By Dea Davidson
SBC International Mission Board
Japan (BP)—Staring out her bedroom window, 49-year-old Michiko did not have much to live for in the spring of 2005. Ravaged by a critical illness and depression, her only source for answers—a 10-year membership in Shinnyo-en, a Buddhist-derived cult—even threatened to punish her if she quit the group over her disillusionment.
In vain hope, she began attending a fitness club to lift her spirits. Finding friendship with a Japanese believer, Michiko heard the Holy Spirit’s call on her life. During a house church meeting, singing the Korean worship song, “You’re Born to be Loved,” Michiko’s heart opened to God.
“As I heard that song, I could not stop my tears,” she recalled. “The first thing the pastor said is, ‘The reason you’re born is that you’re loved by God.’ I realized the reason I’m here is because God made me and loved me.”
Today, not only Michiko but also her husband, Naoyuki, believe in Jesus Christ. It is fruit from seeds planted more than 40 years ago while Michiko attended a missions school.
Like the manmade island known as “Rokko” where she lives, God has taken the life Michiko once felt was wasted and turned it into something beautiful, even as He rebuilds her marriage on the foundation of Christ.
Tradition vs. technology
Outwardly, Japan has adopted a Western lifestyle and accumulated wealth and technology. Yet Japanese are a traditional people who have everything they need except the one thing they fear or resist accepting: a relationship with Jesus Christ. As ijime, or peer pressure, of family and society expectations continues to drive the Japanese, they turn to materialism, humanism and cults to provide answers for their lives.
Japan is a nation of contradictions, from ancient Shinto shrines to futuristic cities; powerful sumo wrestlers to gothic teenagers; and ceremonial tea houses to Starbucks. More than 127 million people live in the island nation which is about the size of California. It is one of the most densely populated countries on earth, with approximately 800 inhabitants per square mile.
The Japanese, with their hospitable nature and quiet smiles, live by cultural rules handed down through generations. A Japanese proverb sums up expectations: “The nail that sticks its head up is the one that gets hit.” The codes of conformity, as well as adherence to traditional animistic religions, are two significant barriers to the gospel.
Japan is called the “land of 8 million gods,” although many Japanese experience apathy rather than adherence to faith. Most claim belief in combined Shinto-Buddhist religions. Native Shinto religion emphasizes ancestor worship and fear of gods and involves various prayers and superstitious practices. Buddhism, introduced in the sixth century, eventually became mixed with Shinto.
Missionary Buddy Brents, formerly of Odessa, Texas, explained, “There are so many spiritual strongholds. ... (The Japanese people) are so locked up in fear of what other people will think about them if they become a Christian.”
Building relationships
Less than one-half of 1 percent of the Japanese profess faith in Jesus Christ. With so few entering a traditional church, missionaries seek lost people through relational evangelism. The approach involves joining existing groups—including sports clubs, quilting and cooking classes and business groups—to build relationships and share the gospel.
The going is tough, but God is producing a harvest of Japanese souls. And as the Lord moves in cities across Japan, missionary Carlton Walker said he feels like his father did when he had a particularly good catch of fish.
“One day we got an awesome catch,” recalled Walker, a native of Lynchburg, Va. “I said, ‘Dad, isn’t this a great day?’ He said, ‘Yeah, but I can’t help thinking about the fish still down there.’”
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Gospel gradually blooms in hearts of Japanese people
By Dea Davidson
SBC International Mission Board
Osaka, Japan (BP)—He is truly a carpenter following a carpenter. “At first, you clean it,” the Japanese woodcarver explained about treating the rough surface of his favorite wood—American pine.
“As it’s treated, I rub it with water,” he continued. “If you add water, it gets darker and then it becomes the color of its maturity. In the same way, God treated my heart and is working on it. In the same way, it will mature just like these tables.”
Tables, cabinets and clocks have been fashioned by Ima Oka’s hands for 33 years. For more than a year now, the 57-year-old has submitted to the crafting of another woodcarver, although the seed of the gospel took root in his heart more than 10 years earlier.
Last year, missionaries Bob and Gloria Gellerstedt, natives of Atlanta and Cambridge, Mass., respectively, were prayerwalking the streets of Osaka when they spotted Oka’s woodcarving shop.
As they met him and silently prayed for God’s direction, the strains of “Amazing Grace” began pouring from a loudspeaker. Seizing the opportunity, Gellerstedt asked, “Do you know anything about this song?” That led to a discussion of the hymn and Bob was amazed when Oka said, “Actually, I have an interest in studying the Bible.”
A rare moment
Only months later, after meeting Gellerstedt each week for Bible study in his Osaka showroom, Oka accepted Jesus Christ and was baptized. Oka’s response to the gospel is unusual for the Japanese, a people whose adherence to native Shintoism and Buddhism, as well as rejection of any religion they consider “foreign” are strong deterrents to Christianity.
Yet many Japanese who come to faith in Christ do so 10, 20 and even 40 years after they have had initial contact with the gospel. In Oka’s case, he had an interest in God, read the entire Old Testament and had several Christian clients and friends.
In the same way:
- Nobuko in Nagoya spent a semester living with a Christian family in California as an exchange student which helped her see the signs of God working in her life almost 20 years later.
- A Brazilian-Japanese man, Tetuo, who grew up hearing about Jesus in predominantly Catholic Brazil, returned to Japan—after the loss of his job and healing of his daughter-in-law from breast cancer after missionaries prayed for her—which led him to accept Christ.
“We hear all kinds of things that have happened in the past to lead them to that point,” said missionary Cindy Reynolds, a native of Fort Lauderdale, Fla. “It’s like they were ready for us to meet them. ... God’s been preparing them all along.”
God’s love is making inroads into Japanese lives. Through Sunday school classes started in the 1950s and ’60s, relationships built with missionaries or through experiences abroad, the Japanese people are hearing about Jesus. That know-ledge eventually blooms into belief—though it may take years for the gospel seed to come to fruition.
“You just encourage people, and be patient with people,” noted Carlton Walker, a 25-year missionary in Japan. “We call them ‘yet-to-be believers.’ When we say, ‘nonbeliever,’ we’re making a judgment call.
“‘Yet-to-be believers’ is a statement of faith that they can be someone who believes along the way.”
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