Before we ever stepped foot in this country, God had a plan for how to move history and people in this land to accomplish His purposes for a church with a vibrant witness. Read on and let us tell you a little about the country we love and serve.

Japan consists of four main and 3,000 smaller islands covering a total land area less than the state of California. Packed into this relatively small space are over 126 million people. Fertile rice paddies stretch between picturesque mountains that cover 85 percent of Japan.

Japan is a nation rich in cultural traditions rooted in a history stretching back thousands of years. Coming from isolation and the ruins of WWII, Japan in the past 50 years has quickly risen to be an important global player. However, after enjoying decades as one of the world’s most powerful economies, Japan’s financial bubble burst in the mid-1980s.

Japan today is struggling with economic insecurity. Additionally, recent political scandals and international tensions with North Korea, have shaken the country even as the emperor retains his throne as a symbol of national unity. Japanese youth are experiencing an identity crisis and lack of confidence in traditional structures. Across the country, the Japanese people are entering a new era of suspicion and insecurity.

Urbanization has cut many Japanese off from their family ties to a specific Buddhist temple and Shinto shrine. Still, many people consider themselves both Shintoist and Buddhist. The Agency for Cultural Affairs statistics for 1996 show the combined membership of both religions as approximately 194,000,000, which is about 54 percent more than the total population of Japan. For the average person, however, religious affiliation does not translate into regular worship or attendance. Most people visit shrines and temples as part of annual events and special rituals marking life passages.

The history of missions in Japan can be broken down into three eras which run coincide neatly with great upheavals in Japan’s political and social landscape. At each of these junctures, Japan western peoples and ideology moved into Japan, and Christianity was able to find an inroad to the otherwise closed nation. The first wave came with three Portuguese traders in 1543 who initiated a revolution in Japan’s military techniques with the introduction of the rifle. With the coming of Francis Xavier in 1549 Jesuit priests continued a ministry in Japan until a time of persecution and expulsion concluding in 1639.

The subsequent isolation of Japan was broken by a second wave of Christianity and western thought in 1853 by Commodore Perry’s demand that Japan open her ports to navigation and trade. With military might to back up his determination, Perry open Japan’s ports not only to trade, but to Protestant mission work. This work continued until the Imperial Rescript of 1890, and later the early world war two years when Japan once again severed its ties with the west and persecuted Christianity, albeit in a more civilized way through consolidation and state-ownership of the church.

The third wave has come in Japan’s postwar years with the Allied victory in the Pacific and the subsequent occupation of Japan by General MacArthur’s forces. Remarkably, Emporer Hirohito himself declared that Japan needed the values and hope Christianity could bring. Japan was open to the Gospel as never before. But the progress of the Gospel since this advent has been spurts of great response, followed by decades of stagnation. The final response to Christianity in this third wave in Japan’s Christian history is yet to be written and, one prays, will be written about a nation that has moved beyond its nationalistic and antagonistic stance toward Christianity to embrace fully the Gospel message.

At the end of the 20th century and beginning of the 21st, the spiritual scene in Japan had begun to change. In 1990 Christians numbered some 1,075,000 or less than 1 percent of the population. Protestant Christians numbered around 639,000 with roughly 7,000 churches. While these numbers had changed little in the last 20 years, the country itself was undergoing significant social change. The nation’s economic “bubble” had burst, and it slipped into years of recession and economic uncertainty. Banks have continued to fail or merge. The jobless rate continues to climb, with college graduates who work in part-time jobs becoming more normative. Along with this economic crisis was the increase in the social problems: divorce, juvenile delinquency, crime, suicide, domestic violence and abortion rates all skyrocketed. In 2004 alone, nearly 26,000 people committed suicide in Japan. At the same time, the so-called “new religions” which mixed elements of Buddhism, Shintoism, Confucianism, Taoism, folk religion and shamanism with new age philosophy, began to grow rapidly and engage in fanatical activity. The founders of new religions are often revered as living deities.

One of the attractions of the new religions is said to be the sense of community they give to people who lack the mental and spiritual support historically provided by the extended family, the local community and the traditional religions. This should be a reminder to us as Christians to establish churches that create a strong sense of community and family support.

The Hanshin earthquake in Kobe in 1995 continued to unsettle the already-nervous Japanese. Even today, rumors of an imminent major earthquake in Tokyo surface every time the weather remains too hot, or tremors are felt. On the political front, Japan has had five prime ministers in the last decade. The government has been troubled by corruption and the voting public has increasingly lost trust in its government institutions. North Korea, with its nuclear weapons threats, has also become an unsettling force in the Japanese psyche.

In this context, the church began to make a recovery. Japanese in increasing numbers have begun to seek out the church’s help in restoring its social wellbeing. Many churches have reported a significant increase in visitors and adult conversions. Some have pointed to this as a fourth wave or invasion: a new window of opportunity for the church to reach its nation for Christ. It is yet to be seen whether the church is able to adapt quickly enough to seize the opportunity in this “post-bubble” society.

Let's work in the Land of the Rising Sun while it is still day, because "the night is coming when no man can work." (John 9:4)