Funny things can happen when you’re in another culture, don’t read the language very quickly, and think that you are buying something in particular because it fits your preconceived notions.  Everyone gets through life by unconsciously working off of assumptions.  It’s what keeps you from having to remake every decision on a daily basis.  However, when you live in another country or culture, these assumptions don’t always hold true.  Allow me to illustrate…

Right after we arrived here last February, Colby and I were out doing our grocery shopping.  There were a number of things we needed, laundry detergent being one of them.  Unfortunately, we forgot to look up the word for laundry detergent before we left home, and so we found ourselves at the store gazing at all of the bottles that could possibly be detergent.  I had a mountain of laundry at home and so it was imperative that we get detergent that day.  We both knew the pictorial character for “to wash” and so that narrowed our search to just one or two shelves.  After some debate, we settled on a bottle that had the wash character on it along with a picture of some shirts with bubbles all around them.  “There,” we thought, “this must be it!”

A month later,one of our co-workers was here at the church doing some clean-up and asked if she could borrow some laundry detergent.  I gave her what we had and after smelling it and looking at the consistency, she said she didn’t think it was detergent.  She said she didn’t know those characters off the top of her head, but they didn’t look like the ones for detergent.  I went to my computer and looked them up and low and behold, it was shirt whitener!  (Why the bubbles on the bottle? I don’t know.)  So for the whole first month we were here in Japan, I had been washing all of our clothes with shirt whitener.  Needless to say, the clothes were nice and bright!

A few months later, we found ourselves at the hundred yen store (like the dollar store) looking for white-out.  We were in the office supply section, had found something in a bottle similar to the normal one for white-out, and it had the characters for “to write” and “to erase” on it.  “There,” I thought, “this must be it!”  So we happily bought it and brought it home.  Later though, when I went to use it, it came out clear on the paper!  Low and behold, it was some kind of solvent for cleaning ink off of hard surfaces!  Thankfully I went back to the store and was able to find some actual white out for paper and not walls.

The last story is what prompted me to write this post.  A few months before we came to Japan, I had begun using hard contacts instead of glasses.  In America, the cleaning solution and the overnight preserving solution for the contacts are in separate bottles and are usually bought separately.  After running out of my American solution, I went to the drug store here to buy the more, not even giving a second thought to the fact that they might be sold differently.  My wrong assumption was confirmed when I saw two bottles of solutions side by side, one larger and one smaller, just like in America.  So what that they happened to have the same picture on them – they must just be from the same company, that’s all.

After faithfully using both bottles as separate solutions for the last year, I went to the eye doctor recently to get my prescription updated.  With the new contacts, they also gave me a bottle of solution to use.  It was a small bottle and so I thought, “This must be the cleaning solution and I must have to get the preserving solution elsewhere.”  Then I looked more closely at the characters on the bottle and found that it said both cleaning and preserving (I’m now able to recognize those words).  “Oh, isn’t that interesting?” I thought, and suddenly a tiny suspicion about my two bottles at home started to grow inside of me.  Upon returning home I checked both of the bottles  and they both also had the same two words on them – cleaning and preserving.

It is usually at this point when previously held cultural assumptions shatter. However, not to be outdone for the third time by a store product, I calmly told myself I would wait and ask my language helper what the difference between my big and small bottles was.  Alas, my helper said that the two bottles I had bought were different in one simple way – size.  So from here on out I will only need to buy one bottle of solution!

They sure look different, don't they?

Unfortunately, just as it was easy to wrongly assume things about store products, it can also be easy to wrongly assume things about the Japanese.  We desire to understand the Japanese and their perspectives, but sometimes it can be hard to keep an open, unassuming mind when they do or say things.  People from other cultures act differently and look at life in different ways than we do, which is neither good or bad, but just different.  One of the most important things for being effective here is for us to be very careful not to rush to conclusions about the things Japanese people do and say.  By taking the time and putting in the effort, we can learn more deeply about them which will have an effect on how we minister in the future.

Please pray for us as we continue to have our understanding of Japanese culture modified.  Pray that we would be careful not to assume various things about people and their actions, but that our hearts and minds would be open to seeing the Japanese for who they really are.

Once a month the Christar workers in Japan get together for a morning of prayer followed by lunch and general discussion. This past month’s meeting took place at the Christar planted church in a town called Hofu where the Japanese pastor, Yuki-sensei, shared some thoughts with us. He had some very fascinating things to share about the history of Christianity in Japan that Colby and I thought would be interesting to share with you.

Pastor Yuki shares as our team leader translates.

In a general sense, Christianity was formally introduced to Japan in 1549 by Frances Xavier who was a Jesuit missionary. The people were open and over the next few years it seemed to flourish. Pastor Yuki estimated that by 1620, around 800,000 people professed to be Christians (approximately 5% of the population at that time). Around that same time, the Tokugawa dynasty came to power. They began to see Japan’s biggest threat as colonization by the west and almost anything foreign in Japan – Christianity being one of those things – was made illegal. Anyone who was caught worshipping Christ was tortured and killed in a variety of ways unless they renounced their faith. Eventually, Japan became so closed that from 1635 to 1868 the only foreigners allowed in Japan, were Dutch traders, and even they were restricted to a small floating island in Nagasaki harbor.

The Japanese people, being an organized and systematic people, created efforts to expel Christianity that were also organized and systematic. According to Pastor Yuki, the methods used to eradicate Christianity were some of the most systematically thorough methods in the history of the world. During this period of about 250 years, each family was required to be registered with their local Buddhist temple. In those days the Buddhist temples acted like a pseudo town office. Every year, every member of the family had to visit the temple, confirm their membership (including their adherence to Shinto and Buddhism), and then to prove it, each person was required to stomp on a picture of Jesus or Mary.

One of the pictures of Jesus, called a fumie (踏み絵), that the Japanese were forced to step on.

Anyone who did not step on the carvings, or even hesitated to, was assumed to be a Christian or a sympathizer with Christianity and was sent to a place called Nagasaki to be prodded to change their beliefs. If they chose not to renounce Christianity, they were tortured and killed. Even a Christian person’s parents, siblings, grandparents, children, and grandchildren could all face potential persecution for someone in their family being a Christian. Thus, there was great societal and family pressure on a person if they chose to follow Christ. It is said that many people renounced their faith, and it is also said that the Hidden Christian movement began at this time.

When Emperor Meiji began his reign in 1868, because he wanted to open Japan to foreign influences, Christianity was once again allowed and has been ever since. Even though it is gaining in interest these days, the idea of Christianity being a foreign religion and one that is risky in that it can turn families against each other is still a deeply rooted idea. While Japanese people are free to worship whomever they desire, societal pressures are still strong in encouraging people to conform to traditional Buddhist and Shinto beliefs. This, combined with the Japanese tendency toward busyness and accumulation of material things, are a few of the reasons why it is hard for a Japanese person to become a Christian.

Please continue to pray for Colby and me as we minister here in Japan. Pray for God’s wisdom to know how best to convey the truths of the Gospel and the Japanese people’s need for the Gospel. Please pray that God would be mightily at work in Japan.