Japan
Japan is a remarkable country with a remarkable history. It has the world’s fifth-largest economy, universal literacy (despite a highly complex writing system), admirable public safety, and arts that are admired around the world. It has transformed itself at several points in the past. Most notably it leapt in a single generation from an isolated feudal society to a world power. The islands include tropical beaches, snowbound reaches, vast metropolises, ancient temples, active volcanoes, and terraced hillsides. Its people are polite, orderly, educated, and industrious. It celebrates both its traditional culture and its vibrant pop culture.
However, while Kyoto is a sightseer’s paradise, Akihabara a geek’s nirvana, and the country’s Zen temples a mecca for pilgrims, Japan is far from a wonderland.
Economically Japan has been in an extended recession since the 1990s, with no end in sight. With a steadily shrinking population, there is not much hope for economic growth domestically. In recent years China, then Germany, then India have overtaken Japan’s economy. Where lifetime employment was once the rule, loyal employees are finding themselves forced into earlier and earlier retirement, and young college graduates are finding that stable jobs are nowhere to be found.
Japan can not seem to muster the political will necessary to confront its intractable problems. After more than seventy-five years of nearly unbroken one-party rule, change seems unlikely, and few Japanese put much hope in politicians.
Crime, mental illness, and social problems are on the rise. While the streets of Japan are still far safer than those of the U.S., anxieties are up. Random acts of violence by children and disturbed individuals have put people on edge. Up to a million individuals (and, by some estimates, more) have made themselves hermits in their apartments or their parents’ homes. The sex industry—pornography, sex tourism, prostitution, and trafficking—continues to thrive.
Japanese religious attitudes can be difficult for Westerners to understand. Most Japanese practice both Buddhism and Shintō, live by Confucian principles, and deny that they have a religious faith. Many will also tell you that they can’t become a Christian because they are Japanese. About eight percent practice “new religions,” cult-like sects that have proliferated since World War II. Nevertheless, although churches are commonly described as "dark," Christianity has a positive image among Japanese.
Though Protestant missionaries first reached Japan’s shores a little over about 170 years ago, a large harvest is yet to come. For more than two centuries before that, Christianity was an illegal religion, punishable by death. This brutal, systematic persecution instilled an abiding sense that Christianity is for foreigners. Today fewer than half of one percent (0.43%) of the population belong to Protestant churches, and fewer than a quarter of a percent (0.22%) actually attend. Most congregations number fewer than thirty on an average Sunday morning.
The churches of Japan lack shepherds. One out of eight has no pastor or shares a pastor with at least one other church. Two-thirds pastors are near or above retirement age, and few young Christians are preparing for ministry. With pastors and seminarians so scarce, there is little appetite for planting new churches. Many churches are stagnant or in decline.
God has a plan for Japan. We are not privy to the details, but we do know that God intends to gather a people from every tribe and language and people and nation. That includes Japan. We long, pray, wait, and labor for Japan’s great day of harvest, when many will call upon the name Iesu Kirisuto (Jesus Christ).