Kyoto Story (1945)

[music] [music] Heat. Heat. [music] >> [music] [music] >> I've seen a lot of the world in my 22 years, but never anything like Kyoto. It's strange, but this place is untouched. While the rest of Japan was bombed to shambles, you'd think the temple roofs were made with a with a waffle iron. [music] And that beautiful Tori arch standing against the sky like it was carved out of ice cream. Someday the folks back in Boise would see it if my exposure was right. >> [music] >> It's the Japanese theater that really gets you. You have to blink your eyes to believe it. Ever shuffle back through the centuries in a pair of sandals. [music] [music] The villain of the piece strutdded around like a king-sized goblin, and I nailed him. Yes, I tried to catch Kyoto to freeze its loveliness on film. I caught the little things and the big. Then I caught a specimen of bird common to these parts. I went over to apologize to the young fellow. Told him I hoped the camera would recover sufficiently from its shock to go on and face the future. I liked Bill right off. He was something of America transplanted and it felt good talking. Felt like a letter from home. He offered me a lift and I accepted gratefully. When he asked what I did in Japan, I told him. >> A missionary? >> That piece of information almost stole the engine. I guess Bill had never seen a real live missionary before. I hoped it wouldn't affect his driving. Soon I found myself trying to explain just what we missionaries were doing here in Japan. You know, that's never an easy thing to do. But in a way, talking to Bill was like, well, reporting back to America. So, I began enthusiastically with Doshisha. I described the school as best I could. Located near Kyoto, 8,000 enrollment, 10 missionaries, and the staff. But as I talked, I wondered if I weren't spoiling another picture by stepping into it with statistics. Yet, how does one describe a primary school class in English? Describe it as it actually occurs at Toshisha. [music] >> [music] >> What words convey the desire those kids have to learn? Their politeness, their rare and infectious good humor. I found myself talking about the theological school library at Doshisha, number of volumes, some of the titles and authors. But how does one tell of the satisfaction that books bring to the hungry minds of ministers to be and leaders to be? Back home, I remember our pastor saying something about mission work with farmers. Does that still go on? Encouraged by the question, I tried to give Bill a verbal picture of our rural evangelism program. I tried to take him out into the field, so to speak, with a fellow like Bill Mcnite. Tried to show him how we endeavored to increase the efficiency of the Japanese farmer so that desperately needed food could be raised to help his country and himself. >> [music] >> Bill said he was interesting, but I could tell I had only half got him into the fields with Mc Knight. I might tell him about the children, I thought. Yes, tell him about those wonderful kids at Glory Kindergarten. I explained that Glory was founded in 1889, [music] first kindergarten in Japan, and I described the whale of a time those tots had in the playground. But if only I had known how, I could have made that little glory classroom come to life. I'd have taken Bill on tiptoe into a corner of the room, as I've often done, and quietly watched. We'd have stood in the shadows and observed the children learning the names of autumn fruits and flowers. I was enjoying the ride with Mr. Grant, though he seemed to be trying awfully hard to find the right words, like when he told me about Coobe College, >> founded in 1875. We have 11 missionaries on the staff. It's a school for girls, Bill. Uh that is, it's so much more than a school in our American sense of the word. It's well Japanese girls, their world broken by war, destitution, tragedy, learning that there's something left worth caring for. You see, Bill, for people like these, dress making isn't just domestic science. It's it's a rebirth of interest in oneself, a sign of getting well. >> [music] >> We're trying to provide these girls with the recipe for establishing [music] Christian homes. The way trees are planted in barren places for the prevention of floods. That's it, Bill. Christian homes are the roots we plant in the wasteland. They're the top soil from which a sane and happy nation grows. I guess the old ways are dying out. I mean, the old Japanese customs. >> I told him about our classes in Japanese etiquette at Kobe. Told him if he ever got up that way to bring his camera up. I thought Bill would enjoy it, so I tried describing one of those incredibly melodramatic plays the girls give at Kobe to practice conversational English. These were original productions, little things the girls cooked up with just enough ham in them to make them delicious. Well, here again, Bill had only my words to go on. But I could see those faces. I could hear those cascades of heartwarming, spontaneous laughter. >> [music] >> I wonder how you go about describing the rhythmic cadence of a hundred girls exercising against the backdrop of multicolored mountains and soaring sky. [music] [music] We were nearing home when I told Bill that everywhere and always we missionaries endeavored to develop national leadership to help the Japanese to help themselves. That was an ideal for our people, not only here but in every corner of the world. And so ended my report to Boise, Idaho. Well, looks like the end of the line, Mr. Grant. >> It's that house ahead. Number one. >> I watched the neighborhood kids flock around him. That sounds funny, but but it was as though their dad had come home after a long trip. He invited me in, but I excuse myself. I was overdue at the barracks. We said goodbye, and I wondered if Bill had his picture of what a missionary does. I was afraid it would always remain a blurred page in his album. Next morning, Jean and I began our day as usual. Our trusty philosophies were pouring the ground in front of number one Aukai Road, and with customary flourishes and alarms, we pedled off to work. We paid our regular calls on old friends along the way. As usual, I paused to evaluate the weather with Ho, the venerable fellow who braided straw rope at the roadside. [music] And regular as clockwork, we met