Christians
make up only 1.4% of Japan’s 127 million population, but Western “white
weddings” now account for around three quarters of all bridal
ceremonies, which means Christian priests are in high demand. To meet
their clients’ expectations bridal companies have given up on trying to
find ordained ministers and have kept requirements to a minimal – men
looking foreign-enough to pass as Christians who can speak a little
Japanese and perform the ceremony in 20 minutes.
Japan’s
love affair with the Christian wedding is believed to have started in
the 1980s with the televised weddings of Prince Charles and Lady Diana
and was fueled by the nuptials of Japanese pop star Momoe Yamaguchi.
People, women especially, were attracted by the idea of celebrating
their marriage through a ritual that revolved around love and that
elevates the bride to the status of princess even for a short while.
Traditional Shinto weddings, on the other hand, encase women in a wig
and kimono, and are focused more on the merger of two families.
The
Japanese simply fell in love with the sharp dress code, the kiss and
the overall image of Western weddings over their centuries-old
traditions. But in order to have a genuine-looking ceremony, they wanted
Christian priests, which were pretty hard to find. That started the now
famous “foreign fake pastors” trend that saw companies and hotels
hiring average foreign gentlemen with minimal knowledge of the Japanese
language to perform Christian weddings.
One
doesn’t even need to be Christian in order to carry out the task. In
fact, the less religious the pastor, the better. The words spoken during
a Western-style wedding are important, but companies are just looking
for nonreligious guys who can stick to a script, because they realize
for the average Japanese this kind of ceremony is more about the image
rather than the essence. You can find real Japanese Christian priests to
perform the nuptial ritual, but a Western man just fits much better
into the picture than an Asian ever would.
Playing
Christian priests has become a well-paid acting gig for many
foreigners, but the practice is obviously frowned upon by genuine
pastors. ”It is a real problem for us. They are not genuine and they
give us a bad name,” one of them told the BBC. ”It is important for the
bride and groom to have a proper wedding, and they are not getting it
from these foreign priests. I have even heard of hotels using staff when
they can’t find anyone else.”
Fake
priests try to put on a genuine performance, and some even use wedding
scripts complete with all the necessary lines to make sure everything
goes according to plan. Some of the most popular actors are flown all
around Japan to do weddings, while others are hired long-term to perform
in spaces designed to look like churches, chapels or cathedrals and
built especially for fake weddings. They can earn hundreds of dollars
for 20-minute ceremonies for which they have to put on the ceremonious
robes, recite a few lines in English or decent Japanese and tell the
couples to kiss. It may sound a little sacrilegious, but since it’s all
about the image and not the religious aspect, most of the “priests” are
fine with it. ”If people are crying by the end of the wedding, I think I
have done a good job,” one of them says.
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