On a recent writing assignment, I toured Okamoto Castle, “the Shining Crow”, known for its black exterior complemented by a set of gold leafed koi ornaments along the roof, which catch the rays of the setting sun. A display by artist Kimiya Masago depicting the life of the first lord of the castle, Ukita Hideie, caught my attention. A portrait of his wife, Minami no Onkata, nee Maeda Gou was part of the display, in which she sat astride one of the great koi on the roof gaze set on the distant horizon. Around her neck, prominently represented in the image was a gold crucifix.

As I have traveled around Japan, my interest has been piqued by the existence of early Christians in Japan, particularly among the ruling class. While there is solid evidence of many Christian daimyos existing prior to the first edict against Christianity made by Toyotomi Hideyoshi in 1587, much of history after that time has been erased or hidden, as is often the case when the powers-that-be would rather not admit to something they aren’t particularly proud of.

What was extremely interesting in this case, however, was the fact that Minami no Onkata, whom I will from now address as Gohime (Princess Go) was a beloved adopted daughter of none other than Toyotomi himself. If Gohime was a Christian, did she become one in defiance of her father’s edict, or did her father invoke the edict in spite of the fact that his own daughter was a Christian? It didn’t take much searching to find the answer.

Gohime, as it turns out, converted to Christianity nearly 20 years after her father’s edict, around 1606. At that time, her husband Hideie and their two sons had been exiled to a distant island, punishment for Hideie’s loyalty to Toyotomi against Tokugawa Ieyasu, who defeated Toyotomi to become the first Shogun of Japan. Gohime returned to the home of her adopted family in Kyoto. Her father had already passed in 1598, but her adopted mother Kitanomandokoro, a woman of considerable influence and power still remained at the family home with her multitude of servants. Where the story becomes even more interesting is when we examine the household of Kitanomandokoro, the first wife of Toyotomi.

Many texts record Kitanomanodokoro becoming a dedicated Buddhist nun after she was widowed. However, during her reign as basically the First Lady of the Momoyama Period (1573–1600), she wielded great influence both with her husband and on her own, a rarity for a woman in those days. Toyotomi and Kitanomandokoro adopted several children from prominent families, including Gohime and her older sister Mahime, and records show that they truly cared deeply for each of them.

Kitanomandokoro initially strongly opposed the Jesuits and the spread of Christianity, described in Jesuit letters as “cold and unkind”. However, many of her servants and members of her household had become interested in Christianity and more than a few converted, a situation which despite her original feelings, she at least tolerated. Over time, her regard for Christianity changed until she had completely reversed her opinion on Christians and the Jesuits. It has been strongly suggested that when the Jesuit priests and Christian daimyos were unable to get Toyotomi to relax his edict against Christianity, it was Kitamandokoro who successfully petitioned her husband for leniency toward the Jesuits and their disciples.

Later in life, Kitanomandokoro was recorded as saying “…it seems to me that Christianity has great rationale. And it is superior to any other religion, and it is more plausible than many existing Japanese religions.” She continued: “Every Christian agrees on one truth, and claims that to be true. That makes me believe that [Christianity tells] the truth. Japanese religions never agree, and are never the same.” Although it was never recorded that Kitanomandokoro ever officially converted to Christianity, her words suggest a greater understanding of the gospel message than most Japanese had at the time.

Because of Kitanomandokoro’s support of Christians and tolerance for Christians in her own household, Gohime was able to grow up under the influence of several women who were well educated in the gospel and regular attenders of the thriving Osaka church, which they were allowed by Toyotomi to attend. Her husband Ukita Hideie was not a recorded Christian, but his Okayama domain officially permitted Christians to reside and evangelize. His mother, Fuku, like Kitanomandokoro, was a vocal defender of Christians and received appeals from the Jesuits for help. Thus, after her marriage, Gohime continued to live in an environment supportive of Christianity and probably contained Christian servants.

