Sunday, August 16, 2015

"baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus" - A Cup of Cold Water




Rice Paddy Fields around Tokyo



A Cup of Cold Water


The most popular Japanese instrumental rock guitarist has been Takeshi Terauchi in these decades.
Takeshi Terauchi (1939- ), also known as Terry, is a Japanese instrumental rock guitarist. His preferred guitar is a White Mosrite. His guitar sound is characterized by frenetic picking, heavy use of tremolo picking and frequent use of his guitars vibrato arm. 
Terauchi started his career playing rhythm guitar for a country and Western act "Jimmy Tokita and The Mountain Playboys", which had bassist Chosuke Ikariya. In 1962 he formed his first group, The Blue Jeans. However, in 1966 he left the group and formed The Bunnys with whom he played. In May 1967, he also established his own company named "Teraon". He won the "arrangement award" with the song "Let's Go Unmei" at the 9th Japan Record Awards in 1967. He left the Bunnys in 1968. He reformed the Blue Jeans in 1969 and the band has been active until today.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Takeshi_Terauchi
Terauchi was born in a middle-class family and graduated from a university where he learnt electric engineering.  However he loved to play the guitar and joined a band that was performing in US military bases around Tokyo, which was a kind of common process of many Japanese musicians who succeeded in their careers after WWII.

One thing unique about Terauchi was his knowledge about electricity, so that he contributed to development of  electronic musical instruments in Japan, while he was making his career as an electric guitar player and a band leader.

Another unique aspect of Terauchi is that he has given a performance in high schools to deepen understanding of electric-guitar based music among students, teachers, parents, and so on.

Once the Japanese public was very critical about high-school students who played electric guitars.  Parents, teachers, and the public were afraid that students enchanted by electric guitar playing might be easily led to delinquency.  However, young people loved rock music and electric guitar sounds, since some American bands, such as the Ventures, visited Japan in early 1960s to introduce such music as a kind of new culture to Japanese youths.

So, Terauchi started to visit and play in high schools. And Terauchi Takeshi and The Blue Jeans have reportedly played in 1,500 high schools in Japan to date, though it is unknown how much the concert fee is.

However when he first launched this project, it did not look like hopeful.  Terauch visited, at the first onset, 100 high schools to offer and explain the high school concert.  But only three of them treated the offer seriously, and offered Terauchi, a leading guitarist in Japan, a cup of tea in their meeting.  No other high school management presented hospitality to the famous rock guitarist as they were afraid of a bad influence commercial entertainers would have on their students.  


It reminds me of a teaching by Christ Jesus: Those who gave a cup of cooled water to each of these tiny people would receive reward from God.
    

(Refer to https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B2TZ8EJD8K8 for Takeuchi's performance.)


Another situation that reminds me of the Christ's teaching was that those hit by the atomic bomb in Hiroshima in 1941 and lied down on the street asked others walking by to give them a cup of water, since they were suffering so much with burns.  And, there were some people who really gave them water from their drinking flasks to those victims under the hot sun in August 1941.





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Act 8:15 Who, when they were come down, prayed for them, that they might receive the Holy Ghost:
Act 8:16 (For as yet he was fallen upon none of them: only they were baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus.)
Act 8:17 Then laid they their hands on them, and they received the Holy Ghost.