Bach as Antidote to Terror

A cantata answers the gas attack in the Tokyo subway

A few weeks ago I published an introduction to the influential articles by Uwe Siemon-Netto introducing Bach as Japan’s evangelist. I recently got in touch with the retired journalist and asked him about the occasion for his trip to Japan. He had this to say (slightly condensed for publication):

[This story] was a beautiful by-product of a sinister assignment. As I hold a PhD not just in theology but also sociology of religion, I was invited to participate in a confidential study of the faith-based roots of certain types of terrorism. This included Osama bin Laden, of whom hardly anybody had ever heard at that time, but especially the menace of radical Shiva worshipers believing that they must give that third person in the Hindu trinity a hand in destroying the universe, so as to enable Brahma, the creator, to cobble up a new aeon.

My research led me to the Japanese Aum Shinrikyo sect founded by Shoko Asahara who was later hanged with seven collaborators for setting off a deadly sarin gas attack on a Tokyo subway train that killed 13 people and injured 600 more. I managed to enter the sect’s third most important monastery and interviewed Asahara’s number three ghoul, who revealed to me the background of this crime: Shiva had instructed Asahara to set off the Sarin attack, blame it on the US and thus trigger a nuclear war, destroying the world.

Emergency response to the 1995 Tokyo subway gas attack. Wikimedia

This was a goofy story, but it was also so frightening that it made my Japanese interpreter shiver uncontrollably and eventually crawl under my right armpit. On the subway train back to the city, this beautiful young lady told me in the type of German once spoken at the imperial court in Berlin, “There is only one antidote against this grisly experience: a Bach concert conducted by Masaaki Suzuki. Let’s go! I know how to get tickets.” So we went.

In the intermission and then after the concert, I spoke with Suzuki and set up a lengthy interview with him for the next day. This set off my research on Bach in Japan, leading to the articles you have read.

His Japanese interpreter was a 25-year-old law student named Azusa.

[She] came to me one morning and said, “Let’s hear some Bach to start the day.” She pulled out a CD of Bach’s cantata Vergnügte Ruh’, beliebte Seelenlust (BWV 170), whose lyrics say that God’s real name is love. “This has taught me what these two words mean to Christians,” she said, “and I like it very much.” (Civilization, Feb/Mar 2000, 46)

In a later article (First Things, June/July 2000), he quotes Azusa as saying:

I like it so much that I play this record whenever I can.

The particular cantata was not chosen at random. BWV 170’s libretto spoke directly to a soul terrorized by the direct encounter with Aum Shinrikyo’s leadership (mvts. 2–3):

The world, that place of sin,
bursts out only in hellish songs
and strives through hatred and envy
to bear upon itself the image of Satan.
Its mouth is full of snake’s venom
that often deals a mortal blow to the innocent
And only wants to say ‘racha’ [you worthless person]
Most just God, how far
are people therefore estranged from you;
you love, but their mouth
proclaims curses and enmity
And they only want to tread their neighbor underfoot.

How sorry I feel therefore for those perverted hearts
that against you, my God, are so set
I truly shudder and feel a thousand pangs
When they take delight only in vengeance and hatred.
Most just God, what must you then think
when with their truly satanic intrigues
They so insolently deride your strict commands about punishment.
Ah! without doubt you have thought:
How sorry I feel therefore for those perverted hearts!

And then the fourth movement goes on to suggest the possibility of love and forgiveness for such “perverted hearts”:

But since also my enemy
as if he were my best friend
should be loved by me according to God's commandment
then there depart
from my heart anger and resentment
and my wish is to live for God alone
Who is Love itself.

The opening aria for which the cantata is named speaks directly to the open assaults upon humanity evinced by those sarin gas attacks, that cult whose leaders sought to end the world in a conflagration:

Contented peace, beloved delight of the soul,
you cannot be found among the sins of hell,
but only where there is heavenly harmony;
You alone strengthen the weak breast.
Contented peace, beloved delight of the soul,
For this reason nothing but the gifts of virtue
should have any place in my heart. (translation by Francis Brown)

It’s hard to overstate how truly terrorized the Japanese were by the sheer nihilism of the Shinrikyo gas attacks. Many people I have met date a flinty turn against religion of any kind to that date in 1995.

And so it is in response to this specific and most terrorizing of human acts in living memory that Bach’s music spoke words about a God of love and hope to Azusa—and to Japan.

Contented peace, beloved delight of the soul.