So perhaps it was only natural that later, faced with the trials of being separated from her husband and sons forever, Gohime finally grasped the full understanding of God’s love and mercy. Her sons had been baptized before their exile; she could now be reunited with the family she was forcefully separated from in this life. After her conversion, she returned to her birth home in Kanazawa where she made a substantial donation for the building the church there. Christianity in nearby Kanazawa had thrived under the protection of the Maeda clan, which Gohime was part of. Gohime remained at the estate of her birth family until her death at the age of 61.

I find it very disappointing that few evangelical Christians in Japan have a working knowledge of the roots of Christianity in Japan. I do not know if it because those roots were seeded by the Catholic church and there is still some deep seated mistrust between Protestants and Catholics that has gone unresolved for nearly 500 years now since the Reformation. Perhaps it is because many Japanese Christians were eventually forced underground, becoming the Kakure Kirisutan (Hidden Christians) who worshipped in secret, often using the veil of Buddhism as cover. I’ve even heard Western Evangelicals refer to these Christians as syncretic, a term that shocked and angered me.

Whatever the case, I believe the time has come for Japanese Christians, both Protestant and Catholic, to honor the memories of those who remained in the faith at great cost to themselves and their loved ones. As recently as 2017, Takayama Ukon, the Christian daimyo exiled to the Philippines was beatified, one step closer to sainthood in the Catholic Church. According to the church, it was Takayama’s unwavering faithfulness to the believers in his charge in the face of the wrath of Nobunaga, Toyotomi and Tokugawa Ieyasu that led to his beatification. Like Job of the Bible, Takayama lost everything, eventually even his life, but remained faithful to God and to the followers of Christ in his care. But his is a story for another day.

I believe it is critical for Japanese people to see the depths of Christian faith, Catholic or Protestant, in their own history and heroes. For too long, the evangelical church in Japan has glossed over Catholic church history, even going so far as berating the Kakure Kirisutan as syncretists. If the Japanese are to ever fully understand that Christianity is not a Western religion but one which has been practiced in their country 200 years before America was even established, we must first give them heroes of the faith from that time that they can look to.

References:

The Conversion of Hideyoshi’s Daughter Gō, by Tomoko Kitagawa, Japanese Journal of Religions Studies 34/1: 9–25 © 2007 Nanzan Institute for Religion and Culture

Kitanomandokoro : a lady samurai behind the shadow of Toyotomi Hideyoshi, by Tomoko Kitagawa, UBC Theses and Dissertations

Takayama Ukon — A Candidate for Canonization, by Fr. Johannes Laures, SJ

Two weeks ago we completed our third English Summer Camp in partnership with Redwood Community Chapel of Castro Valley, California and Rikko Kindergarten here in Nerima. Over 300 children were signed up to come and about 270 participated this year, about 70 more than we had last year. Perhaps most encouraging was the number of children who came for 5 or 6 days of the program rather than 2 or 3, as was frequently the case in the past two years.

As usual, we had our share of obstacles leading up to camp again this year, and while we recognize that as a sign of opposition from the enemy, I am also meekly aware of how little faith I have. Because God has always come through and almost always in ways that are better than we could imagine.

In past years, our team from California stayed on-site at the Kindergarten in the dorms, but we were unable to get rooms this year. And very late in planning, we also learned that our access to the school would be limited to business hours, another major change from prior years. On the surface, both changes seemed like huge inconveniences to the team and I was extremely frustrated. But not only did God work things out so there weren’t any major inconveniences, the living and eating arrangements actually worked out for the better this year.

Another disaster with our camp shirts was narrowly averted when our partners found a company willing and able to print our shirts overnight after our original order from another company was lost in transit.

For the second year in a row, we also had a typhoon on track to hit Tokyo during the week of English Summer Camp, but even the typhoons bow to the Maker of heaven and earth. The typhoon passed in the wee hours of the morning and had little impact on our program schedule except a minor delay.

Beyond that, things went so smoothly it was as if it were on rails. Volunteer signups picked up the few weeks before camp and we had plenty of helpers including an army of people from church helping with the registration rush on the first day. They were so effective, there wasn’t a registration rush at all, and kids were ready to go right on schedule.

