"And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who[a] have been called according to his purpose."
Romans 8:28 NIV
Romans 8:28 is familiar to many of us. I often quote this passage to myself when something seemingly bad happens to me or when things don’t turn out as well as I had hoped. As a Japanese American, it is my “go-to” shikataganai verse. It is my way of rationalizing what I view as a negative situation with my belief in the love and sovereignty of God. In essence I am reminding myself, “Oh well! I guess it can’t be helped. If God is in control, I guess everything eventually will turn out O.K.!” To me, this verse has been more of an afterthought than an expectation or promise. However, God has been revealing to me how He has indeed been working, throughout my life, and especially now, so that what I have so often thought of as competing and discordant strands in my life are being woven into one wondrous tapestry steadily inching its way closer to completion.
The mission of Iwa for our entire 37-year history has always been to discover why people of Japanese ancestry around the world, whether in Japan, here in the United States or elsewhere, have been so reluctant to become Christians and to develop more convicting and compelling ways for them to do so. Along the way, our explorations have taken us in many directions and we have experimented in a multitude of ways to fulfill our mission from the Lord. Little did I expect that our journey would lead us so convincingly and definitively to the Japanese tea ceremony.
As many of you know from our past reports, I have been immersed for years studying how Christianity was instrumental in the early development of the Japanese tea ceremony. Many in Japanese ministry had mentioned to me their intention to do such a study, but little had ever come of it. So, with a few items collected in a manila folder, I decided to productively use my time while Cyril was on vacation some time ago to see what I had and anything else I could find during that brief period. Little did I anticipate that I would become consumed with a passion to doggedly pursue the surprising journey that opened up before me.
Moses must have felt like I did as I first reluctantly dipped my toe into what seemed to be a formidable unknown sea that began to part. Suddenly, before me, as Moses, a path of dry land appeared before me upon which few, if any, human feet had ever trod. As I timidly meandered between the towering walls of Japanese history looming up like sea water on both sides of me, I began to discover the vast extent to which Christianity and Christians were creative partners in the initial shaping of what became both uniquely Japanese and Christian about the tea ceremony in Japan. What emerged as the Japanese tea ceremony was in stark contrast to its Chinese and Buddhist precursors.
As time passed, increasingly, I was encouraged by others to write and teach what I was finding. But every time I took a stab at comprehensively writing and documenting what I was learning, I was met with challenges that curtailed my efforts to share and publish what I had discovered to be true.
Practically everything I learned about the relationship between Christianity and the Japanese tea ceremony to that point was gleaned online and from books in English. I do not read or speak Japanese. I have never been to Japan. I had few opportunities to witness or participate in the Japanese tea ceremony. And, I had no training in how to host the Japanese tea ceremony myself. As a result, everything I had learned up to that point was academic and speculative, not pragmatic and personal.
What I had discovered from what I believed to be very reliable sources was astounding and ground breaking. It proved to me that the Japanese tea ceremony was a significant factor during the sixteenth and seventeenth century in bringing about the unification of Japan after over two hundred years of civil war and was instrumental in hundreds of thousands of Japanese becoming Christians during this same period often referred to as the Christian Century. The evidence also seemed conclusive that, after Japan banned Christianity within its borders and isolated itself from the world for another two centuries due to rising threat that the rapid growth of Christianity posed to the political and military leaders of Japan, underground Japanese Christians secretly maintained their faith by observing Holy Communion through the practice of the tea ceremony. The most amazing discovery was that the vast majority, and arguably all, of those who were most instrumental in the early shaping of the Japanese tea ceremony, the unification of Japan, and the spread of Christianity was a cohesive group of powerful Christian and pro-Christian warlords and military leaders led by a wealthy fish merchant from Sakai working together under the authority of the top military leader in Japan, Oda Nobunaga who had conquered Japan’s capitol, Kyoto, and displaced the weak Ashikaga shogunate. Subsequently, Nobunaga was commissioned by the Emperor to bring about peace and reconciliation to the nation of Japan and then chose to do so by enlisting the help of Sen no Rikyu, the fish merchant, who, in turn, recruited his core of Christian and pro-Christian disciples.
