“First clean the inside of the cup and the plate, that the outside also may be clean.”
Matthew 23:26b
When people from the West visit Japan, they often remark, “Japan is so clean!” The practice of cleaning (sōji) is ingrained in Japanese culture. There are community cleaning days when all the neighbors pitch in to beautify the environs. Schoolchildren clean their classrooms daily. (In some cases this amounts to rearranging the dirt, but the point is participation, not a spotless result.) And each institution has “big cleaning days” (ōsōji) at various points in the year.
At the end of every year throughout Japan, there is a major cleaning (ōsōji). This has been the custom since at least the Heian period (794–1185 A.D.). Every house, shop, company, and religious edifice is swept and dusted. Shoji—the paper “panes” in traditional Japanese sliding doors are replaced. Temples beat their straw mat flooring to shake loose the accumulated dirt. Build-up on kitchen fans and air conditioning filters is wiped away.
The point of all this effort is to start the new year fresh and clean. Today this is largely a secularized custom, but it has historically been thought of as preparation for the new year, and particularly for the first shrine visit of the year. This bespeaks its origin in Shintō thought. Shintō is concerned with purity and pollution—somewhat like the Old Testament laws regarding uncleanness. Jesus, however, taught that the cleanliness that matters is not external but internal, a purity that only he can bring.
If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
1 John 1:9
Prayer Prompts
- Recognition by Japanese people of their need for the ōsōji that only Christ can accomplish
- Repentance by God’s people daily as the Spirit reveals lurking sin and the gospel assures of forgiveness
- Clean hands for churches and Christians, that no unnecessary offense would hinder their witness