Signs of Spiritual Awakening in Japan

Japan is known by many to be a difficult mission field. But for those who know missions in Japan well, the phrase “hard mission field” is merely a euphemism for a grimmer expression that was previously used about Africa, one that has been recently applied to Japan: “the missionary’s graveyard.” One would expect such a bleak designation to be used in reference to a land known for physical hardship or violent persecution, and there have been martyrs in Japan’s Christian history. That is not the case today, however. Religious worker visas are readily available, and the Japanese often politely thank missionaries for coming to their country.

This missionary graveyard reputation does not result from missionary deaths; rather, it results from the death of missionary careers. Serving for years amid great spiritual oppression with little to no apparent spiritual fruit has led numerous missionaries and entire agencies to abandon Japan or transfer the work to another field. Supporting churches and sending agencies have often discouraged missionaries from pursuing ministry in Japan. The words of one recruiter for another mission field summarize the thoughts of many: “Japan had its chance.”

Meanwhile, Japan is more spiritually needy than ever. Remarkably high suicide and depression rates attest to the inward longings and deep dissatisfaction with the status quo. The people long for refuge from earthquakes and nuclear catastrophe and desire rescue from rampant bullying and sexual exploitation.

Pertinent Questions

What does it look like in the moments preceding a movement of large-scale renewal generated by God’s Spirit?

Could God do the great work he has planned for Japan in our time even after so many have given up hope?

As missionaries in Japan, these are the kinds of questions we are asking today with mustard seed-sized faith and steadfast hope in our great God. We have already witnessed a glorious revival in South Korea, and we are currently tracking it in China. Why do we not expect to see it in Japan? Surely the great multitude of Revelation 7 will include many Japanese worshiping and joining the chorus, “Blessing and glory and wisdom and thanksgiving and honor and power and might be to our God forever and ever!”

Throughout the country we hear more and more testimonies of responsiveness to the gospel. Many mission teams and local churches throughout Japan attest to a greater openness to hear and quickness to respond among the Japanese than has been seen since the end of World War II.

God at Work in Japan

The ministry continues to be difficult, but we are seeing a wonderful season of fruit-bearing in Japan. That is also true within our own ministry, Christ Bible Institute (CBI), Japan. Our seminary has more than tripled in size over the past five years with many of our students being first-generation believers. We have the glorious privilege of seeing young men and women join investigative Bible studies and pray to receive Christ in the Heart & Soul Café, a safe space for young people in our building. We are now making preparations to send out young men to plant churches in our city of Nagoya and in the almost entirely unchurched prefecture of Toyama with hopes for other locations in the future. To bolster this movement, a new generation of missionaries from churches around the world is beginning to join the work in Japan. God is at work in Japan, and we have reason for great hope.

One of the most encouraging signs of renewal is a three-day conference called Love Japan, set for October 11 to 13 to unfold simultaneously in Japan’s three most prominent metropolitan areas—Tokyo, Nagoya, and Osaka. The purpose of the conference is to celebrate and proclaim the glorious love of God for the Japanese people. Love Japan will introduce the preaching and teaching ministries of John Piper and Don Carson and, in conjunction with this event, CBI has partnered with TGC International Outreach to translate and give away 2,000 copies of Piper’s The Supremacy of God in Preaching. Attendees will also hear the gospel preached by Japanese, Korean, and Chinese pastors paired up with Piper, Carson, and Michael Oh.

As this event draws near, we ask that you would join us in praying for Love Japan and for the Japanese people. Pray that God will open a window of opportunity for the Word to be proclaimed to many who might otherwise never hear it. And pray for the day to come soon when Japan will no longer be known as “the missionary graveyard” but as “the missionary springboard to the world.”

> They are still the Pervert Nation though

ISIAH 58

Shout out, do not hold back!
    Lift up your voice like a trumpet!
Announce to my people their rebellion,
    to the house of Jacob their sins.
2 Yet day after day they seek me
    and delight to know my ways,
as if they were a nation that practiced righteousness
    and did not forsake the ordinance of their God;
they ask of me righteous judgments,
    they delight to draw near to God.
3 “Why do we fast, but you do not see?
    Why humble ourselves, but you do not notice?”
Look, you serve your own interest on your fast day,
    and oppress all your workers.
4 Look, you fast only to quarrel and to fight
    and to strike with a wicked fist.
Such fasting as you do today
    will not make your voice heard on high.
5 Is such the fast that I choose,
    a day to humble oneself?
Is it to bow down the head like a bulrush,
    and to lie in sackcloth and ashes?
Will you call this a fast,
    a day acceptable to the Lord?

