Monday, March 18, 2013

A calligraphy lesson.

Another cultural activity we recently took part in was shodō, or Japanese calligraphy. An older gentleman from one of the Lutheran churches in town was our teacher. I heard later that he and his wife are both well-versed in many classical Japanese arts, so I was grateful that he took an afternoon to teach a few beginners the "way of writing" in the fellowship area of the church while his wife served us tea and sweets.

My workspace.
Thankfully I had a bit of a head start thanks to my home church's retreat last year, where one very talented member of my church taught a bit of Chinese calligraphy during free time. (My attempt at writing 恕 shù, "forgiveness," is still hanging on the wall of my room at home.) Japanese calligraphy is quite similar to Chinese, though this time our instructor didn't speak English.

"Suzuri," he said as he took an inkstone out of his bag and placed it on the table. Then he picked up the brush. "Fude." Finally he poured the ink. "Sumi."
 
Our first task was to write two kanji, or Chinese characters: 十 and 生. The first, pronounced , means "ten," and the second is the first character in the verb 生きる ikiru, which means "to live." Sensei explained that together the characters mean nothing; 十生 isn't a word in Japanese. But, he continued, 十 is the first character in 十字架 jūjika ("the cross of Christ") and 生 means "to live," so it was an appropriate combination of appropriately simple characters for calligraphy beginners during Lent.

He laid out felt mats on the table in front of each of us, some marked with diagrams to help properly balance whatever character we were writing. The paper we used was thin enough that the guide lines were visible underneath. He wrote out 十生 in orange ink for each of us as we watched, then instructed us to try our hand.

It is much harder than it looks. "Hiji wo agete," Sensei kept having to remind us. "Raise your elbow." "Tekubi janakute, ude wo tsukatte." "Don't use your wrist, use your arm."

Don't be fooled by my name in tiny letters
on the left; this is Sensei's beautiful work.
He came around to each of us in turn with his brush dipped in orange ink, drawing circles where we'd done well and gently redrawing parts of the characters we'd gotten wrong. Then we'd take another sheet of paper and try again. The pile of orange-marked practice papers became higher and higher. I was impressed at his patience: a man whose every brush stroke was a thing of beauty taking on teaching three beginners who had barely or never held a calligraphy brush before.

Finally all three of managed to write 十生 well enough that Sensei told us to write our names on them before he hung them up on the whiteboard. "It's important to look at what you have already written, too," he explained in Japanese. After we quietly and awkwardly admired our work for a little bit, he said, "Would you like to try writing different characters? I brought lots of paper, so please feel free."

We nodded, smiling nervously. He gave us each different characters to write. For me, he wrote 天上. "Can you read this?" he asked me. "Ten... jō?" I said tentatively. (Tenjō with slightly different characters also means "ceiling.") He smiled and nodded. "It's where God is," he explained. Ah, this tenjō means "the heavens." Though I had to confirm it with my phone's dictionary later.

We kept all our practice papers as trophies.
The characters 天上 are deceptively simple, especially the two tails on 天. It seemed I could never get the strokes right... if I made one good one, I made two other bad ones. I had just finished one I thought was far from my best when Sensei came over and picked it up, holding it out in front of me. I looked up at him, confused. He had a huge grin on his face.

"Jouzu ni dekita ne," he said. "Well done."

There's a certain je ne sais quois about Chinese and Japanese calligraphy that I've never been quite able to capture, that "I know it when I see it" kind of thing. I saw it in Sensei's every brush stroke... not so much in mine, though the adorable older church ladies who occasionally came through and saw our finished pieces gasped, clapped their hands, and declared them "Jouzu, jouzu, jouzu!" ("Excellent, excellent, excellent!")

From left to right: Caroline's, mine, Morgan's.
山川: yamakawa, "mountains and rivers"
春: haru, "spring" (the season)
When he finally deemed one of each of our attempts at calligraphy acceptable, he had us write our names on the left before he took them and hung them on the whiteboard below each of our previous "十生." "Now let us look at what we've written while drinking tea, shall we?" he said.

I did very much enjoy my calligraphy lesson. It's a precise art, and it's all too easy to make mistakes, but it's also somewhat therapeutic and serene, too. Something about the brush sliding across the paper, the way the ink spreads, the flow of the character. It was raining that afternoon, too, which helped the meditative atmosphere.

Watashi wa budou no ki
Anatagata wa sono eda dearu.
Before we left, Sensei gave us all ribbon bookmarks with his own beautiful calligraphy on them, things like John 3:16 and "God is love." I chose a blue one with the first part of John 15:1: "I am the vine, you are the branches." It goes well with a certain other beautiful handmade John 15:1-themed piece of décor I received as a gift from a member of my home church before I left America last October.

