austraLasia #3147
Salesian Mission Day - Japan and elsewhere
Young members of the DBVG, the Don Bosco Volunteer Group, swelled the ranks. They had spent August in Tetere, Solomon Islands, by now a favourite destination for the DBVG. For the Chofu occasion they had prepared an insightful and entertaining presentation of their volunteer work. The DBVG is particularly supported by the Salesian Cooperators, who later prepared the usual sumptuous repast for everyone attending.
The evening included a paraliturgy of the Word during which Fr Klement in his role as General Councillor for the Missions managed a concise message in three terms: 'Thanks', 'One Big Happy Family', and 'Prayer'. Fr Klement will be preaching a retreat to the Salesian Family before returning to Rome.
The celebration of Salesian Mission Sunday comes at an interesting juncture in Japan's history, and not only Salesian History as represented by the list of prominent names of missionaries in the pic above. An article in the Japanese Times today (Sunday October 21) puts its finger on the quandary Japan now finds itself in. The article is headed 'Only immigrants can save Japan!'. The phrase is not Michael Hoffman's, author of the article, but comes from the lips of the retired Tokyo Immigration Bureau head, Hidenori Sakanaka, who is currently executive director of the Japan Immigration Policy Institute, a private think-tank he founded in 2007.
Sakanaka focuses on sheer demographics. Japan's population peaked at 128 million in 2004 and has been in rapid decline ever since, so rapid that "no nation, barring war or plague, has ever shrunk at such a pace and as for ageing, there are no historical precedents of any kind. The nation needs a fountain of youth". Sakanaka's solution is music to Salesian ears - 10 million immigrants between now and 2050. But of course this has to face up to a Japanese history, and many would say a present, where "Japn's foreign-born population... at 1'7 per cent compares with 10 percent in other developing nations. Refugees have been cold-shouldered to an extent widely regarded as disgraceful".
In the late 1980s and 90s Japan actually did experiment with Sakanaka's thinking, welcoming 300,000 Japanese Brazilians in the country's first-ever mass-immigration program. We Salesians know that this meant a completely new and fruitful direction for mission in the country and we welcomed, amongst these new immigrants, a number of Japanese-Brazilian Salesians to help look after them, especially since many had been baptized in Brazil. Now in 2013 a Salesian not of Japanese ancestry but from Brazil, is joining that team.
There are other reasons why the Salesian work with this group in particular is a demanding one, but a particularly Salesian one. As Hoffman point sout in his article, "Officials who had had assumed the Brazilians' Japanese ancestry would smooth the transition were soon disillusioned. The Brazilian culture of exuberance clashed with the native culture of restraint. The language barrier proved hard to breach. Kids with minimal Japanese dropped out of school; some turned to crime.
A salsa boom in Japan became a symbol of the cultural cross-fertilization some had hoped would come more naturally, but by 2009 the experiment was over. The government offered to pay migrants' air fares back to Brazil — if they agreed in writing not to try to return to Japan to work".
All of which makes the celebration of Salesian Mission Day, the active involvement of young Japanese, many not Christians but active sympathizers, an especially important and poignant one.
Salesian Mission Day - Japan and elsewhere
ROME: 21 October 2012-- Saturday evening, 20 October, was a special occasion for the Japanese Province and the Salesian House at Chofu: the celebration of Salesian Mission Day for the Province with some 150 people, most of them young people. An added bonus for them was the presence of Fr Vaclav Klement who, in rather typical fashion had come from Bueons Aires via Rome, with a handful of hours between flights... added to, courtesy of Alitalia (the handful of hours, that is)!
Young members of the DBVG, the Don Bosco Volunteer Group, swelled the ranks. They had spent August in Tetere, Solomon Islands, by now a favourite destination for the DBVG. For the Chofu occasion they had prepared an insightful and entertaining presentation of their volunteer work. The DBVG is particularly supported by the Salesian Cooperators, who later prepared the usual sumptuous repast for everyone attending.
The evening included a paraliturgy of the Word during which Fr Klement in his role as General Councillor for the Missions managed a concise message in three terms: 'Thanks', 'One Big Happy Family', and 'Prayer'. Fr Klement will be preaching a retreat to the Salesian Family before returning to Rome.
The celebration of Salesian Mission Sunday comes at an interesting juncture in Japan's history, and not only Salesian History as represented by the list of prominent names of missionaries in the pic above. An article in the Japanese Times today (Sunday October 21) puts its finger on the quandary Japan now finds itself in. The article is headed 'Only immigrants can save Japan!'. The phrase is not Michael Hoffman's, author of the article, but comes from the lips of the retired Tokyo Immigration Bureau head, Hidenori Sakanaka, who is currently executive director of the Japan Immigration Policy Institute, a private think-tank he founded in 2007.
Sakanaka focuses on sheer demographics. Japan's population peaked at 128 million in 2004 and has been in rapid decline ever since, so rapid that "no nation, barring war or plague, has ever shrunk at such a pace and as for ageing, there are no historical precedents of any kind. The nation needs a fountain of youth". Sakanaka's solution is music to Salesian ears - 10 million immigrants between now and 2050. But of course this has to face up to a Japanese history, and many would say a present, where "Japn's foreign-born population... at 1'7 per cent compares with 10 percent in other developing nations. Refugees have been cold-shouldered to an extent widely regarded as disgraceful".
In the late 1980s and 90s Japan actually did experiment with Sakanaka's thinking, welcoming 300,000 Japanese Brazilians in the country's first-ever mass-immigration program. We Salesians know that this meant a completely new and fruitful direction for mission in the country and we welcomed, amongst these new immigrants, a number of Japanese-Brazilian Salesians to help look after them, especially since many had been baptized in Brazil. Now in 2013 a Salesian not of Japanese ancestry but from Brazil, is joining that team.
There are other reasons why the Salesian work with this group in particular is a demanding one, but a particularly Salesian one. As Hoffman point sout in his article, "Officials who had had assumed the Brazilians' Japanese ancestry would smooth the transition were soon disillusioned. The Brazilian culture of exuberance clashed with the native culture of restraint. The language barrier proved hard to breach. Kids with minimal Japanese dropped out of school; some turned to crime.
A salsa boom in Japan became a symbol of the cultural cross-fertilization some had hoped would come more naturally, but by 2009 the experiment was over. The government offered to pay migrants' air fares back to Brazil — if they agreed in writing not to try to return to Japan to work".
All of which makes the celebration of Salesian Mission Day, the active involvement of young Japanese, many not Christians but active sympathizers, an especially important and poignant one.
