A Nihilist Finds Christ

As an elementary teacher, Miura Ayako taught her students to submit to and even die for the emperor of Japan. When Japan suffered defeat in World War II, Ayako realized this blind faith was an error. She fell into nihilism and attempted suicide. Unwell with tuberculosis, Ayako relates how a friendship with another patient, Tadashi Maekawa, started her on a search for meaning.

One day [Tadashi Maekawa] took me to Shunkodai Hill. It is often called Clover Mountain because of all the flowers there. The fresh greenness of late June was beautiful, and the bushy tail of a small squirrel flashed across our path. The mountain had once been a training ground for the army, but now the cuckoo sounded far and near. There was not a house in sight. As far as the eye could see there was just green pasture, and here and there a tall oak tree was standing. People rarely come to this hill and that June day there wasn’t another soul there….

Standing on the hill overlooking Asahikawa, I thought, “Isn’t everything ultimately futile? In the end everything dies.”

“Doesn’t this place make you feel happier?” Tadashi Maekawa asked.

“I’m the same wherever I am,” I answered coldly….

For a while he said nothing. The cries of the cuckoo rang out and the sky was clear. As we faced each other in silence, ants busily scurried about on the ground between us. Those ants had a purpose. Suddenly loneliness swept over me.

“I understand what you’ve been saying. That’s why I don’t think your view of life now is right. It’s so pitiful. If you can’t find a more meaningful way of life for yourself …” He got that far and his voice broke. The tears were running down his cheeks. I watched him cynically and lit a cigarette….

“During the war you believed and you were wrong, weren’t you? In spite of this, won’t you try and believe in something again?”

If the end of our existence was death, it seemed foolish to try and believe in anything again, but I decided bravely that it didn’t matter if I was foolish…. If I could not believe, that would be the end of me.

Even though I was in such a chaotic state, the decision to begin searching for something, anyway, was for me a reality. Ever since the war I had been unable to believe in anything and as a result life had been meaningless. Now I had at least begun to look for something. On that dark night when I had tried to end my life in the sea, a part of my life ended and another part began.

I had never set much store by people. To tell the truth, I felt no one was completely reliable, and it was precisely because of the futility and meaninglessness of everything that I had even tried to take my life.

I certainly did not think that those who believed in Christianity were the only good people. Nor did it necessarily follow that Buddhists were outstanding, just because they claimed they had faith. Many complete unbelievers deserved to be called noble and good.

There was no solution to my fundamental restlessness. I was vague about what I was seeking, but nevertheless it could have been called “God.” So, although some of the people at church rejected and even denounced me, this did not particularly hinder me in my search. Rather, the fact that there were church people as weak and foolish as I was myself gave me a deep sense of reassurance. Arrogantly I thought, “If God accepts that sort of person, isn’t it possible that he will even accept me?” And I began to read the Bible more attentively.

Some people go to church under the delusion that it is the place where the most holy people gather. But no church is ever a meeting place of the sinless. It is meant for those who know they are sinners, unable to lift their heads before God or people. Therefore, unless people seek God without expecting anything from others, they may be driven to despair. As I had already despaired of myself more than anybody else from that time to this, I have never wanted to leave the church on account of other people. I learned this lesson at the very beginning, thanks to those who criticized me.

Although I began going to church, I could not get rid of my rather contemptuous attitude toward Christians. It seemed to me that “believing” was only for the simple-minded. During the war we Japanese had fought believing that the emperor was god, and that our country was invincible because it had been founded by the gods. We were fearful of ever putting our faith in anything again.

Aimitsu, Flowers by Window, 1944, oil on canvas. Wikimedia Commons (public domain).

When the war ended Christianity became popular. Although church attendance was poor during the war, people poured into the churches after the defeat. Surely they were insincere. After all that had happened, how could anyone be so ready to put his faith in anything else, so soon? Somehow they struck me as lacking in integrity.

Going to church with such thoughts, I was sceptical even when the Christians prayed. While all the others clasped their hands together and humbly bowed their heads, I kept my eyes wide open, carefully watching the faces of those who prayed, one after another.

“God, our heavenly Father, we thank you that we can pray together on this quiet evening. We earnestly pray that we may live according to your will.”

And as I watched each face, I thought, “Are these people really praying before God? If I did believe in God, I don’t think I would be able to utter a word in his presence. If God is really so great that he is creator and ruler of this world, how can they come before such an awesome being and chatter away like that? Wouldn’t they be trembling or petrified with fear? These people aren’t really praying before God. They are just piling up words for the benefit of those who listen.”

