'Silence' - Endo, Scorsese, Fujimura, Yancey & Kraus

“My personal encounter in the late 1980s with fumi-e displayed at the Tokyo National Museum led me to read Endō’s masterpiece, Silence,” writes Makoto Fujimura in his new book Silence and Beauty. “As I write this, the novel is being made into a major motion picture by the master filmmaker Martin Scorsese. A good friend of mine introduced me to Scorsese, and my conversation with him compelled me to write this book."

"Only Mako Fujimura could have written this book," Philip Yancey writes in the foreword to the book:

"Bicultural in upbringing and sensibility, he understands the nuances of Japan, and his knowledge of the language sheds light on Endō’s original source material. At the same time, Mako’s years of living in New York have given him a contemporary, global perspective ... Informed by both East and West, Mako guides the reader on excursions into Japanese art, samurai rituals, the tea ceremony and Asian theology, even while relying on Western mentors such as Martin Luther King Jr., Nelson Mandela, J. S. Bach, Vincent van Gogh and J. R. R. Tolkien."

Yancey continues:

"Shūsaku Endō described Japan as a swampland for Christianity, and missionaries who have served there tend to agree. Other Asian countries have seen explosive growth—the megachurches of the Philippines and South Korea, the massive unregistered church in China—while in Japan, the average church numbers less than thirty. A nation that copies nearly everything Western, from management practices to McDonald’s, baseball and pop music, curiously avoids religion. Most puzzling, as Mako mentions, is that so many values in the culture already reflect the way of the New Testament. Why, then, do so few Japanese convert?

That question troubled Shūsaku Endō too, who ultimately concluded that the failure stemmed from the Western emphasis on God’s fatherhood. Mother love tends to be unconditional, accepting the child no matter what, regardless of behavior. Father love tends to be more provisional, bestowing approval as the child measures up to certain standards of behavior. According to Endō, Japan, a nation of authoritarian fathers, has understood the father love of God but not the mother love ...

For Christianity to have any appeal to the Japanese, Endō suggests, it must stress instead the mother love of God, the love that forgives wrongs and binds wounds and draws, rather than forces, others to itself. (“Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you were not willing!”) “In ‘maternal religion’ Christ comes to prostitutes, worthless people, misshapen people and forgives them,” says Endō. As he sees it, Jesus brought the message of mother love to balance the father love of the Old Testament.

This insight helps answer a common question about Silence: Why did Endō express his own  deeply felt faith through a story of betrayal? ...

Endō explains that he centers his work on the experiences of failure and shame because these leave the most lasting impact on a person’s life ... The entire Bible can be seen, in fact, as a story of betrayal, beginning with Adam and proceeding through the history of the Israelites, culminating in the cross ... Our only hope is the forgiving gaze of the betrayed Savior, the still point of Endō’s novel."

In sessions that I led in the past at North Thames Ministerial Training Course we explored many of these same issues involved in cross-cultural communication of the meaning of the Atonement by looking at examples of missionary work in Japan through the writings of Endō and the approach of C. Norman Kraus as summarised in Recovering the Scandal of the Cross (Green & Baker, 2000).

Endō's writings depict both the anguish of faith and the mercy of God. A central theme of his writings has been the clash between Japanese culture and a very Western mode of religion. Novels like Silence and The Samurai suggest that Christianity must adapt itself radically if it is to take root in the “swamp” of Japan.

In assessing Christ’s atoning work, Kraus suggests that a Japanese “shame” culture is a less distorting lens through which to read the New Testament than a Western “guilt” culture. The “atonement theory” which emerges from Kraus’s reading centers more on “solidarity” than on “substitution.”

Among the questions we explored in these sessions were:

• What are the cultural factors that Ferreira in Silence thinks have prevented the Christian message from taking root in Japan?
• What other factors in the success or failure of this mission to Japan can be identified in Silence?
• Ferreira says that “the God whom those Japanese believed in was not the God of Christian teaching”. Assuming for the moment that he was right, do you think this matters and why?
• What are the cultural factors in Japan that Kraus takes into account in developing a theology of the atonement for Japan?
• How do these factors influence the theology of the atonement that he develops?
• In your view, is Kraus’ theology of the atonement consistent with the Biblical concepts and images of the atonement? 
• In what ways does your discussion of The Samurai link to Kraus’ atonement theology for Japan? Are there cultural issues that are common to both? Are there understandings of the atonement that are common to both?
• Does Kraus’ theology answer the issues raised by Ferreira in Silence?
• From your understandings of Japanese culture, which of the Biblical concepts or images of atonement would you emphasise in mission to Japan, and why? 
• What factors do you think need to be taken into account when communicating the god news of the atonement in a culture that is not your own (whether this is the culture of another country or a sub-culture within your own culture)?

