As the song warns:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8CJZcVi5BA4_____
I'm talking here about the faces of smiling Mormon missionaries working the people of Japan (and, of course, elsewhere) where they peddled Mormonism under the guise of innocent-sounding "free English classes" to eager but unsuspecting Japanese who just wanted to learn the language.
My own experience in that disingenuous effort was triggered when reading the following recent post on RfM, where its author, "LivinginJapan," warned against LDS operations that use free English classes as a way to fish for converts among the native population of that country:
" . . . I was eating at an Italian restaurant . . . in Japan, with my Japanese friend, and I saw a table that had ads and coupons for other businesses usually local businesses, near the entrance. My friend picked up one of the papers, and said d (in Japanese) 'What's this, it seems to be free English classes.' Anyway, I took a look at the paper, and to my disbelief and disgust, it was a paper for [a English-teaching outfit instructing Japanese in the language].
" . . . [The ad did not use] the word 'Mormon.' Instead, they used the long proper name [of the Mormon Church], as well as the acronym LDS. The thing is, most Japanese people have heard of 'Mormon,' but not 'LDS' or the longer name. So, they don't realize it's the same church. My friend, who is fairly intelligent and well-read about global politics, religion and such did not recognize the name of the 'church.' so I had to tell my friend, 'It's basically a Mormon organization.' . . . My friend, who knows about the Church and has a negative impression about them, then said, 'Thanks for telling me about it. I already go to a non-religious English conversational school, so I would have no need for this stuff, anyway.'
"I think it's disingenuous, because [it] seemed to deliberately use the word LDS and the longer name, in a country that is not really familiar with those names. They claim to offer free English classes (saying 'All of our instructors are native speakers'), and say that the students themselves have to provide the textbooks to use.
"While at least they are being honest that their purpose to help Japanese people converse in English, I'm a bit skeptical because of the bait and switch tactics the missionaries have used in this country for years. Also, while it's marginally a better way to spend time (both for missionaries and local Japanese),instead of bugging Japanese people at train stations or on the street, I'm worried about the missionaries and/or instructors taking advantage of their position to prey on people and lure people in to the cult."
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The Language of Faking It for the Cult
When I was a Mormon missionary in the Japan West/Fukuoka mission (where I belabored the Big Lie from 1973 to '75 in Okinawa's cities of Naha and Oroku, along with Miyazaki, Sasebo and Hiroshima up on Japan's main island of Kyushu), we employed the same deceitful techniques. Always looking for a new way to hook converts, we were encouraged by mission leadership to do what was called "kasha kendo," or "business contacting."
This dishonest effort featured the following false pretenses:
-hitting up commercial businesses (such as company headquarters)
-asking to speak with the male owners;
-introducing ourselves with our version of "business" cards (business cards are important contacting tools in modern Japanese culture); and
-brandising on those bogus "business" cards in a crisp typeset format, our own names in "kanji" (Japanese pictographs) and the formal name of our "business" organization (The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints), all presented in both English and Japanese,
These so-called "business" cards closely mimicked the style, typesetting and look of actual Japanese business cards and were designed to impress and gain us access.
Our "free English classes" were themselves similarly deceitful. They, too, were a deliberately misleading tool which we routinely used, in deceptively-designed ways. to reel unsuspecting Japanese into the Mormon Church in the name of our free-English-teaching gimmick. In reality, of course, it pitch.
Not only were these free English class appealing props fundamentally misleading in their presentation and intent, the ones were taught in Hiroshima also grossly insensitive. I served the last portion of my mission in Hiroshima as a zone leader. There, I regularly visited (and, sadly, proselytized in) the epicenter of the A-bomb, known as "Heiwa Koen" or "Peace Park." The "Atomic Dome"--the remnants of Hiroshima's governmental industrial arts building--stood as a stark reminder of the horror of nuclear holocaust. Every week, I could look down on Hiroshima's "Peace Park" from a tall office building close by, where we as missionaries taught free "Eikaiwa," or "English." Every morning, at precisely the time the bomb fell on Hiroshima, an "atomic clock" would toll inside the park. There, an eternal flame burns in memory of those who lost their lives because of that day. I remember seeing survivors of the A-bomb slowly making their through the park, their faces melted, bloated and blotted; their bodies disfigured and crippled. I visited grass-covered mass graves and brutally-showcased war museums--where my views on war waged at the expense of civilian populations were forever changed. I was reminded me of my Japanese "sensei" (i.e., "teacher") in the then Hawaii-based Language Training Mission, who was was a young grade-schooler in Hiroshima on the day his city caught fire and was flattened by the A-bomb. He ran home to find his home ablaze and his mother and brother dead.
So, there in the heart of Hiroshima--in the middle of that historic setting of gross inhumanity against innocent civilians--I, along with my fellow mischievous missionaries, engaged in a blatant con job targeting Japanese civilians which took the form of employing free-English-classes sleight-of-hand. Our job was to teach them English in hopeful exchange for a lifetime of their own personal tithing-funded Mormon servitude. (Of course, that central purpose was never mentioned in the fine print of our advertising leaflets).
To put it simply, we promoted and taught these free English classes as a bait-and-switch tactic purposed to suck in Japanese businessmen and students into taking the LDS Mormon Church lesson-plan discussions. It involved handing out own personally-produced propaganda to Japanese passers-by that made no mention that were we were actually intent on baptizing them into Mormonism or demanding their money as a ticket into temple marriage and eventual entrance into the Celestial Kingdom.
We knew what the inquisitive Japanese wanted and we took advantage of it: They liked to learn conversational English directly from native speakers, preferring it over the regimented English classes book-taught in Japanese public schools that were long on structure and short on the actual development of free-flowing conversational skills.
I don't recall every snagging a Mormon convert through our "free English classes." Thank gawd.
What a sham, what a scam, what a Mormon plan.
Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 05/12/2017 08:56PM by steve benson.