"A tourist (to Tokyo) sees the gleaming high-rise buildings decked out with video walls five stories tall, the bullet trains and conveyor-belt sushi restaurants, the rave clubs and whisky bars and high tech-robots, and assumes that Japan sailed smoothly into modern prosperity, easily adopting the mores, business practices, and social organizations of the Western world. After all, if the Japanese play golf, design semiconductor chips, and wear suits and ties to work, it is natural to suppose that they have also adopted our own social values along with our technology. After all, Japanese are among the world's most gracious hosts, and always treat temporary foreign guests with uncommon warmth and unstinting hospitality. Yet sixty years after the end of World War Two, it is startling to realize how little Japanese values really have changed and how passive the people remain amid a long and seemingly intractable national malaise." - Shutting out The Sun, page 121.
One reason we want to serve in the heart of Japanese culture is that Tokyo has less than 0.5% evangelical worshippers of Jesus. You may be surprised to learn that Japan is the world's second largest unChristian people group, with less than 0.3% worshippers of Jesus.
Reflections on mission to Japan's next generation
