There have been loud street protests there against this impending change. Good on them.
But another major dissenting voice there is very subdued, but unmistakable: that ofJapanese emperor Akihito.
He’s made statements about this more than once. In fact, many Japan experts believe this dissent, as much as his age, is behind his latest statement in August 2016 about being allowed to “retire” or “abdicate” the Chrysanthemum throne. But there is now no constitutional provision permitting such an action.
“Any legal changes will take time, probably years, to usher through.” the Washington Postreported. ” But in the meantime, the emperor’s intentions probably will create headaches for [prime minister Shinzo] Abe, whose top — and controversial — priority is revising the constitution to loosen the pacifism imposed on Japan after the war. . . .”
As a report in Japan Timessummarized his role in early 2015:
“The people’s Emperor speaks truth to power“:
“Since his reign began in 1989, the Emperor has weighed in on sensitive issues numerous times and in doing so has repeatedly repudiated the agenda of right-wing nationalists. Of course his words are carefully vetted and are sufficiently ambiguous to avoid an explicit political stand, but in the context of his remarks and gestures over the years, his choice of topics represent a powerful message to all but the most obtuse.”
Japanese Emperor Akihito and Empress Michiko.
Recognize thekey phrase in that headline? Thereby lies a story for Quakers, worth recalling today. Here’s a version of it, which shows how small-scale, low-visibility work can cast a long shadow. It centers on a mostly-forgotten Quaker writer, mainly of children’s books:
Elizabeth Gray Vining, who died in 1999 at 97, was an eminent figure among Quaker authors of the twentieth century. She was also a candid observer of many things, including both Quakerism and herself. Consider, for instance, what she wrote in 1939 for a compendium on “Contributions of the Quakers,” specifically the section on “the Arts”:
“This section, unfortunately, might almost be entitled: What the Friends Have Not Given. When they ruled music and decoration out of their meeting houses, the Quakers, being a consistent people, put music and art out of their lives too. So intent were they on worshiping God and helping man that they overlooked the healing and inspiring power of great music and great art…. “Quakerism has produced scientists, as you would expect, for a scientist is one who gives his life to the search for truth …. Quakerism also produced saints, philosophers, philanthropists, reformers, prophets. Perhaps that is enough. Perhaps we should not ask for artists, too.”
Elizabeth Gray Vining in later years.
But avoiding creative work was not enough, certainly so for her. She also, by her own testimony, knew she wanted to be – had to be – a writer from the time she was a child. Her publishing debut came at the age of 13, with a story in “The Young Churchman,” for the princess-ly sum of $2, and an encouragement from the editor to send more.
From then her life was marked out by four poles: her brief marriage; Japan; Quaker Philadelphia; and through it all, her writing.
Born Elizabeth Janet Gray and raised in the Germantown area of Philadelphia, she married Morgan Vining in 1929. Less than four years later, her husband was killed, and she was seriously injured, in a New York automobile accident.
If her physical recovery was long, Vining’s emotional healing went on for the rest of her life. Forty years later she wrote of “the long slow assimilation of grief. Sorrow becomes a companion, a way of life. Grief and joy are opposite poles; joy and sorrow often walk hand in hand.”
She had done teaching and library work when, in 1946, she was selected to be an American tutor to crown prince Akihito of the Japanese imperial family; one of the stated requirements for the position was that the tutor be “a Christian, but not a fanatic.” When Vining quotes this description later, one can see the sly grin; she spent nearly four years in this assignment.
How did it happen that she was picked for this key assignment? A more scholarly assessment of the choice came in a 2010 study by Kaoru Hoshino, a graduate student at the University of Pittsburgh:
“Over the past decades, scholars as well as the media have given explanations as to why it was Vining, a Quaker, not Chaplin or someone else, who was chosen for the position, and their explanations seem unanimous. Vining was chosen because she was not only a Quaker known to be a pacifist but also an author of children’s literature, whom the Japanese expected to be sympathetic to the 12-year-old crown prince in the midst of the postwar confusion. Some also write that the imperial side found Vining more ideal than the other candidate [a Presbyterian], as she, having lost her beloved husband in an accident, had experienced the utmost sorrow in life and therefore would have compassion for others.
Elizabeth Gray Vining with crown prince Akihito.
While such reasons may have been true, there was also another reason why the imperial advisers preferred a Quaker, and based on several sources, the religious denomination of the new tutor was, in fact, one of the major factors that led to the imperial household’s decision to hire Vining. According to Maeda Yōichi, son of Maeda Tamon and the crown prince’s French tutor, a Quaker woman was considered most ideal because Quakers are pacifistic but not self-righteous or preachy. Japanese officials also found Quakerism ideal because it was understood, among Christian religions, as most compatible with the oriental world (where different religions had long co-existed) and therefore a Quaker would not force conversion.”