However, as significant as these findings were, they delineated what had happened in history but not how something viewed by most today as so beautiful, gentle, ritualistic and seemingly benign as the Japanese tea ceremony could possibly have had such an enormous impact upon the course of an entire nation. It is in beginning to discover answers to this much deeper question that helps me understand why the documenting of my historical studies of the Japanese tea ceremony had been so difficult to complete. As important as discovering the historical connection between Christianity, the Japanese tea ceremony and the unification of Japan was, it did not provide the fundamental insights God wanted me to uncover that would lead to the needed concrete changes in the way Japanese Christians worship, conduct ministry and more effectively reach out in evangelism among people of Japanese ancestry.
It was the history of Christian influence upon the development of the Japanese tea ceremony that led to the radical reshaping of Japanese cultural values, the conversion of hundreds of thousand of Japanese to Christ, the unification of Japan, the isolation of Japan from the rest of the world for over two hundred years which, in turn, fostered the birth and incubation of Japan’s monolithic anti-Christian culture during the Edo period, and the subsequent visceral resistance of most Japanese people to Christianity during the Meiji era and even today. In addition, the early development of the Japanese tea ceremony is what catalyzed the emergence of Japan’s unique style of gardens, garden lanterns, architecture, pottery, flower arranging, painting and calligraphy which were previously imitations of the art and culture of primarily China.
So, what has been opening up to me is a much deeper understanding of how Japanese Christians were able to give rise to such a dramatic transformation in Japan in such a relatively short period of time during the early phases of the Japanese tea ceremony’s development. This deep dive into the creation of the tea ceremony all started for me when a number of significant health challenges abruptly curtailed the normal patterns of life for myself and a number of my close family members and friends. I was struck with the realization that I could not assume that I had an unending number of years on earth ahead of me to fulfill God’s calling upon my life. If there were important things that had to get done before the Lord decided to take me “home,” then I had better get serious about taking definitive steps to get them done. One of those major projects was completing our garden by transforming it into a contextualized Japanese American Christian tea garden—a place where we could serve tea for the purpose of worship and evangelism.
Also, I decided to take Urasenke tea lessons so I could host the Japanese tea ceremony and contextualize it distinctly for Christian use and purposes. Of the three major schools of tea, Urasenke is the one most willing to acknowledge the influence of Christianity upon the early development of the Japanese tea ceremony.
Two books written by the past grandmaster of Urasenke, Shositsu Sen XV, gave me insight into background into the foundational purpose, philosophy and principles of Sen no Rikyu, the principal founder of the Japanese tea ceremony. Shositsu Sen XV also delineated all the different forms of the Japanese tea ceremony that have evolved since its early creation by Rikyu and his primary early disciples. It was by unearthing how the Japanese tea ceremony was initially created, molded and performed during the Christian Century that I began to understand why it was so effective in bringing about not only peace and reconciliation among a growing number of warring daimyo but also engendering deeply meaningful worship and enabling fruitful evangelism.
Next, I searched for a tea instructor. Two of three fellow students learning tea from the tea teacher I chose are committed Christians which is very rare among tea practitioners. Also, the retired brother of my “chanoyu sensei” graduated with a degree in Landscape Architecture from Cal Poly Pomona and specialized in Japanese gardens. Her two brothers designed and built the tearoom in her home. My tea instructor is aware and supportive of what we intend to do in our garden and how we want to observe the tea ceremony as Christian communion. She expressed her own interest in knowing more about Christianity and its relationship to the tea ceremony. It looks like God is providing additional human resources that will help to fulfill the vision the Lord as given us for both the tea garden and tea ceremony. My sensei also generously gave me several items I needed to get started.
