1. KAZ Planning
Mr. Hoshino - 03-3465-8572
2. Bridal Bokushikai
Mr. Mitsuo Murasugi
1-71-4 Asahigaoka,
Nerima-ku Tokyo 〒176-0005
03-3954-1111
3. Music Grace
Mr. Nomura - telephone 090-6123-4197
4. Deliart
03-5771-1711
Christian Weddings
Japanese production standards are famous. I mean, the Japanese are famous for their exacting standards that produce reliable goods of a very high quality. (Remember what Marty McFly said to Doc Brown inBack to the Future III, “Whaddaya mean doc? All the best stuff comes form Japan.”) And although statistically American workers are the most productive workers in the world per hour of labor and have high standards of their own to boast about, no one is nearly as famous as the Japanese for their work ethic. Whether they deserve that reputation or not is another matter. After the War it was cameras, and then radios, then cars and finally high tech electronics. And it’s true, too. In Japan things work. And if they don’t work, if they become worn out, broken or just out of date they are quickly replaced/repaired. (I’m not sure that I can say the same about Canada where both quality and expectations seem to be lower, and where surly service people deliver their service grudgingly.) People here are conscientious and clean and most of all persistent. In many ways it is their (sometimes obtuse) persistence that comes across as, or is mistaken for a hard work ethic. High standards do not mean that Japan does not have its share of manufacturing or financial snafus and embarrassments, because it surely does. The 1990s was a “lost decade” of embarrassing economic stagnation flowing from financial mismanagement. And, Japanese auto makers have had their own product recalls, just like GM, Chrysler and Ford have done in the U.S. So they are not at all infallible.
Now in a round about way this brings me to my topic of Christian weddings, a business that I am familiar with because I work on weekends as a Christian wedding pastor - a “bokusi san” (minister). In a country where only about 1.5% of the population is Christian it might seem strange that the business of performing Christian weddings is so widespread and lucrative even in these bad economic times, and that so many couples seek them. Why? They are not Christians. I have read that many young couples feel that a Christian service lets them express their feelings on their special day better than the more traditional Buddhist/Shinto ceremonies can. That may be the case, or not. And, who is providing these weddings? Christian churches? No. Wedding halls exist for that purpose, and hotels have wedding planning departments to attract customers. Foreigners like myself are hired to play the part of a Christian minister to conduct a ceremony in English and Japanese. (The fact that I have a theological education and am an ordained wedding pastor help.)
As any foreign “bokusi” will tell you, the ceremonies have more to do with the Japanese idea of what a Christian wedding service is than what it really is in fact and practice. And here is the connection with the theme of Japan’s high production and service values. Serving customers is highly rated. Good service is sought, delivered and appreciated no matter what. It is a mark of professionalism. If it’s high technology or a glamorous car you seek, salesmen with do their all to deliver. If it’s tattoos you seek, artists will take pride in delivering quality goods with extremely polite service. (Like any business, it relies on delivering a quality product to satisfied customers in order to generate repeat business.) As far as Christian weddings are concerned, providers are very proud of their chapels’ and halls’ lovely accoutrements, their well planned ceremonies and highly practiced delivery by experienced ministers like myself, plus planners, musicians and choirs. They boast about how good / skillful their Christian ceremony is, not about how accurate it is. The congregation has no idea what real or accurate Christian wedding or worship services are like beyond what they see in the movies. They are interested in the appearance of it. (Which is fortunate because it gives the foreign bokusi some leeway to err.)
Japanese approach the Christian wedding as a skill to be mastered, like a martial art in which participants endlessly rehearse the “kata” motions. They search for the best form, or the proper form and try to perfect it by faithfully reproducing the form.
I have heard wedding managers say to visiting couples, “Our Christian wedding is very good,” by which they could have meant skillful or practiced, or aesthetically pleasing, or a convenient package of ceremony and reception meal/party for a reasonable price. The exact meaning gets lost in translation, but what is certainly not meant is “authentic”. But it demonstrates how the Japanese approach the foreign, Christian style wedding as a skill to be mastered. Like a martial art in which participants endlessly rehearse the “kata” motions, they search for the best form, or the proper form and try to perfect it by faithfully reproducing the form. Whether the form is objectively accurate is less the point than whether the reproductions of it are faithful. This is how they approach industrial manufacturing, educational curricula, fashion, popular music and other entertainment, tea ceremony and, of course, sports. Everything has to conform to a form. It explains why we can still see men today practicing their baseball or golf swings in the air with imaginary tools while standing on a train platform waiting to go to work, or on the street in front of their homes. A Christian wedding represents a form devoid of content. Japanese are excited by the form, or appearance of it.
There is a clear contradiction here. On the one hand, the persistent observation about Japan is that appearance ranks above substance for Japanese people (i.e. the appearance of politeness, the appearance of cleanliness, etc.) But on the other hand the achievement of globally renown high production standards could not have been reached without authentic devotion to content and substance. Could they?
I just began working at a new hotel, the Hong Kong-based luxury Hotel X in Tokyo. In Tokyo Station itself, actually. From my chapel windows I can look down on Tokyo Station (a venerated, iconoclastic old building), the Imperial Palace grounds beyond it including a glimpse of the “nijubashi” bridge leading into the inner grounds of the palace and even a small section of the palace moat, the Shinjuku skyscrapers far to the north, various government and corporation office towers scattered throughout the local neighborhood, the Tokyo Harbor Odaiba waterfront development off to one side, and the Bank of Japan headquarters almost at my feet. From the staff cafeteria I can see the city of Urayasuoff in the distance and the Tokyo Disneyland Ferris Wheel there. If the air is clear enough I can even see the city of Makuhariway out there. I cannot see Tokyo Tower which, sadly, is on the opposite side of the tower that houses the hotel on its upper floors.
