The Cross in the Sky
After working 14 years for the Boston branch of Showa Women’s University, I got my wish – to teach for a semester at the home campus. I left the family behind and took a small flat in the Sangenjaya area of Tokyo.
Weekends were lonesome. At one point, I wandered along Setagaya-Dori, looked up, and beheld a cross in the sky. It wasn’t quite the miracle experienced by Emperor Constantine. You will recall that in the year 312, on the eve of the battle to settle leadership of Rome, Constantine saw a flaming cross in the sky, with the words in hoc signo vinces - “In this sign, conquer.” He did so, then made Christianity the official faith of the Roman Empire.
My cross, by contrast, was plastic and attached to the side of an apartment building. It still made an impression, as the landscape of Tokyo is not exactly rife with Christian symbols. This cross was prominent enough, and lovely enough, that I stopped to investigate. Outside the entryway to the building, there was a church sign, in Japanese. All I could decode was a meeting time of 10:30 on Sundays. I decided to check it out.
The sensible thing would have been to find an English-language church, of which there are several in Tokyo. But I was trying to learn Japanese, as I have since 1992, without success. I thought that listening to services in the language would help. Besides, it was nearby, and I might meet some neighbors. Old Peace Corps habits – stay local.
The next Sunday I put on my suit and slipped into the building, just as the service was beginning. It was a small congregation, no more than 25 in the pews. Several turned and smiled (I was the only gaijin), and the young lady beside me beamed. I had been handed a songbook and program at the door, and with the young lady’s help I could follow the service. Most parts were familiar – the Lord’s Prayer, hymns, the Apostles’ Creed, a Scripture reading, sermon, and collection – pretty much how we do it at First Congregational of Essex, Massachusetts.
Except, of course, it was all in Japanese. I could understand a little, but felt in a fog. It dawned on me that one advantage of Christian worship is its monotony. In Tokyo, Texas, or Timbuktu, it’s mostly the same. The language hardly mattered, and this proved a blessing. Week after week I sat there, straining to catch a word or two, then giving up and just absorbing the atmosphere. God was here – faith was here – and that sufficed to cleanse my spirit.
In particular, I looked often at the large wooden cross, fixed on the wall behind the pulpit. I had never noticed how much a cross resembles an upside-down anchor. This became my governing metaphor – amidst the boiling cauldron of temptations that is modern Tokyo, this little church would anchor me and keep me safe.
That first service struck me as rather stiff. Things warmed up during the sermon by Rev. Kusakabe, who seemed one of the happier men in Japan. And he talked for forty minutes, of which I approved. In American churches, it has somehow become a rule that sermons cannot run past twenty minutes, as if the congregants would otherwise turn into pumpkins. But sometimes you need longer to make your point. In my own white-steeple New England church, founded 1683, the old Puritans would listen to three-hour sermons, and nobody died of it.
Still, while Kusakabe-san smiled and gestured, the others remained dead still, till the benediction. Then, as if by a switch, they sprang to life and surrounded me. Welcome to the new brother! they said. God bless you! Please stay for tea! Please come again! I’ve rarely felt such warmth as they ushered me into the next room. Post-service, American Christians stand for coffee, Japanese Christians sit for tea.
As I sat, those who knew English came up with greetings and questions. They were pleased to have a gaijin in their midst, they said, as it made the group “international.” That’s big in Japan. We sipped and munched and smiled. I said I taught English, and they asked if I sang English songs. Yes indeed. Somehow a guitar found its way to my lap. I played "Amazing Grace," and they went bananas.
I left resolved to come back. Whether or not I could understand a service, it felt like a solid little bastion of the faith. It turned out to be a missionary plant of the California-based Church of the Nazarene. Like many American Protestants, I’ve wandered through several denominations, chiefly on the traditionalist side. The Nazarenes would do fine. They were a bit austere (they don’t drink, smoke, dance, cuss or kiss, whereas I practice all of these in moderation), but close enough.
The next week I chatted more with the young lady who had sat beside me. Her English was strong, and her face shone. She had heard me sing and wondered if I would be interested in a Gospel choir. I wasn’t sure I had heard her right. She couldn’t mean Gospel music - as in black Gospel - not in Japan. It sounded like a joke. But no, that’s just what she meant. She and her boyfriend would be happy to meet me Thursday evening at the church, where the choir rehearsed.
