It was shaping up to be a Japanese Christmas like any other.

The familiar posters advertising Christmas cake were up at my station, and the same old carols were piped over speakers at the local department store. The tinsel and wreathes had already been cleared from the shelves of the 100 yen shop to make room for Shinto New Year's goods. The wellspring of Yuletide cheer seemed as dry for me this year as ever.

And it would probably have remained so had I missed the holiday concert led by gospel singer/songwriter and music instructor Garrison Davis. New Jersey born, but a Japan resident of five years, Davis has assembled a choir -- mainly comprised of Japanese singers, but with a smattering of others from the United States, the West Indies and the Philippines -- which proves on stage that even if it gains few converts, Christianity can still ripple the spiritual surface of this country.

With Davis -- a former member of the legendary R&B group The Platters -- at the piano at a recent show in his adopted hometown, and professional African-American singers front stage, the choir's 55 members swayed as they belted out the traditional "This Little Light of Mine," then clapped hands in perfect time to two Davis originals -- the funky-smooth "Praise to You" and the uptempo, samba-inspired "The Word." When they then launched into "Oh Happy Day" -- called Japan's gospel anthem -- feet were stomping, hands were in the air and there wasn't a dry eye in the house. With all reticence and reserve joyously thrown to the wind, this was no staid Japanese Christmas event.

Davis and his singers are onto something hot. Gospel -- the musical amalgam of West African call-and-response, Protestant hymns, jazz and the blues that is on the rise in the West -- is taking root in Japan as well, both at grassroots level and in the mainstream.

Springing up around the country are ensembles with names like The Far East Gospel Singers, and The Tokyo Voices of Praise. Not to be left out of the gospel act, some 7,000 people around the country -- mostly women in their 20s and 30s -- have enrolled for gospel courses at branches of the Yamaha Music School alone. Lessons there include not only voice control but also body movement and English pronunciation. Davis begins each practice session with his own group, called the Tokyo for Christ Gospel Workshop Choir, with a prayer and a brief explanation of each song's religious meaning.

Despite this, only a few of Japan's gospel singers are regular churchgoers. However, for all concerned the experience of raising their voices in harmony is nevertheless an emotionally charged affair, a method of overcoming the reluctance many Japanese feel about openly expressing emotion.

"You should see their faces during rehearsals," Davis said of his students, while warming up for the show. "They go from looking forlorn and timid to looking energized. They're learning they can be a part of this music."

Japanese audiences were first exposed to gospel in the late 1950s, when gospel pioneer Mahalia Jackson performed here. Interest was further fueled in the mid-1980s, with the arrival in Japan of the gospel musical "Mama, I Want to Sing." But according to black-music promoter Mal Adams, president of Japan-based media company Totown Communications, the current boom is mostly thanks to the 1993 U.S. film "Sister Act 2" starring Whoopi Goldberg as a Catholic-school teacher with a penchant for gospel music and a young Lauryn Hill as her brooding student. In the movie's climax, Hill perks up and together with her classmates delivers an unforgettable gospel rendition of Beethoven's "Ode to Joy" at the statewide music competition -- leading their school to grand-prize glory.

"Who would have known such an arrangement of the original was possible?" said Makiko Shinkawa, a professional pianist and singer in Davis' choir who became interested in gospel after seeing the film. "I watched it over and over. I just had to get up and dance along."

Besides inspiring Japanese to move their bodies to the rhythm, the movie also helped foster interest in such Japanese pop acts as the five-member a cappella group Gospellers, whose 2001 CD "Love Notes" sold more than 1.8 million copies, said a spokeswoman at Sony Music group company Defstar Records. (As the CD's name suggests, the group's lyrics tend not toward the divine but rather the romantically secular.)

In the same league is songstress Mika Nakashima, whose 2002 recording of "Amazing Grace," a gospel standard, helped buoy her to stardom.

Meanwhile, on television black choirs with a gospel feel about them have appeared alongside major pop stars such as Ayumi Hamasaki and Ken Hirai.

Amid this rising popularity, professional African-American singers living in Japan have also cashed in, with some able to charge up to 100,000 yen to sing gospel at weddings.

But though the money is good, some in the industry grumble over what they perceive to be perplexing forms of prejudice on the part of some agents and producers.

Foreign singers, for example, sometimes complain of being pigeon-holed into a cultural stereotype. Davis recalled with dismay his Japanese manager balking when Davis brought in a replacement keyboard player for a recent show. The manager worried not whether the stand-in would be up to scratch, but because the man was Chinese-American and therefore not compatible with the "black" image of the show.

Although this threatened to derail preparations at the last minute, in the end Davis persuaded his manager to go along with the replacement musician, who was a seasoned professional who had played for some of America's top R&B singers. Later, Davis says, he was pleased when the repentant manager called him to say the show had been a big success.

That's no surprise, because as choir member Shinkawa says, "Gospel breaks down the barriers of race."

But it goes far beyond. Gospel enthusiasts believe the greatest gift the music offers is the exploration of a deeper psychological realm -- one that can be visited by anyone, regardless of nationality, age, gender or creed.

It's an elusive sensation to describe -- though people do try. Shinkawa explains that though she is not a Christian, the music brings her closer to a personal sense of divinity. "I experience God through the music," she said. "My very blood gets stirred." Another fan named Satoshi, the author of one of countless gospel-related Japanese Web sites, was no less passionate. Gospel, he tells readers new to the music, is not the name of some rhythmic beat, nor, he admonished, is it a form of religious P.R.

Rather, he wrote, "It is being with a good friend in a comfortable place, singing from a beautiful score."