Yes, surely it was all hypocrisy. Arrogantly I thought that if ever I became a believer, I would pray sincerely. I used to pass on what I was thinking freely to Tadashi Maekawa, and he would just reply, “Aya-chan, you’re quite merciless, aren’t you?” and say no more.

Once I announced, “Christians are stupid people. They don’t really believe, but they tell each other, ‘There is a God, there is a God,’ and then they are all content.”

At that Tadashi Maekawa opened the Bible and urged me to read Ecclesiastes. I began reading without much enthusiasm and was completely taken by surprise.

It is useless, useless, said the Philosopher. Life is useless, all useless. You spend your life working, laboring, and what do you have to show for it? Generations come and generations go, but the world stays just the same.

I had only read those few lines when my heart was immediately drawn to this book of Ecclesiastes.

Every river flows into the sea, but the sea is not yet full. The water returns to where the rivers began, and starts all over again. Our eyes can never see enough to be satisfied; our ears can never hear enough. What has happened before will happen again. What has been done before will be done again. There is nothing new in the whole world. “Look,” they say, “here is something new!” But no, it has all happened before, long before we were born. No one remembers what has happened in the past, and no one in days to come will remember what happens between now and then.

I sighed involuntarily. I was pretty negative myself. I believed that when anything died it was the end, but I did not go as far as this book: “There is nothing new in the whole world.” While every day might in the end be a repetition, I thought there were still new things to be discovered. My eyes were not so keen that they found everything faded….

For twelve chapters the book continued in the same vein that all was emptiness, all was useless. My view of Christianity changed considerably, and I revised my opinion that Christians were simple-minded!

To say that everything in the world is utterly empty did not seem to be at all like Christianity. Mystified, I wondered why this sort of thing was in the Bible. After reading the Bible for two or three months I had been struck by such teaching as “Love one another” and “If anyone strikes your right cheek, turn to him the left one,” but the nihilistic outlook of Ecclesiastes led me to change my whole opinion of Christianity….

To begin with, one must be conscious of this emptiness. I saw this was one thing religions had in common. Because I had been so nihilistic myself since the defeat, this discovery became another turning point in my life. Nihilism, I realized, is an empty philosophy, denying everything in the world until in the end one denies oneself. But when I had been driven to that point I found that something else in Ecclesiastes made sense. It was at the end of the book, and in my circumstances it struck me forcibly: “So remember your Creator while you are still young.”

From that time my search steadily became more serious.

It is miserable to be ill. If you know the cause of the temperature and loss of weight, you can treat it and bear with some suffering, but to become weaker, with the doctor insisting that nothing is wrong, is far more distressing. I felt as if the life within me was being devoured, to mock me just as I had begun to take it seriously. However much science had progressed, it seemed unable to discover what was wrong with me. What sort of science was that? …

The doctor at out-patients changed from day to day. I burst out laughing at what this one said.

“What’s the matter?”

I had heard that some patients cried when spinal tuberculosis was diagnosed, yet I had laughed. No wonder the doctor was puzzled. But I was laughing because now I could relax, instead of being treated as neurotic and told, “It’s all imaginary. Why don’t you get up and get some exercise?”

Once they knew the root cause, there was a way to treat it.

Back in my room, I thought hard. Although my spine was being eaten away by tuberculosis and I stumbled as I walked, we had been blind to its presence simply because it had not appeared on the x-ray. If this ignorance had continued, might not all my bones have been affected? I would certainly have died.

And then I thought, “The same could be true of my soul.” Maybe I did not realize my heart was being eaten away or how infected I was, simply because I was unaware of my sin. I found this thought very frightening.

My mind was made up. I had come to an end of myself. I wanted to clinch my decision by being baptized as soon as possible….

At last July 5 [1952], the day of my baptism arrived…. The pastor dipped his hand in the water and placed it on my head. “Ayako Hotta, I baptize you in the name of the Father, and the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, Amen.”

Up to that point I had felt quite calm, even though I was taking the big step of being baptized…. But as soon as I heard these words, I suddenly found myself in tears. I was quite unprepared for this. I could not help weeping at the thought that someone as untrustworthy and sinful as I could belong to Christ.

Excerpted from Ayako Miura, The Wind Is Howling: An Autobiography, translated by Valerie Griffiths (OMF Books, 1990), 40–112. Used by permission of OMF.