The Gospel Choir
The next Thursday, I came at 7:30 pm to the Church of Sangenjaya, with low expectations. Gospel in Japan? Could there be a culture on earth less suited to such a musical form? Gospel is loud and physical, while Japanese people are quiet and reserved. Gospel is spontaneous, while Japanese are obsessive planners and script-followers. Gospel lyrics are direct, pithy, colloquial; Japanese language, formal and allusive. Above all, Gospel is infused with faith, while Japanese are famously irreligious (Christians are just 1% of the population). What were the chances?
Still, I sensed an energy in the room. The practice was held in the sanctuary, which had been transformed. The portable walls had been folded back, and the pews clumped to the side to increase the space to move in. Because of crowding, the Japanese are ingenious at maximizing space.
Musicians were setting up a keyboard, electric organ, drum set, and electric guitars. At the door was a desk, where members signed in – you sign in for everything in Japan – and paid 700 yen (about $6) to take part. This is standard for club activities, but I had to smile. Our choir director back home tears his hair out trying to get singers to come to practice. Maybe the secret is to charge them for the privilege.
People filed in gradually, as the rest of us stood in rows and did warm-up exercises led by a senior member. Then the director – the only other gaijin in the room – stepped up, and the group seemed galvanized.
This was Gil Espineli. A Filipino-American, he was in his thirties, short but powerfully built, tawny-skinned, with an extremely mobile face. As soon as he spoke, I suspected that he was a Californian. (I know because I am one. Japan’s ex-pat community is, for some reason, lousy with Californians). Gil was yet another English teacher, who had a love of, and genius for, Gospel music.
My first impression of him wasn’t purely positive. This owed to unfamiliarity with how Gospel choirs work. My chorus experience had been of a traditional sort, in which singers aim to be disembodied voices. To such singing, listeners may as well close their eyes. But no one closes eyes for Gospel. Every sense is pulled in, as singers’ bodies express and amplify the music. They sway and clap, twirl and kick, fling hands in air. Gospel is as much dance as song, with body and soul restored to their primal unity. This may explain its world-wide popularity, as listeners, even those with not one iota of faith, can feel connected to the religious origins of all performing arts.
As an audience member, I had long known its power to move listeners. In fact, I’m one of those white fans who moves too much at Gospel concerts, swaying and weeping and embarrassing their companions. I’m the sort that the singers must joke about afterwards. Something gets a-hold of me.
The other key difference in singing Gospel - no scores. We did get written lyrics, but these were to be memorized as soon as possible. As for the tune, you copy it from the director. It’s like the line-singing in colonial American churches before people knew how to read music. The director sings the tenor line, and the tenors repeat it, again and again. Then he does it for the altos. Then the sopranos. Master one line, and you go on to the next, creeping through a new piece with excruciating slowness.
So, these were the two surprises - Gospel was very physical, and the lack of a score required exceptional focus and unity. I stress these, as it underlay my nervousness at that first rehearsal. Gil did what he had to do to, but it required of him such extravagant movement and emotion that it left me wondering, “Is this guy all right?”
For example, when he led the warm-up, it felt like an aerobics class. In Massachusetts, I was used to a few scales, a few “me-mi-ma-mo-mu”s, then on to a song. Gil spent twenty minutes having us stretch arms, legs, backs, necks, and above all, jaws. He demonstrated the latter, working his mouth up and down so far and so fast, it was frightening to watch. He kept up a patter, in Japanese and English, explaining that we couldn’t sing properly if we were tight.
But it was the cool-down that shocked me most. He said, “Okay, minna-san (everyone), massage the shoulders of the person in front of you.” What?! I was taught that Japanese people don’t touch those of the opposite sex in public. The exception is the Tokyo subway, where passengers are crushed daily into a sort of human jam. This can lead to greater intimacy between the sexes than is achieved in some marriages. It’s a terrible trial for the females. But I suspect that the men, who after all spend their whole lives trying to get this close to women, mind it less.
Still, all I had learned about Japan since 1992 encouraged the utmost restraint. Don’t touch. Keep your hands to yourself.
How then was I going to lay hands on the shoulders of the young woman ahead of me?
