Japan, like other countries resistant to the gospel, has been called a missionary graveyard. It is meant metaphorically now, used to describe a country where missionary dreams of mighty exploits for God often withered, where hope can die an untimely death, and where prayers seem to go unanswered. Of course there have been times in Japanese history when the words “missionary graveyard” were all too literal.
Some form of Christianity was thought to have arrived in the Far East, possibly in Japan, by the early 600s. Nestorian* missionaries certainly had established churches in China by that time. However the gospel failed to take root in the hearts of the Japanese. Instead, in the late 6th Century, the Indian philosophy of Buddhism was linked in an unholy union with polytheistic Shintoism to enwrap the minds of the people of Japan in almost unbroken darkness for the next millennium. It seems that it was not until 1549 when any light at all pierced the spiritual darkness in Japan. In that year, the Portuguese Jesuit, Francis Xavier, arrived, bringing the message of the one true God, but with a gospel distorted by Rome’s ritualism. Xavier stayed only for two years, being convinced that if the Japanese people were to be converted, it must be through China. He died in Macau the following year (1552).
By the early 1600s perhaps 300,000 Japanese claimed Christianity; it is impossible to know how many were real believers. But the ruling shoguns became alarmed, convinced these missionary efforts were a guise for Western imperialism; they determined to crush this upstart religion. In a chapter little known in Church history, for the next 250 years those professing Christianity were ruthlessly persecuted. Many who claimed Christ were themselves crucified, often with their whole families. Others were burned at the stake, boiled alive, or drowned. Some scholars have claimed it to be the most sustained and brutal persecution in history. Anti-Christian laws were not repealed until 1873—due to severe international pressure.
By 1880, a Japanese New Testament was published, the Old Testament following in 1887. William G. Smith, commended from an assembly in Bath, England, arrived in 1888. Soon others followed. Today there are perhaps 160 assemblies in the country, and the work is growing steadily.
But the price has been substantial. Dr. Eitel, well-known chief of the Changsa Hospital, wrote: “Over Japan, even more than over China, lies the charged weight of demonic influence. Our missionaries there are constantly exposed to this invisible attack. This… presents to the Christian worker a perpetual threat. Without his being aware of it, the missionary’s emotional and mental strength is being exhausted, his faith is being exceedingly taxed. Consequently, there come…nervous breakdowns, and quick fatigue” (quoted in That the World May Know, Vol. 7, p. 368).
But there is hope to be found even in a graveyard. Recently, while visiting the resort town of Karuizawa, about 50 miles northwest of Tokyo, I happened on a “Foreigner’s Cemetery.” It was surrounded by a large Japanese graveyard filled with Buddhist shrines to the dead. My path led me on a long arc past hundreds of memorials to the emptiness of pagan worship. Over it all could be written the words: “…without Christ,… having no hope, and without God in the world” (Eph. 2:12). So it was with great relief that I came to the little walled section for “Foreigners.” Oh, how different! No shrines; no flowers to appease ancestors; no food for their God. Instead, carved on the tombs of missionary stalwarts, and their children—some only days old—were words like these: “With Christ, which is far better”; “Asleep in Jesus”; “At Home”; “Oh grave, where is thy sting?” and other similar ringing expressions of the triumph of the Saviour. It is such a message of absolute assurance and certainty beyond death that is Japan’s—and the world’s—only hope.
Written by J. B. Nicholson Jr