Seeing God as the true artist

WORLD’S 2005 Daniel of the Year was Makoto Fujimura. The Japanese American artist creates prismatic paintings in the Japanese nihonga technique by combining pulverized minerals with animal-hide glue, which he applies to handmade paper. Also an author and arts advocate, he has served as a presidential appointee to the National Council on the Arts and director of Fuller Theological Seminary’s Brehm Center for Worship, Theology, and the Arts. Below is our edited email exchange shortly after he returned from a February trip to India.

Could you catch our readers up on what you’ve been doing since being selected the 2005 Daniel of the Year? I’ve had multiple major exhibits around the world, notably the inaugural exhibit at the Museum of the Bible in Washington, D.C., in 2018. It featured my original paintings for The Four Holy Gospels Bible that Crossway published to commemorate the King James Bible’s 400th anniversary. I’ve also had major retrospectives at Israel’s Tikotin Museum and Gonzaga University’s Jundt Art Museum in Spokane, Wash.

I’ve published several major books, including Silence and Beauty, a journey into the “hidden faith” of Japanese culture. That book is in response to Shusaku Endo’s masterpiece novel Silence [about the persecution of Christians in 17th-century Japan] and Martin Scorsese’s film adaptation of it. My latest, Art + Faith: A Theology of Making, came out last year, and I look forward to seeing this conversation of art and faith expand.

Going back to your childhood, you’ve always had an artistic sensibility. What challenges did you encounter on the path to becoming an artist? A path to becoming an artist involves a series of crossing “impossible” thresholds. I believe the only way an artist’s path can be sustained is by God’s favor and is therefore miraculous. I’ve been able to make a living as an artist for over 30 years and feed my family, even though I’ve been told by many that it’s impossible to do so. I am convinced that this is one of the “proofs” that God is the Artist, perhaps the only true Artist, and gives grace, much grace, to those whom He calls to be artists.

You became a Christian while completing a master of fine arts degree at Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music. How did you arrive at faith in Christ? I became a Christian reading Western literature, understanding the King James Bible, as well as hearing the gospel at the missionary church that I was attending in Japan at the time. I now realize that my desire to seek God was imprinted early on as my maternal grandparents were of Christian lineage, most likely [tracing back to] hidden Christians. My family line includes a great-uncle who was a Presbyterian evangelist in Okayama, Japan. Even though my mother struggled in her journey of faith, the prayers of my grandparents and generations of saints must have had an impact on my journey.

How has art helped you get through the dark times, including the pandemic? My studio has always been the most sacred place to me, a place of solace and healing in dark times. During the pandemic, I have been most productive, as I was no longer traveling and was able to focus on my paintings. I had four major exhibits in 2021, the second year of the shutdown.

You were a consultant for Hollywood director Martin Scorsese’s 2016 film, Silence. What was that experience like? I visited the set twice in Taipei and was asked by Marty to help give feedback to the script and some final decisions of the film editing. It was great to learn from some of the best set designers and editors in Hollywood, and serve in one of the most important films that Marty has made. We spoke on our personal journeys of faith and 17th-century Japanese culture, my specialty.

In Art + Faith, you observed that Christians tend to be utilitarian and undervalue art. What can churches do to help cultivate art that offers a fuller sense of God? First we are the poiema, masterpieces, of God (Ephesians 2:10), so we are the art that God takes joy in refining. That means we need to understand poetry, art, theater, design, architecture, music, dance, etc., to properly understand our existence as the Church. By doing so, the Church will regain her identity as the Bride of Christ, to see herself as beautiful and as the ultimate masterpiece of God. To the extent that we see ourselves as God’s artwork being refined, to that degree the gospel will gain power and joy.

You lost over 50 works to Hurricane Sandy in 2012. Could you tell the story behind that? Many of the Chelsea galleries, including the one that represented me at the time, were severely damaged by the unprecedented storm surge that unexpectedly hit Manhattan’s Midtown area. The surge was so powerful, it rushed in breaking the windows [and destroying his works]. Miraculously, my original Four Holy Gospels framed pages were by the window, but high up on the shelf, and they were not harmed. I was scheduled to ship my other major paintings to the gallery that day, and the truck was on its way, but had to turn back at the last minute. Had those pieces been installed, I would have lost what I now consider to be seminal works, including Golden Sea.