But I did it - shyly, self-consciously, shamefully. As my fingers kneaded her finely formed collar bone, I felt the same movements on my own shoulders, accompanied by frantic giggles. The girl behind me was a foot shorter than I and had to stand tippy toe to get at me.
“Now, do the person on your right,” said Gil, and we swiveled like soldiers on parade. I relaxed a bit. “Person behind you.” We turned again and turned once more to the fourth partner in massage. By then it felt perfectly normal, and I could start taking note of the other members.
Gender-wise, they followed the usual ratio in choruses – about three females to one male. In age, there was a span, and I was clearly the upper limit. Most members were in their twenties and thirties, with a few teenagers sprinkled in. In social class, they varied more than the university types I had known through Showa. Most had jobs, and judging from the arms of the young men, some of those jobs were physical.
As to religion, that remained a mystery. You might think that anyone committed to a Gospel choir in Tokyo would be an avid Christian, or at least a seeker. Maybe, but I suspect that a lot of them just liked to sing Gospel (and in English, which has a coolness factor). Because of the language barrier, I couldn’t get acquainted enough to tell.
But whatever motives brought the singers on long subway rides to Sangenjaya, those of the director were ardently evangelical. “This is not a singing club!” he said that first night, and every week after. “We are here to glorify God!” He meant it, and it went far toward purifying an atmosphere that might have gotten out of hand.
Gospel, after all, is not tea ceremony. To get young Japanese to sing it, he had to break down centuries of inhibitions, in sessions that were charged with sound, motion, heat, sweat, musical and religious passion, and frankly, pheromones. I could tell, and Gil must also have known, that these lads and lasses were checking each other out.
Still, any romantic agenda brought into the room was overpowered by Gil’s personal charisma. He pulsed with an energy - physical, verbal, emotional and spiritual - that kept the attention of sixty people fixed on him and the task.
For example, for lack of a musical score, he had worked out an entire sign language to indicate every idea. Louder? His palms spread apart from each other. Softer? They closed back. Take it from the top? One hand went up over his head. Do it again? Whirled hand. Sopranos only? A finger thrust to the left.
To help us get the lyrics, he would prompt us with the first word of a line. Or he would jump in with his own powerful tenor, improvising the riffs that make Gospel so alive. Sometimes he had to straighten out pronunciation, a skill transferred from his English teaching. There are predictable problems for Japanese speakers, such as /s/ vs. /th/. One song took its lyrics from the King James version of Psalm 150, which begins: Let everything that hath breath praise the Lord! From Japanese lips, it came out: Let every sing that has breasts praise the Lord!
“Not breasts,” said Gil patiently. “Breath-th-th-th. Put the tongue out between the teeth, then pull it back.” He modeled it, memorably.
Another song had the phrase Alpha and Omega, and he directed us to swell the volume on certain syllables - ALLLL-pha . . .o-MEEEE-ga. He wanted us to show the crescendo physically, by dipping our heads and thrusting out forearms.
That I could manage, but not the movements for a final tune. It was called “Whatcha Lookin’ 4?” and it required us to do a little dance with index fingers as we sang, pointing them at our heads, our eyes, the audience, then holding up four fingers in a visual pun. I could never get it straight.
The point is, it took a while to get used to this way of doing chorus. I liked Gil right off, and he seemed to like me. When we chatted afterward, he would call me “Bro.” We talked shop about English teaching, and he asked if there were jobs in Boston. (I’d have hired in him in a second.) But all these vocal and actual acrobatics - where was it going?
What won me was when we finally quit working on bits and sang a whole song first to last. The power of it was stunning and disabused me of two stereotypes. First, the Japanese in that room were not quiet and reserved. They rocked, with a whole-souled passion and joyfulness that went beyond musical skill. It reminded me of someone’s comparison of the Japanese character to Mt. Fuji. On the surface, the mountain is the picture of tranquil repose; but underneath, it’s a volcano.
Second, Gospel music proved not to be as spontaneous as I had thought.
Like all great art, the impression of effortlessness rests on careful effort.
We repeated and repeated and repeated, and while the final product left room for improvisation, we bloody well knew those songs. Gil’s phrase was “simulation.” He wanted the rehearsals before the next concert (concert!?) to be so polished, that the performance would be flawless. He wanted us to internalize the songs so that they sprang out of our depths.
