Two days ago I arrived in Narita airport. The energy saving campaign poster welcomed me before anything else caught my attention as I was walking along with other exhausted passengers deplaning after a long flight across the Pacific. It was still very quiet at the foreign passport section of the immigration lines, but it wasn’t a deadly silence like my last entry on April 11, just one month after the tsunami. The impact of Fukushima Daiichi disaster was so closely felt as I was walking through immigration and customs and finally out of the building to catch a limousine to Yokohama.
I noticed the same campaign poster again as I was walking outside toward the bus stop. I’d come to Narita many times and it had never been quiet like this until a little over four months ago. This nation is not the same any more, and it won’t be the same again. But which direction will Japan turn to from now on?
A big typhoon went by last week before my arrival in Japan and it lifted up all the muggy air, so it was rather cool and breezy by the time I arrived at the hotel in Yamato. Yamato reminds of me the part of Seoul where I grew up. Buildings are not too tall, residential areas are buried in the middle of commercial buildings. The train station outstretches to narrow and curvy streets where taxies, buses and bicycles run all at the same time, and people in trendy fashion styles and kimonos everywhere. It is all blended naturally between young and old, and traditions and modern outlooks, all right in your face. But it does not feel ugly like some modern cities with faces of urban development skyscrapers, wide straight roads filled with shiny sleek vehicles. Here, people seem to be walking more leisurely than hastened for their destinations.
Summer season began with festival, Awaodori, organized by the city council this weekend. Drummers, dancers and children marched with joyful noises as families sat on both sides of the sidewalk and enjoyed their picnic supper. “Special celebration to console the people of the March 11 Great Tohoku Disasters,” this was the reason for the festival and the whole city gathered around narrow streets and intersections.
It was so clear to see how capable Japanese are to create and be a community and do things together in harmony and order. Yet, what continues to puzzle me having worked for many years in Asia (and more so after moving to North America) is this: Christians and churches here or elsewhere in the world struggle to find right expressions for community that will hit home for them. Drawing a hard line between the traditional belief systems and the lordship of Jesus Christ over every area of our lives did not come easily; there have been clouds of witnesses who paid the high price in this part of the world. It started with hard choices each individual had to make by giving up their lives for Christ. We still look for a communal language to grasp that fire and zeal that were here sixty some years ago and centuries prior.
What will take to build a community of Easter hope in the 21st century especially among believers and their neighbours struck by massive disasters in Fukushima? That is the quest I am after as I begin my second journey to Fukushima tomorrow, for nearly two weeks this time. I want Jesus to show up on this road to Emmaus, take me by the hand and speak to me closely through the local church folk I will be meeting in the conference from tomorrow.
Fukushima Future Forum (July 25-28, 2011).
Friends with the Voiceless International (http://www.karashi.net/), my local partner organization in Japan, is gathering twenty some pastors and leaders from several cities and towns in Fukushima who have been fearlessly serving their suffering neighbours. These pastors now want to expand their horizon to work together with other churches beyond their individual congregations and denominations. It is primarily a retreat for them to rest and renew in God’s grace and to envision Fukushima’s future together and be the source of hope to their neighbours.
I will continue my reflections here as much as I can and we invite you to join us in prayers!
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