In Art + Faith, you wrote that as a Christian, you “create from a vision of the world to come, and not just from the broken realities I experience today.” Could you give an example of your work illustrating that? It is “by his wounds we are healed” (Isaiah 53:5), and our brokenness is connected to the healing to come. The “vision of the world to come” is actually through the fractures of our ground-zero realities. [Fujimura was trapped beneath Ground Zero in a subway on 9/11.] My work and my writings have become a way to explore how this transfiguration can take place. My major work Golden Sea reveals the fractured earth, but the pattern is made with gold. My recent Christmas, 3020, dedicated to my wife Haejin, is an example of my art being a portal of the future.

You co-founded Kintsugi Academy (later rebranded as Academy Kintsugi) that trains people in the Japanese art of kintsugi. What do you hope participants learn in that craft? In kintsugi, which is connected with the venerable tea tradition of Japan, we reconnect broken ceramics with Japanese lacquer and gold. As we commemorated the 20th anniversary of 9/11, we relaunched Academy Kintsugi at High Line Nine gallery in New York. A kintsugi master and I co-founded this effort, and my wife serves as the president.

We train instructors who will facilitate the creation of Culture Care communities. These groups are designed to be an antidote to the current divisive culture-wars mentality in the church and a place for creatives to be leading advocates for healing the church and the world. They are also a winsome way to invite skeptics to join us in kintsugi experiences and realize we are all makers. When we make, God shows up. I wrote an Art + Faith reader’s guide toward Culture Care community formation, now available for free.

As I mentioned in the kintsugi chapter of Art + Faith, Christ’s post-resurrection reveals Jesus not only as a fully glorified human, but also a wounded human being. He is our kintsugi Savior, pouring this golden grace through His suffering and His nail marks.

You just returned from working with Embers International in India. What work were you doing there? Haejin [Embers International co-founder and CEO] has established a safe house and rescued or given opportunities to over 100 children living in the red-light districts of the slums. We went to India with two of our Academy Kintsugi instructors to create kintsugi experiences there as a peacemaking exercise. We brought the craft to the staff and groups that rescue and educate these children. We also invited the mothers to a new journey toward restoration and education so they do not have to go back to be victims of sex trafficking.

It felt miraculous to be there after two postponements. We also felt we were in the “eye of the storm” as many of the children literally live in the brothels. We are creating an intergenerational approach to end the multigenerational exploitation of the poor.

What art projects are you working on these days? I have embarked on a psalms painting project. I paint one 48" x 48" canvas per psalm, per month. It will take me more than 10 more years to finish. Dr. Ellen Davis, an Old Testament scholar at Duke University, has been translating each psalm so I may use that translation. We are also in the planning stages of building a Fujimura Chapel with the original Four Holy Gospels paintings, and are hoping to find a host institution.

As the war in Ukraine has unfolded, a video of a Ukrainian girl singing Frozen’s “Let it go” in a bomb shelter went viral. At Washington’s Kennedy Center, cellist Yo-Yo Ma, pianist Emanuel Ax, and violinist Leonidas Kavakos began their March performance with the Ukrainian national anthem. What do you think about the arts in wartime? In the Babylonian exile by Nebuchadnezzar, some of the first captives among God’s people were artisans (2 Kings 24:10-16). Dictatorial forces are afraid of artists and musicians because they are the voices of freedom that cannot be controlled. Conversely, where the arts thrive and new voices are birthed is where the Spirit is operating.

During the pandemic, I’ve thought more deeply about the relationship between trauma and art. I came to the conclusion that if we removed all of the arts that were not a direct result of trauma—such as the bubonic plague, invasions, and wars—we may not have 90 percent of what has endured. All art flows out of the fissures of our brokenness and trauma in some way. Think of C.S. Lewis’ Narnia stories with the Pevensie children escaping the Blitz in London to find the wardrobe. J.R.R. Tolkien imagined an entire subcreation of peaceful and courageous creatures while his friends lay dying in the front lines of war. The arts are given rise in such a time of darkness.