Art Life Faith Podcast

Welcome to the Art, Life, Faith Podcast, and I’m your host, Roger Lowther. This week on March 11, 2026, we remember the 15th anniversary of that terrible earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear disaster that struck the northeast coast of Japan. In memory of that event, last month, we had a big gathering within JEMA, which is the Japan Evangelical Missionary Alliance, the organization that represents every missionary and every mission organization in Japan. We all met in our new church space, Grace City Church Tokyo’s space and spent three days looking at the earthquakes and floods since 2011 and trying to see what we could learn from them and prepare for the next one. Some of the stories that they told were actually quite funny. There was a group that came to mud-out a house. The seawater had gone clear up to the ceiling, and so the walls and the insulation were all soaked and full of mildew. But this group, instead of starting with the ceiling and then the walls, and then the floor, started with the floor. They not only removed the floors but cut through the beams and very foundations of the house. Well, that next team that came in to take out the walls, first had to fix the foundations and then put the floors back before they could work on the rest of the house. And so, at the gathering, they were talking about the need for someone who can lead groups who actually knows what they’re doing. And hopefully, knows a little something about how a house is built. Basically, the problem that kept coming up over and over again during the course of the gathering was that the Church of Japan felt like they had to start from scratch every single time a disaster happened. They needed to try to find new resources: new people, new networks, new money. And so to that end, recently, a new network was formed called Zenkisai, which is the Christian National Disaster Network. And little by little, it’s growing. And also, after this past earthquake, the Noto Earthquake, within Mission to the World, I led a committee to form a disaster relief project account that is for every disaster in Japan, not just for one. When that next disaster comes, we will be ready to receive your help. I’ve put the details for that in the show notes for this episode. So now, through this project account, we can receive funds that will be used to buy food, water, supplies, and also cover costs of sending groups of Japanese people to the disaster area from our churches in Japan. And also very important, we will be able to pay Japanese workers to aid in the relief effort. That next disaster is coming. We know it is, but we’re doing what we can to plan for it. Anyway, before we move on to two conversations I had with people at the gathering, I want to let you all know about a sale coming up. On March 11, on the 15th anniversary of the earthquake, for one day only, all of the ebooks I’ve written about the earthquake will be available for $0.99 on Amazon in the US, and just 100 yen on Amazon in Japan. This includes both children’s books, The Tsunami Violin and Pippy the Piano and the Very Big Wave, in English and in Japanese. The sale also includes another book I wrote called Aroma of Beauty, with a beautiful foreword by Makoto Fujimura. Personally, I think you should get the book just to read what he wrote, his experiences after 9/11. And by the way, we also have an exhibit going on in our church space with The Tsunami Violin, showcasing the beautiful artwork by the very talented Holly Rose Wallace, as another way that our church community is remembering the people and towns affected by the disaster. A big thank you to all of you who’ve already bought all three of these books and left reviews. Thank you so much. Okay, now let’s turn to my conversation with Dean Bengston. We are here at the JEMA Gathering (Japan Evangelical Missionary Alliance), spending three days talking about disaster relief and trying to prepare for the next disaster. There’s been quite a few ways that...