In one such session we identified the following:

Issues for cross-cultural communication of the Atonement 

• Unholy alliances of politics, economics and religion and no consultation with the indigenous peoples
• Our religion is embedded in our culture - difficulties of disentangling the two (can we do this?)
• Perceived conflict between different religions i.e. Western Catholicism and Japanese Buddhism
• May be exporting our denominational, and other, divisions
• Need for understanding of social structures i.e. hierarchies
• Need for understanding of cultural norms i.e. shame
• Suspicious personal motives and suspicion of motives
• Suspicion of ‘outsiders’
• Shaming or threatening people through lack of cultural understanding
• Causing threat through the undermining of cultural hierarchies
• Concerns over Empires following on the heels of missionaries
• Disruption of a ‘closed’ cultural system through ‘outside’ ideas
• Violence accompanying ‘mission’
• Lack of respect for the indigenous culture and religion
• Discounting of indigenous cultures
• Clash with indigenous religious understandings e.g. Velasco’s passion and the Buddhist sense of ‘not desiring’

Ideas for cross-cultural communication of the Atonement 

• Importance of outsider’s showing care
• The giving of honour to all whatever their place within cultural hierarchies
• The giving of help rather than the bringing of oppression
• Exposure to Christian selflessness across cultural hierarchies
• Recognising the examples of service seen in indigenous peoples e.g. Yozö’s example of dedicated service being an image of Christ
• The experience of cultural rejection leading to identification with Christ
• The stripping away of culture leaving people exposed to revelation
• Identification with Christ through experience of sorrow
• Tapping into a universal sense of longing
• Seeing the universal in the particular
• Drawing metaphors from within the culture
• Salvation as being saved from the consequences of cultural norms and practices e.g. Christ above the “karma of man”, identification with Christ once shamed

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Bruce Cockburn - Tokyo.

The whole purpose of a political leader is to make successful alliances

Last Sunday The Observer published an interview with Neil MacGregor in which he made what seem to me to be some of the most pertinent observations that I have heard to date on the issues surrounding the EU referendum and the possibility of Brexit. In the interview he talks about acts of memory as a defining difference within Europe:

'In Germany, he says, “the thing I continue to find striking is that in the centre of Berlin you keep coming across monuments to national shame. I think that is unique in the world.”

Did they really have an option but to confront what had happened though?

“Well,” he says. “Austria hasn’t done it. Post-Soviet Russia hasn’t done it. Japan hasn’t done it.”

And, he would suggest, Britain and France have never really done it. “If you compare the way we remember, the perfect example was the opening ceremony of the Olympics, that selective national memory: all true but not looking at any of the difficult bits.”

Two things, he says, in the past couple of months have highlighted that complacency. The Cecil Rhodes statue debate “shows that we still cannot look at the past dispassionately, even a hundred years on”. Likewise, the centenary of the Easter Rising. “There is still no appetite to look hard at British behaviour in Ireland. What I find so painfully admirable about the German experience is that they are determined to find the historical truth and acknowledge it however painful it is. You can’t be an informed adult – or an artist – in Germany without doing that.”

The great thing a museum can do is allow us to look at the world as if through other eyes

That reflexive act of memory also colours the great political schisms of our times. Much has changed in Europe in the 18 months since the British Museum’s Germany show and the first publication of his book. It contains many chapters of forensic storytelling, but the one that stands out reading it now is MacGregor’s analysis of a simple refugee cart. That cart was representative of one of the most forgotten events of the last century: the forced “repatriation” of German speakers from eastern Europe after the war. About 30 million people were “ethnically cleansed” and 12-14 million returned to a devastated homeland they didn’t know, and became absorbed into a society that was rebuilt and reordered within a decade.

“If you try to explain why Germany has taken its unique stance on Syrian refugees in Europe you can’t ignore this,” MacGregor says. “Some argue the policy is another way of atoning for the Nazi era. But another absolutely central motivation, rarely mentioned, is that almost everybody now in Germany in their 20s or 30s has a grandparent or great-grandparent who has been a refugee. Pretty well every German has direct family experience of knowing what it means to be welcomed.”

The other debate that has become more charged since the book first appeared is the notion of sovereignty. MacGregor believes that the British and Germans mean completely different things when they use that word. Partly because of its own traumatic experience of nationalism and partly because of the history of shifting borders and alliances during the Holy Roman Empire, in Germany, he says, sovereignty always means an appetite for coalition and compromise. “Any German knows that as well as the Bundestag there are 16 other parliaments making laws within its borders. In Britain we don’t have the language for that.”

