Japan Yearly Meeting
1 Novemher 2002
Dear Friends Everywhere
This year's annual session of Japan Yearly Meeting of
the Society of Friends was held at the Tokyo Meetinghouse from 9 November to 10
November.
"Our Forerunners' Heritage: How We Acknowledge and Pass It to the Generations to Come" was the common theme throughout the session. We looked upon the history of Quakerism in Japan in a new light. One of our members made a report of his study of the works in early missionaries to Japan. This reminded us especially of the devotion and earnestness shown by English and American Quakers who had come to Japan in its early modem days. We are grateful for all they have done. In the recognition that it is an important task for Japanese Friends to reflect on the sources of our faith, We talked on our version of "Queries.” We prayed with a new mind that we will experience the living Christ within just as George Fox had done.
Members' aging has slowed down considerably
the Yearly Meeting's activities. Yet we vigorously talked about what we could
do to resist the general tendency outside of seeking only comfortable answers
to what are in truth serious problems. What must we do to reach out to the
people in community? We acknowledged that each of us individually should
develop a warm and deep commitment to Quakel"-associated organizations.
For the speaker of the Nitobe Memorial Lecture, we
were fortunate to have Akira Nitobe, Director of the Nitobe Memorial Museum in
Towada-shi, Aomoriken. He talked on the "Intellectual Origins of Inazo
Nitobe." Inazo Nitobe was a leading Japanese Quaker and worked for world
peace while serving as Undersecretary of the League of Nations.
During the current year we have lost two
Friends who have had a long relationship with Hiroshima and Nagasaki. One is
Katsusaburou Yoshida. He joined the Society of Friends after attending the
Quaker work camp in Hiroshima after World Warn. The other is Susumu Ishitani. A
strong advocate of non-violent ways of building world peace and himself a
victim of the Nagasaki atomic bomb, Ishitani succumbed to the cancer which was
apparently caused by exposure to the bomb radiation.
Let's keep walking together for the
realization of world peace -
Toshihiko Tanaka , Clerk
Japan Yearly Meeting