two of our favorite neighbors, the charm sisters, Jean called them. They were always overjoyed to see us on the bridge because it meant they weren't late for school. Soon we plunged into the center of Kyoto. And yet, even at the heart of commerce and [music] concrete, we found the color, the charm, the graceful good humor that is never [music] lacking in Japan. [music] Gene and I taught classes in different buildings at Doshisha, so we parted company at the main gate. My bicycle was well aware of my schedule, and it picked its way confidently among the buildings. It set its sights on the middle school for girls, where I had an 8:00 class in English. Calling the road was of course first in the order of the day. One girl brought me a note explaining her neighbor's absence. I filed it away for future reference. About a week later, I checked in a shipment of Idaho potatoes down at the depot. Oh, it made me hungry and homesick. Got me thinking about [music] Boise and reminded me of my role of films. It should have been developed by now. I picked up my prints at the Photoshop next morning. M. Not bad. Not bad at all. Uh-uh. I knew somebody who ought to see that one. [music] [music] Mr. Grant had a visitor. pretty little girl. I guessed she was one of his students. [music] Everybody bowed and bowed like they always do out here. [music] I showed him the pictures and waited, trying hard to keep a straight face. >> [music] >> Good heavens. [music] When he grew serious again, he picked up a note the little girl had left. He said her name was Maro, that she used to be one of his students. I could tell he was anxious for me to read it. I wondered why. Tea was served then, and I was grateful. It meant that Bill would stay a while, and I'd have another opportunity, a second chance to show him what missions mean. But thanks to Maro's note, this time the report could be translated into human terms. The note told a story about this girl called Maro. She had been absent from school, sent her address with a friend, and Grant went to her house to find out what was wrong. The family was poor, terribly poor. Grant knew their history. Father killed in the war, mother tubercular. And now he learned Maro had been forced to drop out of school and find work. She was asleep [music] in the inner room, for she worked from dusk to dawn at a glass factory on the edge of town. [music] Grant arranged to go along with her to her job. He simply couldn't reconcile [music] himself to the fact that Maro, so fine a girl so innately intelligent, would have to give up her education. He had no idea of what he could do to help. But they looked to him with such confidence. They were so sure he'd think of something. He had to go along. Inside the factory, I stood a gas floating in a black corner of space unknown to the sun. A drift on a fragment of hell. My ears were choked with the racket of clanging machinery, and I saw ghostlike figures silently at work. There was no room for laughter, for silence, for sanity. I thought of Maro asleep all day and working here all night. How could she help but wilt and die of it? [music] >> [music] >> Grant found the foreman and politely convinced him that Marico was too [music] delicate for such work. She would not be back. He looked after the family for a few days and then took Marico to a neighborhood bookshop. He got her a job there as a sales girl. If the child couldn't attend school regularly, at least she could spend her days in the warm, friendly company of books. And when there was time, she could study. Marico loved it. [music] [music] >> [music] >> The note went on. It told about Yuki Chan, Marico's little sister. Grant remembered that when he visited the family, the younger child had kept her eyes cast [music] down. It could have been politeness. Those people were like that. It could have been politeness. But Grant decided to go back and have another look. No, no, it wasn't politeness. It was traoma. The child was going blind. Was she being treated? What was being done for her? Nothing. No money. Nothing. He took Yukian to the school clinic where the doctor could at least look at her eyes and make a diagnosis. Grant's worst fears were confirmed. Traoma, advanced stage. The doctor had virtually no medicine. But even if he had, it couldn't help Yuki Chan. It would take sulfur. Rare and precious sulfur. Sulfura or the loss of sight for [music] the child. [music] Grant got the sulfa from his headquarters in the states. Got enough for a dozen Yuki chants. I knew then that missionaries meant >> bringing hope to the hopeless bill. Only God's help and the help of Christians at home make it possible. I didn't give Yuki [music] Chan back her sight. God gave it to her and your folks in Boise. Their giving [music] and their prayer made it possible. Christianity is a rock in a sea of despair. Like the neighborhood house at Osaka rising out of the slums. Can you understand what it [music] means to destitute mothers, war widows to come here? They've learned that something is left in the world now that the bombers have passed. Christ is here and he holds out his hand to the helpless. He loves them and their poor, hungry, sick children. His love gives them life. His love gives them life. [music] Missions are people, Bill. The Marikos and Yuki chants. The mother at a pyramid of Pablum who wraps her measure of Christian generosity in a shawl and goes away knowing that God is in the world. [music] What do missionaries do? We seek out the forgotten little people of the world and make them know that he has not forgotten, that he cares. We encourage them to try again, to scrimmage with circumstance, to hold up their heads and go forward. We wait to hear their peels of laughter, Bill, because they are the bells which toll our victory over bitterness and despair. What do missionaries do? We bring Christ in his church. Fellowship with Christians across the world. We bring light where there was darkness. We plant the seed of substance in the void. I said goodbye knowing I'd see him again. It was late and I'd overstayed my time. I knew he had work to [music] do. Work to do for all of us everywhere. For all of us who believed in a better world. I wondered how many human beings had found new faith here at number one Asukai Road. I knew one person who had. So help me God. [music]