Joy to the World | Naoyuki Agawa (Vice-President in charge of Shonan Fujisawa Campus)

2009.12.17

Last Friday evening, I hastily packed my bags and headed for Kyoto. I was scheduled to teach an intensive course on American constitutional law at Doshisha University's Graduate School of Law starting the next morning, Saturday. With December here, the sun sets early. By the time the N700 series "Nozomi" train I boarded at Shin-Yokohama passed through Sekigahara and arrived in Kyoto on schedule, the sky over the ancient capital was already dark. I switched to the subway and got off at Karasuma Imadegawa. Emerging above ground, I walked a short distance east along Imadegawa-dori, passed in front of the Reizei family residence, and turned left at the corner facing Doshisha's main gate and the Imperial Palace's Imadegawa Gate. The Doshisha Amherst House, where I would be staying, was just around the corner.

After dropping my luggage in my room, I went out again. I still hadn't eaten. I decided to have a Kinugasa-don at a familiar udon shop just west of the Karasuma Imadegawa intersection. A Kinugasa-don is a rice bowl dish made with seasoned deep-fried tofu and egg served over warm rice. A dash of sansho pepper makes it even more delicious. My heart felt light being back in Kyoto after a long time, and it wasn't as cold as I had expected.

From the Amherst House, I entered Doshisha's east gate and walked through the Imadegawa Campus toward the shop. Just as I passed by Clark Memorial Hall, one of Doshisha's Important Cultural Properties, and reached the center of the campus, the lights on a large tree in front of the west gate caught my eye. A Christmas tree of light towered against the dark sky. That's right, I thought, Christmas is almost here.

Although I wasn't raised in a Christian family, Christianity and Christmas have been a familiar part of my life since I was young. In kindergarten, I was made to participate in a nativity play at Christmastime, and in elementary school, a friend from a Christian family in my neighborhood would sometimes invite me to Sunday school. I sang a song, "Jesus, Jesus, please make us your good children," without understanding what it meant.

In junior high school, I suffered a serious illness and was hospitalized for a long time at a hospital run by the Seventh-day Adventists, a Protestant denomination. They were a somewhat unusual sect, observing Saturday as the Sabbath, like in Judaism, and abstaining from pork. Nevertheless, the doctors and nurses were kind, and I received heartfelt medical treatment and care. Even though I was sick, I was at that impudent age of a junior high student with an active curiosity. I would pick arguments with the pastor and nurses who occasionally visited me, insisting that "there is no God," but I realized later that I had been quite influenced by them. It seems my habit of rarely eating pork to this day is a result of this church's influence.

After a school life largely detached from Christianity, from Juku High School to the Juku Faculty of Law's Department of Political Science, I studied abroad for two years starting in the summer of my third year of university at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. It is a Jesuit school, a Catholic order with a strong academic tradition. Many of the students came from Catholic families. My roommate, Charlie, was a devout Irish Catholic, and he took me to midnight Mass several times. In a small chapel in a corner of the campus, everyone prayed in silence. I later heard that Charlie entered a monastery. On Christmas Eve, I sang Christmas carols at a church near the university that the Kennedy brothers had attended, and before graduation, there was a Mass that I attended with my friends. The priest gave a sermon, saying, "No matter what happens, the news is very good."

Later, after getting married, the landlord of the house where we rented a room in Yokohama was a member of the Yamate Anglican Church, and we went to services together at Christmas. When I worked as a lawyer in Washington, the private school my children attended was an Episcopal school affiliated with the National Cathedral. The school's major events, such as graduation, Easter, and Christmas, were held in the large, English-style cathedral, and they were always accompanied by a service where we sang hymns.

When we returned to Japan, the local kindergarten I enrolled my second son in was also affiliated with a Protestant church. A condition of enrollment was that parent and child attend church together every Saturday, so for a full year, through all four seasons, I went with my still-young son. The children's service itself wasn't very interesting, so I spent the time each week reading the Book of Genesis by myself. At the graduation ceremony, the headmistress praised me, saying, "Mr. Agawa's father was a very diligent reader of the Bible." The truth is, I was engrossed in passages like the account of what might be called humanity's first case of sexual harassment, which Joseph encountered after being taken to Egypt.

Around that time, I happened to be asked to write an article for a Catholic magazine, and the editor-in-chief, a nun who spoke frankly in a Kyushu dialect, enthusiastically urged me, "Mr. Agawa, you should convert to Catholicism soon!" I still haven't given her an answer. When I was working at the embassy in Washington, I would visit another former college roommate's house every year around Christmas, and we would walk through the neighborhood in the freezing air, singing Christmas carols with all the neighbors.

For these reasons, although I am not a believer, I feel a certain affinity for Christianity. Since returning to Yokohama four years ago, I have made it a point to go to the Yamate Anglican Church for their bazaar and the Christmas Eve service, if nothing else. What I enjoy most of all is singing Christmas carols at the top of my lungs inside the church.

"All people, come and welcome Him; long have we waited, the Lord has come."

The English lyrics for this hymn, which I have sung at the end of every Christmas service since the nativity festival in kindergarten, are:

"Joy to the world! The Lord is come, let earth receive her king."

I do not know whether the Savior, the Son of God, truly did descend to this earth a little over 2000 years ago, but I do know that no matter how dark our surroundings are, no matter how many hardships we face each day, there is hope. There is cause for joy. Once a year, on Christmas Eve in a church, I think a little about God.

Compared to Doshisha with its light-filled Christmas tree, Keio has nothing particularly Christmas-like at this time of year. As someone who likes Christmas, I find this a little sad. It seems Yukichi Fukuzawa did not hold any particular faith and kept religion out of the school entirely. However, setting aside his own beliefs, in his autobiography "Fukuō Jiden," he listed among the things he "would like to accomplish" the goal to "promote either Buddhism or Christianity, whichever it may be, to pacify the hearts of the masses." Given this, I doubt he would have disliked Christmas.

There are many outrageous and worrying things, such as the Hatoyama administration's U.S.-Japan security policy, Secretary-General Ozawa's sycophantic policy toward China, and the state of the Japanese economy, which shows no signs of improvement. But for a little while, I'd like to forget about such things. I think it would be fun if we could all gather at SFC and sing Christmas carols together.

So to everyone, "Merry Christmas" (Note). I hope that many good things will happen to you all from now on. And I hope you have a wonderful New Year.

(Note: Of course, there may be some who dislike the phrase "Merry Christmas." To those people, I pray for your peace according to the customs of your respective religions, or in other words.)

(Posted: 2009/12/17)