Robert M. Fukada (1960)
By Robert L. Shelton ‘59, Graduate Student, BUST
The world in which we live is not an easy place to be prophetic or even Christian but as I go about doing what I can I feel a greater demand for a prophetic voice and faith. We are getting so darn sophisticated here in Japan that Christians, too, are getting to be a bunch of snobs. It is a tragedy. I am trying to get through to our boys at the seminary that it is more important to be able to speak a simple language of their people than to be able to understand Hebrew and Greek, though that, too, may be important.
THERE was no particular reason, in the fall of 1952, to anticipate such words as the above from the Baker University freshman classmate who gave an impression of immature youth and playfulness. Upon closer acquaintance, however, we became aware that Bob Fukada’s fun-loving nature could very quickly turn to deadly seriousness. It was the kind of seriousness that probed through much of the artificiality with which most of the collegians were content to cloak themselves and their thinking. That same probing confronts any of his fellow churchmen who enter into conversation with him about the task of the church in the modern world:
The task of the Church in an industrial society is not to have a monopoly on welfare activities and social reconstruction, but rather to nurture in the members of a community a consciousness of the changes around us and a creative vision of where we are going. It is to be able to move ahead with taste, sensitivity and intelligence, always ready to render concrete service based on competent resources of knowledge and skill, in order to meet the needs of the changing community and of the people in it.(1)
The above words were spoken before the World Council of Churches’ Committee on Specialized Assistance to Social Projects in Bangkok, in February of 1964. The man who wrote and read them there was born on May 10, 1933 in Riverside, California, where his father was the pastor of a Japanese church. The family returned to Japan in 1937, where the elder Fukada worked for Dr. Toyohiko Kagawa’s social welfare settlement in an industrial slum of Tokyo. Bob later wrote that the long association of his parents with Dr. Kagawa was a decisive element in forming his life philosophy.
The Second World War left a strong impression on the young Fukada. He was evacuated, with his classmates, to the country in 1944 to avoid the bombing of Tokyo. In 1945 his father’s social settlement was bombed and completely destroyed. Following the war, his father started a new settlement project—a dormitory for those coming back from overseas and those homeless from the bombings, part of Kagawa’s rehabilitation program for Japan.
Bob, himself, returned to the United States for study and entered Baker University but was then inducted into the American Army and sent to Japan as an interpreter. His parents were then running an orphanage, and he usually assisted them at the Sunday morning service by playing the organ. Later, as he prepared for seminary, he was to write about this time:
Gradually I came to realize that there is an urgent need to put Christianity into practice—if our churches in Japan were to be successful in carrying out the construction of His Kingdom. I found Japanese people very much interested in Christianity, yet somewhat doubtful of its practicality. They felt that it was a fine philosophy, but that it wouldn’t work. Soon I was convinced that the social work I desire to do in Japan must be combined with the Christian ministry. When I talked to Dr. Kagawa, he strengthened my feeling that this is the way.
While in Japan, he married Laura Allen, a teacher in a mission school, whom he had dated already at Baker. After the conclusion of his army hitch, the Fukadas returned to Baker where Bob received his B.A. in sociology in 1957.
There were enough Boston influences around Baker to encourage Bob to seek further preparation at BUST, where he completed both his S.T.B. and his S.T.M. in 1960.
At the Kansas Annual Conference session that year, Bob Fukada was ordained Elder. When appointments were read, his appointment was “Missionary to Japan”; his dream was fulfilled. Born an American citizen, with deep family roots and years of his own life in Japan, he wanted to bring some of the resources of the land of his birth to a ministry in the land of his heritage.
Upon arrival he was appointed as the first Director of the Nishijin Labor Centre in Kyoto. Set up for the “education, recreation and spiritual uplift of the working people of the area”, the Centre has facilities adequate for a program including labor schools, cookery classes, an English school, a counseling service, a medical clinic, research activities and children’s groups. The weekly Bible study group is a part of the “something extra” which Fukada feels must be offered for people to “feel and sense what they cannot find elsewhere.”
The purpose of the Nishijin project is not proselytism, in the old sense of the word, nor is it to engage in social reforms with merely idealistic visions. The purpose, fundamentally, is to witness to the transforming and redeeming power and love of Jesus Christ among the working people of Nishijin. It is believed that the communication of the Christian faith will take place in the process of participation in the suffering and burden of the people by committed Christians.
The Fukadas brought their first child into the family in 1961, with the adoption of 5 ½ year-old “Teddy”, whose real name, Edwin Hideo, came from Dr. Edwin Prince Booth, emeritus professor of the BUST faculty. He was joined by a brother born to Bob and Laura in 1963, Allen Hikaru.
While working with the Nishijin Centre, Bob did some teaching at Doshisha University and became a colleague of Masao Takenaka, Professor of Social Ethics. When Dr. Takenaka was not able to go to the Bangkok World Council meeting in February of 1964, he asked Bob to take his place there. He went early to attend the second assembly of the East Asia Christian Conference. His trip there included stops at Hong Kong, Taiwan and Okinawa on the way home. That experience opened many new opportunities for Bob. He has since been to other working committee meetings of the World Council of Churches in England and Europe. In 1966 he was an organizer of the East Asia Christian Conference on Christians in Industry and Lay Training held in Kyoto.
The furlough year in 1964-65 was a busy one in many ways, including a semester of study in Boston. Now back in Kyoto, Bob finds himself again serving several responsibilities. He is commuting to Tokyo to serve his father’s church until their new pastor comes next April. His work continues at the Nishijin Labor Centre, and he is now Director of Field Work at the Doshisha University School of Theology.
Rob Fukada has spoken often of the fact that it is not easy to be a Christian today, whether in the U.S. or Japan. Speaking of Japan, he has said: “Surrounded by waves of secularism and materialism, Christian Churches here can easily be pushed out of the currents of society. The task for us is to stay right in there and be a dynamic force in guiding the currents.” He has gone on to say, that although it is not easy, “none of us became Christian to lead a life of comfort and self-centeredness. I often stop in the middle of my busy life and go through a period of deep self-reflection in which, with much sadness, I find myself utterly failing God and betraying the prayers of our friends.”
His concerns have centered a great deal on the change which has swept over Japan and other Asian countries. Radical social change has bewildering effects on culture. The necessity to understand this change, and to help direct it, requires the kinds of skills and competence Bob is bringing to his ministry and hopes to bring to the seminarians with whom he works. This necessity also requires a certain kind of spirit. Bob speaks of the challenge and opportunity which Christians have to be responsible for “the social reconstruction of the world—the world which is to be the household of God”:
We are called to be God’s house-servants in the world. When the community of the house-servants of God is a small minority as we are in Japan today, the need for it to be a creative minority cannot be over-emphasized. And a minority cannot be creative in the world in which it is placed unless it can first find the way to an honest and sincere encounter with the world and the people in it.(2)
Some sociology textbooks refer to a concept of the “marginal man”, that person who, by birth, nationality, mobility, or otherwise, finds himself straddling at least two quite different cultures, not able to really identify with either, being so much in the “margin” of both that he is really nowhere. It has often seemed to me that Bob Fukada has been able to stand squarely in two quite different cultures, a kind of “marginal man”, while at the same time being totally at home and effectively related to each. Perhaps it is because his roots are not in either, ultimately, but in the “Household” of which he is so determined to be a servant, that household which transcends all cultural boundaries and calls out the total humanity in each.
(1) Robert N. Fukada, “New Frontiers of Encounter and Witness: The Task of the Church in the Industrial Society of Japan,” The International Review of Missions, Vol. LIV, April 1965, p. 181.
(2) Ibid., p.183.