PRAYERS & POLICEMEN

One of the things of which I remind my travelers in Japan, is that Japan is a fiercely secular state. As it is, religion means something completely different in the east than it does in the west. The Western religions have always had a thing about the truth. The Jews said, we have the truth, and someday everyone will come to recognize that. The Christians said, no we have the truth, and if you don't believe what we believe, we'll kill you. The Muslims said, in fact we have the truth, the rest of you are all infidels and must die. In the east, the truth is to be found within each and every individual. There is no one single truth. You figure out your own.

Thus, Japan, in which the two primary "faiths" or philosophies – Shinto and Buddhism – live more or less hand in glove, with an even mix of each with the other, there are no required rituals, and you can take part of one and some of the other, sprinkle it with a little of something else, and do whatever you wish as you share your soul with the spirits.

However, there is one thing you cannot do. You cannot hold public prayer or devotion in a public place. For that you go to the shrine, temple, church (if you are Christian), mosque (if you are Muslim), other temple (if you are Hindu), synagogue (if you are Jewish), and so on. Muslims will not lay out their prayer mats in public. Evangelicals will not hold their revivalist meetings in public. And Jews will not hold their minyanim in public. That's the way things work.

On my previous (and tenth) tour of Japan, we were fortunate enough to have (for the first time) more than a minyan of men. In keeping with the local rules and regulations, I made sure that Shacharit and Maariv was held in one of our hotel rooms. However, mincha always presented a problem. We were never in the hotel at that time of the day. And so whenever mincha time came around, we stood discreetly behind the bus in the parking lot, or some other place away from the crowds around us.

One day, however, we found ourselves in the middle of downtown Kyoto at Mincha time. We were in a small street behind the Daimaru department store (the Kyoto equivalent of Macy's/Harrod's/Hamashbir) when the time came for afternoon prayers. Hmmm, what to do? Well, we tried to find a place that was as close as possible to the wall of the store, away from where other folks were walking, so we were not blocking the sidewalk or anything like that. A swift mincha prayer ensued. Nevertheless, being in the middle of downtown, it's not like no-one could see us. And it's not hard to figure out that a group of men, all standing facing a single direction with their feet together and some of the swaying back and forth, might, in fact, be engaged in some form of worship.

So my guess is that someone passing by, or looking down from a coffee shop above, or wherever, called the cops.

As we finished our prayers, Kyoto's finest men in blue arrived - two plainclothes detectives and two uniformed policemen. And they were not thrilled, to say the least. Now, seeing as none of our group spoke Japanese, we had no inkling of what the lead detective was saying, but for me it wasn't hard to figure out why he was there. My Japanese counterpart approached him to inquire as to his wrath, and he explained that they had received a complaint of people praying in public. She waved him off with a "What? That's nonsense. They were just standing around. And anyway, we're leaving." She then motioned to us to beat a hasty retreat and off we went, with the policemen wandering about these folks, some bearded, and all with a variety of colored beanies of their heads.

Like  the man who didn't have a ticket for the High Holy Days Services at the synagogue. "You can go in (to Japan), but don't let me catch you praying!"