In the immediate neighborhood I can see two other competing luxury hotels. Hotel X has gone all-out for luxury. My wedding chapel is bright and white like a little girl’s vision of the princess lifestyle (or, from the imagination of James Hilton via his novel, Lost Horizon, which takes the place of the Gideon Bible in Hotel X’s guest rooms). It boasts a 2,500 kg chandelier (the second largest in the hotel - Hotel X is really big on chandeliers), sporting Venetian glass mixed with crystals harvested by Nepalese shepherds from recovered meteorites, and mirrors made and polished by Greek monks on Mt. Athos. It is the size of former Sumo wrestler Konishiki’s skin. (Konishiki, from Hawaii, was the heaviest “rikishi,” or Sumo wrestler, of them all at over 250 kg. The chandelier is far heavier and larger than Konishiki himself, but its area is approximately the same as his skin’s surface area.) While the hotel features grand Chinese art on its walls, the wedding chapel’s walls and ceiling were made and painted by Italian fresco artists using centuries’old techniques and materials, while the floor is tiled with Peruvian marble. The light fixtures are not covered with glass, but more crystal. The seats are ivory and mahogany, covered with white silk covers, hand-crafted by Tanzanian artisans and embroidered with images of a rat battling a raven, from Aztec mythology. The large cross behind the lectern/podium is fashioned from the wood of Baobab trees around a titanium core with a Kryptonite base.
They may not believe in the God of Heaven and Earth, but they are serious about their luxury.
I have heard wedding managers say to visiting couples, “Our Christian wedding is very good,” by which they could have meant skillful or practiced, or aesthetically pleasing, or a convenient package of ceremony and reception meal/party for a reasonable price. The exact meaning gets lost in translation, but what is certainly not meant is “authentic”. But it demonstrates how the Japanese approach the foreign, Christian style wedding as a skill to be mastered. Like a martial art in which participants endlessly rehearse the “kata”motions, they search for the best form, or the proper form and try to perfect it by faithfully reproducing the form. Whether the form is objectively accurate is less the point than whether the reproductions of it are faithful. This is how they approach industrial manufacturing, educational curricula, fashion, popular music and other entertainment, tea ceremony and, of course, sports. Everything has to conform to a form. It explains why we can still see men today practicing their baseball or golf swings in the air with imaginary tools while standing on a train platform waiting to go to work, or on the street in front of their homes. A Christian wedding represents a form devoid of content. Japanese are excited by the form, or appearance of it.
There is a clear contradiction here. On the one hand, the persistent observation about Japan is that appearance ranks above substance for Japanese people (i.e. the appearance of politeness, the appearance of cleanliness, etc.) But on the other hand the achievement of globally renown high production standards could not have been reached without authentic devotion to content and substance. Could they?
I just began working at a new hotel, the Hong Kong-based luxuryHotel Xin Tokyo. In Tokyo Station itself, actually. From my chapel windows I can look down on Tokyo Station (a venerated, iconoclastic old building), the Imperial Palace grounds beyond it including a glimpse of the “nijubashi” bridge leading into the inner grounds of the palace and even a small section of the palace moat, the Shinjuku skyscrapers far to the north, various government and corporation office towers scattered throughout the local neighborhood, the Tokyo Harbor Odaiba waterfront development off to one side, and the Bank of Japan headquarters almost at my feet. From the staff cafeteria I can see the city of Urayasuoff in the distance and the Tokyo Disneyland Ferris Wheel there. If the air is clear enough I can even see the city of Makuhariway out there. I cannot see Tokyo Tower which, sadly, is on the opposite side of the tower that houses the hotel on its upper floors.
In the immediate neighborhood I can see two other competing luxury hotels. Hotel X has gone all-out for luxury. My wedding chapel is bright and white like a little girl’s vision of the princess lifestyle (or, from the imagination of James Hilton via his novel, Lost Horizon, which takes the place of the Gideon Bible in Hotel X’s guest rooms). It boasts a 2,500 kg chandelier (the second largest in the hotel - Hotel X is really big on chandeliers), sporting Venetian glass mixed with crystals harvested by Nepalese shepherds from recovered meteorites, and mirrors made and polished by Greek monks on Mt. Athos. It is the size of former Sumo wrestler Konishiki’s skin. (Konishiki, from Hawaii, was the heaviest “rikishi,” or Sumo wrestler, of them all at over 250 kg. The chandelier is far heavier and larger than Konishiki himself, but its area is approximately the same as his skin’s surface area.) While the hotel features grand Chinese art on its walls, the wedding chapel’s walls and ceiling were made and painted by Italian fresco artists using centuries’old techniques and materials, while the floor is tiled with Peruvian marble. The light fixtures are not covered with glass, but more crystal. The seats are ivory and mahogany, covered with white silk covers, hand-crafted by Tanzanian artisans and embroidered with images of a rat battling a raven, from Aztec mythology. The large cross behind the lectern/podium is fashioned from the wood of Baobab trees around a titanium core with a Kryptonite base.
They may not believe in the God of Heaven and Earth, but they are serious about their luxury.