The rscj in the Nagoya community: Takeuchi Fumiko, Gwen Hoeffel, Hasegawa Kazuko

The community lives in this neighborhood.

Mother-Child class, Christmas 2006

First Communion in the Parish Church

Mothers’ reunion with sisters Hoeffel, Sawada and Nishikawa

Child from Nagoya

On April 1st, 1971 three RSCJ arrived in Nagoya to begin our “alternative apostolate” in the spirit of Vatican II and the Chapter of 1970. It was the day that Sister Brigid Keogh, Vicar since 1954 confided Japan, Korea, Taiwan and the Philippines to our new provincial, Sister Sumiko Iba. The three “foundresses” were Sisters Yoshie Hatanaka, Atsuko Kanno, and Gwendolyn Hoeffel.

We were called and welcomed by Father Thomas Purcell, OSA who had built a church for Catholics emigrating to Nagoya from the historically Catholic parts of Kyushu, in southern Japan. They were forming a cooperative, obtaining donations, buying parcels of filled-in rice paddies, and building their own homes.  After three months living with the Sisters of Saint Paul across from the cathedral, we moved into our new little house next to the church center in a housing development on the western edge of the city (population: 2,000,000+). There we gathered Kindergarten age children for classes, and older children for catechism, and several days a week Father came to offer Mass, as the main church was rather far away. We engaged pastorally with the church faithful, thus caring for people in all stages of life, from birth and development to illness and death. (The kindergarten was closed in the early 1980’s and our other Church ministries continued.) A former parishioner, Hiroyuki Shibata, who was prepared for Communion and Confirmation many years ago by an RSCJ is now the parish priest and a valuable member of the Augustinian community in Japan. The Augustinians and parishioners built a new church and monastery in1997 on filled-in land near the wharves. The church is also the Stella Maris, ministering to the seamen. 

As you may be aware, Nagoya is an industrial city, providing the small factories for making Toyota car parts, Brother computers, faxes, telephones and more.  Our first generation parishioners emigrated here and engaged in the “dirty, difficult, dangerous” work that has contributed to the economic wonder that Japan is.  Now these workers are being replaced by migrants from the Philippines, China, India, some African countries, Brazil and many other Latin American countries.  Many of the migrant workers are children of Japanese descendents who immigrated for land and work one hundred years ago.

Now, in 2007, there are three of us living in this little house among the aging parishioners, some of whom have rebuilt their homes, and are now a three generation family under one roof. We three RSCJ, Kazuko, Fumiko and Gwen manage to keep well occupied with people in all stages of life and wellness within the parish, the diocese and beyond. The province is very committed to this significant mission outside our institutions, among the little people, both Japanese and foreign, who are the salt of the earth.

Sundays find us heading towards our parish church in two cars picking up children along the way. Their parents rarely come to church for various reasons. Mothers and young adults help with the Sunday School classes each week and the children’s Mass once a month. A good number of the children have Filipino mothers who can only speak, but not read or write, Japanese. The children are Japanese and in Japanese schools so they do not feel different from their Japanese classmates, nor do they wish to be considered different. Thus they resist learning about their mothers’ culture, and many look down upon it.

Present day Japan is faced with severe social ills and lacks the know-how to deal with them. The Peace Constitution stating “War never again” and the Educational Philosophy developed under the post World War II American reconstruction period are under attack.  Our apostolate deals with a mini cosmos of Japan’s present social condition: rampant consumerism – young girls sell their bodies to older men in order to buy brand name goods; on the subways they pull out their make up kits and spend the time painting their faces and primping; bullying: children are being cruel to classmates, lacking the feelings of empathy for fellow human beings; the suicide rate in Japan has always been high. Even these young primary and middle school children are taking their lives rather than suffer peer harassment. Minors are killing one another and weaker members of society, the elderly and the homeless. They lack self-confidence and drop out of school and lock themselves in their rooms. There is a pitiful spiritual hunger. People are religionless and rudderless and appear in church seeking peace, acceptance and a listening ear.

Since there are so many needs around us, during the week we are visiting homes, hospitals, homes for the elderly, institutions for the handicapped, schools and jail. If only we could be cloned, then we would be running a study center, a language school, a shelter for women and children escaping abuse and domestic violence, an orphanage, a counseling center, a retreat center, and more. In little ways we are engaged in all these areas of people’s lives.

Our children come to church less and less when they enter middle and high school as school events and clubs take place on Saturdays and Sundays. They cannot ignore their school life, and they are a tiny minority of Christians so it is difficult to stand up for their Church commitments. Many of them leave school after 9th grade, the end of compulsory education. They enter the work force doing manual labor with undeveloped bodies. They want what money can buy, quickly and abundantly. Then accidents occur, they are unemployed and minus the necessary skills that their aborted education denied them.

In the midst of so many family and society problems, we appreciate our community life in the midst of our housing settlement and parish territory. Our neighbors, many retired Catholics, look after us, the sisters. They share their carpentry skills as well as the fruits of their gardening skills. We come home to bags of vegetables at our front door and many other signs of their care for us. We have no idea how much longer our community can be present here but we are doing our best to be healthy and fully present to all in need around us.