Most days, Lutheran pastor Kazuhiro Sekino preaches to his congregation in a soft voice with religious hymns playing in the background of a Tokyo church.
However, as night falls, he hits a smoky stage criss-crossed with whizzing strobe lights, shedding his pious day job in a battle of the bands against a group of Buddhist monks.
“We are rock, pastors are rock,” Sekino, 36, shouts into a microphone to stir up the audience.
Photo: AFP
The band, Boxi Rocks — the name is a play on the Japanese word for pastor — features Sekino and three other pastors, who don church robes during their raucous performances, sometimes with a leather jacket thrown over the top.
“I like Slipknot, a real hard-rock band that has nine masked members. I also like Metallica and Megadeth,” Sekino said. “They may look demonic from the Christian church’s point of view, but they are actually shouting to fight the world’s injustice. They talk about truth, no hypocrisy.”
Monk Yoshinobu Fujioka — head shaved and wearing a dark blue kimono — hit back with an acoustic guitar offering as head of the Bozu (“monk”) band.
“I love the blues. I love Bob Dylan and ’60s music,” the 39-year-old said. “Living a worldly life, we always get hurt by pains and suffering which make us feel small. I like to sing about that pain in a tender way.”
The unlikely pair hope their musical duels help them reach more people in a nation where Buddhists far outnumber Christians. Figures released by the government based on data supplied by temples, churches and shrines show that Buddhism accounts for about 46 percent of religious followers, while Christians make up less than 2 percent. About 48 percent hold to the Shinto religion.
However, for many Japanese, religion of any sort is more of a seasonal formality, paying homage at a shrine or celebrating Christmas.
“We’re actually performing secular music. We have feelings just like other people and use the same language, sometimes even more crass,” said Sekino, who turned to religious work after his sister became critically ill. “But I want people to know that God lives there [in people’s lives]. I want to share this.”
Fujioka and his fellow monk-cum-rockers opened a bar in Tokyo, where they offer another outlet for troubled visitors seeking a better life — over cocktails.
“There are many people who want to talk about their problems and go home with a lighter heart. It’s our responsibility to meet with people like that,” he said.
Sekino initially contacted the monk about his quirky idea for musical evangelism and now they perform several times a year.
“I don’t know if I should call this heaven or nirvana, but I think this is what God would want to see — this is something the church or a temple couldn’t do,” he said.
Thousands gathered across New Zealand yesterday to celebrate the signing of the country’s founding document and some called for an end to government policies that critics say erode the rights promised to the indigenous Maori population. As the sun rose on the dawn service at Waitangi where the Treaty of Waitangi was first signed between the British Crown and Maori chiefs in 1840, some community leaders called on the government to honor promises made 185 years ago. The call was repeated at peaceful rallies that drew several hundred people later in the day. “This government is attacking tangata whenua [indigenous people] on all
The administration of US President Donald Trump has appointed to serve as the top public diplomacy official a former speech writer for Trump with a history of doubts over US foreign policy toward Taiwan and inflammatory comments on women and minorities, at one point saying that "competent white men must be in charge." Darren Beattie has been named the acting undersecretary for public diplomacy and public affairs, a senior US Department of State official said, a role that determines the tone of the US' public messaging in the world. Beattie requires US Senate confirmation to serve on a permanent basis. "Thanks to
UNDAUNTED: Panama would not renew an agreement to participate in Beijing’s Belt and Road project, its president said, proposing technical-level talks with the US US Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Sunday threatened action against Panama without immediate changes to reduce Chinese influence on the canal, but the country’s leader insisted he was not afraid of a US invasion and offered talks. On his first trip overseas as the top US diplomat, Rubio took a guided tour of the canal, accompanied by its Panamanian administrator as a South Korean-affiliated oil tanker and Marshall Islands-flagged cargo ship passed through the vital link between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. However, Rubio was said to have had a firmer message in private, telling Panama that US President Donald Trump
‘IMPOSSIBLE’: The authors of the study, which was published in an environment journal, said that the findings appeared grim, but that honesty is necessary for change Holding long-term global warming to 2°C — the fallback target of the Paris climate accord — is now “impossible,” according to a new analysis published by leading scientists. Led by renowned climatologist James Hansen, the paper appears in the journal Environment: Science and Policy for Sustainable Development and concludes that Earth’s climate is more sensitive to rising greenhouse gas emissions than previously thought. Compounding the crisis, Hansen and colleagues argued, is a recent decline in sunlight-blocking aerosol pollution from the shipping industry, which had been mitigating some of the warming. An ambitious climate change scenario outlined by the UN’s climate
RSS