As the weeks passed, my skepticism about Gospel in Japan seeped away, replaced by joy. I’ve sung in many choirs, and I’m the type that is easily, weepily touched by music. But never had I felt this degree of inspiration. Thursday after Thursday, I dragged myself to the church after a hard week’s work. I anticipated refreshment of body and spirit, and it came. Some lyrics cut so close to the bone of my own spiritual experience that I could barely sing them without breaking down.
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For example, here’s the song “When I Think about the Lord” by the composer James Huey:
When I think about the Lord How He saved me, how He raised me, How He filled me with the Holy Ghost How He healed me to the uttermost When I think about the Lord How He picked me up And turned me around How He placed my feet on solid ground It makes me wanna SHOUT! Hallelujah! Thank you, Jesus! Lord, you’re worthy Of all the glory, and all the honor, And all the praise! |
In cold print, the words may not seem potent. But sung out and commingled with a personal experience of divine love – well, I defy anyone not to get choked up.
Just look at the language. The best English is sometimes the least English, that is, diction that is spare, simple, monosyllabic. When Churchill wanted to rouse Britain against Nazi invasion in 1940, he fell back on pure Anglo-Saxon: “We shall fight them on the beaches, we shall fight them in the fields . . . we shall never surrender.” Only the last word is Latin-derived.
Gospel lyrics likewise gain power by mixing biblical rhetoric - Holy Ghost, Hallelujah, worthy, glory, honor - with phrases of the utmost clarity and daily-ness - He saved me . . . He raised me . . . He picked me up and turned me around . . .
It’s common speech, a people’s poetry. It uses words for physical actions (fill, raise, place) that are taken up one metaphorical level to express spiritual ideas. It makes images that bridge the gap between human and divine, natural and supernatural. For example, there’s a fragment of an old spiritual that, in nine words, captures the Incarnation better than many a theology text:
World treat you bad, Lord.
Treat me bad too.
So, you take such lines, that catch universal experiences of suffering and longing; you set them to harmony; you add in gestures; you repeat them, a lot, with jazz variations; you turn up the volume; and you infuse them with a spirit of pure, exuberant worship . . . I ask you, who could hold back tears? Not me (though I try, since crying while performing is a musical sin). We’d reach that phrase, He turned me around, and I would be reduced to a puddle of gratitude. Because that’s what He did, to me.
What I got, and what I hope the others sensed as well, was the gospel behind Gospel. This is music that connects - us to each other, and us to God. It transcends all barriers, it unites all types – a poor black kid struggling against perils of the ghetto; a privileged white yuppie mired in pride; a stressed-out, rule-ridden Japanese yearning for freedom of the spirit. Each can feel in the plain phrases the same Lord reaching down in grace, to transmute sorrow into strength, humiliation into humility.
It makes you want to shout.
The Concert
Gil had mentioned early on a concert, to be held in late July. I assumed I would
be part of it, and I even thought I could lure some of my students to the audience. That’s one consequence of Christian salvation, that you always feel pressure to share it. While I can’t deny the call - it’s right there in our marching orders, Ye shall make disciples of all nations - I’m not very good at it. But I suspected that if anything might nudge my students to consider Christianity, it would be Gospel music. Would the spectacle of Tom-sensei, getting down with a bunch of hip young Tokyoites, be novel enough to draw them?
Then, I learned that all performers had to wear the group’s choir robe, which cost $100. For long-term members it made sense, for there would be other concerts. But I was a bird of passage, soon to fly back to Boston. Was it worth it? And the duties at school were mounting as the semester ended. I was getting busier, just as the rehearsal schedule was picking up.
The tipping point came one night, when Gil gave us homework. Homework? I thought I was doing well just to show up for two hours every Thursday. But this was Japan, and this was Gil. He had the obsessive perfectionism of the true artist. My fellow choristers had the zeal that is in the Japanese DNA.
“Minna-san,” said Gil, “The time is short, and you’ve GOT to know these songs cold. Our practice schedule isn’t enough, so please record each song on your devices and listen to them, over and over, in your free time.”
