When Wesley United Methodist Church in San Jose, California, makes mochi-tsuki, it takes three days and the help of many members of the congregation. They start with approximately 4000 pounds of rice, which they wash and steam. After pounding, rolling, and cutting, the rice circles are dried and finally packaged. Wesley UMC sells about 100,000 mochi between Christmas and New Year’s Day. Proceeds from the sale are added to the church’s operating budget for the next year. The church is located in San Jose’s Japantown section, an ideal market for the mochi-tsuki sale.
Making mochi-tsuki also has the benefit of bringing the two congregations of Wesley UMC together for fellowship and a common purpose. The 800-member church has an English-speaking congregation, led by senior pastor Mariellen Sawada Yoshino, and a Japanese-speaking congregation, or Nichigo-Bu, led by the Rev. Junichi Tsukamoto. Most of the English-speaking members of the congregation are Asian Americans. The Japanese-speaking congregation has about 40 to 50 members. The church also employs a third pastor, the Rev. Wendy Komori Stager, who is the minister of Christian education and spiritual nurture.
Wesley United Methodist Church of San Jose traces its origin to 1895. At that time, Japanese immigrants began meeting for Christian fellowship in California’s Santa Clara Valley. Most were men who worked in California’s fruit orchards—part of the wave of Japanese immigration to the United States after the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 created a need for new low-wage workers. In 1907, when Japan promised to halt unrestricted emigration of its citizens to the United States in a “Gentleman’s Agreement” with President Theodore Roosevelt, some Japanese wives and children were allowed to leave Japan; but the ratio between new male and female Japanese immigrants in the United States was 9 to 1. Then in 1924, a new US immigration law banned all Chinese and Japanese immigration. So, since California law forbade marriage between Asians and Caucasian Americans, most Japanese men in San Jose’s Japantown remained single.
For most of its history, Wesley UMC has served people of Japanese ancestry—both immigrants from Japan and successive generations born in the United States. Originally the church was a mission outpost of the Methodist Church. From 1949 to 1964, it was a member of the Pacific Japanese Provisional Conference. Then in 1964 it became part of the San Jose District of the California-Nevada Annual Conference.
Through the grace of God, the church survived the World War II years of the 1940s, when the pastor and members were removed from San Jose to internment camps far from the West Coast. The church was closed, but, according to Masami Ishikawa, the lay leader of the Japanese-speaking congregation, the Methodists “kept the church for us.” In fact, the church was used to store the possessions of a number of interned Japanese, since they were forced to pack up with very little notice and were allowed to take only 150 pounds of possessions with them to the camps. Almost all of Japantown’s 53 businesses closed during the wartime internment, when most of the community was relocated to Heart Mountain in Wyoming. Meanwhile, the Christians in the internment camps continued worship services with Japanese pastors. “Then, after the war, they came back [to San Jose] and started again,” noted Ishikawa. Within three years, 40 businesses and 100 families reestablished themselves. Wesley Church reopened. While many Japanese American neighborhoods along the West Coast were lost after internment, San Jose’s Japantown was rebuilt.
Today, descendants of the early Japanese immigrants continue to live in Japantown and in the greater San Jose area. They were joined by more immigrants after World War II and, over the past 20 years, by an influx of Japanese businesses and workers with their families. Wesley UMC, which conducts services and classes in English and Japanese, found the need to reach out to “newcomers” from Japan. A program for newcomers called “Saffron Kai” was established in 1980. It provided fellowship, mainly for Japanese women who came to the United States with their husbands and children. In 1997, Wesley UMC hired the Rev. Tsukamoto from the Kyodan (United Church of Christ in Japan) to lead the historic Japanese-language congregation.
“The English-speaking congregation has made a serious commitment to keep our Japanese-speaking congregation solid,” stated Kazuko Tengon, Wesley’s English-speaking congregation lay leader. “We are one church. We’ve always included the Japanese-speaking ministries as part of the mission statement of the Wesley United Methodist Church.”
Mission, according to senior pastor Mariellen Sawada Yoshino, is part of Wesley UMC’s everyday life. “That’s a part of who we are,” Sawada Yoshino noted. “For 60 years we were on missionary support from the denomination and we remember that. Now, we are able to support ourselves and to share in missional giving.”
