BHU had been founded in 1916 to promote all that was good and great in Hinduism and the ancient civilization of India. One of its special features was the provision of Hindu religious instruction for Hindu students. The university was fiercely proud of its role and its situation near Mother Ganges and the most holy pilgrimage centre of Varanasi. At the same time, Pt. Madan Mohan Malaviya, its guiding genius, had insisted that the university would be for all students, whatever their religion. So BHU is an All-India university drawing students from all parts of the country. From the beginning it has also aimed to provide scientific and technical education of the highest quality.
Despite his warning Minoru went on to say: ‘Nevertheless I suggest that you apply for the MA course in Indian Philosophy and Religion. I am 90% sure that you will get in, as no one has actually been refused so far.’
Reassured by this positive advice, I went on to ask about the hostels, as I wanted to know which would be a good one to apply for. Like Minoru I had no desire to live in the International Guest House with foreign students.
This was a little world of its own with a fascinating mixture of Buddhist monks from Burma and Thailand, communists from Poland, westerners from Europe, America and elsewhere. But I had not come to India to view the country from the outside, but to get close to Indian students and empathise with their hopes and fears.
Minoru described his experience of living in Birla hostel. ‘Birla is an Arts Faculty hostel and as the Arts students are not so well qualified and come mainly from the villages, the standards are pretty low. The science faculties, particularly engineering, have a good reputation, whereas the Arts faculty is generally poor, providing a low standard. There is only one wash place and one wash basin for a hundred students. The food is provided by several different canteens, according to how much you can pay. Most students have only two meals a day and have a very poor diet with watery dal and chapattis.
‘Do you keep well?’ I asked.
‘Yes, yes. Now I am alright, perhaps only ill once a month.’
‘What’s the worst thing?’ ‘The noise from other students’ rooms nearly drives me mad. But Fr. Van Troy and I are both agreed that we really experience the atmosphere of rural Indian mentality in a way that would be impossible elsewhere.’
It would be a challenge, but Minoru’s comments only made me more determined than ever to live in an Indian hostel. Immersion in the culture would demand much more than academic study, it would mean sharing the lifestyle. I wanted to be here in Varanasi, to enter the soul of India, to discover what shaped the mindset of millions of Indians, even if they were ignorant of Hindu philosophy.
As we parted, we wished each other well. I left wondering whether I could cope with the rigours of Birla hostel, when I joined the university in July. Unknown to me, Minoru was contemplating a move from Birla to a hostel for research students. Both of us wondered whether our meeting on that February evening would be the beginning of a friendship that would grow deeper in the days to come. Would we be able to overcome the obvious barriers of race and nationality, and what would we discover about each other, which might unite or separate us?
The Experience of Reconciliation
In July 1963 I returned to Varanasi. The monsoon had broken, and four days of torrential rain had lowered the temperature from the furnace heat of mid‐summer. Minoru took me on July 19 to the Indology College office in BHU, and with his help and persistence I got all the forms I needed to apply for a room in one of the hostels. The next day Minoru introduced me to the College Principal and to Prof. Devaraja, the head of my department. After more form filling and paying my university fees, I was finally given a room the next week, not in Birla Hostel as we had originally planned, but in Gurtu Hostel.
When Minoru and I met in Varanasi, we were drawn together by common interests, as students studying in the same University and the same College. Two things were particularly important: we were both foreigners in the same Indian university, and both of us were disciples of Christ. I needed someone who understood a foreigner’s problems and had learnt how the university operated, as Minoru had done through three years at BHU. I also appreciated Minoru, because he understood my beliefs as a fellow pilgrim on the way with Christ.
There was also something else that we had in common, something unusual. I do not remember how we discovered that we had lived close to each other in China as children without ever meeting. On some occasion we must have been talking about our past. Probably I said: “I used to see Japanese during the war when I was in Shanghai.” Minoru must have been very surprised. “How could you be in Shanghai? I was there too.” That would have amazed me. How could Minoru have been in China during the war? The reason for both of us being in Shanghai was the same our parents were there. His father was not a soldier but in private business, and my father’s office was in Shanghai. Now twenty years later we were meeting for the first time not in China but in India. It sounded like a good opening for a novel, but this was reality. We both had roots in Shanghai. The fact that we were different in many ways was not a barrier. As Miroslav Volf says in his book Exclusion and Embrace, differences are not the problem. All human beings have been created uniquely different. Difference constitutes the basis of our individuality. What separates us is the barrier of enmity.
