Luciano Mazzocchi (chaplain of the Japanese Catholic community in Milan)

Wa-Peace

There are words that are able to express their meaning already from their pronunciation, before any dictionary explanation. Those are the words that have kept the pureness of their origin, while they are the dearest and most precious to the human heart. “Peace”, from the Latin “pax”, is for sure one of those. Its pronunciation always relaxes on the first vowels “ea”, as if they represented the stillness of reaching peace. Its opposite, “war”, sounds so harsh instead.
As words, also signs and images have the power to express directly meanings that they do not simply indicate. In the Mediterranean, the dove and the olive branch are well-known and unmistakable symbols of peace. The dove is such a mild animal that he loves being run after by children, and that is why the Holy Spirits takes this form to reveal itself to mankind. The olive branch speaks about peace through its silvery green feathers and through its juice, oil, an element able to rejuvenate dry skin and reinvigorate weary limbs. The olive tree recalls the wavy countries of Southern Italy, where nature is mother of peace through its landscapes and through the scents of its many aromatic herbs.
The ideogram (invented in China and then migrated to Japan) for peace is 和 – wa. Ideograms are images and not ideas. As an image it is the mother of many possible usages and shades. An image it can be seen as a substantive, adjective or verb. Also in our languages, adding the Latin word for “make”, we can construct a significant adjective: “pacific”. In Japanese however it is the same ideogram, without any further addition, that expresses peace as a noun, verb or adjective. And there is more.
My trusted ideogram dictionary, the Sumigawa Kanwachūjiten, starts by describing which influences led the Chinese to compose this ideogram 和. The left part 禾 is the stylised representation of an ear of rice that, in its ripening, bends its head. The right one 口 signifies “mound“. The combination of the two recalls then a mouth open to ask for nourishment and obtaining it. Peace is thus, first of all, a gift of nature, work and social solidarity. It is the gift of a providential guide to the universe.
Let us quote from psalm 8:

“Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth!
You have set your glory in the heavens.
Through the praise of children and infants
you have established a stronghold against your enemies,
to silence the foe and the avenger.”

The psalmist invokes the power of the child sucking his milk to force rebels and enemies into silence. Significantly here the Biblical tradition meets the Confucian one: the symbol of peace is not conveyed by weapons, but by the mouth and the nourishment, the mouth of the child and the breast of the mother.
My trusted ideogram dictionary gives its interpretation of 和 with this sentence: “This ideogram communicates the feeling of peace that two people experience when they put their hearts near one another.” Then it lists the multiple ways in which a Japanese can understand this ideogram in its context. Yawaragu, to soften; Yawaraka, soft; Tairaka, plain; Tairagu, to smooth out; Odayaka, pacific, calm; Atataka, warm; Nagi, halcyon days. The same ideogram, used in nouns, can moreover be read wa but also kazu, as in the very common name Kazuko, Daughter of Peace, and the masculine Kazuo or Kazuto, Son of Peace.
The ideogram 和 then combines with other to constitute some of the most sacred words for human existence: 調和, chōwa, harmony; 穏和, onwa, warm kindness (as the benevolence of Pope Francis); and above all 平和, heiwa, the official name for peace in Japan.
The treaties of peace drafted by authoritative men often reflect only an equilibrium of powers, where peace is the predominance of the stronger at the expenses of the weaker. Peace obtained through war is not an approach of hearts, rather it is the semen of future revolts of the defeated against the winners. Peace, 平和 – heiwa, is real only when it is also 調和, chōwa, harmony, and 穏和, onwa, kindness. Every civilisation, Western or Eastern, has desecrated peace by resorting to weapons and spreading blood. Far too often religions and cultures have mystified the confrontation between groups with mutual bans and censures, fuelling violence between populations.
Peace, 平和, heiwa, is authentic only when it is 調和, chōwa, harmony and 穏和, onwa, kindness. Every time Nature and Man meet up to the fusion of their beings. That is where peace originates as harmony and kindness. Nature produces the ears of rice, corn and all the other nourishments for life. Man pours its heart beats and the light of thought in it. Together, Nature and Man, are able to conceive art.
When a painter sketches on the canvas a sun, rising or setting, it is simultaneously the work of many authors. The man with its heart and mind seizes in himself the scene he wants to paint, nature through the rising or setting sun dictates him what to draw, while colours and brushes make this meeting possible. A work of art, in painting as in music, is always the result of a concert of human and natural.
I would like to conclude this brief thought with the image of two hands joined in prayer. The Japanese word for this image is 合 掌 , gasshō. I was recently granted a visit by the Bonzo Tatsusawa Nichikō, of the Nichiren school, that travelled from Japan to visit his son Kyōichi, an opera singing student in Milan and a regular guest of our Sunday Mass in Japanese. Together with him I visited the Cardinal Tettamanzi who, after his retire from pastoral activity, lives in the spirituality centre of the Sacred Hearth in Triuggio. The Bonzo showed the Cardinal a painting that was very precious to him: it depicted two joined human hands overlapping with the silhouette of Mount Fujiyama. The two shapes harmonize perfectly. The Bonzo commented with these words: “Fujiyama is our mother earth joining its hands, and we human beings learn from Fujiyama and join our hands together as well. Mother earth and we, its children, pray thus as one.”
Cardinal Tettamanzi was very touched and added an evangelic hint to this image: “One is the hand that gives, the other the one that receives. Together, they are the hands of love.”
In the paintings of my fried Giuseppe Siniscalchi I see the same harmony of giving and receiving. The hand that gave then becomes the one that receives, and vice versa. When there is thanksgiving for both the possibility of giving and receiving, then there is the ear of rice and the mouth, the child sucking from his mother’s breast. The breast empties and the child’s stomach fills up. Someday, the child will then take care of his elderly mother. 和.

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