Welcome to the Art, Life, Faith podcast. And I’m your host, Roger Lowther. Well, Happy New Year everyone! It’s good to be with you in 2026. I hope you’ve had a good year so far. Two of my boys are in college now but were able to be back with us over the winter break, and we got to have some fun in the snowy mountains of Japan, including an overnight snowshoe camping trip up one of the tallest mountains in Japan. It was beautiful, but it was also very, very cold. So cold, in fact, that the water in our water bottles froze almost immediately. And my fingers stuck to any kind of metal I touched. But so many good memories. Anyway, I want to thank you so much for your support of our newest children’s book, The Tsunami Violin, which was released late last year. Many of you have been writing me notes of encouragement, telling me who you’ve gifted the book to or your own experiences with the story. I want to share one of them with you. One woman read the book to her granddaughter’s elementary school class. In her note to me, she wrote, “Every child was wide-eyed and engaged. Students were able to identify how the characters were happy at the beginning, how they were changed by the tsunami, and how at the end of the story they were happy again because they were able to bring others hope through their story and their music. I will always cherish this special time with the students and that it was possible because of your book.” So of course I’m encouraged to receive notes like this and pray that this book will continue to have an ongoing impact in people’s lives. In our last episode, we shared a little bit about the making of The Tsunami Violin and the people involved. I thought you may also like to hear a little bit more about the background of what went into the making of the book. We consciously followed the traditional sonata-allegro form that is so common in much of classical music. In the beginning, we have the exposition, when the main theme is introduced. The main character is introduced as a tree, living in a literal garden of paradise, a forest that was planted 400 years ago and was designated as one of the most beautiful sites in all of Japan. Then everything falls apart. The tsunami comes and physically breaks the tree, tearing her up by the roots. This is the beginning of the development section, when the melodic theme is broken into fragments. Also, the development is usually in the minor key to express sadness. Then in the story the craftsman shows up, has the tree cut into smaller pieces, takes them to Tokyo, and begins to build a violin out of them. So this is the part where the development continues, where melodic fragments are taken through different keys and different ways: backwards, forwards, and upside down. Sometimes they find new relationships with a secondary theme. In other words, the fragments are put back together in new ways. And then the story ends with the main character finding hope and new life as a violin, surrounded by community through her music. And this, of course, is the recapitulation, the opening musical theme but as a new creation. Somehow that theme is deeper and more beautiful for having gone through the trauma of the development, through the breaking, through the minor key, and we hear the melody with new ears. I pray that as you read this book, you will be filled with new wonder as to how God brings hope into broken lives. Okay, today I want to share with you a conversation I had with Jerrod Partridge, a phenomenal artist working in Ocean Springs, Mississippi, on the coast of the Gulf of Mexico. He and his wife Jessie play a central role in the life of the community there, running a studio right on the main strip, and also in the lives of so many artists including, recently, a Japanese intern who came from our community here in Tokyo to spend the summer with that family. I so appreciate them and am happy just to be able to share this conversation with you so that you can get to...

Today, I'm excited to share with you a project that our team has been working on for quite some time now. Our new children's book, The Tsunami Violin, comes out on November 24, 2025. ...

Every month, we invite an artist to come and share their art with us after a meal and then lead a discussion. “What does their art have to do with our lives? What does that have to do with the Christian faith?” Art, life, faith. When this artist can speak English, I ask them to record one of these podcasts so that we can share the story with you as well. ...

Hello and welcome to the Art Life Faith podcast. I'm your host, Roger Lowther. Every year, we have interns come work alongside us in what God is doing here in Japan through the arts. This summer, one of our interns was a phenomenal dancer named Anna Gardner Herren, with a huge heart for missions around the world. This was her third summer with us here in Japan, and she also made trips to Taiwan and Korea. Last August, I interviewed her in this podcast—"#61 Summer Internships” if you’d like to have a listen—so I thought it would only be fair to give her a chance to interview me this year. She has her own wonderful podcast called The Purpose of Beauty, where she explores the role of beauty in our lives talking with various artists from around the world. In this episode that I’m about to share with you, we discuss some things that I’ve never talked about before on this podcast, especially about the music of Bach and its impact in Japan, so I think you’ll enjoy it. You can find other episodes of her podcast by searching for The Purpose of Beauty or by going to our show notes. Here is our conversation: Anna Gardner Hello and welcome to the “Purpose of Beauty” podcast. I'm here with Roger W. Lowther, founder and director of Community Arts Tokyo and worship director at Grace City Church Tokyo. He also just happens to be my boss as the Mission to the World team leader in Japan. So let's welcome Roger. Roger Thank you. Great to be here. Looking forward to talking with you about this. Anna Gardner I'm so excited to talk to you because you have so many books written about beauty, so I really wanted to hear some things that you had to say. Roger Sure. Well, where do we start? Anna Gardner Where do we start? Well, one of the things that I really enjoyed hearing you talk about is Bach, and especially Bach in Japan. So for those of you just tuning in, he is a really amazing organ player, has played all over Japan and America and probably other places as well. And he was telling me more about how Bach is so influential and important in Japan, possibly more so than America. Roger Yeah, I would say so. Anna Gardner But how did you first encounter Bach? Roger Oh, interesting question. I've actually never been asked that before. Anna Gardner Really? Well, I would love to know. Roger I was about to switch teachers between elementary school and junior high, and the teacher wanted to test me, audition me to see if he would take me on as a student. And so he gave me a lesson and said, “I want you to learn this piece.” It was from the Liturgical Year, the little pieces that Bach wrote, each one's like a page long, so it's not too hard. And I passed the audition. He said, “Wow, I've never had someone learn this so quickly.” I had nothing to compare it to so I didn't know. I practiced really hard. Anna Gardner So Bach is one of your origin stories of playing the organ? Roger Yeah, I mean, it was a very stressful situation, so I didn't actually enjoy playing the piece very much. But that was my first interaction. Yeah, and then it's grown from there. Anna Gardner Wow. Did you ever think you would be playing it here in Japan? Roger No, Japan was not on my radar at that point. But actually after that, my audition to Juilliard, to college, was through a piece. They make you memorize and play a prelude and fugue of Bach, which are much longer as organ works than piano. It's about 15 minutes, something like that. And so that was my first piece on the audition, and I will never forget any of the notes in that piece ever, because I had four other auditions before that one, and I recorded it, and it is permanently etched into my head. So yeah, right now I'm actually going through a whole project to record all of Bach's sacred organ works. Anna Gardner Why his sacred organ works? Roger Because people really haven't focused on that.

