To reach those who do not have the time to visit him, a Buddhist priest in Innancho, Wakayama Prefecture, records three sermons every month for a telephone service through which the faithful can hear his words.
Masanori Shimizu, 68, a former resident priest of Senpukuji, a Buddhist temple of the Honganji branch of the Jodo Shinshu sect, recorded his 500th sermon recently for the three-minute Kokoro-no denwa (heart line), the telephone preaching service he set up in April 1990.
Even though Shimizu changes the sermon every 10 days, he still preaches to people in person and visits temples nationwide for half the year. His preaching gained popularity for its interesting, easy-to-understand content.
Based on his own experiences, Shimizu largely preaches about marriage, brotherly love and the importance of cherishing the environment as well as its inhabitants.
In his 500th sermon, Shimizu tells the story of the relationship between a child and his stepmother.
In the story, the child always feels sad when he opens his lunch on school excursions because his stepmother never prepares anything other than onigiri and umeboshi. He was envious of his friends whose mothers included eggs and other delicious goodies in their lunches.
The boy thought his lunch would never change, because his stepmother was not his biological mother.
During one of the school trips, some of his friends had stomachaches after lunch because the food they had brought was tainted by the hot weather that day, whereas his lunch was not.
He found out that his stepmother had woken up very early in the morning to cool the rice--which is necessary in hot weather. She also chose umeboshi because it does not perish as do other ingredients.
The boy realized she had thought of his welfare when she prepared his lunch for the excursions, showing love for her stepson.
Fusako Nishiyama, 59, of Innancho calls the service every day and said, "Telephone preaching is very useful for me because I don't have time to visit Shimizu to listen to him."
"People have fewer opportunities to learn from the wisdom of elderly people due to the structure of the nuclear family," Shimizu said. "I hope I'm around to record my 1,000th sermon as there are people who count on my sermons."