Amid the hassles of trying to negotiate the Japanese equivalent of Amazon so I could purchase other items needed to practice my tea lessons, I stumbled across an online store in English specializing in the Japanese tea ceremony located in Fukuoka where my father’s family originated and raised tea and lumber. This store had what I had never seen anywhere before. Listed for sale were three Japanese tea bowls with crosses on them. After asking the owner, Shinichi, whether he had anything else with a cross on it, he directed me to a tea scoop and a tea caddy both having crosses on them. This started a relationship and a collection of tea ware I had never expected. I have been able assemble a full array of different Christian tea accessories so that I can now conduct the Japanese tea ceremony as Holy Communion. Shinichi and his wife are also involved in Urasenke; his wife, Yanako, is a tea instructor and Shinichi is himself a tea student.
In addition, all the other things I need now and much of what I will need in the future to conduct the tea ceremony has been given to me by an elderly couple who recently joined my church. The wife is a retired Urasenke tea instructor from Japan who entrusted me with much of her valuable collection of tea ware and accessories on condition that I am diligent in my study of tea.
We have invited one of my fellow Christian tea students and her husband over for dinner because she and her husband have been researching online the connection between Christianity and the Japanese tea without much success. Her husband is starting a new ministry focused on addiction therapy through Christian discipleship.
Janie and I will be going to Japan at the end of November to visit sites in Kyoto, Sakai, Kanazawa, Nagasaki and other places significant to the development of the tea ceremony and the Christian Century. Close JEMS missionary friends, Michael and Chris Mason, will accompany and guide us on most of this trip Also, Shinichi has volunteered to drive us into the mountains of Yame to visit members of my father’s family and ancestral property. Perhaps, we will even have the opportunity to visit the origins of my mother’s side of the family in Kanazawa and Wakayama.
In the process of all that is happening in recent months a whole new depth of insight and understanding about the relationship of Christianity and the initial development of the Japanese tea ceremony emerged. I am now even willing to make an assertion that undoubtedly will be extremely controversial. What I have come to believe is true and supportable is outlined in Part 2 of this blog.
Romans 8:28 NIV
Romans 8:28 is familiar to many of us. I often quote this passage to myself when something seemingly bad happens to me or when things don’t turn out as well as I had hoped. As a Japanese American, it is my “go-to” shikataganai verse. It is my way of rationalizing what I view as a negative situation with my belief in the love and sovereignty of God. In essence I am reminding myself, “Oh well! I guess it can’t be helped. If God is in control, I guess everything eventually will turn out O.K.!” To me, this verse has been more of an afterthought than an expectation or promise. However, God has been revealing to me how He has indeed been working, throughout my life, and especially now, so that what I have so often thought of as competing and discordant strands in my life are being woven into one wondrous tapestry steadily inching its way closer to completion.
The mission of Iwa for our entire 37-year history has always been to discover why people of Japanese ancestry around the world, whether in Japan, here in the United States or elsewhere, have been so reluctant to become Christians and to develop more convicting and compelling ways for them to do so. Along the way, our explorations have taken us in many directions and we have experimented in a multitude of ways to fulfill our mission from the Lord. Little did I expect that our journey would lead us so convincingly and definitively to the Japanese tea ceremony.
As many of you know from our past reports, I have been immersed for years studying how Christianity was instrumental in the early development of the Japanese tea ceremony. Many in Japanese ministry had mentioned to me their intention to do such a study, but little had ever come of it. So, with a few items collected in a manila folder, I decided to productively use my time while Cyril was on vacation some time ago to see what I had and anything else I could find during that brief period. Little did I anticipate that I would become consumed with a passion to doggedly pursue the surprising journey that opened up before me.
Moses must have felt like I did as I first reluctantly dipped my toe into what seemed to be a formidable unknown sea that began to part. Suddenly, before me, as Moses, a path of dry land appeared before me upon which few, if any, human feet had ever trod. As I timidly meandered between the towering walls of Japanese history looming up like sea water on both sides of me, I began to discover the vast extent to which Christianity and Christians were creative partners in the initial shaping of what became both uniquely Japanese and Christian about the tea ceremony in Japan. What emerged as the Japanese tea ceremony was in stark contrast to its Chinese and Buddhist precursors.
