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This article is from the EMU News Archive. Current EMU new is available at www.emu.edu/news
Zehr Reaches Millions in Japan
While traveling to his next appointment on the Tokyo subway system, Howard Zehr (right) is interviewed by Yasukazu Akada, a reporter for Asahi, a daily newspaper circulating to 10 million across Japan.
Trivia test: Who is famous in Japan, lives in a rural Virginia city, teaches at a small Christian university and had never visited Japan before this summer?
Until a few weeks ago, Howard Zehr would have said, "I have no idea."
National Coverage
Dr. Zehr, co-director of the Center for Justice and Peacebuilding at Eastern Mennonite University, made his first trip to Japan this summer and was amazed to find himself facing crowded lecture rooms almost every day for two weeks. He also received coverage from the two leading national newspapers and the three weekly Christian newspapers. The resulting articles reached the hands of more than 10 million people.
"My stuff is being used in Japan a lot more than I knew," Zehr said in an understatement that is typical of his style of speaking.
Japan’s awareness of Zehr’s worldwide work on restorative justice — Zehr is considered to be one of the founders of the field — apparently started with a translation into Japanese in 2003 of his seminal book, "Changing Lenses: A New Focus for Crime & Justice" (1990).
The translator was a prominent law professor in Japan who ensured that the book circulated among students and professors of Japan’s law schools, the Japanese bar association and some social welfare programs.
Book Bridges Gap
Zehr’s book makes it clear that his advocacy of "restorative justice" stems from his Mennonite roots in Christianity. As a result, Zehr’s book and tour served as a bridge between Japan’s largely secular academic and professional community and Japan’s minuscule Christian community, comprising less than 1% of the Japanese population.
In Japan from June 26 to July 8, Zehr told his Japanese listeners that the development of the western legal system, based in part on the Emperor Justinian’s Code from the late Roman empire, introduced punishment into the Christian way of dealing with offenses. Zehr argued that a "restorative" approach was more in line with the teachings of the early church.
Zehr said that 20th-century Japan seems to have imported the punitive Justinian approach to justice and suggested that today’s Japan might look to the Confucian harmony espoused at an earlier period as inspiration for "restorative justice."
The Western criminal justice system centers around making sure that offenders get the punishment they "deserve," said Zehr. In contrast, restorative justice is more focused on the harms done, the needs unmet and the obligations to "put right the wrongs." Ideally, everyone touched by an offense is involved in the "putting right" process.
New Editions Released
Japanese editions of two other books by Zehr — his photojournalism books on victims of crime and on prisoners serving life sentences — were released in tandem with Zehr’s visit to Tokyo.
Robert Lee, a retired Mennonite missionary and founder of Tokyo Mission Research Institute, was the organizer behind Zehr’s appearances at the Tokyo Biblical Seminary, Japan Missiological Society, Waseda and Toyo universities, and the Japan Bar Association.
Mitsunari Nakashima, a recent graduate of Eastern Mennonite Seminary and its Center for Justice and Peacebuilding, accompanied Zehr for much of his travels and presented several lectures of his own.
