Monday, Mar 18, 2013, at 07:08 AM
I Guess I Was On The Cusp Of The Missionary So-Called "Golden Age": Japan West/fukuoka 1973-75. Believe Me, It Wasn't Golden
Original Author(s):
Steve Benson
Filed Under:
MISSIONARIES - SECTION 6
--Pitchin' Mormon Business to Japanese Patriarchs
As missionaries looking for any way to hook converts, we were encouraged by mission leadership to do what was called "kaisha dendo," or business contacting.
It involved going to work places--i.e., commercial business settings such as company headquarters--and asking to speak with the male owner. We would introduce ourselves with business cards (which are very important contacting tools in Japanese society), complete with our names in kanji and the name of our organization (the Mormon Church), in both English and Japanese, Our "business" cards closely mimicked the style, typesetting and look of actual Japanese business cards and were designed to impress and gain us access.
Once in the door of the targeted business, we'd ask the front desk receptionist if we could speak to the head of the company. If the company head was not available, we'd ask for an appointment for a return visit, If granted access then and there, we'd be ushered into the company head's office where, more often than not, we'd promptly be offered tea as a social grace (which, of course, we promptly turned down--not exactly a good way to start the sales pitch, I must say).
We'd then slickly slide into our sales approach, trying to surreptitiously sell the company/corporation owner on the idea of holding, in his home, a Mormon Family Home Evening (without, at that point, getting too deep into the religion thing--you know, tithing, giving up tea and dedicating all your time, talents and resources to a church headquartered in Salt Lake City, America. That would all come later. First things first: Concentrate on the soft sell).
We attempted to hook the head of the company's interest by comparing his family to his company. (Japan is a male-dominated society and it was figured that this approach would go over well with, you know, the guys). The business contacting angle was designed to play to the head of the firm's ego by emphasizing to him that his business was successful because it featured a clear chain of command--one that was structured, goal-oriented and male leader-directed.
The president (so the script went) was the head of the firm who was responsible for making the big, important and final decisions for his present and future business needs, based upon a laid-out model or plan.
In approaching this task, the president has a vice-president with whom he consults, a senior officer of the company from whom the president receives input for effectively and efficiently running the company. The vice-president is often a person who has direct, face-to-face contact with the firm's employees on a regular basis, who is intimately aware of the day-to-day needs of the employees and who keeps tabs on the state of company employee morale, sales and success.
Having laid that groundwork, now came time to pitch the parallels between the guy's business and the guy's family.
The theme for snagging the business owner into further contact with the missionaries was to lure him into attention by convincing him that he could similarly structure his family like his business and in that way keep his family happy, productive and functional.
To accomplish this required a power pyramid, modeled after his own business's, one that went like this:
Your family, sir, is like your company.
You are the husband and father--the CEO, if you will--of your family. You are the head of this organization you call your family--just like you are the head of your business.
Just as you do at work, you, sir, are responsible for making the ultimate decisions that you determine are in the best interest of your family.
Your wife is the equivalent of your vice president. She can give you--the president/husband/father--her advice and observations, as they come from her vantage point from inside the family where she operates closer to the front lines, if you will, and where she works intimately and on a daily basis with your children.
Speaking of which . . .
Your children are your employees.
They are part and parcel of your family plan, like your workers are essential in operating your business plan. It is your job and responsibility as president/husband/father of your home to make sure that your children are productive, well-behaved and follow the rules that you establish (in consultation with your vice-president/wife/mother). You, sir, make the final decisions after seeking out assistance from your vice-presidential assistant/consultant.
The Mormon Family Home Evening program is the business plan for your family. It is organized around the president/husband/father's goals for his family, arrived at after touching base with his vice-president wife and. in the end, signed off by the male head of the house.
A successful Family Home Evening program works like a successful business plan.
To boost employee/children productivity and understanding of the goals of your family, the Family Home Evening program features lessons that teach the employees/children what is important and right for the family.
The lesson, or plan, opens and closes with prayer, asking for God's help that your family will understand this plan as being best for them--just like you, as president of your company, certainly would want heavens's help in running your business successfully.
As with your company employees, it is vital for you, as president of your home, to attend to the personal needs and desires of your children, as well as to the needs and desires of your vice-president wife. The Mormon Family Home Evening program provides opportunities for lessons, games, singing and other together-time activities designed for relaxing and enjoying fun things together with your vice-president wife and employee children. It is important that your vice-president/ wife and your children/employees be actively engaged in planning these fun times and are given responsibilities in carrying them out--all under your supervision and with your approval, of course. This will strengthen the bonds between you, as president/husband/father with your vice-president/wife/mother, as well as with your employees/children.
(Are you with me, dear readers?)
This whole male-centric promo (which, again, we as missionaries would make to the corporation/business head in his office at his work site) was accompanied by flip-charts, illustrations and diagrams to drive the point home--much like the official missionary discussions.