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But lest we be Marthas instead of Marys, logistics aside, this was an amazing week for us and the children who participated. We were thrilled to teach the children songs reminding them “Our God is a great big God and He holds us in his hands” and “What great love the Father has given us that we should be called His children.” It gives me such joy to think that one day when these children need to know that God is real and He loves them, they will already have these words planted in their hearts.

Most importantly, the children (and by extension, their families) spent a week experiencing the love of Christ through our many Christian staff and volunteers. We continued to build upon the relationships we have with some of our special friends who have now known us for two years. They know who we are and are learning, step by step, WHY we are. That because of God’s mercy through Jesus we can try to love others as God loves us. And we hope the more time they spend with us, the more they can confirm the truth about God’s love for us and for them.

The best news is that plans are already in place to continue this ministry, next year and beyond. As these children grow up with the Word of God planted in their hearts, we will develop ministries to help them deepen their understanding of the gospel. But for now, we are patiently planting, watering, and loving what the Lord has entrusted to us.

One of the greatest blessings for ministry workers in the field is the gift of expertise: lending your life experience, training and education in an area where it is most needed. This past month, a family from our home church did just that. Pam Y. came with her husband (the associate pastor of the church) and three young girls to serve us in a very unique way: providing her expertise on working with children with special needs. Pam taught a workshop to the elementary school teachers at the school my wife works at and helped my wife teach a seminar for parents of children with special needs at the preschool where our pastor is the chaplain. For the latter, we were hoping a few parents might show up so we wouldn’t be lonely; in reality, almost 20 parents came, underscoring what we believed to be the truth. Resources for Japanese parents with special needs children are so scarce they will make use of any opportunity they can to get help.

Japan lags behind most first world countries in terms of providing resources for children with learning and behavioral challenges. The reasons probably lie in the structure of the Japanese educational system and are reinforced by the expectations of Japanese society. Did you ever wonder why Japanese students are famous for their uniforms? The Japanese educational system stresses uniformity, being part of a group and contributing to the success of the group. Everyone learns at the same pace, so those who cannot keep up are considered a burden to the entire class. It’s no wonder the typical Japanese classroom can seem hostile to a child who is a slower learner or has attention deficit disorder, dyslexia or is on the autism spectrum.

The Japanese “solution” to these types of children is to place them in special schools where they are not hindering the progress of their classmates. Of course, once you have been tracked into one of these schools, the doors slam shut on your chances for a bright future. At best, most students in these types of school may end up in vocational school, if they are able to continue their education beyond secondary level at all.

For this reason, any loving parent will avoid getting any sort of diagnosis for their child that might label them as “special”. In America, special needs children get special attention and help. In Japan, the same children get swept to the side, into the shadows. Therefore, if parents want to try to ensure a future for their children, their main option is to help their children by themselves. Unfortunately, there are few private resources available that can help them.

My wife has a burden to help children and families like this. We have prayed even before we arrived in Japan for a chance to use her skills and experience working with special needs children in ministry. Finally, the doors opened up to us to help the parents of children at the local preschool, and in God’s perfect timing, He brought Pam to us at that exact moment to co-facilitate a seminar for them.

We don’t know exactly where this path leads us. We do know that there is a lot of interest among the parents for help. One mother is working on forming a support group for families with special needs children. Another Japanese man who has training and expertise in this area is anxious to lend his help. There is momentum building, a momentum driven by the Spirit for this time.

Please pray with us as we determine how this ministry will develop and how to best use it to show the love of Christ to families and children who often feel alienated, alone, or frustrated by their situation. The church has always been a place for those who felt cast aside by society, and we want to be here to welcome them to the family of Christ.

And above all these put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony.

The Bible speaks of the attributes of our character that should be apparent to those transformed by Christ: compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, patience and forgiveness. Above these things, we are to put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony (Colossians 3:12-14).