Welcome to the Art Life Faith podcast, and I'm your host, Roger Lowther. Well, before we get this episode’s interview, I want to share a couple of updates with you. A couple of weeks ago, we launched the Japanese edition of Third Culture Kids, which is designed to help Japanese families living overseas with the challenges that come from raising kids in a foreign context. We know it's going to be a big help to a lot of people, and so we're excited to see that it made it to the top 10 for Christian books in Japan and the top 20 for family relationships. We are also looking forward to the launch of my next book, Hidden Beauty: Seeing God in Japan on August 1. The book is about seeing the beauty of God that's hidden within the art, history, and lives of people in Japan. In fact, this is a book that has grown out of our Art Life Faith gatherings. Most of the people I tell stories about in the book have been featured speakers in the past. By writing it down with them, this has been one more way to help Japanese people articulate how they see connections between their art, life, and faith. It's been really fun to see the excitement on their faces as these stories now come out in print. I really hope that even if you're not interested in Japanese culture at all, that through these books, you will gain a fresh perspective on how God can be worshiped in your daily life. Well, for this episode I have the privilege of talking to Takahiro Nakamine, otherwise known as Tone, who leads a Christian heavy metal band called Imari Tones, and he led our Art Life Faith discussion the evening after recording this interview. There were a lot of people there, very interested in hearing what he had to say, hear his music, and watch some of his music videos. He has quite a following here in Japan, and it really was an honor talking with him. I find discussions like this particularly fascinating, because when we consider what it means for ethnodoxology, the praise of the nations of the world, sometimes it’s not what we expect. Takahiro’s music is very Japanese, not because he plays traditional Japanese instruments, and not because he is singing in Japanese, and not even because he incorporates Japanese scales into his music. It’s because he is authentically praising God. It just flows out of his music and leads us to worship God as well. No one can say the West imposed their culture on him. Rather, he took an art form that spoke to him and made it his own. I mean, there is no other heavy metal band in the world quite like Imari Tones. He said he was born to play heavy metal, and I have to agree. Here’s just a little taste of his music. [“Passion” by Imari Tones] Roger So, Takahiro, thank you so much for sitting down with me to talk with people on this podcast. Takahiro Konichiwa! Arigato Gozaimasu! Thank you for having me. My name is Tak. I'm from Japan, and I'm in a band called Imari Tones, and we play Christian heavy metal. Roger So that I have so many questions for you, but let me first start with your name. So, Takahiro Nakamine, but you said that you're also called Tone. Why are you called Tone? Takahiro Yeah, some of my close friends call me Tone, and basically it's about my guitar sound. People call it Tone. And because I have a good tone, people call me Tone. Roger That's awesome. Takahiro Also, you know, my name is Takahiro Nakamine. That's my real name, and the first and last letter of these goes like T, O, N, E, so that's where I got my nickname. Roger Very cool. I love it. A musical nickname. And your band is called Imari Tones. Now how did the band get that name? Takahiro It's a long story. Imari is a name of Japanese porcelain, like dish pottery. Japanese old pottery from like the 18th century. We had very beautiful traditional pottery. And this pottery was exported to Europe and was very expensive. So, in a sense, it means Japanese beauty. So that's one explanation.