— “Why an American Quaker tutor for the crown prince? An Imperial Household strategy to save Emperor Hirohito in MacArthur’s Japan.” Kaoru Hoshino, Master’s Thesis, U. of Pittsburgh, 2010
As personally enriching as this Tokyo sojourn was, Vining returned to the U.S. in 1950 to discover that it had also made her something of a celebrity. “Oh, Mrs. Vining!” gushed one matron, on meeting her in Maine, “How wonderful to meet you! I have never been so close to royalty before.” She published several books based on her experiences in Japan, and one of them, Windows for the Crown Prince,was a 1952 best-seller.
Friends report that even in her last years, around the time of her birthday a sleek diplomatic limousine would pull up at Kendal, the Quaker-related retirement community southwest of Philadelphia where she lived, and disgorge the Japanese ambassador, often accompanied by a large spray of sumptuous flowers, for a courtesy call on behalf of her former pupil, now the emperor.
Given that Friendly connections paved the way for her time in Japan, one might think Vining had one of those long Quaker pedigrees. But in fact she was a convinced Friend, who was drawn magnetically to meeting in Washington, DC after her husband’s death, when her native Episcopal services proved no help.
“It was the silence that drew me,” she wrote, “that deep healing silence of the meeting at its best, when the search of each is intensified by the search of all….I found each Sunday just enough of acceptance, of strength, of inner serenity to carry me through the week…My searching, restless, arid heart was like a stranded boat which was lifted for a time on buoyant waters from an ocean beyond the boundaries of selfhood.”
Once inside the Quaker circle, however, Vining steeped herself in the most Anglophilic Philadelphia-centered version of the faith, rarely straying from a circuit that included Germantown Meeting, the American Friends Service Committee’s headquarters downtown, and Pendle Hill in suburban Wallingford, with side trips to Quaker and literary locales in England and Scotland.
This focus turned up frequently in her work. Vining spent three years working intensively on a biography of Rufus Jones, who became the mid-20th century icon of Philadelphia Quaker culture (though himself an immigrant from New England). The book, Friend of Life, explores Jones’s thought and work deeply, reverentially, and well; but from it one will get little insight into why Jones was so reviled, by so many, for so long, even decades after his death. Why not? The best guess is that the opposition, by Vining’s time, came almost entirely from outside Philadelphia, and is thus only barely worth notice.
She also wrote about Jones’s idol, John Greenleaf Whittier, a biography of William Penn, and a historical novel, The Virginia Exiles,about a group of Philadelphia Friends who were falsely accused of spying for the British and taken prisoner by George Washington’s army during the American revolution. She returned to Japan as the only Westerner invited to the crown prince’s wedding; she described this journey in Return to Japan (1960).
She was not entirely uncritical of her adopted community, however. Listen to the narrator from her 1967 novel, I Roberta,fingering the way old-time Friends had turned the plain language, originally used as a blow for equality, completely inside out:
“Some Quakers have a way, which I dislike, of saying thee to other Quakers and you to outsiders. If there’s a roomful of Friends and non-Friends, they’ll sort it out quick as lightning, theeing the sheep and youingthe goats in the same breath.”
But if her range of vision was sometimes limited, her sense of vocation was always clear: she was a writer. “I am with Book as women are with child,” she once said. Besides best-sellers, among her 25 books, Adam of the Road, for young readers, was a Newberry Medal winner in 1943. Yet for all her dedication, she spoke of this career late in life with an appealing modesty:
“That I have never been the writer that I wanted to be has not greatly diminished my satisfaction in the work of writing. Every book has fallen short of my vision for it…There must be many people like me…not first-rate writers, but…born writers, who write because we would rather write than do anything else, because we are fulfilled while writing, because in some obscure way we feel guilty when we are not….”
As a later member of this writer’s fellowship, I smile and nod at the clear-eyed wisdom and balance of this last comment. Friends are fortunate that our contribution to the arts is much more real 75 years after she commented on the lack thereof. Elizabeth Gray Vining’s long life of creative labor is one major reason for the improvement.
And beyond the books, she left a thumbprint on history that may be faint now, but is still visible.
— Adapted from The Harlot’s Bible, a collection of Quaker essays, now available in paperbackand Kindle.
Monthly Meetings and individuals in Aotearoa/NZ contributed a significant sum towards the reconstruction of the Mito Meeting House in Japan, and this was sent to Mamoru Hitomi, Clerk of Mito MM, in 2011.
