Religion: Garden of Love

When 17-year-old Yasujiro Aoki was told that he had leprosy, he did what a devout Buddhist should. Dressed in white robes and carrying a walking stick, he made a lengthy pilgrimage to the 88 holy places of Buddhism on his native Japanese island of Shikoku, visiting each three times. But at the end of the last lap, having found no cure, he did what a devout Buddhist should not: he turned in at the gate of an Anglican missionary hospital.

There, although he stayed ten years, he found no cure, but he found a cause. He became a lay missionary in the...

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