Sharing our Faith with our Japanese Neighbors
Radix article
by Stanley K. Inouye

The Japanese are growing in power and influence day by day around the world. Over the years, they have proven themselves to be such an adaptive people. They are are masters of eclecticism. They have embraced much of the best the world's cultures have to offer and transformed whatever it is into something uniquely Japanese.

All except Christianity that is.

After centuries of Catholic and Protestant presence, less than one percent of the Japanese population are Christians. And the statistics are not much better wherever the Japanese have moved. Here in the United States, in spite of the fact that Japanese Americans are one of the most assimilated and upwardly mobile ethnic minority populations in the country, and four generations removed from their cultural roots, still less than five percent are Christian.

That is the pattern for the rest of the world as well. For whatever reasons, wherever they are, no matter how highly they have assimilated or acculturated, the Japanese still have not embraced the Gospel in any great numbers. What can we do to relate our faith in Christ more effectively with our neighbors and friends who have Japanese cultural backgrounds?

One key concept has helped me understand what we Christians must realize if we are going to be effective relating the Gospel to people of Japanese cultural backgrounds. That concept is known as omoiyari. This Japanese word roughly translated means empathy.

In Japanese Patterns of Behavior, Takie Sugiyama Lebra writes, "For the Japanese, empathy (omoiyari)ranks high among the virtues considered indispensable for one to be really human, morally mature, and deserving of respect. I am even tempted to call Japanese culture an omoiyari culture."

Omoiyari refers to the ability and willingness to feel what others are feeling, to experience vicariously the pleasure or pain that they are undergoing, and to help them satisfy their wishes.

According to Lebra, four behavioral patterns are characteristic of omoiyari people. One, they seek to maintain consensus or agreement by deferring to the fulfillment of each other's needs and desires.

Let me share an example out of my personal experience. When a group of Japanese Americans is deciding where to go for a bite to eat after seeing a movie together, they will first take an informal poll of one another's preferences. They will each tend to make their suggestions but end their comments with a statement to the effect, "But it really doesn't matter to me. Wherever is fine."

When all involved have probed each other for some sense of consensus, someone will pose what is apparently the group's leaning. With the favorable nodding of heads, it is decided. But chances are, the final selection is seldom someone's first choice. This is to protect that person from feeling guilty for not deferring enough to the wishes of the others.

Two, omoiyari people seek to optimize each other's comfort by seeking to provide pleasure or prevent displeasure by anticipating the other's needs and desires and taking initiative to meet those needs and fulfill those desires without the other person having to express them overtly in some obvious manner.

For instance, when dining with others, it the responsibility of the others in your group to notice when you no longer have enough of something to eat and offer it to you. You must also refuse the offer several times before accepting. If there is a limited quantity of what is being offered, you should also offer it to others before accepting it.

The person doing the offering, if not the host, is often the person who most wants what is being offered. The individual is adamantly offering the precious morsel to you, so you will be just as insistent that they eat it. Consistently, a bit of every dish should remain after the meal is completed; otherwise the person who ate the last portion of a particular item would not be certain they didn't deprive another. They would have also communicated to the host, if there is one, that there wasn't enough to satisfy everybody, thus embarrassing the host. The individual who finished the dish would be considered self-centered or unsophisticated, the opposite of an omoiyari (empathetic) person.

Another variation involves preserving another's pleasure or preventing displeasure by not revealing one's own discomfort or suffering.

It is the other person's responsibility to realize that you are uncomfortable or suffering.

When asked if you are in such a state, you are to nobly reply that you are "fine." It is only after repeated probing that you are to admit to whatever discomfort or suffering you are experiencing.

Your pain is to be communicated in such a way that it is read from behind your forbearance. If your discomfort is too obvious, then you will be viewed as self-centered, immature, and inconsiderate of others. If you are too subtle, your need for help or consideration will go unheeded and you will be left to suffer alone. This non-verbal means of asking without asking is referred to as amaeru.

