Reading · Schools and the words they use
At some Christian schools in Japan, new students hear something like “you have been chosen by God” at the entrance ceremony. After years of exams, it can sound like a pat on the back for getting in. Its original meaning is a little different. This page traces where the line comes from, and follows Aoyama Gakuin through 150 years of deciding what being “chosen” asks of you.
In short
Ye have not chosen me, but I have chosen you, and ordained you, that ye should go and bring forth fruit, and that your fruit should remain.John 15:16 (King James Version)
It's part of the long farewell Jesus gives his disciples on the night of the Last Supper. Just before, he says he no longer calls them servants but friends.
So this “chosen” isn't selection in the sense of passing an exam. You didn't put yourself forward; you were called — and you were called in order to go and bear fruit. Christians call this a vocation: being called and given a task.
Heard at an entrance ceremony, it's tempting to take it as “we made it through, so we're special.” Read in context, it says nearly the opposite: “Don't imagine you got here on your own. Bear fruit for others in the place you've been given.”
Some Christian traditions teach strongly that God has decided in advance who will be saved (predestination). Methodism — the movement begun by John Wesley in 18th-century England, and the root of Aoyama Gakuin — took a different view: God's grace reaches out to every person first, and anyone can respond to it.
So when a Methodist school tells students “you were chosen,” it isn't drawing a line that leaves everyone else out. The natural reading is: each of you has been called, and here you've been given a place to answer.
Most students at Japan's Christian universities aren't Christian. Chapel services and Bible classes are part of the education, but faith is each person's own choice. Even without faith, you can take the line as “I'm not here on my own merit alone” and “what I gain here is for others” — a reading open to anyone.
Aoyama Gakuin wasn't founded as a single school. Missionaries sent by the American Methodist Episcopal Church opened three small schools in Tokyo and Yokohama, which later became one. The school calls them “three seeds sown in the earth.”
Opened by Dora E. Schoonmaker in Azabu, Tokyo. Its opening on 16 November is still the school's founding day.
A boys' school opened by Julius Soper in Tsukiji, Tokyo — later Tokyo Eigakkō, then Tokyo Eiwa Gakkō.
A theological school for training ministers, opened by Robert S. Maclay in Yamate, Yokohama.
Japan took down the public notice boards banning Christianity only in 1873. The three schools opened in the years right after. It's also notable that the story begins with education for girls.
Of everything on the timeline, only the years 1943 to 1945 were changes the school didn't choose. Under wartime rule, Christian schools were associated with the “enemy's religion”: the theological department was shut, and the literature and commerce departments were merged into another school. Then in 1945, air raids burned about 70% of the buildings.
In 1949 Aoyama Gakuin made a fresh start as a new-system university — 75 years after the first seed was sown.
Ye are the salt of the earth … Ye are the light of the world.Matthew 5:13–14 (King James Version)
This comes from the Sermon on the Mount. In the school's explanation, salt adds flavour, keeps things from spoiling and purifies — working for society where no one sees. Light shows the way, illuminates and warms — giving others hope. And before it's an instruction to become something, it is a declaration: “you already are irreplaceable.”
The entrance-ceremony line and the motto say the same thing from two sides: you are here because you were called — so work for others, as salt and as light.
| Heard as | What it sounds like | How close to the original |
|---|---|---|
| A privilege | We beat the odds, so we're special | Far. The verse says “ye have not chosen me” |
| A task | Take what you gain here and use it for others | Close. It's exactly what “that ye should go and bring forth fruit” says |
| Being irreplaceable | Not your score, but you yourself were called | Close. It's how the school explains its motto as a declaration |
How the words sound on the day you enter and how they sound years later are probably different. Rather than one being right, the way the words shift in meaning over time may be the very reason to give them to students on their first day.
Contributed by a graduate. The year, faculty and other identifying details are left out.
I switched from the science track to the humanities. Studying classical Japanese felt like too much of a chore, so I looked for universities I could get into with Japanese, English, and politics and economics.
I checked the results site in a school bathroom and sent my parents a message on LINE right there.
I walked it for the first time on the day of the entrance ceremony. It was beautiful.
“You were chosen by God.” I'm sure that was said, but I let it go past me. Hymns, an organ, prayers — my first Christian ceremony, and yet it felt comfortable.
At chapel I bought a Bible, and sang hymns and listened to them. There are a lot of stylish people. Quite a lot of kind people, too. I cheer for the Hakone Ekiden every year.
I once saw a newspaper reporter asking students, “What comes to mind when you hear Aoyama Gakuin?” A young man answered, “Being stylish,” and was told, “Wrong. You're not very stylish yourself, are you?” The right answer, apparently, is the Ekiden.
I'll keep working to be both.
Don't be afraid.