At the personal level, Minoru and I were not enemies. We had never been enemies to each other. Nevertheless, underneath the surface there were barriers that needed to be overcome. Our upbringing and identity as Japanese and British citizens threatened to keep us apart. By nationality we had been divided by war. At one time we had both been on opposite sides, on opposite sides in the Second World War, living on opposite sides of the river in Shanghai. We had experienced the pain that war inflicts.
How was this inherited barrier of national identity to be overcome? The experience of reconciliation took place for us at two levels. The basic level of practical friendship was important for me. When I went to Banaras Hindu University in July 1963, I found myself in a vast campus of three square miles, with thousands of students and dozens of hostels. It was a bewildering encounter with a new culture. The only friend I had was Minoru. He helped me to get admission to the Indology College, and he was there to welcome me when I arrived at the beginning of the academic year. I am still indebted to Minoru for looking after me in those first few weeks when I was so ignorant of a strange environment. He introduced me to the professor of Indian philosophy under whom I was to study. He helped me to get a good room in a student hostel. He guided me through the initiation of form filling and fee paying. I would have been lost without him.
Some may wonder, ‘How did you feel about being befriended by a Japanese?’ This thought was not uppermost in my mind, because Christ had united us in love for him. On the other hand, I have many times pondered how extraordinary it was that I had to depend entirely on a Japanese student, when I first went to India.
As far as I remember Minoru was the first Japanese I got to know after being in a prisoner of war camp. He was certainly my first Japanese friend. Not that I was particularly hostile to Japanese, as none of my family had been tortured or subjected to forced labour in our civilian camp. Nevertheless, there was something that had alienated us in the past, which had to be overcome by Christ. The way Christ did that for us has always been a powerful example of what the gospel of Jesus is all about reconciling enemies not only to God but also to each other. This is particularly impressive when you experience deep friendship with someone of a totally different culture, whom your country regards as an enemy.
Our friendship led to a deeper level, where we were united in prayer. Even before I came to BHU Minoru had written to me in March saying that he was looking forward so much to fellowship with me. What thrilled me was his suggestion that we should pray together daily. He longed for ‘a new living and burning fellowship which would melt the hearts of non‐Christians too.’ So it happened that when I took up residence in BHU, we began to meet daily for prayer. In the months of July –September 1963, when I had moved to BHU for the new academic year, we prayed together as far as possible every day. Whatever else we may forget we will never forget those times, when we entered into the mystery of oneness in Christ. In my diary I wrote, ‘it was as if I saw straight into Minoru’s soul.’
There were no barriers, nothing was hidden. We were one in Christ. This was much more than meeting ‘face to face’. As Minoru recalls, it was meeting ‘heart to heart’ and ‘beyond nationality’.
This was an unforgettable experience. As a human being I could never hope to know what a Japanese man was thinking. But as we prayed together, nothing was hidden, our innermost being was laid bare. There we knew a oneness in the presence of God where all thought of enmity was banished. There was nothing hidden, nothing in between, as we met beyond barriers.
A quote from Miroslav Volf, a Croatian author who has experienced the bitterness of ethnic conflict, illuminates why this came about: “… Christians can never be first of all Asians or Americans …and then Christians. At the very core of Christian identity lies an all‐encompassing change of loyalty, from a given culture with its gods to the God of all cultures” (M. Volf, Exclusion and Embrace, Nashville, 1996, p.40). However we explain what happened to us, we were reconciled by Christ. All our national differences and wartime memories simply melted away in His presence. We wanted to be friends, and we became friends by his grace. It was a sheer gift from Christ, which we had never sought or imagined. What God has given us is entirely due to Christ who embraced us and gave us the love to embrace each other. The embrace of Christ goes very deep, because he has identified with the suffering of humanity on the cross. He did not shrink from it. So he has understood our pain and forgiven our hostility to himself and to others.
As I reflect on what meeting with Minoru has meant to me and as I ponder the liberating effect of reconciliation across national barriers, I am profoundly moved by what God has done for me. I look back now without any bitterness on those POW camps. There is no bitterness for our guards. It does not mean that I have lost my critical faculties. I know many things done by both sides were wrong and some were emphatically evil. I have not lost my senses, but I have lost all sense of resentment. I owe this to Christ, and I owe it to Minoru.
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