As time passed, increasingly, I was encouraged by others to write and teach what I was finding. But every time I took a stab at comprehensively writing and documenting what I was learning, I was met with challenges that curtailed my efforts to share and publish what I had discovered to be true.
Practically everything I learned about the relationship between Christianity and the Japanese tea ceremony to that point was gleaned online and from books in English. I do not read or speak Japanese. I have never been to Japan. I had few opportunities to witness or participate in the Japanese tea ceremony. And, I had no training in how to host the Japanese tea ceremony myself. As a result, everything I had learned up to that point was academic and speculative, not pragmatic and personal.
What I had discovered from what I believed to be very reliable sources was astounding and ground breaking. It proved to me that the Japanese tea ceremony was a significant factor during the sixteenth and seventeenth century in bringing about the unification of Japan after over two hundred years of civil war and was instrumental in hundreds of thousands of Japanese becoming Christians during this same period often referred to as the Christian Century. The evidence also seemed conclusive that, after Japan banned Christianity within its borders and isolated itself from the world for another two centuries due to rising threat that the rapid growth of Christianity posed to the political and military leaders of Japan, underground Japanese Christians secretly maintained their faith by observing Holy Communion through the practice of the tea ceremony. The most amazing discovery was that the vast majority, and arguably all, of those who were most instrumental in the early shaping of the Japanese tea ceremony, the unification of Japan, and the spread of Christianity was a cohesive group of powerful Christian and pro-Christian warlords and military leaders led by a wealthy fish merchant from Sakai working together under the authority of the top military leader in Japan, Oda Nobunaga who had conquered Japan’s capitol, Kyoto, and displaced the weak Ashikaga shogunate. Subsequently, Nobunaga was commissioned by the Emperor to bring about peace and reconciliation to the nation of Japan and then chose to do so by enlisting the help of Sen no Rikyu, the fish merchant, who, in turn, recruited his core of Christian and pro-Christian disciples.
However, as significant as these findings were, they delineated what had happened in history but not how something viewed by most today as so beautiful, gentle, ritualistic and seemingly benign as the Japanese tea ceremony could possibly have had such an enormous impact upon the course of an entire nation. It is in beginning to discover answers to this much deeper question that helps me understand why the documenting of my historical studies of the Japanese tea ceremony had been so difficult to complete. As important as discovering the historical connection between Christianity, the Japanese tea ceremony and the unification of Japan was, it did not provide the fundamental insights God wanted me to uncover that would lead to the needed concrete changes in the way Japanese Christians worship, conduct ministry and more effectively reach out in evangelism among people of Japanese ancestry.
It was the history of Christian influence upon the development of the Japanese tea ceremony that led to the radical reshaping of Japanese cultural values, the conversion of hundreds of thousand of Japanese to Christ, the unification of Japan, the isolation of Japan from the rest of the world for over two hundred years which, in turn, fostered the birth and incubation of Japan’s monolithic anti-Christian culture during the Edo period, and the subsequent visceral resistance of most Japanese people to Christianity during the Meiji era and even today. In addition, the early development of the Japanese tea ceremony is what catalyzed the emergence of Japan’s unique style of gardens, garden lanterns, architecture, pottery, flower arranging, painting and calligraphy which were previously imitations of the art and culture of primarily China.
So, what has been opening up to me is a much deeper understanding of how Japanese Christians were able to give rise to such a dramatic transformation in Japan in such a relatively short period of time during the early phases of the Japanese tea ceremony’s development. This deep dive into the creation of the tea ceremony all started for me when a number of significant health challenges abruptly curtailed the normal patterns of life for myself and a number of my close family members and friends. I was struck with the realization that I could not assume that I had an unending number of years on earth ahead of me to fulfill God’s calling upon my life. If there were important things that had to get done before the Lord decided to take me “home,” then I had better get serious about taking definitive steps to get them done. One of those major projects was completing our garden by transforming it into a contextualized Japanese American Christian tea garden—a place where we could serve tea for the purpose of worship and evangelism.
