Episode 420 - RTS Classic Conversation: Mako Fujimura, “Everything I Do is Prayer”

Many of us have been handed a faith of victory and failure, where the heroic are celebrated, and the weak quietly disappear from the story. Painter and author Makoto Fujimura has found something truer in the darkness. Through Shusaku Endo’s novel Silence and the bronze images of Christ that persecuted Japanese Christians were forced to step on, Mako reflects on a gospel big enough for anyone who doubts they can ever be strong.

He and Michael also talk about why beauty matters most when the world feels chaotic, how anyone can care for culture the way a gardener tends soil, and why Mako calls Silence a Holy Saturday book. And he opens up about his own ground zeros, from living blocks from the World Trade Center on 9/11 to his grandfather’s silence after Hiroshima, and the call to seek the sunrise by turning into the dark.

Makoto Fujimura is an internationally exhibited artist working in Nihonga, a centuries-old Japanese painting tradition using natural minerals and gold. He served on the National Council on the Arts, and his books include Culture Care, Silence and Beauty, Refractions, and Art and Faith: A Theology of Making.

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