In the Japanese translation of this passage, “love” is described as an “obi”, the material wrapped around a kimono to hold the garment on and tied in a variety of beautiful ways. It is a masterful way to describe love in a way that is easy for those familiar with Japanese culture to understand.

Today, I was introduced to a woman who makes clothing and accessories out of recycled materials. Some of her items are made from recycled kimono that are too old to be worn again. She takes these once beautiful garments and makes them new again.

But what touched me the most was when she said she could take old cloth from a person’s history and make it into a new garment. A piece of a blanket once precious to your son when he was a toddler. A scarf from your grandmother who passed away years ago. To do so, she said, was to bring a memory of someone you love close to your heart.

I thought about how our experience informs our personal concept of “love”. Some people experience love from family members, spouses, or friends. But for others, they receive something less pleasant from those same people: ambivalence, neglect, even abuse. Some pour out love into the lives of others, to receive little or nothing in return from them.

Yet when the Bible talks about the obi of love, I believe it describes the state of understanding God’s unconditional love for us. By understanding how God loves us in spite of our imperfections perhaps we can overlook the imperfections in others and love them in a similar way. Without real love for others, our compassion, kindness, and patience toward them is self-serving, designed to make us feel good about ourselves.

We can receive glimpses of God’s love for us through other people, but we can also receive wounds from them. But even those wounds can be bound up and healed by experiencing the amazing love God has for us in Christ.

At any given moment of the day, Yumeno Nito, founder of Colabo, and her partner Inaba-san may be found quietly doing the work in Japan that few people wish to do. Late at night, they might be patrolling the streets of Shibuya, looking for girls who have run away from abuse or neglect at home, only to find themselves in another vulnerable situation as potential prey for those who would seek to use them for financial gain or more abuse. During the day, they might be teaching girls they have rescued how to cook and take care of themselves, or encouraging them to stay in school so they can get good employment, or counseling them through their many emotional wounds. On top of this, Yumeno spends a great deal of time speaking at various events and venues across Japan, spreading the message that the issues young people, especially girls, are facing are real and growing, though little help is available through the government or even other organizations. She spends countless hours raising money to buy or rent apartments for the rescued girls to live in, money for food and necessities, money for education and counseling sessions.

Once or twice a year, my friend Sheila Cliffe and I, along with others who care deeply about this problem, volunteer to help with events Colabo sponsors. Sheila dresses the girls in kimono or yukata for Coming of Age day or summer festivals respectively, and I take portraits of them. Many of these girls don’t know what it feels like to be treated as someone special, to be dressed like a princess and fawned over. They don’t know how to act in that situation. Most shy away from the camera. Some hide their faces, turning away or hiding behind their hair. But we make them as comfortable as possible and give them photos that can become happy memories of lives that are often filled with only sad or hurtful experiences.

I hesitated for a very long time to write this post because I don’t want this to be about me. What we are doing is a tiny part of what Colabo is doing for these girls as a whole, so insignificant I would hardly mention it if only to explain the connection I have to Colabo. But the fact is, Colabo is doing such important work in Japan, Nito-san and Inaba-san need to be recognized for it.

I’ve known about and worked with Colabo for almost two years, though Yumeno founded the organization years before that. It is only recently that they were able to rent an apartment as a safehouse for a few girls, and very recently they were able to purchase another unit. But the fact of the matter is that there are hundreds if not thousands of young people, girls and boys, in vulnerable situations all over Japan, and nobody is paying attention to the problem. Sure, the government should have a better infrastructure for finding and supporting children like this. And yes, more non-profit organizations should step up to do more where the government is lacking. But we the general public are not innocent in the matter either. When we see these kids hanging out on the streets late at night, in our minds we label them as “hoodlums” or “bad girls”. The reality may very well be that they have nowhere to go. That karaoke rooms or convenience stores might be the only places to keep them from freezing at night. That going to a stranger’s home or hotel room might at least mean a warm bed and a free meal.

It breaks my heart to have to write this, knowing that many of Japan’s children, precious and critical to the survival of the country, are suffering neglect not just at the hands of their parents, but at the hands of society as a whole. Society chooses the easy road: blaming the victims for their circumstances. In this way, they can ignore the problem.

