The Broken Leaf

Meditations on Art, Life, and Faith in Japan

Roger W. Lowther

• Publisher: Resource Publications
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN: 9781725251137, 9781725251144
• eBook ISBN: 9781725251151
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Literature & the Arts in Christianity

The Broken Leaf invites you to explore the beauty and gospel images found in Japanese art and culture. Through ten short meditations, discover for yourself just how God might be revealing his story in the everyday objects of your life whenever and wherever you may be.

Meditation 1

The Broken Leaf

The Lord is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit.

—Psalm 34:18

Daddy, fix it!

How often I hear these words from my four small boys. Something . . . somewhere . . . always seems to be broken. Not just our bikes and our toys . . . but our homes . . . and our hearts too.

I will always carry around with me the pain and suffering of the people I worked with after the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake. One woman told me (I never did find out her name) how she lost her whole family in the tsunami, including all three of her children, ages 8, 10, and 13, as they came home from school. “I’m so sorry,” I mumbled weakly. Why did she lose her family while mine lived? It all seemed so arbitrary.

How do we respond to all the brokenness in this world?1 Fighting, bombing, refugee crises, shooting in schools, terrorism . . . Day after day, we see and hear of new atrocities.

After making my way from an underground subway halted by the earthquake in downtown Tokyo on March 11, 2011, I joined the masses standing in the streets Hundreds of digital screens played the horrific scene, magnifying the effect. Town after town was being wiped away live before our eyes by a wave of terrifying proportions on the northern coast of Japan.

Can a wounded and violent world truly be ‘fixed’? Is there a path that leads to healing and to peace? I believe Japanese art quietly whispers of a way forward.

Shōtoku Taishi2—the famous leader from the seventh century who first called Japan the ‘Land of the Rising Sun’—wrote, “Sickness is saved by sickness.”3 Brokenness is saved by brokenness, and wounds are healed by wounds. From ancient to modern Japan, we find the idea that the path to healing and redemption leads not around suffering, but right through the worst of it.

I think of redemptive brokenness shown in the art of kintsugi pottery, where veins of gold mend a broken bowl into something far more valuable than the original object. I think of nihonga painting, where the act of crushing minerals into powder brings out the shimmering and brilliance of the colors. I think of Japanese folk songs like Sakura Sakura (“Cherry Blossoms”), Kōjō no Tsuki (“Moon Over the Ruined Castle”), and Tōryanse (“The Crossing”), where inherent dissonance in the Japanese modes communicates a melancholic beauty that moves people to tears.4

Beauty in brokenness is an intrinsic characteristic of Japanese poetry, literature, flower arranging, sumie painting, rock gardens, and more. We recognize this aesthetic throughout nature—in the wilting of a flower, the shimmering of a fragile dewdrop, the melting of a snowflake, and the fall of a cherry blossom.

However, it is in the art of tea, the art most closely associated with the aesthetic of Japan, that I find the fullest expression of brokenness, beauty, and healing.

Tea. Why tea?

When I first moved to Japan, I did not understand why there were so many kinds of tea: green tea, black tea, barley tea, oolong tea, jasmine tea, crushed matcha tea, roasted hojicha tea, herbal tea, milk tea, and so many others. The Japanese word for absurd, mucha, literally means, ‘without tea.’ It’s as if to say, “A day without tea? Don’t be absurd!” The word for the common color brown is chairo—‘tea-colored.’ No other beverage gets this honor!

I grew up near Boston, Massachusetts, famous for the Boston Tea Party of 1773. An entire shipment of tea was destroyed in Boston Harbor to protest certain British taxes. This symbolic act galvanized colonists into action, escalating into the American Revolution and, eventually, independence. Residents of my hometown of Lexington burned every leaf of tea in their cupboards on the Lexington Battle Green, a name earned from the fighting that erupted there with British troops less than two years later. Tea culture in Boston never recovered, and coffee became the preferred drink of the United States.5

I did not learn about the mystery of tea until I moved to Japan. So simple, just hot water and broken leaf, yet so profound! For the aroma and flavor of tea to come out, the leaf must be ‘broken’. The ‘broken leaf’ of tea reveals a mysterious relationship between brokenness and beauty.

In its origins, tea was a medicin...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Preface
• Introduction
• Meditation 1: The Broken Leaf
• Meditation 2: The Golden Cracks
• Meditation 3: Sap of the Cross
• Meditation 4: Rough Patches
• Meditation 5: Welcome to heaven . . . Here’s your koto!
• Meditation 6: The Rainbow Bridge
• Meditation 7: Pearls and the People of God
• Meditation 8: The Forsaken One
• Meditation 9: Finding the ‘Bi’ in Our ‘Sanbi’
• Meditation 10: A Pleasing Aroma
• Bibliography