June 2004

The coming harvest will not wait

When the apostles took the gospel “to the ends of the earth” (Acts 13:47), some went West, like Peter and Paul, but others, like Thomas, went East, along the Silk Road. According to Dr. Yoshiro Saeki, the early church reached Japan in 199 and the Nestorian Church in 515. Honda Yoshinari says that Pure Land Buddhism, which started in the 12th century, took its concept of immortality from early Christianity. Though we do not know what happened with the early church or the Nestorians in Japan, some of their theology lives on in modified Buddhist teachings.

In 1549, when Jesuit priest Francis Xavier arrived in Kyushu, he found Buddhist priests speaking of a trinity of gods and even teaching a salvation limited to those predestined for it.

Seeing the vertical structure of society, Xavier presented the gospel to the Daimyo, promising them trade with Portugal. The commoners embraced Christianity out of respect for their Daimyo’s decisions. Several Daimyo, who became nominal Christians, came to true conversion as they later more fully understood Christian teachings. Though Xavier left after only two years, Christianity spread so rapidly that it may have reached as many as 10-20 percent of the population.

Christianity’s undoing was its political and economic connections with the West. In 1596, a Spanish galleon ran aground off Shikoku. When the authorities refused to release the ship, the captain tried to impress them with the power of Spain, saying, “The kings of Spain begin by sending out teachers of our religion, and when these have made sufficient progress in gaining the hearts of the people, troops are dispatched who unite with the new Christians in bringing about the conquest of the desired territory.”

When Shogun Toyotomi Hideyoshi heard this, he realized that was exactly what Spain had done in the Philippines. He decided to quickly rid Japan of this dangerous religion. He publicly humbled that captain, ordered soldiers to surround the Franciscan and Jesuit centers, and, in 1597, had 26 Christians (Franciscans and Japanese) crucified at Nagasaki.

Forty years later, during the severe Kan’ei famine, Kyushu’s largely Christian regions of Shimabara and Amakusa suffered under merciless taxes imposed by the prince of Karatsu. Noncompliant farmers suffered torture and death, but when the prince’s officials stripped and publicly tortured a farmer’s virgin daughter with a burning stick, the people rebelled, asking supremely capable 15-year-old Christian samurai Masuda Shiro to lead them. After six months of fierce fighting, Shogun Tokugawa Iemitsu’s 100,000-strong force beheaded all 37,000 men, women, and children. Judging from the clothing, peasants and nobility alike had joined in the rebellion.

In 1853, Commodore Matthew Perry’s black ships forced open Japan’s doors; in 1858 the Japanese government made a treaty with the United States; in 1863 the Meiji era began; and in 1873 the signs banning Christianity came down. Freedom of religion finally became a cornerstone of Japanese law.

But in 1890, seventeen short years after freedom of religion became law, the government required all school children to bow in worship before a portrait of the emperor. To get around the law allowing freedom of religion, the government called it a “civil manifestation of loyalty.”

For centuries, Japan micro-managed every detail for its citizens, down to the sizes and kinds of houses and even materials for and kinds of clothes that could be worn. As Japanese say, “The nail that sticks out gets pounded in.” Centuries of group conditioning effectively silenced the church from raising its voice against Japan’s military expansion in which 20,000,000 people died. Evidence now shows that from 1931, Emperor Hirohito directed all operations, even approving the Nanking massacre, Unit 731’s human experimentation, and the attack on Pearl Harbor. When President Bush bowed at Hirohito’s funeral, the Japanese press called it “worship” and an exoneration of his WWII responsibility.

After the war, General Douglas MacArthur urged mission boards to immediately send 10,000 missionaries. Until Japan’s financial engine got underway, Christianity did make headway. But then “Japan, Inc.” brought prosperity to its people, making them feel self-sufficient.

The teachers at one mission high school asked the PTA how the parents taught morality to their children. They responded, “We don’t have time to teach them morality. All we could do was prepare them to pass your entrance examination. We thought you would teach them morality.”

The lack of moral underpinning, coupled with teens’ thirst for designer clothes, and (until just a year or two ago) no laws against consentual sex with minors, makes Japan the only country in the world where teenage girls engage in voluntary prostitution.

One Presbyterian missionary college professor said, “Every so often, a co-ed comes into my office, offering sexual favors for a better grade, but I just show her to the door.”

On a positive note, more young fathers are regularly spending time with their children at local parks. Young men are also changing jobs more often to keep from being “owned” by any one company.

United Church of Christ missionary Howard Norman, whose brother had a high post in the Canadian embassy in Japan, said that when, in the early 1960s, the Japanese government took a poll asking which religion the people either were or preferred, fully 10 percent said “Christian.” Though the official count of baptized Christian only totals 1 to 1.5 percent of the population at large, many of that 10 percent are members of “non-church” movements that do not baptize or are wives of husbands who do not allow them to be baptized.

Two decades later, in the mid-1980s, a national Japanese newspaper took a poll of college students, asking, “Do you believe Jesus Christ might be the Son of God?” Over 60 percent said “yes.”

Hotel wedding chapels schedule five to ten Christian weddings for every Shinto one. Indications point to a Japan that seems ripe for a big harvest. Pray for laborers to come to Japan. The coming harvest will not wait.

Andy Carrick

The 2004 Mission Yearbook for Prayer & Study, p. 92