A letter has been received thanking us for our contribution:
Nobody could expect the dedication ceremony of our Meeting House and Kindergarten coming so quick! It was held on 9 September 2012, just two days before a year and half after the great earthquake on 11 March 2011. It was cerebrated by 130 attendants not only from our area but also Tokyo and much further.
Let me express appreciation to all the donors worldwide who have supported Mito Monthly Meeting to build a Meeting House and Kindergarten. The house is a joint house of the two. On weekdays it is a kindergarten and on Sunday it is our Meeting House. This system has been kept since 1951 when Edith F. Sharpless, a Philadelphia Quaker, started over again after WWII. 100 year old brick meeting house was replaced by wooden house, but bricks carefully taken out from the ruins were put on the walls up to the waist and on the walking space around the whole house. At the porch the kindergarteners placed each brick piece as their memory in July. Now they enjoy playing in the new house and out in the garden lively. Wood smells good in the hall under the tall triangle ceiling. On Sunday meeting for worship has been held comfortably. It might be impossible without your kind donation.
But I’m very sorry we have made you troublesome when you directly wanted to send us your donation because of our wrong bank account. That’s why some of your donation took a long journey through FWCC Section of Americas, FWCC World Office in London, FWCC Asia West Pacific Section and Japan Yearly Meeting, and to Mito Monthly Meeting. During the long journey personal donors’ names were not always clear, sorry to say. We thank each FWCC staff who worked for us often.
As our Meeting House and Kindergarten is a joint house, 1/3 of the building belongs to the Meeting and the other 2/3 to the kindergarten. The kindergarten is to be nearly half granted disaster subsidy from the government, but none to the religious body. That’s why your donation was very helpful for Mito Monthly Meeting
We cannot say thank you all directly, but let me send you much appreciation to all of the donors. Enclosed are the photos of the new safety and lovely house. We will be very happy if you could some day visit us and see our Meeting House and Kindergarten.
Games People Play: The Psychology of Human Relationships is a bestselling 1964 book by psychiatristEric Berne. Since its publication it has sold more than five million copies.[1] The book describes both functional and dysfunctional social interactions.
In the first half of the book, Berne introducestransactional analysis as a way of interpreting social interactions. He describes three roles or ego states, known as the Parent, the Adult, and the Child, and postulates that many negative behaviors can be traced to switching or confusion of these roles. He discusses procedures, rituals, and pastimes in social behavior, in light of this method of analysis. For example, a boss who talks to his staff as a controlling 'parent' will often engender self-abased obedience, tantrums, or other childlike responses from his employees.
The second half of the book catalogues a series of "mind games" in which people interact through a patterned and predictable series of "transactions" which are superficially plausible (that is, they may appear normal to bystanders or even to the people involved), but which actually conceal motivations, include private significance to the parties involved, and lead to a well-defined predictable outcome, usually counterproductive. The book uses casual, often humorous phrases such as "See What You Made Me Do," "Why Don't You — Yes But," and "Ain't It Awful" as a way of briefly describing each game. In reality, the "winner" of a mind game is the person that returns to the Adult ego-state first.
In the game entitled "Now I've Got You, You Son of a Bitch," one who discovers that another has made a minor mistake in a matter involving them both holds the entire matter hostage to the minor mistake. The example is where a plumber makes a mistake on a $300 job by underestimating the price of a $3 part as $1, so the plumber sends a bill for $302, the correct price. The customer won't pay the entire original $300 unless and until the plumber absorbs the $2 error instead of just paying the (undisputed part of the) bill of $300.
Not all interactions or transactions are part of a game. Specifically, if both parties in a one-on-one conversation remain in an Adult-to-Adult ego-state, it is unlikely that a game is being played.
Origins
In the 1950s, Berne synthesized his theory of "human gaming" and built on work fromPaul Federn and Edoardo Weiss and integrated results from Wilder Penfield to developtransactional analysis.[1] Transactional analysis, according to physician James R. Allen, is a "cognitive behavioral approach to treatment and ... a very effective way of dealing with internal models of self and others as well as other psychodynamic issues."[1]
Influence
In 1993, American therapist-turned-author James Redfield self-published The Celestine Prophecy influenced by the theory of Berne's human gaming. Specifically, the life games to which Berne refers in his book is a tool used in an individual's quest for energetic independence.
References
Berne, Eric (1964). Games People Play – The Basic Hand Book of Transactional Analysis. New York: Ballantine Books. ISBN0-345-41003-3.
The Celestine Prophecy is a 1993 novel byJames Redfield that discusses variouspsychological and spiritual ideas rooted in multiple ancient Eastern traditions and New Age spirituality. The main character undertakes a journey to find and understand a series of nine spiritual insights in an ancient manuscript in Peru. The book is a first-person narrative of the narrator's spiritual awakening as he goes through a transitional period of his life.
