YUASA HACHIRO:
The Hopes and Challenges of a Christian Educator in Japan
Cho Takeda Kiyoko
translated with the assistance of Philip West
The life of Yuasa Hachiro is significant not only for the story it tells of his inspired leadership as the first president of the International Christian University but also for what it tells us about the role that Protestant Christianity has played in modern Japanese history. It begins with the stories of his parents and their families who adapted to the dramatic cultural and political changes ushered in by arrival of the American “Black Ships” in 1853 and followed by the Meiji Restoration of 1868. As devoted Christians, following codes of discipline and strictness not often found among practicing Christians today, they became leaders in education and women’s rights in Japan, foreshadowing Yuasa’s vision for and leadership at Dōshisha University and after the war as ICU’s first president. That family heritage, enriched by an ecumenical vision gained from his many years studying, living, and working in the United States, helps us to understand the breath of the liberal arts mission of ICU and the distinctive role it plays in Japanese higher education today.
The Yuasa story is a saga of wrestling with the unresolved questions of Japan’s role in World War II, the impact of the American occupation, Japan’s role in the Asian Cold War, and the new realities of Post Cold War Asia. Yuasa’s vision holds steady, even as the meanings of International, Christian, and University adapt to an ever changing world. What delights the reader is her appreciation for two other parts of Yuasa’s life that have little to do with the university, per se. One is his passion for Japanese folk art and the way it echoes his own practical view of Christianity while serving to anchor his appreciation for Japanese culture. The Yuasa Folk Art Museum is one of the gems on the ICU campus today. Tireless to the end, Yuasa remained actively engaged in ICU life and in community activities—not exclusively Christian—sharing his humor and optimism until his death at ninety-one in 1981.
His biographer, Kiyoko Cho, shares the Yuasa vision, and as a longtime professor at ICU and leading intellectual figure in postwar Japan, brings to her writing profound insight into the challenges that ICU has faced in its attempt to remain true to its founding vision. At the end of her book Cho leaves us with a short poem penned by Yuasa that was his vision for ICU, that joins Christianity with enduring values in Japanese culture, and that offers a merciful balm to the ruptured times in which we live:
To live is to love
To love is to understand
To understand is to forgive
To forgive is to be forgiven
To be forgiven is to be saved.
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