The church has a covenant relationship with three missionaries assigned by the General Board of Global Ministries (GBGM) to serve in Japan: Judith Newton, Claudia Genung Yamamoto, and Toshimasa Yamamoto. In the near future, Wesley plans to support an international person in mission in Peru, Ghana, or Mozambique, becoming a Global Mission Partner. In many other ways, the church’s mission giving is similar to many other United Methodist churches across the connection. The congregation takes part in the annual Church World Service CROP Walk. It supports Heifer Project International and Habitat for Humanity, providing funds and volunteers for work sites.
The church also supports local projects through ecumenical and neighborhood channels, such as a homeless shelter, a convalescent hospital, and a service project within the community. Often, too, Wesley UMC responds to appeals from the United Methodist Committee on Relief (UMCOR), giving to Turkey earthquake relief, Hurricane Mitch relief, Taiwan earthquake relief, and emergency funds for Kosovo. Funds to support the church’s mission projects are generated through two main events: a Hawaiian-style luau and a golf tournament that brings in about $8000 annually. “We’re so much involved in mission,” said Sawada Yoshino, “we don’t even realize that we are a part of the United Methodist Advance for Christ and His Church. It’s a natural thing.”
Sawada Yoshino, who is the daughter of Methodist missionaries Ben and Lily Sawada, was born in Japan and grew up in the Southeastern Jurisdiction in the United States, becoming familiar with the GBGM before she was ordained as a United Methodist pastor. She served as a US-2 after she graduated from college, working in Des Moines, Iowa, at the Inner City Cooperative Parish.
Wesley UMC is also conscious of growth within its congregation and the passing of responsibility from one generation to the next. At present, regular worship attendance for the English-speaking congregation is about 275—just the number the sanctuary can handle. But when holidays occur or special events are held, the church overflows with people. The Rev. Wendy Komori Stager stays in touch with Wesley’s student population. “I’m doing conversations with them over the E-mail,” Komori Stager explained. “We’re sending CARE packages to them at college (home-baked goodies and other items from home), and we gather them together when they come home for Thanksgiving or Christmas.”
Katsumi Hikido, the administrative board chair for Wesley UMC, has been active in the church for 49 years. “When I came to this church in the mid-1950s, our fathers and their generation were still running the church,” he explained. “But instead of holding onto their power, they cautiously turned it over to the younger generation, so the young adults could become the leaders of the church. I always remember that. So, when they asked me to serve again, I said: ‘I’ll give it one more shot.’ I figure I will try to use this year to help build the leadership for the future. This church has always had good leaders, and I want to leave it with good leaders.”
Joe Yasutake, who chairs the Council on Ministries, agreed. He added: “As a generation of Japanese Americans goes on, there are more and more changes. The kids are marrying into other cultures, and I think we need to be inclusive. I think the congregation is going to change—not just over the next five years, but continually, for 10, 15, or 20 years. I think we need to include people from the community and become more multicultural as time goes on.”
The annual mochi-tsuki-making event provides an opportunity for Wesley UMC that encompasses more than just fundraising. It is a chance for the whole church to work together on a project. It is a chance for cultural learning and for passing on a time-honored tradition from one generation to the next. It is a chance to break down the walls that exist between the young and the old, between Japanese newcomers and second-, third-, and fourth-generation Japanese Americans.
Junichi Tsukamoto remembered an image that made an impact on his understanding. “I experienced the earthquake in Kobe,” he said. “There were a lot of houses with broken walls everywhere and the church walls were crumbled too. In Japan, the church has very high walls that divide the community, separating those who are inside the church from those who are outside. But as I saw 100 community people living in our church (which was one of the shelters set up for survivors), suddenly this broken wall became a very good symbol. After the earthquake, there was nothing dividing us, nothing that defined who was inside the church or who was outside. We were all there, together, standing in the rubble of the broken walls. We all worked together to help each other during this time of crisis.
“I saw the hope and future of the church in the broken church wall. We have many kinds of walls to break down. We have a hard time when we start defining who is inside the church and who is outside. Our church should break the walls. We can serve the people of the church, the community, the state, and the United States and also people of other countries.”
Text and photographs copyright 2001 by New World Outlook: The Mission Magazine of The United Methodist Church. Used by Permission. Visit New World Outlook Online at http://gbgm-umc.org/nwo/.
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