Where do we relocate?

After I shared the calling to Japan with Woody, she purchased a map of Japan for me. I started to open it on Saturday mornings during a time that I devoted each week to pray about Japan and to seek where the Lord wanted us to go. I thought about the Tokyo area where I was born and where my family had lived when I was in elementary school since I still hold memories of those places. However, those particular military installations have closed and the land has been returned to the Japanese government. Additionally, Woody and I no longer hold any military privileges so we wouldn’t be able to visit a military installation. I considered things that Woody enjoys, like baths and beef. I wasn’t sure about baths but Kobe is renowned for their beef. Perhaps there? When examining the map one morning I found a train station that had ‘Woody’ in the name, which surprised me. Maybe there? Maybe someplace close to a university? Yes, that would be important because of an understanding of us working with college students that I was given during the morning outpourings. However I never sensed a clear direction, so I kept seeking and asking. In the summer of 2018, a cousin reached out to one of my sons over Facebook and asked if he was related to my father. She is the daughter of my dad’s younger sister - my aunt's daughter. Growing up, we were not close to my father’s side of the family so I barely knew my grandparents, nevertheless my uncles, aunts and cousins. When she came for her teacher's conference in San Antonio later that summer, she was thrilled to reconnect with my dad. We took her out for dinner and then back to my father’s house where she set up a Facetime meeting between my dad and her mother. It was the first time that my dad and his sister had seen each other in decades. I don’t recall meeting my cousin as children, but she showed me a photo that was taken when my dad took my sister and I to Kauai to meet his family. It had been over 50 years since I met her and I was in elementary school at the time. We had traveled to Hawaii on our way to his second military tour in Japan when we made the trip to Kauai. Following our brief reunion, I didn't hear from her after we exchanged a few photos from our dinner. But around Christmas, she sent a photo of our grandparents' family tombstone in Kauai. It was a nice surprise to hear from her since we hadn’t communicated since her conference that past summer. But I was surprised to receive pictures of a tombstone, which seemed odd to me. I now understand its importance in honoring the dead in Japanese culture. On the front of the tombstone, our family name was inscribed in Japanese and English. On the back, the names and dates of my grandfather, grandmother, two sons, and one daughter were inscribed in English. Then on one side, or edge, of the tombstone was an inscription in kanji which neither she nor her relatives nor my father could read. My father said that the tombstone was much nicer than the original marker and was not the original one that marked the grave. I had been studying kanji so I made an attempt to decipher the inscription and determined that it said something like, ‘permanent address.’ I thought perhaps it might have meant, ‘final resting place,’ but I wasn’t sure. On New Year's Day, my cousin texted, ‘Oita beppu shi is supposedly where family from.’ I googled ‘Oita beppu shi’ and learned that Beppu is a city in Oita prefecture on the southern island of Kyushu. I wasn’t really sure why or how she thought Beppu was where our family was from, but she did not respond to my inquiries regarding her message. My grandfather’s marriage certificate listed his place of birth as Fukuoka. Fukuoka is a large city on Kyushu and is a couple of hours north of Beppu by car. Ten days later it dawned on me that her text might have been in reference to the inscription on the side of the tombstone instead of where our grandfather was born. I looked online to see if I could find a website about Beppu, and found one that included the kanji for Oita, Beppu. It was a direct match to the characters on the side of the tombstone! I texted back to ask if a birthplace is a common inscription on a family gravemarker. Perhaps my grandfather was born there and later relocated with his family to Fukuoka. She replied that her mother-in-law, who interpreted the kanji on the tombstone, tried to explain its meaning, but that she wasn’t able to fully understand her mother-in-law’s explanation. Some time later, Woody and I attended a Japanese church service in San Antonio. A friend of mine had let me know about this congregation after hearing about our call to Japan. We started to attend and became friends with the pastor and his family. I showed them the photo of the inscription and they told me that my translation of ‘permanent address’ was actually ‘place of origin.’ The pastor went on to explain that it best translates to where a family originated, meaning that the Murata lineage originated in Beppu in Oita prefecture. So the inscription read, ‘Place of origin: Oita, Beppu city.’ With Beppu now on my radar, I discovered that Beppu is known for several brightly colored thermal pools, which are labeled as ‘hells.’ As I learned about their name, I remembered the passage, “the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.” Considering Paul's writing in Ephesians concerning the true battle and enemy that we face, this distinction was fascinating to me considering our calling. Indeed, hell will not prevail against His kingdom! In August of 2021, Woody and I flew to Kauai to visit my son and his wife and our new granddaughter. On the trip, we were able to spend time with my last remaining uncle on my dad’s side. He spoke very softly, but it was wonderful listening to the stories about his childhood memories of my dad. They were the same stories that I had heard when we cared for my dad. It touched me that they both remembered the same special moments of their childhood together. I told my uncle of the love that my dad had for him, and that he would have wanted him to know the gospel, which I shared with him. I left after gifting him with my father's Bible. When we left my uncle’s house, Woody asked me if the family gravesite was nearby. We had earlier met with my cousin and her daughter. This cousin was the younger sister of the cousin who we had met in San Antonio and who had texted me the tombstone pictures. We asked them about the tombstone’s inscription, but neither of them knew any details as to who placed the tombstone, or who had it inscribed. She and her daughter described the cemetery's location and showed us the general vicinity on a map on her phone. As she talked, she mentioned traversing several back country roads to get to it and described some landmarks along the way. I had a general idea of where it was located, but I wasn’t really interested in visiting. I already had seen pictures of the gravesite and am one who doesn't feel the need to visit family graves. But Woody said that we should perhaps at least try since we might not travel to Kauai again. In thinking about her reasons, I agreed that she was right, especially since we had placed credence upon an inscription written on the tombstone as a direction as to where we were to relocate in Japan. We started to drive to the cemetery in search of the landmarks, and promptly got lost a couple of times along the way. We eventually found the last landmark and I remembered my cousin saying to take the right fork in the road and the cemetery would be there. However, there were two cemeteries. We remembered my cousin motioning with her hand towards the right so we drove to the second cemetery and parked. Once in the cemetery, it felt like we were in a scene from a movie where there is an attempt to locate a single gravesite in a sea of graves. Where do you start? Are we even in the correct cemetery? I distinctly remembered from the photos that the monument was black granite and was a polished monolith, but there were many monuments to look through. After walking around for a while, I saw a black, polished monument with writing inscribed on the side. The side inscription was a distinction that I knew well! It was indeed the correct gravesite. As far as I could tell, it was the only monument in the entire cemetery to have an inscription on the side. We once again sensed God’s answer to our prayer for a place where we would live once seeing the gravestone and the uniqueness of the inscription - ‘Place of origin: Oita, Beppu city’. Even though I have more questions than answers, I believe that the Beppu area is where we are supposed to relocate. I had been seeking a place when my cousin, who I hadn’t heard from in over 50 years, reached out to meet my dad. Our meeting led her to send me a picture of my grandparents' tombstone with 'Beppu,' a Japanese city, inscribed on the side. Beppu is famous for their baths, or onsen. Furthermore, the cattle industry in Kyushu, where Beppu is located, has recently produced the best wagyu beef in the world. Quite amazingly, they together fulfill the baths and beef criteria that I set out originally when considering what Woody enjoys. Now understanding that Beppu is the place of origination for the Murata lineage, I can’t help but wonder if the Lord wants to start a spiritual lineage in the same location as the birthplace of our physical lineage. More on Beppu in the Oita prefecture section. 

 

佳信

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