Village Voice - July,
2005
The Japanese Joseph
The sad story of a
girl and grace
moves Japan.
On a brisk fall day in 1977, a 13-year-old Japanese girl named Megumi
Yokota
vanished on her way home from badminton practice after school. Police
dogs
tracked her scent to a nearby beach, but the distraught Yokotas had no
clues
that might explain their daughter's sudden disappearance.
Grief-stricken, Mrs.
Yokota found solace in the Christian faith of one of Megumi's
classmates, and
under the guidance of a team missionary, she converted to Christ. Her
husband,
angry with God, turned in the other direction.
Sixteen years later,
long after
the Yokotas had resigned themselves to Megumi's death, a North Korean
defector
made a stunning claim: A Japanese woman named Megumi, who played
badminton, was
living in North
Korea
at a training institute for intelligence agents. He said that scores,
maybe
hundreds, of Japanese had been kidnapped to teach spies their language
and
culture. He provided heartrending details of Megumi's abduction: Agents
had
seized her, wrapped her in a straw mat, and rowed her to a waiting spy
ship,
where she had spent the night scratching against the hold with bloody
fingers,
crying, "Mother!"
North
Korea dismissed all such
reports as
fabrications. Other defectors soon validated these stories, however,
which were
reported by the BBC and U.S.
television, and made sensational news in Japan. Finally, Kim Jong-Il
himself, the "Dear Leader" of North Korea, admitted to
the
abductions of 13 Japanese citizens. Five returned to Japan,
but North Korea
insisted that the other eight had died, including Megumi, who in 1993
had used
a kimono to hang herself.
Information supplied
by North Korea
proved untrustworthy, however. DNA tests revealed that bone fragments
supposedly from the dead abductees were bogus. When the five
repatriated
abductees verified they had seen Megumi in late 1993, the North Koreans
simply
revised the date of her suicide to 1994. Her medical records referred
to a
hospital room that did not exist. Meanwhile, all over Japan,
prayer groups sprang up to
support the Yokotas. Mrs. Yokota traveled across the globe in her quest
for
justice, becoming one of the most familiar faces on Japanese media.
On a
recent trip to Asia, I was asked to speak to the combined prayer groups
in Tokyo.
A week before the
scheduled meeting, a new development arose: North Korea invited a
Japanese
delegation to several days of talks in an attempt to resolve the
abductee
issue, which has caused a severe diplomatic strain. There, North
Koreans
presented an urn purported to contain Megumi's ashes, along with three
photos
of Megumi and some notes in her handwriting. (DNA tests later proved
the
remains were not Megumi's.)
The most poignant
photo, taken just after her capture,
shows her at age 13 still in her Japanese schoolgirl's uniform, looking
unbearably forlorn. "We couldn't help crying when we saw the
picture," her mother told reporters. The two others show her as an
adult,
reasonably well dressed and appearing healthy. According to reports,
she
married a North Korean and gave birth to a daughter. Defectors say she
tutored
Kim Jong-Il in Japanese
I agonized over what
I might say to bring comfort to the
prayer groups after such a traumatic week. I made a list of characters
who had
served God in foreign lands: Abram departing for a new homeland that
included Sodom
and Gomorrah; Joshua leading his people into an enemy-occupied Promised
Land;
Naomi raising her sons in the alien land of Moab; a Jewish slave girl
attending
to the Syrian general Naaman; Daniel and other prophets serving enemy
administrations in Babylon (Iraq) and then Persia (Iran); Esther
risking her
life to preserve her compatriots in Persia; and Paul taking the gospel
in
chains to Rome—forerunner of a host of missionaries who would encounter
resistance from foreign cultures, including many early martyrs in Japan
itself. Joseph provided the most direct
parallel: a
young man abducted and presumed dead, who rose against all odds to
serve a
foreign dictator. Joseph's terse summary to his brothers offers the
Yokotas a
strong word of hope: "You meant evil against me, but God meant it for
good."
The Tokyo
meeting proved how Joseph's principle of providence might apply.
Instead of the
expected 150 people, almost 1,000 Japanese turned out, along with all
three
television networks. Before them, Mrs. Yokota gave a stirring testimony
of hope
and redemption. Christians represent less than 1 percent of the
population in Japan,
but on the evening news that week, nearly every broadcast led with a
segment on
this mild-mannered housewife pleading for justice with the demeanor and
spirit
of God's grace.
One more detail
deserves mention: Megumi is the Japanese
word for grace.
-- Philip Yancey, Christianity Today, July 2005