Garden of Love

When 17-year-old Yasujiro Aoki was told that he had leprosy, he did what a devout Buddhist should. Dressed in white robes and carrying a walking stick, he made a lengthy pilgrimage to the 88 holy places of Buddhism on his native Japanese island of Shikoku, visiting each three times. But at the end of the last lap, having found no cure, he did what a devout Buddhist should not: he turned in at the gate of an Anglican missionary hospital.

There, although he stayed ten years, he found no cure, but he found a cause. He became a lay missionary in the Anglican Church in Japan and devoted himself to helping other leprosy victims. In March 1927, at the age of 35, he made his way to jungle-like Motobu Peninsula on northern Okinawa because he had heard fearful tales of the misery of Okinawa's leprosy sufferers.

Religion Spurned. He could hardly have picked a more difficult place for his labors. The last missionary who had tried to help Okinawa's destitute victims had been deported for meddling. When Aoki arrived, the afflicted were either kept hidden by their families or left on the beaches to starve. Many of them managed to live by creeping into stores, threatening to touch the goods on display unless the storekeeper paid them off with food.

Aoki made his headquarters in a cave by the ocean, secretly began rounding up his fellow sufferers and taking them back to his peninsula. There, unnoticed by the islanders, they built crude shelters and lived on food that Aoki bought with his slim funds. His recruits at first spurned his religion, since by Okinawan tradition leprosy was considered an evidence of evil, on the part of either the sufferer or his ancestors. Aoki countered by reciting Christ's absolution of the blind man: "Neither hath this man sinned, nor his parents: but that the works of God should be made manifest in him (John 9:3)."

Lowest Point. Aoki's colony was making quiet progress when the islanders were suddenly aroused by a Japanese plan to build a leprosarium on Okinawa. They burned the lumber for the buildings, finally forced Tokyo to postpone the plan. Then an enterprising newspaper printed a story about Aoki's work, and nearby farmers marched on the colony, pulled the huts down with ropes (they were afraid to touch the boards) and burned them. Aoki's small band got until sundown to get off Okinawa. They fled by boat to an uninhabited island off the coast to start all over again.

Undaunted. Aoki slipped back to Okinawa, used intermediaries to buy up a wooded island called Yagaji, just off the peninsula shore. Two wealthy Japanese Christians donated money to build a central hall and two dormitories. A new colony, called Airaku-en (Garden of the Haven of Love) was started, and Aoki became its manager. The following year the Japanese government decided to use Aoki's site for its leprosarium, built a hospital and several other buildings. The colony's population jumped from 42 to 242, and some blamed Aoki for the government's brutally efficient gathering process. "I could stand the stonings and beatings and having my house burned down, because I had faith in my work," said Aoki. "But when people here turned on me, it was the lowest point of my life."

Full Cycle. Out of nowhere to Okinawa came World War II. The Japanese turned on Christians, treated Aoki as a spy, and drove him out of the colony. He tried living on an offshore rock, got the police to jail him until they needed the jail for criminals, finally went to live in an abandoned tomb. Later, he dragged himself from his tomb to have a leg amputated. Making his way back to Airaku-en, he found his colony demolished by U.S. bombs (the U.S. thought Yagaji a submarine base) and his old companions back in the caves.

The fighting had no sooner stopped, however, than Aoki was back on his one foot, organizing the colonists in rebuilding Airaku-en. The U.S. Army arrived with Quonset huts, clothing and food. Aoki was made a lay reader of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the U.S.. acted as minister until the Rev. Luke Kimoto, a 25-year-old Episcopal deacon from Japan (who does not have leprosy) became its first permanent minister in 1954.

At 63, Aoki still bears the dreadful marks of leprosy, but the disease seems to have been arrested. In Airaku-en's chapel he leads hymn singing and teaches Sunday school each week. He watches over Airaku-en like a patriarch, continues to convert its inhabitants to Christianity. Last week he asked the Episcopal Church on behalf of Airaku-en's Christians to establish a worldwide mission to victims of leprosy. By the standards he has set for himself, Aoki regards his life as a heartening success. His proof: although less than 1% of Okinawans are Christian, 34% of Airaku-en's 924 residents are Christian.

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