Three, omoiyari people can control each other very effectively in non-verbal ways.

One of the ways they can constrain or punish one another is by refusing to respond to another's expression of amae. When another person non-verbally expresses their need for comfort or assistance, and you want to punish or constrain them, you simply refuse omoiyarior empathy and do nothing.

For example, I remember the distraught puzzlement of some Christians involved in campus ministry over the suicide of a Japanese American student who was both a Christian and leader in their predominantly Caucasian group on campus. Before he ended his own life, this student seemed so "together." They commented on how sensitive he was to the needs of others. He was always caring for others so much that they assumed he didn't have need of much care. Evidently, a lot of miscommunication was going on in this cross-cultural situation.

How does a person from an empathetic culture ask for empathy? By giving empathy. Evidently, this Japanese American student was asking for understanding and help in the most emphatic way he knew how, by being very sympathetic to the needs of others. When others didn't respond in like measure, he might have felt not only uncared for and unloved, but that he was actually being punished as well.

Four, omoiyari people believe that non-verbal communication is the most powerful form of communication. The following are just a few quotes from Lebra (pp. 46-48) expressing this dynamic of Japanese culture: "...[the Japanese attach priority] to implicit, non-verbal intuitive communication over explicit, verbal, rational exchange of information... Omoiyari makes explicit, verbal communication redundant and superfluous... The Japanese find esthetic refinement and sophistication in a person who sends non-verbal, indirect, implicit, subtle messages... The message of a conversation is not what is said, but what is not said; silence is communication...Among the reasons for the priority of non-verbal communication is that an intuitive, roundabout form of communication is based upon empathy as necessary to maintain the Japanese way of life; a verbal, explicit form may disrupt it."

In Dean Barnlund's Public and Private Self in Japan and the United States (p. 89), the author quotes two well known Japanese scholars (Inazo Nitobe being a noted Christian). In the words of Inazo Nitobe, "To give in so many articulate words one's innermost thoughts and feelings is taken among us as an unmistakable sign that they are neither profound nor very sincere." This thought is put more bluntly still by Hidetoshi Kato when he says, "In Japan speech is not silver or copper or brass—but scrap." Intuitive communication, through means other than words, is praised and revered. Articulate persons, especially talkative ones, are seen as foolish or even dangerous. Eloquence can even disqualify one for positions of authority and influence.

How are we going to reach people like this with the Gospel, when so much of our traditional approaches to doing evangelism are so contrary to what is culturally natural to the very people we want to embrace for Christ? Our evangelistic method, media, and message must be in forms that are appropriate to our audience if we are going to be maximally effective relating the Good News to them. We must begin with who it is we are called to reach and serve for Jesus Christ and shape ministry accordingly.

The Japanese as an omoiyari people are very relationally oriented. They are other-centered. Their lives are extremely affected by what others think and feel, and by what others think and feel about them. They are very group-oriented, the needs of the group coming before the needs of the individual. They are family centered. As such, in Japanese culture, the needs of the family come before the needs of the individual family member. Each member must sacrifice for the good of the whole. In other cultures, members of close families may say, "I am a member of a close family." However, in Japanese culture close family members relate more like, "I am my family. My family is me."

Because they are so relationally oriented, people with Japanese cultural backgrounds tend to judge truth by the integrity and sincerity of the person saying it, rather than by judging truth on its own merits. Western culture tends to see truth as truth, no matter who says it. Japanese culture says, "So and so said it, so it must be true."Truth is measured as much by what is not said as by what is said. People of Japanese cultural backgrounds read and listen to lives lived rather than to eloquent words and rational arguments.

So, what are some of the evangelistic implications of realizing people of Japanese ancestry are omoiyari people?