6 Is not this the fast that I choose:
    to loose the bonds of injustice,
    to undo the thongs of the yoke,
to let the oppressed go free,
    and to break every yoke?
7 Is it not to share your bread with the hungry,
    and bring the homeless poor into your house;
when you see the naked, to cover them,
    and not to hide yourself from your own kin?
8 Then your light shall break forth like the dawn,
    and your healing shall spring up quickly;
your vindicator[a] shall go before you,
    the glory of the Lord shall be your rear guard.
9 Then you shall call, and the Lord will answer;
    you shall cry for help, and he will say, Here I am.

If you remove the yoke from among you,
    the pointing of the finger, the speaking of evil,
10 if you offer your food to the hungry
    and satisfy the needs of the afflicted,
then your light shall rise in the darkness
    and your gloom be like the noonday.
11 The Lord will guide you continually,
    and satisfy your needs in parched places,
    and make your bones strong;
and you shall be like a watered garden,
    like a spring of water,
    whose waters never fail.
12 Your ancient ruins shall be rebuilt;
    you shall raise up the foundations of many generations;
you shall be called the repairer of the breach,
    the restorer of streets to live in.

13 If you refrain from trampling the sabbath,
    from pursuing your own interests on my holy day;
if you call the sabbath a delight
    and the holy day of the Lord honorable;
if you honor it, not going your own ways,
    serving your own interests, or pursuing your own affairs;[b]
14 then you shall take delight in the Lord,
    and I will make you ride upon the heights of the earth;
I will feed you with the heritage of your ancestor Jacob,
    for the mouth of the Lord has spoken.

If America wants to be great, then America needs to passionately pursue Justice, to love Mercy, and to walk humbly with God.
If they are perverts, then what better way to loose their bonds than by the transformative power of Jesus?

Japanese Martyrs

There is not in the whole history of the Church a single people who can offer to the admiration of the Christian world annals as glorious, and a martyrology as lengthy, as those of the people of Japan. In January, 1552, St. Francis Xavier had remarked the proselytizing spirit of the early neophytes. "I saw them", he wrote, "rejoicing in our successes, manifesting an ardent zeal to spread the faith and to win over to baptism the pagans they conquered." He foresaw the obstacles that would block the progress of the faith in certain provinces, the absolutism of this or that daimyo, a class at that time very independent of the Mikado and in revolt against his supreme authority. As a matter of fact, in the province of Hirado, where he made a hundred converts, and where six years after him, 600 pagans were baptized in three days, a Christian woman (the proto-martyr) was beheaded for praying before a cross. In 1561 the daimyo forced the Christians to abjure their faith, "but they preferred to abandon all their possessions and live in the Bungo, poor with Christ, rather than rich without Him", wrote a missionary, 11 October, 1562. When, under the Shogunate of Yoshiaki, Ota Nobunaga, supported by Wada Koresama, a Christian, had subdued the greater part of the provinces and had restored monarchical unity, there came to pass what St. Francis Xavier had hoped for. At Miyako (the modern Kiyoto) the faith was recognized and a church built 15 Aug., 1576. Then the faith continued to spread without notable opposition, as the daimyos followed the lead of the Mikado (Ogimachi, 1558-1586) and Ota Nobunaga. The toleration or favor of the central authority brought about everywhere the extension of the Christian religion, and only a few isolated cases of martyrdom are known (Le Catholicisme au Japon, I, 173).

It was not until 1587, when there were 200,000 Christians in Japan, that an edict of persecution, or rather of prescription, was passed to the surprise of everyone, at the instigation of a bigoted bonze, Nichijoshonin, zealous for the religion of his race. Twenty-six residences and 140 churches were destroyed; the missionaries were condemned to exile, but were clever enough to hide or scatter. They never doubted the constancy of their converts; they assisted them in secret and in ten years there were 100,000 other converts in Japan. We read of two martyrdoms, one at Takata, the other at Notsuhara; but very many Christians were dispossessed of their goods and reduced to poverty. The first bloody persecution dates from 1597. It is attributed to two causes: (1) Four years earlier some Castilian religious had come from the Philippines and, in spite of the decisions of the Holy See, had joined themselves to the 130 Jesuits who, on account of the delicate situation created by the edict were acting with great caution. In spite of every charitable advice given them, these men set to work in a very indiscreet manner, and violated the terms of the edict even in the capital itself; (2) a Castilian vessel cast by the storm on the coast of Japan was confiscated under the laws then in vigour. Some artillery was found on board, and Japanese susceptibilities were further excited by the lying tales of the pilot, so that the idea went abroad that the Castilians were thinking of annexing the country. A list of all the Christians in Miyado and Osaka was made out, and on 5 Feb., 1597, 26 Christians, among whom were 6 Fransciscan missionaries, were crucified at Nagasaki. Among the 20 native Christians there was one, a child of 13, and another of 12 years. "The astonishing fruit of the generous sacrifice of our 26 martyrs" (wrote a Jesuit missionary) "is that the Christians, recent converts and those of maturer faith, have been confirmed in the faith and hope of eternal salvation; they have firmly resolved to lay down their lives for the name of Christ. The very pagans who assisted at the martyrdom were struck at seeing the joy of the blessed ones as they suffered on their crosses and the courage with which they met death".

