About two weeks ago David and I attended Reaching Japanese for Christ conference, where we ran into a Japanese lady whom I made acquaintance with through international students’ ministry last year when I was attending UCI. She talked about communication barriers between American believers and Japanese non-believers. And I just wanted to share some of that because we thought that was very interesting. One of the things she talked about was that the words like “God”, “sin”, or “love” have different meanings in Japanese culture and statements like “God loves you” doesn’t make any sense to many Japanese without first explaining what kind of “God” you’re talking about.
The word “god” in Japanese is “kami”, which was originally a word for Shinto gods. When Christianity was brought to Japan, they translated the word “God” to “kami”. But these two concepts actually have no similarities whatsoever, except that they are not human. There’s a saying in Japanese that there are “eight million gods” meaning that there are many gods. There are gods everywhere, in a mountain, river, boulder, tree, animals, wind and fire. Sometimes Japanese made certain humans gods after they were deceased, usually to soothe their spirits because people feared that their souls were angry and causing bad things to happen. “Kami” are feared for their supernatural powers but not necessarily revered. Another saying in Japanese goes “Untouched gods can do no harm”, which means something like “let sleeping dogs lie”. In other words, the primary reason people have anything to do with gods is to keep them quiet. Obviously, “god” in Japanese mind can have many humanly faults, and there is no personal relationships between the gods and the people.
The only true God that we’re talking about has no flaws. He is God who is perfectly holy, and has personal relationships with humans. Thus “God loves you” is a great assurance and comfort. But in Japanese context, it just sounds odd and people might think, “Which god loves me? For what? And what does it mean to me? I’d rather not be loved by that god because I don’t want anything weird in my life.” So before telling them that “God” loves them, we might want to take time to explain who God is. We thought that was very interesting and something important to remember when we are sent to Japan to do His work.
I hope everyone will have a good rest of the week! (Oh by the way, this is David and Tomo’s missionary blog that’s linked to David’s facebook. Sometimes people get confused 🙂