What free time? What devices? We were sitting on the floor between numbers, and I glanced around. I hadn’t noticed before, but nearly every member had a tiny digital recorder, out and cranking. Moreover, I knew that they would do what he asked. Their lives were as full and frenetic as mine - everyone in Tokyo crams about 30 hours of activity into 24 - but if the leader said to do something to make the performance better, they would do it. For several weeks I had been suspicious, and a little annoyed, that they seemed to learn the songs faster than me, the native speaker. Now I understood.
The fact is, I didn’t want to do it. In my four months in Japan, I had worked harder than at any time in my life, and I was just out of gas. I still had to finish classes and close up an apartment. So, I told Gil I wouldn’t sing in the concert. He looked slightly relieved.
Instead, I arranged to attend with the pair that had brought me in the first place, Chihiro and Kazuye. They’d dropped out of the choir after introducing me to it. But every Sunday morning they were back in the pews, and within the congregation, they had taken me under wing. A couple of times we went out to lunch after the service. They wanted to practice English, and I wanted to practice Japanese, and we all wanted something to do on lonely Sunday afternoons.
I learned that my assumption was wrong. They weren’t boyfriend and girlfriend, just friends. Kazuye was from Okinawa, and Chihiro called him the most relaxed man in Japan. “That is his talent,” she said. “He never worries.”
She was serious, for she was a more typical Japanese who worried a lot. Her face shone with faith, but it also mirrored an exquisitely sensitive spirit that knew the pain of life. Though only in her mid-twenties, her mind and maturity impressed me.
One time as we walked through Shibuya, she told her spiritual journey. After high school, she had opted not to start university right away. Instead, she enrolled in a six-month English course with a private school in London. She had a home stay in the suburbs of Surrey.
The family was kind, but as with foreign students anywhere, her first months were lonely. Her bedroom was formerly that of the family’s grown daughter. On a bookshelf was a children’s Bible, colorfully illustrated and in easy English. Chihiro began to read it, purely as a language text. The stories pierced her heart, and in solitude she embraced Christianity.
I asked, was the family Christian? Not at all. The daughter? The daughter had in fact gone wild and was a heartache to the family. Yet this little children’s Bible, this forgotten bequest of some pious old aunt, had lain fallow on the shelf, till its words could leap out and bring solace to a lonely Japanese girl.
The concert was on a Saturday afternoon in late July. The three of us met at Shibuya station and began a trek to a distant suburb. After forty-five minutes on the train, we got off and hunted up the address. Churches in Japan never look like churches. Like our own in Sangenjaya, this one resembled an apartment building, with the sanctuary on the sixth floor. It was much larger than ours, with seating for two or three hundred, and nearly filled. At a signal, the band struck up, the rear doors swung open, and the choir came roaring up the center aisle.
Gil was resplendent in an all-white suit. The others in the $100 robes looked sharp, as they flowed onto the risers up front. I felt a brief pang of regret that I wasn’t up there with them, but it didn’t last. Why? Unlike any concert I had ever been to, the veil between performer and audience dissolved, and a polished presentation by sixty singers morphed into pure worship.
This was helped by a large screen above the choir, on which the lyrics of each song were projected. Gil invited us, nay, insisted that we sing along. Our little trio needed no urging - we knew the songs. More amazing, those around us, many of them families with children, jumped in as well.
You would have to live in Japan awhile to grasp the impact. Public gatherings there have a decorum that can be deadening, as no one wants to stand out. I had a lesson in this the first week, in our university’s opening ceremony. As a visiting professor, I got to sit on the dais with the administrators and board of trustees, in front of two thousand students. I settled in to enjoy it, when I felt a slap on my thigh from a woman dean. It was playful, but with a point. She gestured to how everyone else was sitting - feet planted, hands on knees, torso erect - whereas I was sprawled out with my legs crossed, like an American. The message - you are not here to enjoy, but to act your part. In embarrassment, I straightened up. It’s not bad for a few minutes but try sitting that way for an hour and a half without moving. Or itching.
It wasn’t much different in church services. Japanese people, these walking volcanoes, accept an extraordinary degree of social discipline. In public, you must be serious, must suppress personal desires, must put group harmony above comfort. It has a kind of beauty to it, but that makes the exceptions all the more striking. If Americans loosen up, who notices? But if Japanese do it . . .