I thank God for organizations like Colabo and selfless individuals like Nito-san and Inaba-san who give their lives for the cause, but the number of resources working on behalf of the children pale in comparison to the number of children who need help.

It would be easy to throw up your hands and say “What can I do as an individual person?” Perhaps you don’t even live in Japan. But if you have a passion to serve the vulnerable here in Japan, you are not powerless.

Pray. The prayers of the selfless person are powerful. When we have nothing to gain for our prayers, I believe God really honors our intentions. Prayers sustain those who have little to hope for, so let’s pray for God to bring hope into the lives of these vulnerable young people, to restrain them from doing the unthinkable.

Learn. Unfortunately, there is only so much you can learn about this topic because it isn’t well recognized as a societal problem in Japan. Yumeno is working hard to change that by speaking on the topic to as many people as possible as often as possible. But there are a few articles online you can research to help you understand the problem. In many ways, this problem isn’t unique to Japan except that the lack of response by the government and other organizations to it is deafening.

http://mainichi.jp/english/articles/20160816/p2a/00m/0na/009000c

https://thelily.com/a-culture-of-dates-in-japan-targets-vulnerable-high-school-girls-2ca321875684

Give. As long as there are so few organizations working against this issue, Colabo will always need as much support as possible to fund new safehouses for girls, pay more staff to help, and make themselves into an organization that the government cannot ignore. As long as they are small scale, the government can pretend they aren’t important. But as they grow, they become a force for change, a voice for the powerless.

You can donate to Colabo by credit card or purchasing Amazon goods here:

Support Colabo

God bless those like Yumeno and Inaba-san who are doing the difficult, thankless work down in the trenches, helping people who would otherwise be ignored or even despised by society. Though they are not “Christians” in the traditional sense of the word, they are doing the work Jesus instructed us to do and demonstrated through his life here on earth.

This was our first year at  the CPI (Church Planting Institute) conference and to be honest, I never felt the need or desire to go in the past. After all, we are technically not church planters, but church supporters, working with an existing church and following the vision of the pastors. We went this year because our organization, JEMS, used CPI as an opportunity to bring together all of our JEMS co-workers in Japan for the first time.

Now I have never been one to love this type of event from the start. As a staunch introvert, the idea of spending the whole day with a large group of people and not even having my own room to decompress at the end of the day sounded more like torture than rest. But God always knows what we need and I was one of the lucky few who was able to secure an individual room for the duration of the conference, which put me much more at ease about going.

The time spent with our colleagues was precious. Two summers ago, we were fortunate enough to be in California for the Mt. Hermon conference with a large group of us, but there were still many who were not able to attend. And in the past couple of years, our executive director has worked hard to add to our numbers, so there were many more team members whom I had never met even on social media.

It was great to catch up with old friends and meet new ones. There is a special bond between ministry workers that doesn’t even need to be established; we simply relate to the kinds of trials that are common to our occupation. So it is easy to pray for and with one another and feel the support of those who have and continue to walk in our shoes.

As for the conference itself, the message really struck a chord with me this year. As basic as it seemed, we were simply reminded to take time to experience the love of God, and given ample opportunity to do so in worship and prayer. And for the first time in what seemed like a long time, I really felt I was able to let the Lord draw near to me and be embraced by Him with His unconditional, infinite love.

As ministry workers, we can talk for hours about God’s love and faithfulness. We drill it into our heads and we try to drill it into the heads of those who want to know it. But we don’t always give people the opportunity to experience it, largely because we may not be experiencing it on a daily basis ourselves. This is the challenge of what we do: maintain a respectable level of work for the Kingdom while nurturing a relationship with God so that we truly can understand the importance of the work we are doing for others.

Coming out of the conference, I’ve been prayerfully pondering how to make the love of God real in my own life and how to relate the experience, not just the knowledge, to those who desire to know God more. I feel there are no easy answers, but at the same time, I also feel that God provides answers to those who earnestly seek Him.