taylor in the May 2022 issue of Sojourners magazine. 

An Apology for Apologetics

Communication is hard—for many reasons, one being that the same word sometimes has quite different meanings. Apology is one such word, and I invite you to think with me a bit about the meaning, and value, of apology and apologetics.

My Lifelong Interest in Apologetics

An apology often means an expression of regret or remorse for something a person has said or done. But there is another, technical meaning of that same word. Apology can also be legitimately used to mean the verbal or written defense of one’s basic beliefs.

There is a long history of apology being used in the latter sense with regards to the Christian faith, beginning with these New Testament words: “Always be ready to make your defense [ἀπολογίαν, apologian] to anyone who demands from you an accounting for the hope that is in you” (1 Peter 3:15).

One of the important Christian books of the second century CE is First Apology of Justin Martyr (c.156), and his Second Apology was written shortly after the first one.

As a third-year college student, I became deeply interested in Christian apologetics, the religious discipline of defending Christian beliefs through rational discourse.

Philosophers/theologians such as Pascal and Kierkegaard were the Christian “apologists” I was most interested in at first and through graduate school, although I also read and wrote papers by lesser-known thinkers such as German theologian Karl Heim and Hungarian philosopher Michael Polanyi.**

A Good Book on Apologetics

This article was prompted by my recent reading of Randal Rauser’s 2020 book, Conversations with My Inner Atheist: A Christian Apologist Explores Questions that Keep People Up at Night.

Rather than writing more about that book in this article, I invite you to see here for a brief review of that intriguing work by Rauser (b. 1973), a Canadian Baptist seminary professor. 

A Different Type of Apologetics

Even though I maintained my initial interest in apologetics, long ago I began to shift my emphasis from apologetics by rational argument to what I sometimes refer to as “apology by life.”^##

That shift was prompted by my growing awareness that the main reason so many Japanese students in my classes at Seinan Gakuin University rejected Christianity was not because of intellectual issues but because of ethical problems.

The bulk of the students in my Christian Studies classes did not have as much problem, I gradually began to see, with Christian doctrines as with Christian actions.

Rejection of Christianity was based far more on what they had learned in high school world history classes about the Crusades, for example, or what they had seen on television about racism in the United States, which they generally thought was a “Christian nation.”

With that awareness, I began to read and think less about traditional apologetics and more and more about Christian social ethics. Thus, I began thinking more about apology by life rather than apology by rational discourse.

Rauser hardly deals with this matter in his book, although the 20^th chapter begins with Mia saying, “It’s often been said that the biggest objection to Christianity is the life of Christians.” That is probably true.

Although I was unable to find the source, I have often heard these or similar words that Nietzsche reportedly said to Christians: “Show me that you are redeemed, and I will believe in your Redeemer.”

For a long time now, Christians have needed to say less about their beliefs and to act much more deliberately and lovingly for peace and justice, that is, for the basic well-being of all people.

_____

** My last essay published by The Seinan Theological Review in Japan was in March 2004, and it was largely on the thought of Karl Heim. It is available for viewing/reading here.

^## In footnote 16 of the above article, I wrote, “I have long wanted to write an essay on ‘Apology by Life.’ Apologetics has long been one of my strongest interests, but long ago I realized that the best apologetics may well be done by loving action rather than by words.”

Disclosure: The review I wrote of Rauser’s book and my mentioning of Rauser and his book in this blog article is partly because of receiving the book for review from Mike Morrell and his Speakeasy book review network.