And Japanese did it at this concert, from the get-go. First, they clapped, then swayed, then stood, then sang. To be sure, the music was so infectious, it would have made the very stones cry out. Gil’s pushing had paid off. The tunes had been rehearsed right into the souls of the singers, and now they could surge out in perfect harmony.
And if excitement flagged for an instant, Gil filled the gap with preaching. Charismatic in every sense, he tended to get carried away and talk too much. Yet he spoke with such fervor and sincerity that you forgave him. “Oh holy father we just praise you praise you praise you! Let your spirit down upon this gathering with POWER fill us use us mold us make us vessels for your love your grace your blessedness! Let this music of praise and gladness go out from this place and touch hearts everywhere in Japan and turn souls to YOU in worship and adoration and honor and glory and praise!”
I looked on him with love, and it made me cry all the more. Gil was a man on fire for God, and I yearned to be so myself. Whatever his struggles, his heart in that moment was as immaculate as his suit, as he poured himself out. In my judgment, the spirit had come down on the room. It’s something I’ve felt maybe a dozen times in my Christian experience. Some cases may just have been religious emotion, for it’s hard to tell the difference. But for an hour and a half, this obscure little company on the sixth floor of a drab ferro-concrete building in northwest Tokyo reached for heaven, and was transported, transformed. We sang as one, and felt as one, and when the music finally ceased, we left as if floating.
There was a wry little coda. Chihiro and Kazuye and I departed in silence, not wanting to break the spell. But across the street from the church was a park, which happened to be the site of a neighborhood matsuri, or summer festival. Taiko drums beat out a rhythm, and in the center a group was forming up for a traditional dance.
Chihiro’s face lit up. “I know this dance! It’s the children’s dance! Can we go?” Kazuye and I were startled by the change in her. Normally she was a proper young Japanese woman, demure, cautious, mindful of every action and word. Now, wild horses could not have held her back.
He and I bought popsicles at a stand and watched, as Chihiro plunged into the dance. I knew from my students that these events are highlights of a Japanese childhood. It charmed me to see grave Chihiro recapturing the joy of it. She closed her eyes and beamed as she made the familiar movements, slowly striding and tossing her arms in a pattern unchanged for centuries.
To a country battered by modernity, haunted by the West, these matsuris gave a link to the roots of the culture. That they derived from the indigenous religion didn’t bother Chihiro, who of us three had the purest faith. It was a Japanese moment - pure fusion - that we could step right from a Christian festival to a Shinto one. We were simply children of God, our ears ringing with the thunder of Gospel, our heads swaying to the immemorial beat of the summer drums.
Just look at the language. The best English is sometimes the least English, that is, diction that is spare, simple, monosyllabic. When Churchill wanted to rouse Britain against Nazi invasion in 1940, he fell back on pure Anglo-Saxon: “We shall fight them on the beaches, we shall fight them in the fields . . . we shall never surrender.” Only the last word is Latin-derived.
Gospel lyrics likewise gain power by mixing biblical rhetoric - Holy Ghost, Hallelujah, worthy, glory, honor - with phrases of the utmost clarity and daily-ness - He saved me . . . He raised me . . . He picked me up and turned me around . . .
It’s common speech, a people’s poetry. It uses words for physical actions (fill, raise, place) that are taken up one metaphorical level to express spiritual ideas. It makes images that bridge the gap between human and divine, natural and supernatural. For example, there’s a fragment of an old spiritual that, in nine words, captures the Incarnation better than many a theology text:
World treat you bad, Lord.
Treat me bad too.
So, you take such lines, that catch universal experiences of suffering and longing; you set them to harmony; you add in gestures; you repeat them, a lot, with jazz variations; you turn up the volume; and you infuse them with a spirit of pure, exuberant worship . . . I ask you, who could hold back tears? Not me (though I try, since crying while performing is a musical sin). We’d reach that phrase, He turned me around, and I would be reduced to a puddle of gratitude. Because that’s what He did, to me.
What I got, and what I hope the others sensed as well, was the gospel behind Gospel. This is music that connects - us to each other, and us to God. It transcends all barriers, it unites all types – a poor black kid struggling against perils of the ghetto; a privileged white yuppie mired in pride; a stressed-out, rule-ridden Japanese yearning for freedom of the spirit. Each can feel in the plain phrases the same Lord reaching down in grace, to transmute sorrow into strength, humiliation into humility.
