Like most of the hundreds of youths who packed the Church of the Gesù in Rome on July 31, the 42 singers from Elisabeth University of Music, a ministry of the Jesuits in Hiroshima, arrived excited to celebrate the feast day of St. Ignatius. Like most, these musicians were pilgrims who flooded the streets of Rome to participate in the Jubilee for youth. They cooled themselves with hand-held, battery powered fans, printed sheets of music scores or whatever they could to fight back Rome’s summer heat.
But unlike most, the vast majority of these sacred musicians were not Christian. Nevertheless, they joined other young musicians singing motets at the liturgy. For this Japanese choir, to sing at this memorial for St. Ignatius Loyola was to bring their own prayers for peace as the world marks the 80th anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on Aug. 6 and Aug. 9, respectively.
During the distribution of Communion, their rendition of Shokoh Maita’s “On the Hill Where the Wind of Galilee Blows” evoked a type of requiem as the young people fell into line. In Japanese they sang: “On the cross at Golgotha, You beckoned to the sinner. Let me also hear Your saving words…. Your words of life.” For Sai Murata, who is majoring in voice at Elisabeth University, to sing at that liturgy was to feel “overwhelmed” from the experience of being in churches she had only read about in books. The Mass also afforded her the opportunity to “reflect on what kind of service we, those involved in music, can offer.”
Kanaka Takano, a first year voice major, echoed Ms. Murata’s sentiment. Even though they come from different religious backgrounds, she hopes that music might be able to “transcend religious boundaries” and to bridge “differences in language, culture and faith in order to connect with each other on a deeper level.”
From Ashes to Art
In 1947, nearly two years after the bombing of Hiroshima, Ernest Goossens, a Belgian Jesuit, founded the Hiroshima Music School in a small quonset hut. He hoped the school could serve the practical purpose of training musicians for the liturgy, but also to show how the arts could bolster spirits as the city began to rebuild from the devastation of World War II.
Eventually, as Father Goossens sought the necessary certification from the prefecture in 1948 and established patronage from the late Queen Mother Elisabeth of Belgium in 1951, he developed connections with the new Assumption of Mary Cathedral, also known as the Memorial Cathedral for World Peace, which opened next door to the school in 1954.
The school’s location and affiliation with the cathedral were no accident. Inspired by the medieval custom of placing music schools next to churches, Father Goossens structured Hiroshima’s curriculum on Gregorian Chant as promoted by the Benedictine Abbey of Solesmes, France, which had been instrumental in the liturgical reforms of Vatican II.
Today, the conservatory offers undergraduate, master’s and doctoral degrees to its student body of 250. Led by Professor Yuji Kawano, the school’s chancellor-president, more than 30 full-time and 140 adjunct faculty members provide training in both performance and music education. And while the school comprises a small percentage of Catholics, Gregorian chant plays a foundational role for the school—even literally. Glass panels etched with the notation for liturgical propers of the Mass form the south walls of its renovated wing.
Pedagogically, all undergraduates are required to enroll in humanities courses— akin to a survey of Catholic faith and culture. Their professor and campus minister, an Indonesian Jesuit named Fransiskus Puthastanto (popularly known as Father Anto), explains that these courses are essential to their study because so much of the Western musical canon is “mingled with Christian culture.”
Singing the Horror and Hope of Hiroshima
The day after participating in the St. Ignatius Day liturgy, the ensemble presented a concert at the Church of Sant’ Ignazio di Loyola, just a 10-minute walk from the Church of the Gesù. Under the direction of Professor Hiroharu Orikawa, the choir performed for fellow pilgrims and visiting tourists a collection of sacred motets and Japanese folk music echoing the theme of peace.
Hikaru Hayashi’s “Scenes From Hiroshima” comprised the core of the choir’s concert. A work for mixed voices that integrates the poetry of the Hiroshima survivor Tamiki Hara, Hayashi spared no sentiment in giving voice to Hara’s sparse and emotionally naked texts, which ran through the opening movement:
Give me water
Oh give me water
Please let me drink
I’d rather be dead
Dead
Aaaa
Help me! Help!
Water
Water
Please
Somebody
Oooooo
Oooooo
The harmonic textures are plaintive and eerily unhinged—almost evocative of horror-films that create dread and tension. Students also spoke Hara’s words, which amplified the panic: “Please, help me!” “Mommy Mommmmmmy!” Akito Kimura, a euphonium major, says that this section “evokes a terror that feels otherworldly, almost inhuman.”
But the experience of performing was “extremely meaningful,” Mr. Kimura insists. “Through it, we were able to reaffirm the horror of the atomic bomb—its fear, its despair, and emotions too overwhelming to put into words.” And while it would have been easy to sink musically into the abyss of loss, the singers also insisted on holding that destruction alongside a spirit of hope. Mr. Kimura notes, “It heightened our awareness of the importance of peace more than ever before.”
The premiere of “A Heart for Others” provided the emotional pivot from destruction to hope. A joint collaboration among three of their professors, the composers Yoko Okada and Yuko Hirata and the lyricist Father Anto, the hymn commemorates the life of Pedro Arrupe, S.J., the former Jesuit superior general who ministered to the wounded in Hiroshima in the aftermath of the bomb’s explosion. Like the superior general who “heard the wounded’s anguished cries,” Father Anto’s texts ultimately invites people to imitate Father Arrupe’s courage in order to “serve with joy, to give our all.”
Sung prayers concluded the program. These included Francesco Meneghello’s “Hymn for the Jubilee Year 2025” and Aldougs Joson’s choral arrangement of Manoling Francisco, S.J.’s “Take and Receive,” a reprise from the St. Ignatius Day liturgy of the day before.
Promoting Peace through the Arts
In light of the decreasing number of Jesuits worldwide, the shifting realities of evangelizing in religiously diverse contexts, and shrinking arts and humanities departments in schools, questions remain as to how the arts might promote peace. Joseph Christie, S.J., the Jesuits’ secretary for higher education who helped bring the choir to Rome, suggested that a music school like Elisabeth University is “instrumental” in spreading that peace. And given the present circumstances in the world, “spreading peace at this moment is an absolute necessity.”
Mr. Kimura linked their peace pilgrimage to hope. “As we visited churches…planting seeds of peace through song…I believe this, in turn, leads to hope,” he reflected.
Benjamin Jansen, S.J., a Jesuit scholastic missioned to Elisabeth for his regency, finds hope in the crossroads of cultures. Since he began studying Japanese in high school in his native Indiana, Mr. Jansen held several positions that have allowed him to use the language—a skill that his superiors have encouraged him to deepen through his current mission in Asia. Though it is rare to find Jesuits in music education, let alone conservatories, Mr. Jansen finds hope in music’s relevance and urgency.
“In the present moment, we are in a place where many people are questioning the validity of objective truth and the very nature of reality itself,” he says. “Music is really excellent because it touches a part of the human person that is inexorable…. Music pulls you out of yourself; it transforms you; it does something to you. Even in the midst of this divided, polemic world, it’s an undeniable part of the human experience….
“Really excellent music…[can] facilitate encounters with the divine that can be great starting points for conversation with people who otherwise might not be in a place where they are open to other conversations,” he added. “It’s a way in.”
Benjamin Jansen, S.J., helped transcribe and translate interviews conducted in Japanese for this story.
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