LONDON - Books on St.  Maximilian Kolbe are not uncommon. Since his canonization in 1982, there have been many books examining the life and martyrdom of the Polish friar. For many Catholics, the story of his choosing to die at Auschwitz in the summer of 1941 so that another could live is a 20th-century parable of grace abounding in a sea of evil.

That said, The Martyr and the Red Kimono: A Fearless Priest’s Sacrifice and a New Generation of Hope in Japan (Chatto & Windus), is a new book about Kolbe with a difference. In it, he is one of a triptych of men all linked to Japan, the Second World War and its aftermath. Intriguingly its author, Naoko Abe, is neither Polish nor Christian; she is secular Japanese, which in turn prompts the question: Why write a book centered on Kolbe? And, in regard to the saint, what did she conclude?

Maximillian Kolbe was as fiercely intelligent as he was on fire with the Gospel; indeed, he felt compelled to evangelize the whole world. While today the story of his eventual martyrdom is relatively well known, less so is the fact that in the 1930s he spent several years in Japan. It was there he ministered to what were termed “hidden Catholics” — Japanese Catholics who had converted to the faith many centuries earlier but only now, after centuries of religious oppression, were able to emerge into public view.

The subsequent manner of Kolbe’s death was to be a profound witness, and, in particular, would affect the lives of two Japanese men — one from a “hidden Catholic” family, Tomei Ozaki, and a non-Christian, Masatoshi Asari.

Ozaki was just 17 when Nagasaki endured an atomic attack in which his whole family was killed and his home destroyed. But, as Abe says, he would “use his experiences as an atomic bomb survivor to highlight the pain of war and the moral bankruptcy of using nuclear weapons.”

In contrast, Asari had worked on a farm in Hokkaido during the war. Yet, all that time, he was aware, and subsequently haunted by, the cruelty meted out to inmates of a nearby Japanese prisoner of war camp. Post-war, Abe says he set out to “spread the gospel of peace in the only way he knew how — by creating cherry trees with stunning blossoms that left admirers flushed with the wonders of life.” Both men would be inspired by the Polish priest’s sacrifice, prompting both to dedicate their lives — if in very different ways — to healing the wounds of war inflicted upon their motherland and beyond.

This remarkable tale of the interconnectedness of humanity across continents — because of rather than in spite of war — is the premise for The Martyr and the Red Kimono. The Register met its author Naoko Abe in London just as her book was published.

So, why did she write this book? Abe explains that its subject matter came unexpectedly from her research on her previously published work: The Sakura Obsession: The Incredible Story of the Plant Hunter Who Saved Japan's Cherry Blossoms (Alfred Knopf 2019). That book’s focus was the life and achievements of the British plantsman Collingwood Ingram and his love affair with cherry blossoms in Japan at the beginning of the 20th century.

While charting his saving of many cherry tree varieties, not just in Japan but also through their introduction to Britain, the text explores the ongoing symbolism of cherry blossoms in Japan. This became darker in light of events during the war, when, in the course of that country’s imperialism, the flower was co-opted into the militarism of Imperial Japan to romanticize as somehow noble the “sacrifice” of thousands of young lives.

As part of her research for that book, in 2015, Abe met and interviewed Asari. She was touched by his mission to send cherry trees to the world as a gesture of peaceful reparation for the actions of Japan. At the same time as she was wondering if there was a book to be written about Asari, she interviewed Ozaki about his remarkable life post-war. In that interview, she became aware that Asari’s shrubs had made their way to the friary in Poland founded by St.  Maximillian — and with that, a book was born.

Before making these connections, like many Japanese, Abe was familiar with Kolbe. His links with Japan were remembered, and his heroic death was known to a populace that was largely secular, with little exposure to Catholicism. That said, Abe discerned that this holy friar is the external, non-Japanese part of a story that is as much about a global war and its aftermath as it is about Japan. Kolbe would become the hinge between the life stories of Asari and Ozaki and his own.

As a non-Catholic, did Abe’s time researching and thinking about Kolbe leave any lasting spiritual legacy? Her answer is as simple as it is polite: “No.” She explains that her family background is fairly typical for “an average Japanese”: a mix of Buddhism and Shinto, with neither religion clearly defined doctrinally and with little overt hold over an individual’s spiritual imagination. Although clearly admiring of Kolbe’s moral and personal heroism, she also senses that his European mindset failed to understand that of the Japanese when it comes to the subject of religion.

“As a non-Catholic, I don’t understand his devotion to the Virgin or even to one particular God,” she explains, before going on to describe his desire to convert the whole of Japan to Catholicism as “naïve.”

“He was serious about this,” she says, “but soon realized that it was not so easy.” Then, with a fair degree of understatement, she says, “Japan was [for Kolbe] a hard six years.”  Yet for all that, she recognizes and admires his passionate concern for others especially the oppressed, summing this up succinctly by stating: “He was a fighter against evil.”

The shadows cast by the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945 haunt the pages of this book. According to the author, those bombings, with casualties at some estimates of 250,000 people, still cast long shadows across Japanese society. Recently, this was brought home to Abe with the release and publicity surrounding the 2023 film Oppenheimer, the story of the construction and use of those same atomic bombs.

Abe points out that whereas the debate around nuclear weapons is largely an ethical one in other countries, in Japan any discussion about their use and consequences is “still very real.” She goes on to point out that still today people suffer and die from radiation caused by the fateful events of the summer of 1945. The recent Hollywood film, released in August to coincide with the events depicted, is, she says, in stark contrast with the national mood in her homeland at that time of year, which she sums up by quietly saying: “August is a somber time in Japan.”

Yet, surprisingly, for Abe, there is another Polish Catholic who has played a crucial part in helping Japan come to terms with the events of August 1945. When after the war for many Japanese there was a sense of despair about what had happened, she says. For the country’s small Catholic community in particular there was a dark sense of the calamity of the atomic bombs as somehow being “God’s will.” For centuries, during their persecutions, the “Hidden Catholics” had hoped for someone to come from Rome to Japan to help them.

Unexpectedly, this hope was fulfilled in 1981 when Pope St.  John Paul II visited Japan and spoke of the atomic bombs dropped on Japan. The Pope stated that this episode had never been part of God’s Providence but rather taught that “war is the work of man. War is destruction of human life, war is death.” Abe remembers that this much-longed-for visitor from Rome was greatly appreciated not just for his visit by Japan’s Catholics but more so for the message and the sentiment which to this day he has left as a legacy.