Ten years before this another missionary had foreseen and predicted that "from the courage of the Japanese, aided by the grace of God, it is to be expected that persecution will inaugurate a race for martyrdom"... "The fifty crosses, ordered for the holy mountain of Nagasaki, multiplied ten or a hundred fold, would not have sufficed" (wrote one missionary) "for all the faithful who longed for martyrdom". ..After the persecution of 1597, there were isolated cases of martyrdom until 1614, in all about 70. The reigns of Ieyasu, who is better known in Christian annals by the name of Daifu Sama, and of his successors Hidetada and Iemitziu, were the more disastrous. We are not concerned now with the causes of that persecution, which lasted half a century with some brief intervals of peace. According to Mr. Ernest Satow (quoted by Thurston in "The Month", March, 1905, "Japan and Christianity"): "As the Jesuit missionaries conducted themselves with great tact, it is by no means improbable that they might have continued to make converts year by year until the great part of the nation had been brought over to the Catholic religion, had it not been for the rivalry of the missionaries of other orders." These were the Castilian religious; and hence the fear of seeing Spain spread its conquests from the Philippines to Japan. Furthermore the zeal of certain religious Franciscans and Dominicans was wanting in prudence, and led to the persecution.

Year by year after 1614 the number of martyrdoms was 55, 15, 25, 62, 88, 15, 20. The year 1622 was particularly fruitful in Christian heroes. The Japanese martyrology counts 128 with name, Christian name and place of execution. Before this the four religious orders, Dominicans, Franciscans, Augustinians and Jesuits, had had their martyrs, but on 10 Sept., 1622, 9 Jesuits, 6 Dominicans, 4 Franciscans, and 6 lay Christians were put to death at the stake after witnessing the beheading of about 30 of the faithful. From December until the end of September, 1624, there were 285 martyrs. The English captain, Richard Cocks (Calendar of State Papers: Colonial East Indies, 1617-1621, p. 357) "saw 55 martyred at Miako at one time. . .and among them little children 5 or 6 years old burned in their mother's arms, crying out: 'Jesus receive our souls'. Many more are in prison who look hourly when they shall die, for very few turn pagans". We cannot go into the details of these horrible slaughters, the skilful tortures of Mount Unaen, the refined cruelty of the trench. After 1627 death grew more and more terrible for the Christians; in 1627, 123 died, during the years that followed, 65, 79, and 198. Persecution went on unceasingly as long as there were missionaries, and the last of whom we learn were 5 Jesuits and 3 seculars, who suffered the torture of the trench from 25 to 31 March, 1643. The list of martyrs we know of (name, Christian name, and place of execution) has 1648 names. If we add to this group the groups we learn of from the missionaries, or later from the Dutch travellers between 1649 and 1660, the total goes to 3125, and this does not include Christians who were banished, whose property was confiscated, or who died in poverty. A Japanese judge, Arai Hakuseki, bore witness about 1710, that at the close of the reign of Iemitzu (1650) "it was ordered that the converts should all lean on their own staff". At that time an immense number, from 200,000 to 300,000 perished. Without counting the members of Third Orders and Congregations, the Jesuits had, according to the martyrology (Delplace, II, 181-195; 263-275), 55 martyrs, the Franciscans 36, the Dominicans 38, the Augustinians 20. Pius IX and Leo XIII declared worthy of public cult 36 Jesuit martyrs, 25 Franciscans, 21 Dominicans, 5 Augustinians and 107 lay victims. After 1632 it ceased to be possible to obtain reliable data or information which would lead to canonical beatification. When in 1854, Commodore Perry forced an entry to Japan, it was learned that the Christian faith, after two centuries of intolerance, was not dead. In 1865, priests of the foreign Missions found 20,000 Christians practising their religion in secret at Kiushu. Religious liberty was not granted them by Japanese law until 1873. Up to that time in 20 provinces, 3404 had suffered for the faith in exile or in prison; 660 of these had died, and 1981 returned to their homes. In 1858, 112 Christians, among whom were two chief-baptizers, were put to death by torture. One missionary calculates that in all 1200 died for the faith.

Source: www.newadvent.org

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