The idea was to get the Japanese man to agree to let the Mormon male missionaries come to his home and, together with his wife and children, actually conduct a Family Home Evening, under the missionaries' guidance, suggestions and outlining.
It was designed as a foot in the door.
But, alas, it didn't work very well.
Once the demonstration Family Home Evening was over and the missionaries asked for a follow-up meeting with the guy and his family to talk about a wonderful book that would bring their family forever-happiness and eternal life with God, eyebrows would more often than not lift and we'd politely be shown the door.
It was a disingenuous, manipulative, sneaky and sexist gimmick.
I hated it.
It represented the essential element of Mormon missionary work that bothered me the most: operating under false and misleading pretenses in order to gain converts.
In other words, the Utah Mormon business model.
Some more thoughts about my time there . . .
--Proselytyzing in the Heart of Nuclear Horror
As noted in the subject line, I was in the Japan West/Fukuoka mission back in the mid-'70s, first under Kan Watanabe and then Arthur Nishimoto. Watanabe was more outgoing amd personable while Nishimoto, having served in the U.S. military as a full-bird colonel, was more regimented.
I was assigned to Naha and Oroku, Okinawa; Miyazaki; Sasebo; and Hiroshima (the latter three up on the island of Kyushu).
In Hiroshima, I regularly visited (and, sadly, proselytized in) the epicenter of the A-bomb, known as "Heiwa Koen" or "Peace Park." The "Atomic Dome"--the remnants of Hiroshima's governmental industrial arts building--stood as a stark reminder of the horror of nuclear holocaust. I remember seeing survivors of the A-bomb walking through the park, their faces melted and bloated, their bodies disfigured and crippled. I visited grass-covered mass graves and brutally-showcased war museums--where my views on war waged at the expense of civilian populations were forever changed. Further south in Okinawa (where I began my mission), I visited World War II battlefields, where last-gasp hand-to-hand fighting, cave-clearing flame-throwing and group-forced suicide by soldiers and civilians alike were recalled in profoundly sobering and disturbing displays.
But back to "the Lord's work."
--Struggling to Baptize, Then Hold on To, Far-Eastern Asians Who Weren't in to American-Western Handcarts
As missionaries, we typically worked in small branches (Naha, Okinawa's capital, was the exception, which had a ward). Membership retention was an ongoing problem. Older men (priesthood bait needed to run the local congregations) were hard to snare, meaning that the missionaries frequently ran the branch meetings and supplementally staffed the auxilliary sub-groups. The general meetings were largely attended by women (old and young). The youth members showed up primarily for the social activities, not because they were drawn to Mormonism's frontier-America doctrine. Baptisms were hard to come by; I saw 11 during my mission and I seriously doubt that many of those converts are active today.
We employed a lot of deceptive bait-'n-switch tactics that were taught, approved and encouraged by mission leaders in our door approaches, in our business contacting, in our street and train-station crowd-working and in our free English classes--all designed to lure the Japanese into letting us into their houses. I hated it.
--Being Hosted by Subservient Females
When I was there, Japan was quite the patriarchal society (hence, we played to that unforunate reality with the all-hail-to-the-Mormon-prophet-male approach). Japanese women would typically serve meals when we were visiting in investigators' (as well as members') homes, often retreating quietly to the kitchen while the conversation went on with the guests in the other room. (I remember later meeting, quite by chance, one of the female Japanese members whom I had first met on my mission. She was at Temple Square during General Conference, no doubt looking for an eternal American mate).
--God Loses Out to Gambling
"Pachinko" parlors (the Japanese version of pinpall machines) were all over the place, crammed full of young boys and men who would mindlessly play the games for hours on end.
--The Male Degradation of Japanese Women
The public signage for Japan's version of X-rated moves was prominent and explicit, with females being overtly objectified on large billboards that were frequently featured along busy city streets.
--Cartoon Crudeness
The "manga," or cartoons, were typically and horrifically violent, featuring gory scenes of stabbings and shootings that were over-the-top graphic and bloody, yet regularly watched by very young children.
--Allegiance to the Group, not to the "Gaijin" (Meaning "Foreigner")
The mentality of the Japanese nation was one which placed a premium on group compliance, with strong emphasis on sacrificing for the good of the company and nation at the expense of individualism, all the while avoiding shaming those in authority. That meant not embarrassing one's family by, for instance, joining an American religious cult.
--Free English, in Exchange for a Lifetime of Mormonism
As missionaries, we used to advertise and teach free English classes as a ploy designed to lure Japanese businessmen and students into taking the lesson-plan discussions (The Japanese liked to learn conversational English directly from native speakers, preferring it over the regimented English classes taught in Japanese public schools that were long on structure and short on the actual development of free-flowing conversational skills)
--Angling for the Kids
Japanese youth were enthralled with Western fashion and music. They would wear American-style jeans and t-shirts--the latter often decorated with English-language slogans (even though the wording was often grammatically broken and just as often unwittingly hilarious). Japanese boys would sport what we called "aircraft-carrier" haircuts--protruding out long in the front, waxed along the sides and ducktailed in the back--all while clogging around in their traditonal Japanese shoes, or "getas."
