Ever since I started learning about Japanese culture many years ago (at least eight now), I’ve had a very deep love for Japan. It’s one I cannot explain and have never been able to, as it has never really had any kind of cause. I just saw the language and culture and fell in love with it. I mean that as much as I can mean anything – what I feel about Japan can only really be described as love. I love everything about them.

That doesn’t mean I love them in a weeb or otaku kind of way, because I don’t. I love them in the same way as God loves. And I don’t even know why, I think it’s something God gave me. It’s so deep and intense sometimes that I don’t even really know what to do with it. I love them in a way I don’t even love my own country (but I love my own country in a way I don’t love Japan).

But I don’t love them as a weeb or an otaku, because it’s not the kind of love that makes you obsess over them. It’s not the kind of love that makes one want to watch All the Anime (though I have really enjoyed it for the most part) or buy otaku goods (though I have) or any of that. It’s the kind of love that makes you weep over them.

And that’s really hard to explain. Even for me, sometimes.

The Japanese are a people with so much going for them. They are such a wonderful, hardworking people, with such a great capacity for innovation, intelligence, and industry. When they set themselves at a task, they do it with everything they have. They are also a very sacrificial people, who often (and in a culturally enforced way) think of others before themselves. They are a clean and orderly people who value social harmony and always do their very best.

They are also a depressed and hopeless people, for the most part. They work themselves to death, bottle everything up until it erupts out explosively in unhealthy ways, generally have a pretty unhealthy attitude towards pretty much everything, and their drive for perfection can cause some pretty atrocious results when they miss the mark.

I say this not to criticize them, but because it makes me very sad for them. Because I love them.

The Japanese have a very animist religion, with many Gods (kami). They will worship at a shrine or temple sometimes, and have many rituals in which they will try to absolve themselves of their “sins” and hope for a better future, such as it is. And these rituals are generally quite beautiful. Their holy places are very well kept and clean, and they respect and revere them in the same way they respect and revere nature.

And there is nothing at all in their religion that redeems.

I’m not here to say that my belief system is superior or anything like that. That’s not the point of this post. But theirs is a culture that seems to have no way out. Their religion seems like a dead end. There’s no life to it. It’s very ancient, and very beautiful, and the rituals are amazing, but at the end of the day, it doesn’t save, and I can’t think of many cultures that need salvation more than the Japanese people. And they have no route to it. My previous sensei even said that Japan is a very depressed place. I can see it. And I wish with everything I have that they could find, well, salvation. Or redemption. Or whatever concept leads to their finding life again.

And this makes me sad. Very, very sad sometimes. Because I love them.

So, I think now I understand why I love Japan. I think I finally understand. It’s not because they have good anime, or good food, or beautiful women, or lovely scenery, or pretty shrines, or a clean and orderly culture, or anything like that. It’s because God loves them, and it’s because God has given me the gift, or the curse, of loving them in the same way that he does. That’s why I love Japan and the Japanese people. Because it’s my job.

In the words of evangelical Christianity, they are “on my heart”.

And now, I need to figure out what to do about that. But I think perhaps prayer is a good first step. I pray that Japan finds the redemption that has so eluded them over these many thousands of years. I pray for the restoration of their culture, for the rebuilding of their population, for the redemption of their people. I pray that they will find that which they don’t even know that they’ve been seeking. I pray that they can take their beautiful culture and turn it to the cause of the elevation of their people, rather than the destruction of these people. I pray all these things for them. In the name of Jesus, in whom their kami are none but a poor reflection. Sowaka.

Funny. As I write this, I feel like it’s what I’ve been needing to do for years.

And for the first time, AI made a great image.