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婚約式 – The Engagement Ceremony

Photos!

On Sunday the 22nd of November 2009, Emiri and I got officially engaged.

Now I thought we were engaged before, but that’s only part of the story here in Japan.  Japan has a lot of traditions that stem from the Buddhism and Shinto religions, from Confucianism and just from having a culture and people of it’s own.  Marriage, as you’d expect, has a whole bunch of these traditions, one of them is 結納 (ゆいのう ‘yuino’, for more info) which is basically an exchange of gifts between the bride and grooms’ families.  This exchange of gifts formally marked the engagement of the couple and there are a few other things around it that I won’t go into, largely because I am not at all sure that my understanding is correct!

The church in Japan quickly recognised that if Christians are to get married they should have something to go in place of these various ceremonies and traditions, as they are based in buddhism and shintoism.  Otherwise, families and onlookers may feel something is not right and the engagement and marriage aren’t valid.  So in place of this engagement process the church created a 婚約式 (konyakushiki – engagement ceremony, or betrothal ceremony).  While the original Japanese traditions have pretty much died off, the engagement ceremony in the church is still done.  This is what Emiri and I did last Sunday!  We did it at Itayanagi Chapel in Aomori, where I spent 3 months of my short term year, and Emiri attended for 6 years and actually lived in for a few!

We went down by Ferry last Monday, spent the week half on holiday (although Emiri had a lot of homework) and half preparing for the ceremony.  We got to go to the Thanksgiving celebration on Saturday (Surprised I could fit in my suit on Sunday) and on the way home the following Monday stopped in Hakodate to see Nari-Nari and Hana-chan, who used to live in Aomori, but now live and work in Hakodate.

Overall the ceremony was great.  I had kind of expected it to be a kind of formal proposal of marriage, or agreement to get married or something like that, like a formal pandering to culture…  But really it was more significant.  It really was about us gathering with friends and relatives to aknowledge before them and before God, His work in bringing us together, and then promising to seek to honour Him as we prepare to get married.  In that regard it really was a strong affirmation of the purposes of the marriage we intend to, and are preparing to enter into, particularly in a modern culture that doesn’t hold marriage in the regard that it used to be held.

Some detail about the ceremony itself…

The ceremony was held in the afternoon at 2pm.  The normal morning service went on, then everyone had lunch at church (normal at many Japanese churches) and we rearranged and decorated the room a little, greetted all the guests who weren’t at the service and began the ceremony.  Martin Ghent, the pastor and OMF missionary, lead the service, we sang a song called God’s Family (神の家族, chosen by Emiri).  We then made promises before the congregation, each other and God.  As I understand from Martin’s explaination (I didn’t fully follow the promises as he read the Japanese, but thankfully he explained beforehand!), we aknowledged God’s leading in bringing us together and promised to remain pure and faithful to God’s Word as we move towards marriage.  This was particularly relevant as for many in Japan marriage is just a formality to undergo to have legitimised children and obtain the relevant benefits and legal recognition etc.  We also exchanged gifts as symbols of the promises we made, I gave Emiri a bilingual Bible and she gave me a Japanese one.

Martin spoke about love based on 1 John 4:7-12 (although, becasuse of a slide break, we only actually read vv7-9), talking about the roles of the different kinds of love mentioned in the New Testament and how they fit into engagement and then into marriage.

After the ceremony the church was rearranged and the tea and cake came out!  The youth group “surprised” us with a song we most definately didn’t know anything about whatsoever…  Emiri used to help lead the youth group and so has a close link with them.  They sang the song “God bless you” which some of us a JLC had sung for the Pain family when they graduated, but they also added a special last verse for us!  the food was good and the chat was nice, it was great to see people who had moved away from the church since I was there in 2006, and also to see others who I hadn’t seen in a while, like the Elliots and Angela!

The testimony slideshow

Emiri and I also gave a sort of testimony about where we were from and how we met, then how I went back to the UK and came back to Japan and Emiri talked about how she ended up at HBI, all the while showing photos of along the way, including as kids…  Afterwards Peter shared on behalf of OMF, Nozomi on behalf of Itayanagi church and Emiri’s dad too.  Then there were some thanks and a lot of eating things!