When local Amish expert Donald Kraybill gave talks in Japan this past May, he noticed an amazing thing.

His audiences appeared to be made up of row upon row of surgeons.

The people behind the white masks weren't really doctors, it turned out — they were simply trying to protect themselves during a swine flu scare.

Their fears didn't keep them out of the lecture halls, however. The Japanese have long been fascinated with the Old Order Amish.

The love affair continues to bloom; in fact, it might not be an overstatement to call this Japan's Summer of the Amish.

Kraybill and Elizabethtown College colleague Stephen Scott, who lectured in the Land of the Rising Sun in June, sat down recently to discuss the evidence:

•A large exhibit of quilts, art, clothing and other Amish artifacts that ran from May-July at the Shibunkaku Art Museum in Kyoto.

•A July 8 feature story on Amish Nickel Mines forgiveness, based on a lengthy Kraybill interview conducted by prominent writer Kunio Yanagida and published recently in a leading Japanese newspaper, The Asahi Shimbun.

•The proliferation of Amish-themed businesses such as Flavor, which uses Amish recipes for chiffon cakes, oatmeal raisin cookies and other treats.

In Japan, Kraybill said, "It's a cool thing to use an English word to name a company. It's sort of an avant-garde kind of thing."

Experts on Plain-sect culture say the Japanese homed in on the Amish after the 1972 U.S. Supreme Court case Wisconsin v. Yoder excused Amish schoolchildren from compulsory public high school education.

The Harrison Ford movie filmed here in 1984, "Witness," stoked the trend.

Japanese affinity for the Amish stems from deep parallel currents in the two outwardly disparate societies, Kraybill said.

Both espouse collectivism, religious faith, hard work and frugality, he pointed out. Both exhibit marked deference to elders and have deliberately distanced themselves from the outside world.

The Japanese industrialized rapidly after World War II. But they've struck an uneasy truce with modernity, Kraybill added.

As their youth absorb Western individualist ways and traditional values further erode, he said, the people look more keenly to the Amish as exemplars.

"I would expect [Japanese] interest to continue and grow," Kraybill said. "I think it feeds on itself."

Bowing to custom
Three Kraybill books, "Amish Grace," "Puzzles of Amish Life" and "The Amish of Lancaster County," have been translated into Japanese.

In all, Kraybill and Scott say, at least 27 books about the Amish have been translated there. That's more than in all other countries of the world combined.

Kraybill was invited to speak at the art museum and at two schools, the University of Tokyo and Gifu University, by Chiho Oyabu and Toshiharu Sugihara, professors who collaborated on translating two of his books.

Scott, a research assistant at The Young Center For Anabaptist and Pietist Studies, helped the museum assemble clothing and other Amish display items for the exhibition over the past year.

He lectured in the same venues as Kraybill and also visited the National Museum of Ethnology, Osaka, to speak about Amish perseverance in the face of modernity.

It's a cogent topic in Japan. So is restorative justice and the Amish treatment of criminals, such as Charles Roberts IV, the man who shot and killed five young Amish schoolgirls at Nickel Mines in 2006.

The Japanese have reintroduced an American-style jury system for trying more serious criminal cases, Kraybill said.

"There's concern that the lay jurors will become more punitive."

Japanese researchers have often visited these shores, and Japanese tourism in the county is well established. (Please see related story, this page.)

Naturally, according to Kraybill and Scott, the Amish remain largely unaware of Japanese adulation.

The two men said they are the first local scholars to go to Japan to speak about the Amish, so far as they know.

They say the secure, orderly culture impressed them — and they got a warm reception in more ways than one.

Scott's stay coincided with the muggy monsoon season.

"I soaked through quite a few shirts," he said, but Japanese men continued to wear full suits and ties no matter how hot it got.

Kraybill remarked on white-gloved taxi drivers, "the cleanest cabs I've ever seen" and a commuter culture paradoxically both harried and courteous.

During one rush hour, he recalled, a train door slammed shut, momentarily pinching his briefcase on the outside of the subway car. A Japanese man came to the rescue by prying the door open.

The Americans learned to eat fish, rice, soybeans and vegetables — for breakfast — and they adjusted to a micro-scaled environment.

"Everything is small" in the land of the bonsai tree, Kraybill said. "Rooms are small, houses are small, cars are small, trucks are small. They have to be in a mountainous island nation roughly the size of Montana yet with a population of some 128 million.

And most of them will exchange pleasantries at the slightest provocation. "Just incessant bowing," recalled Kraybill, who said he is interested in studying the Japanese-Amish connection.

He and Scott exchanged contact information with many of the people they met.

"That's a big thing," Scott said, "business cards. You hand them with both hands."

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Jon Rutter is a staff writer for the Sunday News. His e-mail address is jrutter@lnpnews.com.