It makes you want to shout.
The Concert
Gil had mentioned early on a concert, to be held in late July. I assumed I would
be part of it, and I even thought I could lure some of my students to the audience. That’s one consequence of Christian salvation, that you always feel pressure to share it. While I can’t deny the call - it’s right there in our marching orders, Ye shall make disciples of all nations - I’m not very good at it. But I suspected that if anything might nudge my students to consider Christianity, it would be Gospel music. Would the spectacle of Tom-sensei, getting down with a bunch of hip young Tokyoites, be novel enough to draw them?
Then, I learned that all performers had to wear the group’s choir robe, which cost $100. For long-term members it made sense, for there would be other concerts. But I was a bird of passage, soon to fly back to Boston. Was it worth it? And the duties at school were mounting as the semester ended. I was getting busier, just as the rehearsal schedule was picking up.
The tipping point came one night, when Gil gave us homework. Homework? I thought I was doing well just to show up for two hours every Thursday. But this was Japan, and this was Gil. He had the obsessive perfectionism of the true artist. My fellow choristers had the zeal that is in the Japanese DNA.
“Minna-san,” said Gil, “The time is short, and you’ve GOT to know these songs cold. Our practice schedule isn’t enough, so please record each song on your devices and listen to them, over and over, in your free time.”
What free time? What devices? We were sitting on the floor between numbers, and I glanced around. I hadn’t noticed before, but nearly every member had a tiny digital recorder, out and cranking. Moreover, I knew that they would do what he asked. Their lives were as full and frenetic as mine - everyone in Tokyo crams about 30 hours of activity into 24 - but if the leader said to do something to make the performance better, they would do it. For several weeks I had been suspicious, and a little annoyed, that they seemed to learn the songs faster than me, the native speaker. Now I understood.
The fact is, I didn’t want to do it. In my four months in Japan, I had worked harder than at any time in my life, and I was just out of gas. I still had to finish classes and close up an apartment. So, I told Gil I wouldn’t sing in the concert. He looked slightly relieved.
Instead, I arranged to attend with the pair that had brought me in the first place, Chihiro and Kazuye. They’d dropped out of the choir after introducing me to it. But every Sunday morning they were back in the pews, and within the congregation, they had taken me under wing. A couple of times we went out to lunch after the service. They wanted to practice English, and I wanted to practice Japanese, and we all wanted something to do on lonely Sunday afternoons.
I learned that my assumption was wrong. They weren’t boyfriend and girlfriend, just friends. Kazuye was from Okinawa, and Chihiro called him the most relaxed man in Japan. “That is his talent,” she said. “He never worries.”
She was serious, for she was a more typical Japanese who worried a lot. Her face shone with faith, but it also mirrored an exquisitely sensitive spirit that knew the pain of life. Though only in her mid-twenties, her mind and maturity impressed me.
One time as we walked through Shibuya, she told her spiritual journey. After high school, she had opted not to start university right away. Instead, she enrolled in a six-month English course with a private school in London. She had a home stay in the suburbs of Surrey.
The family was kind, but as with foreign students anywhere, her first months were lonely. Her bedroom was formerly that of the family’s grown daughter. On a bookshelf was a children’s Bible, colorfully illustrated and in easy English. Chihiro began to read it, purely as a language text. The stories pierced her heart, and in solitude she embraced Christianity.
I asked, was the family Christian? Not at all. The daughter? The daughter had in fact gone wild and was a heartache to the family. Yet this little children’s Bible, this forgotten bequest of some pious old aunt, had lain fallow on the shelf, till its words could leap out and bring solace to a lonely Japanese girl.
The concert was on a Saturday afternoon in late July. The three of us met at Shibuya station and began a trek to a distant suburb. After forty-five minutes on the train, we got off and hunted up the address. Churches in Japan never look like churches. Like our own in Sangenjaya, this one resembled an apartment building, with the sanctuary on the sixth floor. It was much larger than ours, with seating for two or three hundred, and nearly filled. At a signal, the band struck up, the rear doors swung open, and the choir came roaring up the center aisle.
Gil was resplendent in an all-white suit. The others in the $100 robes looked sharp, as they flowed onto the risers up front. I felt a brief pang of regret that I wasn’t up there with them, but it didn’t last. Why? Unlike any concert I had ever been to, the veil between performer and audience dissolved, and a polished presentation by sixty singers morphed into pure worship.