The European debate in Britain looks so strange if you are a German for precisely this reason, he suggests. “German people see the whole purpose of a political leader is to make successful alliances. The proper use of sovereignty is all about pooling it to achieve your aims. The British idea that you should entirely do these things on your own and try to assume total control over your environment is unthinkable.”'

This, it seems to me, explains, in part, the shortcomings of the argument currently being made by anti-EU campaigners that Barack Obama is guilty of double standards when he encourages the UK to remain part of the EU. What those campaigners fail to acknowledge is that the USA is, as it says on the tin, a Union of States. Obama recognises the importance of cooperation rather than isolation and interdependence rather than independence because that is built in to the existence of America, part of its raison d'être. By contrast, the anti-EU campaigners believe, as McGregor notes, that we should entirely do these things on our own and try to assume total control over our environment. In my view it is this refusal to recognise the value of cooperation and interdependence that causes the shallowness in the arguments made in favour of Brexit.

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Woody Guthrie - This Land Is Your Land.

Ticking the box of our own self-interest

In all the analysis of the surprise and shock of yesterday's election result, three key influences to do with the process rather than the content of contemporary elections stand out:

First, polling is a distraction from the reality of what is occurring. Polling has provided the media with their primary source of news and debate throughout the election and, as a result, much of that debate and discussion has proved wholly irrelevant to the outcome. Lynton Crosby, who masterminded the Conservative's victory, has been quoted as saying, 'Ignore most of the opinion polls that you see in the newspapers, because they are so simplistic.' This proved true for Labour who were 'given false comfort by the national opinion polls showing the party neck and neck.'

Second, Crosby's strategy of negative campaigning, which is based on the politics of fear, has proved once again to be successful. In this case the fear was of 'the influence the SNP might hold over a minority Miliband government'; a fear which is a essentially unfounded but which, 'with typical shrewdness and ruthlessness, Crosby identified ... as a wedge that could be used against Labour, both in Scotland and in England.' Crosby has stated that, 'At its absolute simplest, a campaign is simply finding out who will decide the outcome … where are they, what matters to them, and how do you reach them?' (Andy Beckett). No-one has been more effective than Crosby at focusing on this simple truth.

Third, the continuing power of the predominantly right-wing press has been demonstrated. 'When Murdoch appeared before the Leveson inquiry he argued that the Sun’s “won it” headline had been “tasteless and wrong”, adding: “We don’t have that sort of power.” The election of 2015 might just prove him wrong.' The 'campaigning coverage of the Rupert Murdoch-owned Sun and the Times, Lord Rothermere’s Daily Mail and the Barclay brothers’ Telegraph titles has been a marked feature of this campaign ... the Sun, Murdoch’s biggest-selling title, was more virulently anti-Labour in this campaign than it was in the runup to the 1992 election when Neil Kinnock was depicted in a lightbulb on polling day.' 'With a party now in power whose only manifesto pledge on the media was to freeze the BBC’s licence fee, Murdoch and his UK executives can rest easy that they can do business again. Calls for a Leveson-approved press regulator are likely to diminish.' 'It is likely that whoever replaces Miliband as Labour leader will be even more wary of threatening Murdoch or any other press baron with increased regulation and the breakup of their empires.' (Jane Martinson)

Giles Fraser, as often, is both clear and honest in his reaction:

'Right now I feel ashamed to be English. Ashamed to belong to a country that has clearly identified itself as insular, self-absorbed and apparently caring so little for the most vulnerable people among us. Why did a million people visiting food banks make such a minimal difference? Did we just vote for our own narrow concerns and sod the rest? Maybe that’s why the pollsters got it so badly wrong: we are not so much a nation of shy voters as of ashamed voters, people who want to present to the nice polling man as socially inclusive, but who, in the privacy of the booth, tick the box of our own self-interest.'

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Patti Smith - After The Gold Rush.

Andrea Büttner: The Poverty of Riches

One of the BP Spotlights currently at Tate Britain is a selection of work by Andrea Büttner:

"The work of Andrea Büttner (born 1972) includes woodcuts, reverse glass painting, sculpture, video and performance. She creates connections between art history and social or ethical issues, with a particular interest in notions of poverty, shame, vulnerability and dignity, and the belief systems that underpin them.

Büttner’s work often makes reference to religious communities, drawing attention to the relationship between religion and art, and between religious communities and the art world. The video Little Sisters: Lunapark Ostia focuses on a sisterhood of nuns who manage an arcade in a small amusement park in Ostia, near Rome. The nuns speak about their work and respond to questions posed by Büttner concerning happiness, spirituality and spectacle."

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The Frames - Pavement Tune.