Today I had the blessing to talk to Rev. Ichiro Yano from Hiroshima Jogakuin High School. He has been a pastor at that school for many years and we shared about our thoughts, opinions and current conditions on Japanese ministries.

Japan is very different from other countries I’ve done ministries in. First off, the traditional Japanese culture caused the delusion that there is no place for God in our daily lives. Ever since 1597 when the first missionaries arrived in Japan to share the gospel and were martyred, Japan has been refusing the word of God. Japanese people in general hold a worldview of pluralism, where they accept many different types of faiths. There is a saying that Japanese are born Shintos, married as Christians and die as Buddhist. To be more precise, Japanese people love following customs and they love following the custom of a western Christian wedding, ever since Princess Diana’s wedding was broadcasted live all over the world.

In Japanese culture, friends love talking about sports, music and celebrities but the two things they avoid the most are politics and faith. Even the mentioning of faith itself will lead someone to walk away thinking you are trying to use them. This is because Japanese have a very bad image of faith, especially Christianity. Many cult groups, even recently, have been damaging the image of the body of Christ. For instance, Aum Shinrikyo, a Japanese New Religion Terrorist group claiming to be Christians launched the 1995 Tokyo Metro Sarin Attack killing 12 and injuring 1050, and also a recent “pastor” vandalizing temples around Japan. Moreover, the view of believing in a religion has a negative connotation of being weak, as strong people can be individual.

As for churches, most of their purpose is to serve weddings and funerals. As for Christians in Japan, the majority of them are Sunday-only Christians, and due to the culture, the Christian community is absolutely nonexistent in medium-scale cities, such as Hiroshima. That is, the number of churches are declining, with the majority of Christians being Sunday-only Christians, and with people scattered all around, there are not enough people to form a community and even if there were, people are demotivated to do so due to their busy schedules.

Now one may ask how does the gospel get preached in such a dark area? I will write about it in the next few days. It is a completely different style of evangelism so for those who wish to do ministry in Japan, I strongly suggest you stay tuned as I will write about how evangelism works from a Japanese Christian point of view.