Also, I decided to take Urasenke tea lessons so I could host the Japanese tea ceremony and contextualize it distinctly for Christian use and purposes. Of the three major schools of tea, Urasenke is the one most willing to acknowledge the influence of Christianity upon the early development of the Japanese tea ceremony.
Two books written by the past grandmaster of Urasenke, Shositsu Sen XV, gave me insight into background into the foundational purpose, philosophy and principles of Sen no Rikyu, the principal founder of the Japanese tea ceremony. Shositsu Sen XV also delineated all the different forms of the Japanese tea ceremony that have evolved since its early creation by Rikyu and his primary early disciples. It was by unearthing how the Japanese tea ceremony was initially created, molded and performed during the Christian Century that I began to understand why it was so effective in bringing about not only peace and reconciliation among a growing number of warring daimyo but also engendering deeply meaningful worship and enabling fruitful evangelism.
Next, I searched for a tea instructor. Two of three fellow students learning tea from the tea teacher I chose are committed Christians which is very rare among tea practitioners. Also, the retired brother of my “chanoyu sensei” graduated with a degree in Landscape Architecture from Cal Poly Pomona and specialized in Japanese gardens. Her two brothers designed and built the tearoom in her home. My tea instructor is aware and supportive of what we intend to do in our garden and how we want to observe the tea ceremony as Christian communion. She expressed her own interest in knowing more about Christianity and its relationship to the tea ceremony. It looks like God is providing additional human resources that will help to fulfill the vision the Lord as given us for both the tea garden and tea ceremony. My sensei also generously gave me several items I needed to get started.
Amid the hassles of trying to negotiate the Japanese equivalent of Amazon so I could purchase other items needed to practice my tea lessons, I stumbled across an online store in English specializing in the Japanese tea ceremony located in Fukuoka where my father’s family originated and raised tea and lumber. This store had what I had never seen anywhere before. Listed for sale were three Japanese tea bowls with crosses on them. After asking the owner, Shinichi, whether he had anything else with a cross on it, he directed me to a tea scoop and a tea caddy both having crosses on them. This started a relationship and a collection of tea ware I had never expected. I have been able assemble a full array of different Christian tea accessories so that I can now conduct the Japanese tea ceremony as Holy Communion. Shinichi and his wife are also involved in Urasenke; his wife, Yanako, is a tea instructor and Shinichi is himself a tea student.
In addition, all the other things I need now and much of what I will need in the future to conduct the tea ceremony has been given to me by an elderly couple who recently joined my church. The wife is a retired Urasenke tea instructor from Japan who entrusted me with much of her valuable collection of tea ware and accessories on condition that I am diligent in my study of tea.
We have invited one of my fellow Christian tea students and her husband over for dinner because she and her husband have been researching online the connection between Christianity and the Japanese tea without much success. Her husband is starting a new ministry focused on addiction therapy through Christian discipleship.
Janie and I will be going to Japan at the end of November to visit sites in Kyoto, Sakai, Kanazawa, Nagasaki and other places significant to the development of the tea ceremony and the Christian Century. Close JEMS missionary friends, Michael and Chris Mason, will accompany and guide us on most of this trip Also, Shinichi has volunteered to drive us into the mountains of Yame to visit members of my father’s family and ancestral property. Perhaps, we will even have the opportunity to visit the origins of my mother’s side of the family in Kanazawa and Wakayama.
In the process of all that is happening in recent months a whole new depth of insight and understanding about the relationship of Christianity and the initial development of the Japanese tea ceremony emerged. I am now even willing to make an assertion that undoubtedly will be extremely controversial. What I have come to believe is true and supportable is outlined in Part 2 of this blog.
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