In a Japanese in-flight movie I watched on the way over here all those months ago, the main character would write her goals in calligraphy and hang them on the wall to make them more likely to come to fruition. I wonder if I couldn't go down to the hyakuen (dollar) store and pick up some (cheap) supplies of my own to write Japanese Bible verses or prayers or the like to hang around my permanent apartment when I move there. (It's coming up soon!)

Let love and faithfulness never leave you;
bind them around your neck,
write them on the tablet of your heart.

Proverbs 3:3 (NIV)

Thursday, March 14, 2013

Hinamatsuri.

One of the many Hina doll displays along the
downtown shopping arcade that day.
Sunday, March 3 was my first Hinamatsuri, also known as Girls' Day or the Doll Festival, a uniquely Japanese holiday that traces its origins back to over a thousand years ago. The holiday celebrates daughters and is a chance for their families to pray for health and a good marriage. Every year households traditionally set up a display of dolls representing the Emperor and Empress and their court, dressed in the traditional clothes of that time period. In the old days, it was thought these dolls could draw bad spirits away from the daughters. Full doll displays tend to be very expensive, so they are often passed down through generations. And they are always taken down soon after March 3, since the story goes that the longer the doll display is left up, the longer it will take for the daughters to get married.

The YMCA here in Kumamoto runs a Hinamatsuri event for international students every year, and one of the coordinators, a member of one of the Lutheran churches here in town, invited us to join. So after church that Sunday, Caroline and I strolled down to the local community center where we met our host, and several Kumamoto University graduate students.

We were first led into a large room where several other foreign women were already getting outfitted in kimono, and were allowed to pick from something like twenty kimonos laid out on the tatami mat flooring. I chose a dark blue one; Caroline took a bright red one. It was much like the tea ceremony we attended last month: three or four women scuttled around us, putting kimono piece after kimono piece on us--a ribbon here, a hidden towel there, a plastic insert to keep the obi (that wide sash) smooth.

Both of our kimonos were of the style known as furisode ("swinging sleeves"), appropriate for unmarried women as the long sleeves can be used to beckon suitors. Caroline's kimono turned out to be downright Biblical, with a dove and a rainbow. Mine had rickshaws on the sleeves and the front panel. Props to Japan for creating a garment that is beautiful and elegant and also features a mode of transportation at the same time.




 
Caroline and me at the tea ceremony.
(Photo courtesy of our host.)
 After we were all dressed up we were ushered into a smaller tatami-matted room where we were given sweets and tea. It was a much more informal tea ceremony than the one we had last month, but we had many more people there, too.

We also had the chance to hear the niko, or erhu in Chinese, a traditional Chinese bowed instrument that sounds much like a violin but with a thinner, more voicelike sound. A Chinese student, dressed in a traditional men's kimono, played four Japanese folk songs, one of which was apparently a Kumamoto folk song. My favorite part was hearing all the middle-aged Japanese ladies in the back of the room softly sing the lyrics. When the performance was done we all called for an encore from his own country, so he played a beautiful Chinese song called "Jasmine."

Last of all was a dance. An older, kimono-clad woman moved to the front and demonstrated a dance from the Aso region northeast of the city to the recording of an old Aso love song. The dance moves were quite subtle--one can't move very much past shuffling pace in a kimono--but really lovely and graceful. Afterward, we were immediately handed baton-like objects and she began to demonstrate another dance, this time a repeating sequence of tapping one's shoulders and legs with the baton. I may have gotten bruises from hitting myself too hard with the baton in my concentration.

The international group.
(Photo courtesy of our host.)
Surprisingly, Caroline and I were the only Americans at the whole event. We met new friends from all over the world, from Eastern Europe to the South Pacific. After the event ended, Caroline and I joined a couple of them in a stroll through the downtown shopping arcade to see the doll exhibits, talking about our hometowns and comparing them to Kumamoto. Truly an intercultural day all around. It was good to meet people outside church and school, too; I'm eager to form relationships with people all over this city.

(I couldn't find a Bible passage I felt fit with this entry, but since Caroline and I spent so much of the afternoon feeling like princesses, here's the wham line from the story of my favorite Biblical princess, Esther, who risked her life to save her people from annihilation:)

And who knows but that you have come to your royal position for such a time as this?
Esther 4:14b (NIV)

Friday, March 8, 2013

Amakusa.

