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celebrating divorce

Celebrating Divorce

By Matthew Barrett

“Ever since I was little,” says Hiroki Terai, Tokyo’s pioneering divorce planner, “I wondered, If you have a wedding ceremony, why not have one to mark your divorce?” Described as a “man of good cheer” Terai has created a rave of interest in Tokyo Japan for ceremonies celebrating one’s divorce. Paige Ferrari writes about this recent phenomenon in The New York Times Magazine with an article titled, “Untying the Knot.” Apparently, celebrating divorce is big in Japan, including all the same hoopla that comes with a real wedding, even speeches and slide shows. Hiroki Terai has performed over 100 ceremonies in the last two years and since the March earthquake has received over 200 inquiries a month! Where do these divorce ceremonies occur? They take place wherever you desire. One couple, for example, held their divorce ceremony in a restaurant. Some schedule their divorce ceremony on butsumetsu, unlucky days of the month associated with Buddha’s death. And with the ceremony comes all the desired accommodations, a buffet, a slide show, fancy clothes, a speech by the best friend. Sometimes, says Terai, couples even reconcile after seeing the slide show (I can’t imagine that is great for business!).

In Paige Ferrari’s article, however, the couple in focus chooses an alternative route. Rather than a big public divorce ceremony this couple, who remains anonymous, has chosen to have a private ceremony with only one friend. The location: Hiroki Terai’s “House of Divorce.” The House of Divorce is an abandoned, old, deteriorating building chosen for these characteristics in order to represent the destruction of the marriage between the husband and wife. “It’s a building,” says Terai, “which represents a husband and wife’s relationship – about to collapse.” The House of Divorce has no lighting, plumbing, or decoration. It is dark, with candles lighting the ceremony. The Japanese couple meeting in the House of Divorce on this occasion legally divorced back in 2008, but since has decided to have a divorce ceremony for closure. The couple has a five-year-old son, though it is not specified whether he attended the ceremony. Terai commenced the ceremony listing the reasons for the divorce. Some of these include: different values, different taste in hobbies, etc. Turns out, the husband secretly had a heavy debt to be repaid. The husband (or ex-husband) explains that he was skeptical about the ceremony but now sees it as marking a new life. Ironic given the dark, black room the ceremony is in, with paint peeling off the walls.

The ceremony concluded with a friend wishing the divorced couple the best of happiness. The divorced couple then grasped together a hammer, using it in unison to smash the husband’s wedding ring. However, on the first try the ring escapes them, ricocheting off the table and onto the floor. The second time, however, is a success for the ring is distorted into an oblong figure. The divorced couple is satisfied. But the ceremony is not yet over, says Paige Ferrari. Afterwards the smashing of the wedding ring the couple walks to the Sumida River, a place filled with memories of fireworks they watched together. Earlier that evening, crowds released candle-lit lanterns into the river, a tradition of Obon, the festival remembering the dead (again, am I the only one catching the irony here?). But for this couple, they instead release a lantern with handwritten messages inside. The wife’s message reads, “So that our son may grow up well.” The husband’s reads, “Let us remain friends.” The point is for the lantern to glide “into the great beyond.” Instead, this lantern returns, refusing to drift away. The wife responds, “It’s just like life, always back and forth.” The husband grumbles, “Don’t be a silly loser.”

What strikes me in this whole affair, among many things, is the twisted reality of the event. By twisted I mean depraved in the strangest of ways. I have met non-Christian couples who have been divorced. And even for them, divorce is not something to be proud of nor is it a subject they usually want to laugh about, let alone celebrate. But here we see the event turned on its head. It is deserving of a ceremony, public or private. It is worthy of celebration even with all the gusto that comes with a wedding. How contrary this is to the biblical worldview where marriage is valued, praised, and honored, while divorce is seen as shameful, disobedient, and ultimately sinful, breaking the covenant union God put in place. I am reminded of Matthew 19 where the Pharisees seek to test Jesus by asking him the question “Is it lawful to divorce one’s wife for any cause?” Jesus responds, “Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female, and said, ‘Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’? So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate” (Matt 19:4-6). And when the Pharisees press Jesus further, saying, “Why then did Moses command one to give a certificate of divorce and to send her away?”, Jesus responds revealing the true problem within, “Because of your hardness of heart Moses allowed you to divorce your wives, but from the beginning it was not so.” After exposing the depravity of man’s heart, Jesus brings down the gauntlet, “And I say to you: whoever divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, and marries another commits adultery” (Matt 19:9). According to Jesus, divorce is the result of man’s depraved, hardened heart. It is contrary to God’s design: the union of a man and a woman for a lifetime. To divorce is to rip apart this “one flesh” union, like the tearing off of the torso from the abdomen! And further still, divorce is so disruptive and displeasing in God’s sight that he calls the one who divorces and marries another an adulterer.

With the tragedy of divorce in mind, I find the story narrated by Paige Ferrari telling. This couple does not have a public ceremony with lights, flowers, dresses, and a buffet. Rather, their ceremony is in the dark, cold, moldy House of Divorce, perhaps better termed the House of Death. They even wish to remain anonymous to the reporter, showing their embarrassment and shame. And the events that correspond seem coincidental: the ring that resists the hammer, the lantern that refuses to drift into oblivion. What comes to mind is indeed death, despite the couple’s insistence that the ceremony is to celebrate new life. What comes to my mind is the tearing of flesh, that is, the one-flesh union of a man and a woman. What God has put together, man has separated. There is nothing here to be celebrated. At the end of the day all that is left is a lantern which finally and reluctantly drifts away with the other lanterns remembering the dead.



Matthew Barrett (Ph.D., The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary) is the founder and executive editor of Credo Magazine. Barrett has contributed book reviews and articles to various academic journals and he also writes at Blogmatics. He is married to Elizabeth and they have two daughters, Cassandra and Georgia. He is a member of Clifton Baptist Church in Louisville, KY.

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