This weekend Hiroshima held it’s annual Toukasan Festival. Touka, is another reading of the name Inari, the deity of grain, and each year approximately 450,000 people participate in the festivities at the local shrine dedicated to this (so-called) deity. Because this festival marks the start of summer in Hiroshima, many people wear yukatas, summer kimonos, to this festival. For this reason, Toukasan festival is sometimes called “Yukata festival”. In fact, for the first year Matt and Misty were in Hiroshima, they only knew the festival by that name. Like many festivals in Japan, Toukasan involves rows of roadside stands selling great food and toys, holding raffles or inviting children to squander their allowance trying to catch their own goldfish. In many ways it’s an incredibly festive (hence the name) and entertaining experience.
Unfortunately, like many other festivals in Japan, it’s centered around some kind of idol worship. Matt and Misty were greatly saddened to see many people –including friends- lining up to pay homage to the deity celebrated during this time. Along with the celebrations came the sale of fortunes, charms for couples to solidify their relationships, and yakuyoke uchiwa, or paper fans said to ward off evil. As Matt and Misty asked our friends about the goings-on at the shrine, they said that even most Japanese weren’t entirely sure of the meaning of the various charms and rituals. All of this breaks their hearts as they are reminded of the blindness of the Japanese “in whose case, the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelieving so that they might not see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God,” (2 Cor. 4:4).
Please pray for the “Light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ” (2 Cor. 4:6) to shine through the church in Hiroshima, so that those who are now blind might turn from darkness and receive their sight.
by Matt Sargent
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