A few weeks ago I went with Caroline, Morgan, Christine (a 2010-2013 J-3), two Kumamoto pastors, a Luther High School student, and a Kyushu Lutheran College student to the Amakusa islands southwest of Kumamoto City. Amakusa is an area rich in nature, beauty, fresh sashimi, and Christian history, and we soaked it all in for an entire day. Here's some of what we learned.

Crossing one of the so-called Five Bridges of Amakusa on our journey in.

The Shimabara Rebellion.
Memorial at the Amakusa
Municipal Christian Museum.
European Christian missionaries first arrived in Japan in 1549, and their teachings, along with the goods they brought, were generally welcomed. But in 1582, the feudal lord Toyotomi Hideyoshi took power and, fearing a threat to his authority by such foreign influences, strictly prohibited Christianity. Hideyoshi ordered the death of many a Christian, including the public crucifixion of who are now known as the Twenty-six Martyrs of Japan in nearby Nagasaki.

Christian persecution continued sporadically for the next eighty years or so, as well as heavy tax burdens on the Amakusa area peasants. Punishments were harsh for those who couldn't pay--they were generally made to die horrible deaths. Discontent over persecution, taxes, and famine stirred up rebellion, and the charismatic 16-year-old Amakusa Shiro was chosen as leader in 1637.

Amakusa Shiro.
Statue of Amakusa Shiro outside the
Amakusa Municipal Christian Museum.
Photo by Caroline.
Born Masuda Shiro Tokisada, Amakusa Shiro was raised among Christians and was said to have mysterious powers from God. Supposedly he walked on water, and once had an egg containing a scroll of Scripture and a painting of Jesus fall into his hand. Many thought he was the fulfillment of a prophecy, made by a Catholic missionary who had been expelled some years earlier, that a "child of God" would come to save the people of Amakusa. Evidently Amakusa Shiro was a natural-born leader, as at the tender age of 16 he helped round up the citizens of Amakusa to try to attack Tomioka Castle. When that didn't work, they sailed to nearby Shimabara and barricaded themselves in the formerly abandoned Hara Castle.

Tomioka Christian Monument. May or may
not have the severed heads of some of the
1638 Shimabara rebels buried underneath it.
The number of Christians in that castle was about 37,000, including women and children who were willing to die for their faith, preferring to go to paraiso (paradise) than live in the hellish conditions brought on by unmerciful feudal lords. As time wore on, the rebels' food ran out and the government troops surrounding the castle grew to 125,000. Hara Castle finally fell on February 28, 1638. All the Christian rebels (except one suspected traitor) were beheaded, all believing they would be reunited in the Hereafter, safe in God's hands.

The Shimabara Rebellion was the largest rebellion as well as the largest religious war in Japan's history, and as such, changed the course of Japan's history for the next 200 years. Having seen firsthand the dangers of Christian teachings of human equality before God, the Japanese government officially closed off all exchange with foreign countries (with very limited exceptions) until 1853. Freedom of religion would not be instituted until 1873.

The Hidden Christians.
Amakusa Rosary Museum (foreground) and Ōe Catholic
Church (background), the latter established in 1880 after
Christianity was permitted, and rebuilt in 1933.
During the intervening years, Christian culture in Japan was calcified in the practice of the Kakure Kirishitan, or "Hidden Christians." They worshiped Jesus in secret, hiding crosses in seemingly Buddhist artifacts and praying in secret rooms. An innocent-looking hand mirror would project a cross onto the wall if held to reflect direct sunlight. A statue of Kannon, the Buddhist Goddess of Mercy, would really be a statue of Mary. When someone received a Buddhist blessing in the house, someone else would recite Christian prayers and pull a rosary in and out of a jar full of holy water in the secret room to neutralize the sutra.

Sakitsu Catholic Church, also established in
1880, rebuilt in 1934.
Sometimes these hidden Christians would be found out by means of fumi-e, or "stomping pictures." Officials would put a metal or wooden plate engraved with an image of the Virgin Mary or Jesus on the ground and challenge suspected Christians to step on it. If they refused, they were instantly arrested and killed for being a Christian. Many were martyred this way, and many lost their nerve and recanted, begging God for forgiveness later. The Hidden Christian culture remained well-preserved until the ban on Christianity was lifted in 1873 and Christian culture was once again allowed to flourish.

There is much more to this story, and I admit with my limited historical knowledge (and the limited availability of English-language materials) I may have gotten some details wrong, but it was still quite a moving experience to be in a place steeped in so much history. For a country that still largely views Christianity as foreign, Japan has quite a rich Christian heritage.

Scenic Amakusa.
From one man he made all the nations, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he marked out their appointed times in history and the boundaries of their lands. God did this so that they would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from any one of us.
Acts 17:26-27 (NIV)