The incredible influence the family and group has on personal decision-making must be considered. Effective evangelism must seek to influence and eventually reach the entire family for Christ. Also, the relationships non-Christian Japanese have with the groups to which they belong, whether their informal network of friends or the company they work for, are seen as permanent and lifelong. All these bonds of belonging must also be addressed if the Japanese are going to be effectively reached with the Gospel.

In animistic cultures, the "power encounter" that must often take place before a non-Christian may fully yield his or her life to Christ is spirit against spirit. In such a group- and family- oriented culture as the Japanese, the power encounter may be group pitted against group, and family confronting family.

Corporate witness has a tremendous impact upon those who are so group- and family- oriented as the Japanese. Non-Christians, together with their families and friends, should be offered the opportunity to enter and experience Christian family and group life. Non-Christian families and friends have such a powerful influence over those of Japanese cultural backgrounds that they tend to believe that the good of their family and friends is more important than their own welfare.

Since this is so, non-Christian Japanese need to be offered an even more powerful bond of love and unity by being welcomed into the alternative experience of Christian group and family. Christian families and groups should seek to win not just individual non-Christians but whole networks of non-Christian family members and friends.

In my experience here in the United States, the way most of us have been taught to do evangelism is to communicate the truth of the Gospel (the abstract plan of salvation), challenge the individual to make a conversion decision, and then once the decision is made, to incorporate that individual into the church. It is my feeling, however, that for people like those with Japanese backgrounds who are culturally so relationship-oriented and group-oriented, cultures described as omoiyari cultures, the process has to be reversed.

This means we need to incorporate these people into relationships within the church first, with Christians and Christ Himself, and then focus our attention on conversion. Because I am advocating for relational incorporation before conversion, I am not advocating for church membership before a person becomes a professing Christian. Not so. What I am encouraging, however, is the need to see conversion as a relational process. We need to enable the non-Christian to get to know Christ better and better, little by little, becoming more and more committed to Him as they come to appreciate, admire and trust Him in small relational increments, not demanding that non Christians be on a fast track to commitment to a pat set of beliefs and an abstract apologetic for faith.

This relational process to evangelism is, after all, consistent with the way Jesus related with those around him in the Bible. He invited people to discover who he was and is. Jesus asked Peter, "Who do you say I am?" To which Peter replied, "You are the Christ, the Son of the Living God!" (Matthew 16:15-16 NIV). How did Peter arrive at this discovery? By spending time with Jesus.

Because we know how those of Japanese ancestry perceive truth—that who says it is most often more important than what is being said—the quality of relationship between the Christian and non-Christian, and the integrity of the Christian's walk with God, is of utmost importance to effective personal evangelism. The decision to become a Christian would sound something like, "She's a Christian, so I am going to be a Christian. What do I have to believe?" Japanese tend to believe because they belong rather than belong because they believe.

The Christian's power to influence an omoiyari person toward faith in God is directly proportional to the degree that that Christian's life reflects the truth of the Gospel. But since our ability to do so will always be limited, no matter how close our relationship with Christ, our primary responsibility is to introduce the non-Christian Japanese to the person of Jesus Christ, who is "the way, the truth and the life." By becoming familiar with Jesus' life, death and resurrection as recorded in the Bible, they themselves can come to empathize with the anguish our Lord suffers as he yearns to embrace them with his love.

As Japanese theologian Kazoh Kitamori envisions it, our Lord's love is so great that the cross of Christ is but a window, a passing glance, into the pain our God has suffered and endured from the fall of humankind until now. So that what Lebra (p. 45) said of omoiyari people might come true, They believe that one's magokoro (sincerity or trueheartedness) will eventually open another's closed heart and induce a desired reaction; that an event, however tragic or far-reaching, must be evaluated and judged by the presence or absence of magokoro in the parties involved. With such a bent for omoiyari (empathy), the non-Christian Japanese will join the centurion "who stood there in front of Jesus, heard his cry and saw how he died"and be moved to exclaim, "Surely this man was (and is) the Son of God!" (Mark 15:38 NIV)

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