This was helped by a large screen above the choir, on which the lyrics of each song were projected. Gil invited us, nay, insisted that we sing along. Our little trio needed no urging - we knew the songs. More amazing, those around us, many of them families with children, jumped in as well.
You would have to live in Japan awhile to grasp the impact. Public gatherings there have a decorum that can be deadening, as no one wants to stand out. I had a lesson in this the first week, in our university’s opening ceremony. As a visiting professor, I got to sit on the dais with the administrators and board of trustees, in front of two thousand students. I settled in to enjoy it, when I felt a slap on my thigh from a woman dean. It was playful, but with a point. She gestured to how everyone else was sitting - feet planted, hands on knees, torso erect - whereas I was sprawled out with my legs crossed, like an American. The message - you are not here to enjoy, but to act your part. In embarrassment, I straightened up. It’s not bad for a few minutes but try sitting that way for an hour and a half without moving. Or itching.
It wasn’t much different in church services. Japanese people, these walking volcanoes, accept an extraordinary degree of social discipline. In public, you must be serious, must suppress personal desires, must put group harmony above comfort. It has a kind of beauty to it, but that makes the exceptions all the more striking. If Americans loosen up, who notices? But if Japanese do it . . .
And Japanese did it at this concert, from the get-go. First, they clapped, then swayed, then stood, then sang. To be sure, the music was so infectious, it would have made the very stones cry out. Gil’s pushing had paid off. The tunes had been rehearsed right into the souls of the singers, and now they could surge out in perfect harmony.
And if excitement flagged for an instant, Gil filled the gap with preaching. Charismatic in every sense, he tended to get carried away and talk too much. Yet he spoke with such fervor and sincerity that you forgave him. “Oh holy father we just praise you praise you praise you! Let your spirit down upon this gathering with POWER fill us use us mold us make us vessels for your love your grace your blessedness! Let this music of praise and gladness go out from this place and touch hearts everywhere in Japan and turn souls to YOU in worship and adoration and honor and glory and praise!”
I looked on him with love, and it made me cry all the more. Gil was a man on fire for God, and I yearned to be so myself. Whatever his struggles, his heart in that moment was as immaculate as his suit, as he poured himself out. In my judgment, the spirit had come down on the room. It’s something I’ve felt maybe a dozen times in my Christian experience. Some cases may just have been religious emotion, for it’s hard to tell the difference. But for an hour and a half, this obscure little company on the sixth floor of a drab ferro-concrete building in northwest Tokyo reached for heaven, and was transported, transformed. We sang as one, and felt as one, and when the music finally ceased, we left as if floating.
There was a wry little coda. Chihiro and Kazuye and I departed in silence, not wanting to break the spell. But across the street from the church was a park, which happened to be the site of a neighborhood matsuri, or summer festival. Taiko drums beat out a rhythm, and in the center a group was forming up for a traditional dance.
Chihiro’s face lit up. “I know this dance! It’s the children’s dance! Can we go?” Kazuye and I were startled by the change in her. Normally she was a proper young Japanese woman, demure, cautious, mindful of every action and word. Now, wild horses could not have held her back.
He and I bought popsicles at a stand and watched, as Chihiro plunged into the dance. I knew from my students that these events are highlights of a Japanese childhood. It charmed me to see grave Chihiro recapturing the joy of it. She closed her eyes and beamed as she made the familiar movements, slowly striding and tossing her arms in a pattern unchanged for centuries.
To a country battered by modernity, haunted by the West, these matsuris gave a link to the roots of the culture. That they derived from the indigenous religion didn’t bother Chihiro, who of us three had the purest faith. It was a Japanese moment - pure fusion - that we could step right from a Christian festival to a Shinto one. We were simply children of God, our ears ringing with the thunder of Gospel, our heads swaying to the immemorial beat of the summer drums.
Tom Griffith lives in Beverly, Massachusetts. He recently retired from a career teaching ESL. For 26 years, he worked for Showa Women’s University at its Boston campus. He traveled often to Tokyo and taught there one semester. He is the author of Anasara: A Peace Corps Journey. Reach him at: tgriffith520@gmail.co
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