The Osmonds were very popular when I was there (particularly Jimmy), so we used to regularly trot out pictues of the Osmond family smiling and holding up Japanese copies of the Book of Mormon. (That gimmick was especially effective in catching the attention of Japanese schoolgirls).
--My Personal Distaste for the Fakeness of It All
It was such a disingenuous way to approach the people and I never really liked it nor was comfortable doing it. I felt like I was play-acting my way through a distasteful charade, despite what I was outwardly saying or showing. I eventually came to inwardly disdain it, given that it was so phony and deceptive. I actually enjoyed becoming a mission leader, as the assignment allowed me to spend less time hitting people up on the street in ways that bugged both them and me.
--On the Brighter Side
Despite all the Mormon-generated unpleasantness, the upside to my mission was that Japan is a beautiful country full of wonderful, fascinating people with a rich cultural tradition uniquely their own. Their holidays were festive and colorful, with both men and women dressed in striking historical costuming. Their Shinto and Buddhist temples were open and elegant. Their traditional gardens--complete with bonsai trees, arched bridges and meticulously sculpted grounds--were simple and stunning. Their natural landscapes, from the rice paddies to the mountains (and including, because of a lack of space, rice paddies on the sides of mountains), were serene and majestic.
I wish I had spent my stint there as an out-of-the-nest 19- to 21-year-old focusing on absorbing Japanese culture, learning the naton's history and appreciating its amazing singularity instead of wasting such opportunties by peddling silly Mormon propaganda to a nation that really doesn't want it, really doesn't need it and really doesn't relate to it.
--Ode to My "Dodes" (Short for "Dorio," Meaning "Companion")
In the years since, I haven't kept in meaningful contact with my former companions, nor they with me. I wouldn't be surprised if, for many of them, their missions were an early phase of life they went through as obedient, youthful soldiers for Zion but who now are far less involved, devout or even faithful at all.
--Big-City Memories and Small-Zoo Atrocities
For what it's worth, my most memorable recollection of big-city Fukuoka was not of any Mormon temple (there wasn't one back then, anyway). It was of an angry, captive chimpanzee spitting through his cage bars on human gawkers at the city zoo.
I warned a fellow missionary to be careful but he was bound and determined to get a good shot of the displeased and ornery chimp who was sitting,hunched over, at the back of his cage glaring at his unwanted visitors.
The chimp slowly filled his cheeks with water sucked up through his pursed lips from his drinking trough then, without warning, dashed down toward the front of his chain-linked cage, leapt to the top of his enclosure and unleashed the contents of his cheeks, drenching the Mormon elder with a great shot of his own--one that spit-split the missionary right down the middle, drenching his suitcoat and gooping up his nice, long-lens, pricey Nikon camera.
Talk about a missionary door approach gone wrong.
Another equally distressing scene (at least from the perspective of abused animals) was when, early in my mission, I went to a so-called "zoo" in Okinawa, where a mongoose and a cobra were thrown into the same cage to fight it out in front of a bunch of hollering homo sapiens.
The mongoose, by instinct, was focused on attacking the snake, while the snake was likewise focused on fighting for its life.
The animals eyed each other warily, each threatening the other. The cobra eventually struck out at the aggressive mongoose, whereupon one of its fangs became lodged in the tongue of it tormentor. The mongoose proceeded to drag the snake around inside the glass enclosure of this cage-fight, tongue painfully extended from its mouth, unable to shake itself loose from the cobra.
The human handler finally stepped in and pulled the snake out of the mongoose.
It was awful.
Japan was a conflicted mix for me--an experience of good and bad. I learned a lot there. I learned what an amazing place the country was, with gracious, hard-working and devoted people.
I remember, especially and early on, doubting the depth of my testimony. I was in my first area. Despite my earnest study, I had nagging doubts about the veracity of the Book of Mormon, so late one night I climbed up to the roof of our apartment in Okinawa, seeking answers.
I remember the moon was out, dramatiucally reflecting off the clouds in what we called "typhoon alley." I paced back and forth for hours, praying for God to tell me that the Book of Mormon was true.
Finally, after a long futile effort, I "heard" a voice inside me ordering me to go to bed because I had work to do in the morning--missionary work. I stuffed my doubts down deep and plowed ahead, finishing my mission as a zone leader and returning, ostensibly faithful, to the fold.
I told that apartment-rooftop story to a young-adult fireside audience upon returning from my mission--after which my mom reprimanded me, telling me that I was not to repeat that story again since, she declared, I had always had a testimony.
But Mormonism--as I was to eventually find out through my own stubborn thinking, digging and asking--wasn't true and, hence, wasn't for me.
Too bad it took me so long to arrive at that conclusion.
I would have much more enjoyed Japan as a Gentile.