The book discusses various psychological and spiritual ideas that are rooted in many ancient Eastern traditions, such as how opening to new possibilities can help an individual establish a connection with the Divine. The main character undertakes a journey to find and understand a series of nine spiritual insights in an ancient manuscript in Peru. The book is a first-person narrative of spiritual awakening. The narrator is in a transitional period of his life and begins to notice instances of synchronicity, which is the belief that coincidences have a meaning personal to those who experience them.
The story opens with the male narrator becoming reacquainted with an old female friend, who tells him about the Insights contained in a manuscript dating to 600 BC, which has been only recently translated. After this encounter leaves him curious, he decides to go to Peru. On the airplane, he meets a historian who also happens to be interested in the manuscript.
The historian explains how the world is currently undergoing an enormous shift in consciousness, elaborating on how things had been generally understood until now: 1) at first people believed the world to be governed by the forces of divinity; everything could be explained as an act of a god or gods, 2) with increased knowledge of their world brought about through scientific inquiry, people turned to the men and women of science for an explanation of life and their world, and 3) without a satisfactory answer from science, people instead had them focus on efforts to improve their lives materially and subdue the earth, illustrated by a hyper-focus on economic conditions and fluctuations. What was now occurring, explained the historian, was that the baseness of current conditions was revealing itself in our souls. We had become restless and were now ready for another fundamental shift in thinking that would eventually bring about a better world.
He also learns that powerful figures within the Peruvian government and the Catholic Church are opposed to the dissemination of the Insights. This is dramatically illustrated when police try to arrest and then shoot the historian soon after his arrival. This forces the narrator to live a nomadic lifestyle amongst those wishing to bring news of the manuscript to the public at large.
The narrator then learns the Insights, one by one, often experiencing the Insight before actually reading the text, while being pursued by forces of the Church and the Peruvian government. In the end, he succeeds in learning the first nine Insights and returns to the United States, with a promise of a Tenth Insight soon to be revealed. The Insights are given only through summaries and illustrated by events in the plot. The text of no complete Insight is given, which the narrator claims is for brevity's sake; he notes that the "partial translation" of the Ninth Insight was 20 typewritten pages in length.
In the novel, the Maya civilization left ruins in Peru where the manuscript was found, whereupon the Incas took up residence in the abandoned Maya cities after the Maya had reached an "energy vibration level" which made them cross a barrier into a completely spiritual reality.
Redfield originally self-publishedThe Celestine Prophecy, selling 100,000 copies out of the trunk of his Honda before Warner Books agreed to publish it.[1]
The Twelfth Insight: The Hour of Decision (2011)[4]
Reception and critique
The book was generally well received by readers and spent 165 weeks on the New York Times Best Seller list.[5]The Celestine Prophecy has also received some criticism, mostly from the literary community, who point out that the plot of the story is not well developed and serves only as a delivery tool for the author's ideas about spirituality.James Redfield has admitted that, even though he considers the book to be a novel, his intention was to write a story in the shape of a parable,[6] a story meant to illustrate a point or teach a lesson.
Critics point to Redfield's heavy usage of subjective validation and reification in dealing with coincidences to advance the plot thus spending more time concentrating on the explanation of spiritual ideas rather than furthering character development or developing the plot in a more traditional manner.
Critics also point to improperly explained and, in some cases, completely unexplained “facts” as flaws in the story.[7] Examples of this include the author’s suggestion of the presence of a Mayan society in modern-day Peru, rather than in Central America, as well as the suggestion that the manuscript was written in 600 BC in the jungles of Peru, despite the fact that it is written in Aramaic. Another point of criticism has been directed at the book’s attempt to explain important questions about life and human existence in an oversimplified fashion.[8][9]
Given that Friendly connections paved the way for her time in Japan, one might think Vining had one of those long Quaker pedigrees. But in fact she was a convinced Friend, who was drawn magnetically to meeting in Washington, DC after her husband’s death, when her native Episcopal services proved no help. 
This focus turned up frequently in her work. Vining spent three years working intensively on a biography of Rufus Jones, who became the mid-20th century icon of Philadelphia Quaker culture (though himself an immigrant from New England). The book, Friend of Life, explores Jones’s thought and work deeply, reverentially, and well; but from it one will get little insight into why Jones was so reviled, by so many, for so long, even decades after his death. Why not? The best guess is that the opposition, by Vining’s time, came almost entirely from outside Philadelphia, and is thus only barely worth notice.
She was not entirely uncritical of her adopted community, however. Listen to the narrator from her 1967 novel, I Roberta,fingering the way old-time Friends had turned the plain language, originally used as a blow for equality, completely inside out:
