TAIRYU FURUKAWA'S LIFE STORY

TAIRYU FURUKAWA'S LIFE STORY

In the same year, he became the editor of the religious review called "Cosmos". Due to the financial problems he faced, a friend asked a prison in Fukuoka to print the copies for him. Some prisoners working in the printing office took copies of the magazines to their cells to read his articles in secret and they were greatly moved and touched by his words. Although taking any papers into one's cell was not permitted, the head of the prison understood their wishes and invited Rev. Furukawa to give his lectures directly to the prisoners. In this exceptional way, he was appointed to be the prison chaplain, especially to care for those who had been condemned to death. Then he encountered two prisoners on death row who had been imprisoned under false charges ; Mr. Nishi and Mr. Ishii. It had taken nine years for the Supreme Court to finalize their sentences and in 1956 both prisoners were given the death penalty.

During this time, Rev. Furukawa had been considering the possibility that the two prisoners could actually be innocent. When the sentences were finalized and he saw the reaction of both men, he became utterly convinced of their innocence. At that time he was, on the one hand, a responsible head of a family of eight struggling with the problems of poverty and, on the other hand, entirely taken up by his personal quest for religious truth. Yet he decided to launch a campaign to obtain a retrial and the reversal of the death sentence for the two prisoners. (Please see Our Work - The Fukuoka Incident.) He had no knowledge of judicial matters and no funds for the campaign. In the face of these difficulties, he set out on a stormy sea with his family in 1961.

Two years later, by the order of the Ministry of Justice, he was barred from working any more as a prison chaplain, because he had started his campaign to free the two prisoners which he was told a chaplain should not do. Yet he did not stop the campaign! In order to raise funds for the campaign, he sold all his property including his wife's and begged for alms throughout the country. Only his family and several friends joined him and went out on the street to collect signatures and funds from passers-by. Whenever the Minister of Justice changed, he went to lodge an appeal against the pending executions, carrying his "Factual Investigation Report", containing more than 2000 Japanese manuscript pages. He worked 12 hours a day, every day, for about 5 months in order to complete this book.

During 40 years of the campaign, there were several unique episodes that happened to him.

The movement had some surprising developments, but the door to a retrial was not opened. In 1975 at the peak of the campaign, he was in Tokyo trying to obtain amnesty for the two prisoners. At this time, on June 17th , while Mr. Ishii was being granted an amnesty, getting an indefinite commutation of his sentence, Mr. Nishi was suddenly executed. Even though the death sentence had already been finalized by the Supreme Court, Rev. Furukawa succeeded in obtaining the reversal of the death sentence for Mr. Ishii. It was the first such instance in the history of Japanese law. Mr. Nishi, however, who was not even at the scene of the killing, was executed on the same day. The reason why the Ministry of Justice had Mr. Nishi executed and had Mr. Ishii' sentence reduced still remains a mystery to this day.

In accordance with Mr. Nishi's last wish, all his belongings and remains were given to Rev. Furukawa and were enshrined in the temple. This sudden execution, after the desperate efforts of 15 years to save his life, came as an enormous shock to Rev. Furukawa and it took him a long time to get over it.

The campaign, however, did not come to an end.

Every year, in June, on the anniversary of the execution, a memorial service was held, remembering Mr. Nishi' wish; " I do not want anybody to lead such a hard life as I did. I should be the last one." While thinking of the deceased, preparations were still being made for a posthumous retrial. Rev. Furukawa wanted to work as a prison chaplain again, but the wall of the Ministry of Justice was too thick to penetrate and his wish did not come true. Yet he started to practice the" reverence for life " in different ways.

In 1981 he was invited to give his lectures on Thanatology (i.e. the study of death ) at the University of Industrial Medicine. Since then his lectures on the deep meaning of life and death were regularly given to medical students, nurses and doctors across the nation in order to convey the reverence for life.

Furthermore, he shed tears for the people who died brutal deaths during the Second World War, especially for the Chinese people. In 1984 he built a monument in Kumamoto to remember hundreds of Chinese forced laborers who died in the coal mines of Arao during the War, inscribing his words, "Grief transcending national boundaries". In 1985 he took people to China for the first pilgrimage of reconciliation and peace, commemorating the victims of the Nanjing massacre perpetrated by the Japanese army in 1937. In order to make people aware of what had been done in the past and to help establish peace, yearly pilgrimages have been conducted since then.

In the same year, he had a fortunate encounter with Fr. Franco Sottocornola, a Xaverian Missionary Father in Japan, who had the same dream as Rev. Furukawa to create a center for interreligious dialogue. After first meeting him, Fr. Sottocornola immediately decided to come down to Kumamoto to work with him. In 1986 they established "the Center for Interreligious Dialogue", the first instance in Japan of a Buddhist and Christian activity united in one single religious institution.