Orthodox kaleidoscope: focus on Japan

ABSTRACT

This contribution addresses the theoretical and methodological issues proposed in the ‘Orthodox Kaleidoscope’ network. Based on five months of field research in Japan, the contribution argues that the experience of the Japanese Orthodox Church refracts some of the theological and organisational concerns of the Russian Orthodox Church (Moscow Patriarchate) – of which it is a constituent part – and that it does so in ways that may help us move beyond our traditional approaches to the whole field of Orthodox studies, both Russian and otherwise.

KEYWORDS:

• Japanese Orthodox Church
• St Nicholas of Japan
• votserkovlennye
• liturgical language
• church attendance
• tradition

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Drs Sanami Takahashi, Norihiro Naganawa, and Kimitata Matsuzato for their invaluable help during my research stays in Japan, and Katya Tolstaya for inviting me to take part in the workshops that shaped the direction of this contribution.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. The ‘Moscow Patriarchate’ (MP) refers to the administrative structure that currently governs most parishes of the Russian Orthodox tradition both in Russia and worldwide, but should not be conflated with the concept ‘Russian Orthodox Church’ (ROC) because there continue to be some communities that claim continuity with that body but do not accept the authority of the patriarch of Moscow. For that reason, I occasionally use the term ROC MP to make clear that I’m referring to the patriarchal institution as opposed to the broader category.

2. The existing literature on the Russian Orthodox Church is already broad and continues to expand; here, only a few key works should be mentioned to give the reader a sense of the interdisciplinary scholarship: cf. (Kenworthy 2010; Knox 2005; Stoeckl 2014).

3. Participant observation included regular weekly attendance at the Orthodox parish in Sapporo, and field visits to parishes in Hakodate, Nagoya, Tokyo, and Sendai.

4. Cf. Naganawa (2007, 1989); Nakamura and Nakamura (2003).

5. The hagiographic material I have identified is largely Russian and American in origin, and not Japanese; I suspect this may stem in part from the Japanese Orthodox reluctance to venerate saints in general, discussed later in this contribution.

6. Besstremiannaia (2006, 291–312) provides an extensive bibliography of Russian sources on the JOC; of these, only one five-page article deals with its history post-1912 (Bogoliubov 2001).

7. Naganawa (2013, 6–9); Foundation (2018); Kharin (2014, 149–153).

8. The Japanese ecclesiastical crisis of the 1940s was extremely complex; see Kharin for details.

9. Besstremiannaia (2006, 26–27); Sviataia (2013, 26–29); Naganawa (2013, 7); Kharin (2014, 39–41).

10. Field visits to Orthodox communities in Hakodate, Sapporo, Tokyo, and Nagoya.

11. I witnessed such a collective celebration at the parish in Sapporo, autumn 2015.

12. This assessment is based on my observation at liturgies I attended, as well as on the opinions of several JOC clergy members and active parishioners interviewed.

13. Maria Matsushima is the foremost authority on Japanese Orthodox music; Svetlana Dmitriev is the Japanese wife of the priest at the parish in Hakodate, where she serves as choir director.

14. Author interview with Ariana Dolgova, a parishioner at the Tokyo Cathedral and a descendant of the emigre Russian community that appeared in Japan after the Russian Revolution.

15. Unrecorded conversation with Fr Seraphim Gan, spring 2015.

16. Of the clergy I interviewed, the majority were converts to Orthodoxy.

17. Assessment of non-Russian converts to Orthodoxy in the United States and their level of adherence vis a vis the ‘native’ Orthodox is based also on two decades of observing both ROCOR and OCA dynamics.

18. Cf. Desnitsky (n.d.); see also for example Liturgical language (2015).

19. These are services that may be held in place of a liturgy if there is no priest available to officiate.

20. These literatures sometimes overlap, when the scholar in question happens also to be an Orthodox Christian, often writing different kinds of pieces in different media – peer-reviewed scholarship and think pieces addressed to the Orthodox community (cf. Karras and Mitchell 2017).

Additional information

Funding

This work (autumn 2014 and autumn 2015) was supported by funding from the Slavic-Eurasian Research Center at Hokkaido University as well as from the Japanese Society for the Advancement of Science. Research was conducted under the auspices of the Georgetown University Berkley Center for Religion, Peace and World Affairs.

Notes on contributors

Irina du Quenoy

Irina du Quenoy is a scholar affiliated with the Berkley Center for Religion, Peace and World Affairs (Georgetown University). She has written extensively on the post-Soviet Russian Orthodox Church, and taught for several years at Central European University in Budapest. Her family is related by marriage to St Nicholas (Kasatkin) of Japan.