(There are a few more posts here than usual, because I just got back from a very brief trip to Japan, and there are a number of issues and thoughts that came up while I was there that are now percolating to this blog.)
I hate traveling with people, generally. I make a couple of exceptions (my husband, a friend or two), but generally speaking, I like to travel alone. It's true, I have to lug my nimotsu up and down subway stairs by myself; and every now and then something stressful happens and I have to deal with it alone, but by and large, it's preferable. Especially when traveling in Japan, I get tired of the gawking, the questions, the need to tell stories and (worst) the bad habit many people have - making assumptions about a foreign country about which they have not got an actual clue.
But, all that said, having someone I don't know very well accompany me on a trip can lead to a discovery or two, and on this trip, a mundane chore ended up resonating with me.
I took a relatively new student on this trip. One of his obligations, he told me, was to buy a Christian cross somewhere while on his visit to bring back to a hyper-Catholic friend of his as a gift. I noted that Japan is hardly a Christian country, and bringing something like that back might be considered faintly ridiculous. He responded that that was probably the point (i.e., his friend would gain some sort of satisfaction from knowing that Christ was alive among the pagans - heathens? - whatever). Not knowing Tokyo at all, he was relying on me, if I felt like it, to help him out. My reaction, in one word: ick; though, being polite, I didn't say anything.
We were sort of busy, and I totally forgot about his request. He bought a shrine amulet for his friend, as an fyi thing, just in case he could not fulfill his actual request. Off the hook, I decided.
But, on our last day in town, I was scoping out the location of a private museum, and, on the map, not far from the area (in fact, a good marker for what street we should turn down), I saw it - St. Mary's Cathedral.
A catheral. Really? I remembered going to St. Peter's Church in Rome as a kid, and noting the brass inlays representing the different cathedrals around the world. St. Peter's of course, is the largest. NYC's St. Patrick's is the smallest. I do not remember anything called St. Mary's in Tokyo; but there it was. So before we set out for the museum, I mentioned my discovery. He was delighted.
We found the place. It was a spare, modern building, pretty large for Tokyo but not hardly a cathehdral the way we would think of one. While he was asking the nun on duty at the gift shop about which crosses were actually made in Japan, I browsed among the keepsakes for sale. I noted they were really not much different than what I might find at any cathedral gift shop anywhere in Europe, or even at St. Pat's - rosaries, charms for necklaces, etc. What really overwhelmed me, though, was the Western-ness of it. Jesus as White Guy. Mary as White Woman. Joseph (of course) nowhere to be seen.
Japan is a Shinto and Buddhist country - unlike Western religions, it is possible in Japan to pay a certain amount of attention to both, rather than be exclusively for one or the other; and, until the start of the Meiji period, there was a high degree of syncretism. Buddhism came from India, but a survey of sacred artwork confirms that images of the Buddha took on characteristics of the area where they were produced (my favorite Buddhist art period - Ghandaran - shows him with a very handsome moustache). However, the only cultural allowance for Jesus in Japan is the one adopted by Europe - instead of the image of a middle easterner, or someone who looks vaguely Asian, we have a fair-haired image that looks nothing like the the pool of potential converts.
This recollection, coincidentially, meshes nicely with an article I am currently reading that deals with recited performances of the life of St. Anthony of Padua that are performed in an area of Bangladesh that was once under Portuguese control. One style of performance thoroughly localizes the saint in the neighborhood where his chapel is located, and the other performance described could be taken directly from some version of the lives of Catholic saints, and is set entirely in medieval Europe. The writer is a Muslim who is very upfront about his identity, both in his writing and apparently in his described interactions with the St. Anthony devotees he observed at both performances. Not surprisingly, he was somewhat alienated by the medieval Europe narrative, though he was charmed by the recitation that manages to locate St. Anthony in the small town in Bangladesh. The more Western-oriented narrative strikes him as being more colonial, of course, while the other is not really nativized, but not totally an outsider story either.
My own thoughts, while I was wandering around the rosaries and little statuettes for sale at the St. Mary's gift shop, were similar to the writer's. How could an image so alien to Japanese experience, presented in such a western-centric fashion, possibly have any appeal to non-westerners? It felt so culturally imperialistic. Abandon your whole identity, and be saved.
My student, after going through the whole line of crosses and crucifixes hanging on the wall next to the cash register, finally picked something that he thought his friend would like. Even though he was assured it was made in Japan, it looked like pretty much any crucifix found anywhere in Europe or America, but he was happy - mission accomplished.
Just before we left, I noticed a few postcards that featured the virgin and child. Though the iconography was unmistakable, at least, this time, she was wearing a kimono.
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