Agnes Chan

Agnes Chan, a famous pop singer in Japan, lectured on the 8th of October to the audience of more than 800 people at one of the biggest city halls on Sado. She was born in Hong Kong and came to Japan as a singer when she was seventeen. Now as a UNICEF ambassador, she is making a great contribution to the children who are forced to live in difficult situations in war, poverty, etc.

When she was a junior high student, she was involved in a volunteer activity to visit handicapped children, and experienced that she was warmly welcomed by them. She said she had a kind of inferiority complex, but this experience changed her.

She wanted to give food to them who are hungry. During the lunch time at her school, she started to sing, asking other students to give her a leftover of their lunch. In this way she obtained the food to bring to the handicapped children. It was the beginning of her career that she sang not for her self-satisfaction, but for the joy of the abandoned children.

She also talked about some children whom she met in Ethiopia, Thai, Cambodia, Iraq, etc. who were in extremely difficult situations to survive. What struck me was that she remembered the names and stories of them, and was continuingly working for them.

While I was listening to her story, I remembered that I also received a lot from the children who were living in particularly difficult conditions, in Bangladesh, the Philippines, Pakistan, Lesotho, Zimbabwe, and South Africa. I asked myself, "What have I done for them?"

Agnes Chan said, "When I was just thinking about myself I felt life was difficult. When I thought on my own, I felt life was beautiful." She noticed that she received a lot. So she is giving a lot. This balance seems to make her full of life. I think I received a lot, but haven't given enough. That might be the reason that I don't have enough energy. For me to write this web log is a kind of exercise to give, to take a balance, and to make a good circle.

Being straightforward

"Please raise your hand if you think you are straightforward" asked Rev. Fumio Konishi, the principal of Keiwa High School in the closing worship at the end of the five-day camp held at Sado Church in August. In the camp, about twenty students worked together, cooking together, serving one another, and learning from one another. The purpose of the camp is to empower the young people through the community life.

Keiwa High School was founded by the United Church of Christ in Japan in 1968. Rev. Konishi assumed his position from 2003 as the fourth principal of the school. He started this "Keiwa Camp" in 2007. He must have believed the power of community for the development of the personality of young people.

Five-day camp would be exceptionally long here in Japan. However, five days are not too long for young people to discover their friends, teachers, and themselves as they are. Actually, most of the students still hesitated to raise their hand when they were asked if they were straightforward.

Rev. Konishi published a booklet in September, whose title was "Find yourself in Keiwa High; to meet what you shall be." In the booklet, there are ten homilies he made for the high school students in the morning daily worship. He talked about the dignity and brokenness of human being as well as God's love, with vivid illustration. The messages sound powerful. It is because he talked straightforwardly.

Being straightforward is not just a subject for high school students. To be as you are where the pressure of conformism is relatively strong, you need a kind of discipline, like a camp that young people had on this island.

Opening a new way

"Historians can't sum up my life," said Taro-san, showing me a box of papers. In general Taro-san is in New York, but a few times a year he comes back to Sado. One day when he was on Sado, he showed me a number of his drawings in the box which he had just found at home. They were the works he concentrated on when he was in his twenties.

His drawings seem something like a scribble of a little child or like a trace of natural phenomenon. It seems simple, but nobody could make it as he did. He experienced a kind of brake throw after drawing a thousand of pieces when he was young.

Among the bunch of papers, there were some drawings of a nude. It was wonderful for they were in between of abstract and concrete, remaining the shape of the model vaguely.

"Critiques would never know what had happened inside of me from those works." What he said makes me feel that it is an artist who makes efforts to open a new way which nobody has ever walked. The way he lives challenges me.