Creative ways to connect in Japan

The arts are not the primary way my wife and I do ministry. My wife is good at crafts. I can play trumpet a little bit and guitar, but I rarely do (I don’t practice). However, it was through our D House internship program that I began to see how effective the arts are for connecting to others. Most of our interns come to Japan with very limited Japanese language ability, and yet music, drawing, dressing up, and cooking naturally draw people together and break down some of the communication barriers.

Of course, we try to teach our interns some Japanese language during the 12 weeks they are in Japan, but how much can they learn and use in such a short time for effective ministry? Ah, but their art (or their sport, their games, their time, or their smiles) is often what the Japanese remember most about our interns. And that memory, along with the knowledge that those interns are Christians, create a wonderful testimony (even without language) as to the wonder of Jesus Christ. This is something we who are long-term missionaries can follow up on. The following accounts are of various interns who have served with us over the last eight years.

Music

Blake, our first D House intern, came to Japan in September 2014 with very little Japanese ability. However, he had memorized “Let It Go” in Japanese (from the Disney movie Frozen). One afternoon we were having a picnic in our tiny yard with Blake’s Japanese language tutors, two university students. With a little persuasion, Blake began singing “Let It Go” with all the drama and volume of a stage actor. Within seconds, a crowd of neighborhood children and their moms were at our gate looking for the source of the music.

Our church was without a bass player one Sunday. One of our Canadian interns knew how to play and stepped in to serve on the worship team that Sunday morning.

Sam from Australia knew how to play the piano. At our church’s Kids Club, one young girl sat next to him while he played. He showed her how to play a simple harmony, and they began playing a duet. The girl’s mother was so pleased.

In the winter of 2017, my wife and I visited our local jidōkan (community center for children) for the first time with our three interns. The staff showed us around and explained the activities available for children there. Jalen spotted a guitar and asked if he could play it. He sat down on a child’s chair and started playing and singing a worship song in English. Quickly, the staff sat on the floor all around him, clapping along and swaying to the music. Not long after that, we got permission to volunteer at that jidōkan every week.

In 2017, five young women came from Canada to learn about missionary work in Japan. An English conversation group put together a food-making party in downtown Sendai, and they asked the girls to sing. They sang a Canadian folk song and a worship song. They did a repeat performance at a farewell party put together by the local children and their mothers that was hosted at our house. The worship song ended up as a favorite of one of the Japanese girls even though she was not a Christian.

Eli came to Japan with training in Japanese martial arts. He also enjoyed traditional Japanese musical instruments. He hoped to buy a shakuhachi (Japanese bamboo flute) while he was here. By asking around, we found a shop in Sendai. It just so happened that when we went to the shop, a shakuhachi teacher was upstairs giving a middle school boy a lesson. He invited us to observe. Afterward, he invited Eli to his studio for a free lesson. Eli practiced for the couple months remaining of his time in Japan. His last Sunday here, he performed a hymn with the shakuhachi, accompanied on the guitar by Raven, another intern.

Visual arts

Kacey had been majoring in art when she came to Japan as an intern in the fall of 2019. At that time we continued to volunteer weekly at a local jidōkan. Kacey would draw simple pictures and give them to the children. Soon the children were bringing her picture books and asking her to draw certain objects. Pokémon characters were a favorite. Each week a group of children would gather around Kacey to make their requests and watch her draw pictures for them.

Catherine loved manga-style art. She even had her own online shop. During her time with us in the summer of 2018, she learned that two of the middle school girls in our church-sponsored English class were members of the manga club at their school. After English class, they would all gather at the white board and begin drawing manga-style characters. We even had those girls over to our house one Saturday for food, English practice, and drawing.

Tim’s hobby was photography and videography. As a farewell, when he abruptly had to leave Japan because of the COVID outbreak in March 2020, he gave his many new Japanese friends a copy of his gorgeous photo of a starry night sky with a handwritten message on the back.

The five Canadian women garnered a lot of attention when they went out in public together. One of the members of the English conversation group who was not a Christian set up a time for them to be fitted in yukata in beautiful Matsushima. We walked around town and took photos in a Japanese garden. Many passersby took photos, too. This deepened our relationship with the woman who set up the day’s experience.

Food and culinary arts

If cooking is an art, it’s the one that we personally have used the most to connect with others, especially with our interns when they’re staying with us. We have, on multiple occasions, invited people to our house, to our church, or to a different location to cook. A pizza party is great fun, but making the pizza together with each person choosing their toppings or even making their own pizza adds greatly to the fun, while getting to know each other.

Braeden loved coffee. He would use time off to visit coffee shops. He took notes about the taste of the coffee, how it was made, and the atmosphere of the café. We decided to have a party for our neighbors in a neighborhood we had just moved into. After dinner, Braeden did a coffee-making demonstration as he prepared a cup of coffee for each of our guests.

The Japanese tea ceremony is well-known and beautiful (although painful for those of us who cannot sit seiza style). How wonderful it was to be able to ask Japanese people to demonstrate this ceremony for our interns on different occasions. Giving our Japanese friends a chance to show Japanese art not only helped us introduce the culture to our interns, but it also gave us a chance to deepen relationships, especially with those who are not Christians.

Reconsidering the arts for ministry

Flavors, colors, sounds, smells, textures—the arts touch on many, if not all of the senses. This past Sunday, I took a curtain with me and lifted it up to show the congregation as I talked about curtains and their uses. I talked about the curtain in the temple that was torn in two and how the cross of Jesus removed the “curtain” between our holy God and sinful humanity. I was completely shocked at how holding up that curtain as an illustration made such an impression on many of the hearers. One woman even wrote that she remembered my message as she opened her curtains the following Monday morning.

I used to only consider performance or visual art as true art. Our D House interns showed me clearly that art is more diverse than that and it connects us in profound ways. Certainly, artists connect deeply with each other, but even those of us who don’t consider ourselves artists can deepen connection by thinking creatively beyond the use of words.

I thank God for those who are artistic and for how artists naturally connect with others. I desire to increase my creative thinking about how I can begin and deepen relationships through the arts. I also hope to develop how I can communicate better by thinking beyond words.

Photos submitted by author