| 4 September 2010 |
| Asian ecumenical leader Kentaro Shiozuki remembered |
By Hisashi Yukimoto
TOKYO (APEN) -- Professor Kentaro Shiozuki, a former general secretary of the National Council of the Young Men's Christian Associations (YMCAs) of Japan, is being remembered for his dedication and leadership for about half a century to Asian student Christian movement and nongovernmental organizations for reconciliation and social development.
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Shiozuki, a former Secretary of the Geneva-based World Student Christian Federation’s (WSCF) East Asia Desk and the WSCF Asia Secretary in Tokyo for thirteen years since 1957, died of pneumonia at Tokyo's Musashino Red Cross Hospital on 9 July. He was 86.
His funeral was held at his local church, the United Church of Christ in Japan on 15 July, following a memorial service held on the previous night.
Necta Montes Rocas, Regional Secretary of the WSCF Asia Pacific Region expressed deepest sympathy and condolences to the family, friends and loved ones of Shiozuki’s family.
"We are saddened by the death of Prof. Kentaro Shiozuki, our dear senior friend, former leader and inspiration to many of us in the ecumenical movement," Necta said.
"As WSCF Asia Secretary for 13 years, he became instrumental in the difficult task of developing and strengthening the work with university teachers and educators in the Asia region in the post World War II period and at a time when the role of Christians in the Academic World was a contentious topic of debate among the churches and the university world," the letter from the Hong Kong-based WSCF Asia Pacific Region noted.
According to it, Kentaro also prepared the ground work for the WSCF regionalized structure in Asia Pacific which began to take shape in 1968.
Necta told apenews.org that a Kentaro Shiozuki Fund has been set up by the WSCF Centennial Board in honor of Shiozuki's life and contributions to the WSCF.
The main purpose of the fund, established in 1990 is to gather and administer a large endowment on behalf of the WSCF, so that the constant anxiety and difficulty of raising the annual budgets for the movement can be reduced at least in part by an assured income from the endowment, said the President of the fund's board of trustees, Dr. Martin Conway.
Born in Tokyo in 1924, Shiozuki joined the Christian student movements in 1945, after he became a Christian in 1943 through a Methodist missionary during the World War II. He studied metallurgy at the Osaka Imperial University in western Japan.
During the war, he refused to worship at the Imperial Shinto Shrine and was severely punished for this act and was forced to do labor at the Osaka Port.
Through his participations in the summer seminars of the Student YMCA at Tozanso, near Mt. Fuji in central Japan in 1946 and 1947, he devoted himself to the student Christian movement and became an assistant secretary of Tokyo YMCA.
In 1948, he met John R. Mott, the founder of the WSCF, and participated in the WSCF Leaders' Meeting in Sri Lanka that year.
Soon after this, he developed keen interest in the vision of the ecumenical student movement and participated in the 1948 WSCF Ceylon Leaders’ Meeting and the 1949 WSCF Asian Regional Council Meeting.
The theological debates and discussions in the WSCF inspired him take-up further training in theology.
He studied theology at Yale Divinity School in Connecticut from 1951 to 1954 and the University of Chicago Divinity School with theologians such as Paul Johannes Tillich, H. Richard Niebuhr, and Harvey Cox from 1964 to 1965. Between these periods, he worked as a secretary of the National Council of YMCAs of Japan.
In 1970, Shiozuki organized at Tozanso the first Asia Leadership Development Center Program for Student Christian Movement’s Asia Secretaries, which produced many leaders for the Asian ecumenical movement.
In 1976, he led the national council as its general secretary for nine years, after working as it’s vice general secretary from 1972.
He also served as the moderator of the National Christian Council in Japan in 1976.
After his retirement from the YMCA in 1984, Shiozuki became the general secretary of the Japan Overseas Christian Medical Cooperative Service.
Before his death, Shiozuki had said that his ecumenical service in Asia was based on his sense of responsibility for and repentance of Japan's war actions in Asia during the World War II, in order to realize reconciliation and peace in the region and the rest of the world.
He was also involved in the establishment of the Faculty of International Studies of Meiji Gakuin University, Japan's oldest Protestant-run school in Yokohama and Tokyo, where he was among the earliest in Japan to teach on nongovernmental organizations and international social development from 1987 to 1994. Soon after, he also taught international cooperation at the Japan Lutheran Seminary in Tokyo.
After his retirement from teaching, he served as a board member and chairperson of the Nippon Christian Academy in Tokyo from 2000 to 2003 to promote ecumenical dialogues.
”In legislation to support citizen's organizations,” one of his Japanese books that he co-authored and published in 1996, Shiozuki said: "I think that living as a volunteer today is a matter of whether to change our way of life voluntarily toward living together in the whole world, not just providing some service."
Shiozuki is survived by his wife, Tomoko, and his son Isaku, both living in Japan.
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