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BF: I was wondering at a lot of these Japanese American churches -- I mean, I grew up in the church, as well -- that there's these, there's these little things that are done differently that make it feel more comfortable for Japanese. And I'm not sure what it is -- whether it's the potluck dinners that have sushi, or if it's because we, we actually do Girls' Day celebrations, as well. But do you have any examples of where you sort of see kind of a blending with the Japanese culture, as sort, sort of gets into the church, as well, so that people feel more comfortable there or...?

PN: Yes. Right now, I'm in northern California. And just about every single Japanese American church has a bazaar. And the bazaar always tries to preserve a lot of the Japanese cultural festivals, whether it be the Girl Festivals, the dolls... and then they bring out all of the, some of the meaningful Japanese culture identifications into the bazaar. And they try to preserve a lot of the beauty of our Japanese culture into the bazaars. So this is what is happening. If I may go a little bit ahead of ourself, I've been fortunate to be the advisor of several doctoral students. And it's interesting, the topics that they're choosing. One has chosen the topic of "Chanoyu, Tea Ceremony as Eucharist", or the communion service. And what he writes in his dissertation is to show that the, that the cultural expression of the tea ceremony is similar to the communion service or the Eucharist, that the Christians have. And what he's trying to bring out is that there is a commonality, in spite of the cultural differences. And then another student wrote about the memorial services and kouden -- and some of the rituals and practices of the Japanese cultural ethnic group, and how that is brought into the memorial services, or the funeral services. So you can see that the Japanese churches did introduce a lot of the cultural meaning into the worship and into the church life.

BF: Maybe you could, I didn't, actually, kouden 's a great example. I didn't think about that. Maybe you could describe it a little bit because some of the people watching this won't understand what that means.

PN: Yeah. Kouden , the word itself as I understand, it really means, "incense of reverence," that is really introduced by the Buddhists. If you go far back enough someone has written a thesis that it was introduced by the Jesuit missionaries. And there was a time in Japanese history as you probably know, when the Buddhist priests were looked down upon, and they were persecuted. I think it was in the -- a time of (Tokugawa) Ieyasu, and Oda -- I get all these shoguns all mixed up. [Laughs] Oh, they persecuted the Buddhist priests. And they were confined -- temples were burned, so forth. And the Buddhist priests were just confined to (deal with) death. They just handled the dying, that's all. That was their job. And they introduced ways in which they could make a livelihood. One of the things had to do with kouden. And so the kouden practice became part of the Japanese culture, starting from the Buddhist culture. And of course, we maintain that here in America. And a lot of people don't realize that what that kouden is, but it has come to mean -- to help the bereaved family, to meet some of their particularly financial expenses when they do have a funeral. And so people come and say, "We care. We want to help you in this way." So the kouden practice has become just a natural ritual for the Japanese community. A lot of Sansei, Yonsei wonder, "Why?" But this is really, the reason was to help the family.

SF: So this kouden , it was -- from way back in the Issei days there was really no different between, say, the way the Buddhists did kouden as opposed to the Protestants? All, it was just a common Japanese American -- well, actually, a transplant from Japan. But it was found uniformly throughout the whole community, in terms of the kouden practice?

PN: Yes. And you know, even today that reciprocation is a very strong cultural trait in Japan. Even when they have a wedding, I understand they bring a financial gift, as well. That is to take care of the, the tremendous expenses to have a wedding. Well, the same thing with funeral, any affair. And as we know in our Japanese culture, we always have to reciprocate for anything that people do for us. We just don't feel right. And sometimes we have to outdo the gifts that we receive in order to feel, you know, good about it. And so that practice has carried over to even the, some of the Sansei, Yonsei, I think. The people always have to bring a gift and do, reciprocate this and that. And that, that is one of the practices that I think we have adopted, as well.

SF: This is sort of jumping way ahead, but since we're talking about kouden , I was just wondering what your thought is about -- as the Sansei and Yonsei get a little further removed from this practice, do you think that the Yonseis will go to the kind of common American practice of shifting from kouden to, say, donating to the American Cancer Society or something? Are we gonna lose this tradition, or do you think we'll adapt it, or... what's your guess about what'll happen to this, this longstanding practice in our community?

PN: I think that that is for us to see. My feeling is that the American way that's adopted by the third and fourth generation will probably begin to give the gifts over to a charity or some charitable organization. The reason for this is most of the families have insurance that take care of all of the funeral arrangements and so forth. And they figure, "Well, may as well give it to charity." Even the family that receives the kouden as it is now usually donates that to the church or to some charitable organization. So maybe in the future they'll do away it with that, but maybe they'll announce that the particular kouden, so-called -- well they may change the name -- will be given to a particular charitable organization. That may be the way it might go.

<End Segment 4> - Copyright © 1999 Densho. All Rights Reserved.