# The Lutheran Pioneer_St. Louis_1892_S34 # Machine transcription, uncorrected — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration) Early Difficulties and Present Sppoctunities in Japan. In December last the Rey. Dr. J. D. Davis of Kioto read a paper before the Kobe and Osaka Missionary Conference, in which he pre- sented the contrast between the present oppor- tunities for missionary work in Japan and the condition of things which he found on land- ing in Kobe in 1871, the year that ‘‘witnessed the abolishment of feudalism, the dispatch of the first great embassy to foreign lands, the beginning of the first railway and of the post-office system, and the starting of the first newspaper.’’ ‘‘The edicts against Christi- anity, which had been posted upon the bulletin boards all over the empire for 250 years, and which made the profession of Christianity a capital offense, and offered rewards to all in- formers, had been re-affirmed by the Mikado upon his restoration, and were still to be seen in every part of Japan.’’ Early in 1872 Dr. Davis, in com- pany with Dr. Greene, called upon the Governor of the Hiogo Ken, and were told that if it came to his knowledge, that a Japanese bookseller in Kobe had sold even a copy of the English Bible, it would be his duty, acting under orders from Tokio, to arrest that man and send him to prison. Among the early difficulties of the situation, Dr. Davis mentions the fewness in numbers of the mis- sionaries, the difficulty of travel, the lack of help in learning the language, the small number of Japanese Christians, and the dis- semination of Western skepticism and materialism through the ex- tensive circulation of books in both Japanese and English. Speak- ing of the lack of Christian literature, he says: No part of the Bible had been printed, and, so far as the writer knows, no tracts had been prepared. We were shut up to the Bible in the Chinese language, without the kunten, and to Dr. Martin’s evidences of Christianity, in Chinese. On account of the fear which had- possession of the people, the preparation and printing of Christian books were very difficult, _ and the prejudice of all scholars against writ- ing anything in popular language was an almost insuperable barrier against the preparation of ‘any books or tracts for the masses. In the summer of 1878 the writer sat under “the maples by the waterfall in Arima, the only fa “missionary in the place, and wrote in Roman detters in his broken Japanese, the first draft of a little tract; two months later, when his teacher had copied this into Japanese, he asked ie to revise it, and it came back in such high that the masses could read it, and after another month it came back about fifty degrees higher yet; the writer then took his original draft and sat down by his teacher and fought it over word by word and sentence by sentence, de- manding that the words which could be under- stood by the greatest number of the common people should be used, and after two months it was ready for the block-cutter. But his teacher begged of the writer not to let any one know who helped in the preparation of it, as he would be ashamed to have it known that he prepared a book in the language of com- mon people. This was one of the very first tracts prepared, and within ten years over 100,000 copies of it had been circulated. There is a different outlook to-day: ' _ The twenty missionaries of twenty years ago have become, including the wives of mis- sionaries, nearly 600. Instead of the four 34 The Lutheran Pioneer. The fear which existed universally twenty years ago is well-nigh gone; religious freedom is guaranteed in the constitution, and there is a readiness to hear on the part of the people, in most places throughout the empire, which calls for a manifold larger number of direct evangelic workers than are at present engaged in that work in Japan. The Protestant Christi- ans of twenty years ago have become more than 30,000, organized into over 200 churches, with about 130 ordained Japanese ministers, and nearly 500 other Japanese evangelists and workers, with nearly 400 men in training in theological schools. —The Bible Society Record. ~