A lot has been happening since our last podcast, so let me catch you up a bit. First, our church, Grace City Church Tokyo, celebrated its 15th anniversary this past Sunday on Pentecost Sunday, June 8, 2025. We started weekly worship exactly 15 years ago, and it's been quite a journey since, which became real to all of us watching the presentation we made of pictures over the years and seeing my own children as little kids. Two of them are now in college. A lot of time has passed since this church started. And to just think about all the things that we've gone through over the past years. There was a lot of pain, but a lot of joy as well. And it was so exciting to celebrate that together with this community. We're so thankful for how God has blessed over these years. ...

This episode, I have the privilege of talking with Mike Nawrocki, co-creator of VeggieTales and the beloved voice of Larry the Cucumber.

This is the third in a series of conversations I've shared with you from Lausanne Congress 4, which took place September 22–28, 2024 in Seoul, South Korea. Because it was the 50th anniversary of the Lausanne Movement, it was the largest gathering yet, with over 5,000 people in person and another 2,000 online, plus over 200 nations were represented. I had so many amazing conversations. I'm so glad that through these three episodes, you can get just a little peek into what God is doing around the world. ...

I'd like to continue in this episode what we began in the last, reflecting on the Lausanne Fourth Congress that happened at the end of September 2024, which I had the honor of attending. These events don't happen very often. The previous one was in 2010, 14 years ago. This one was by far the biggest, with 5,000 people from over 200 nations, and I'm still trying to process all the material that was there and all the relationships and new people that I met. So in this episode, we will have a longer conversation at the end with Doug Birdsall, who was chairman of the Lausanne Committee for 10 years, as he reflects on Lausanne and its purpose and where it has come from. But first, I'd like to begin by introducing you to some of the people that I met. Here are just some of the conversations I had with people there.

In September, I had the honor of attending the 4th Lausanne Congress on World Evangelism in Seoul or Incheon, South Korea. The Lausanne movement celebrated its 50th anniversary with 5,000 people from over 200 nations. ...

Are you a college student? If you are, have you ever considered doing an internship somewhere in the world with a missions team? In this episode, we're going to talk a little bit with two interns who spent some time with us this summer. Internships are a great way to see what God is doing around the world. ...

My family and I live on an island that's part of the reclaimed land of Tokyo Bay. It's at the mouth of the Sumida River, which flows down from the heart of Tokyo. And this is a very interesting place, one reason why we chose to live here. ...

When you walk out of an airport and enter a country that's foreign to you for the first time, one of the things you might notice is the different smell in the air. And, you know, often these differences come from the food. Food is so closely tied to the identity of a nation which plants you in that place. And cultures are practically defined by their food. Think of spaghetti: Italy. Fish and chips? England. Tacos? Mexico. Curry? India. The list goes on. Obviously, these are only just a few examples. ...

Well, it's here! The day has finally come. The launch of my next book “A Taste of Grace” is right around the corner, coming this Monday, May 27, on Memorial Day Weekend. I'm so excited to finally be able to share this book with all of you. ...

Just the other day we hosted a Zoom call for our friend Satomi Suzuki to help raise money for her upcoming artist residency. She’s a visual artist and a writer here in Tokyo, but she’s about to head to Ocean Springs, Mississippi. And so in advance of her departure, I asked if she wouldn’t be willing to have a conversation with us.

Here is a brief report from our relief trip to Ishikawa Prefecture last weekend, responding to the needs from that enormous 7.6 magnitude earthquake that struck the region on January 1, 2024. My church, Grace City Church Tokyo, sent a youth team of 3 adults and 7 junior high, high school, and college students. ...

This episode, I want to share some stories from Christmas concerts in Fukushima. Yes, that Fukushima, the second-only-to-Chernobyl-nuclear-meltdown-disaster-of-epic-proportions Fukushima. We were invited to that area to give some Christmas concerts.

Many of you have been writing me about this earthquake that hit Japan just a couple of weeks ago on January 1st. What a way to begin the new year! As you know, it was a pretty big one. I was in Nagano, not far from the epicenter. The ground was jolting so hard that it was impossible to walk. ...

Welcome back to the Art, Life, Faith Podcast, and I’m your host Roger Lowther. This really has been fun for me, sharing conversations in the past two episodes recorded at the GCAMM Conference, the Global Consultation on Arts and Music in Missions, as it helps me remember what I learned and also the people I befriended there. In this third and last episode, let’s do this just one more time, and continue to travel from table to table during lunch time and see who else we can meet. ...