BRANCH EXPANSION

For fourteen years, from January 1949 until September 1962, the wooden Japanese-style house at 5-5-8 Mita, Minato-Ku, Tokyo, did good service as the Japan branch headquarters. However, the rapid growth of the organization brought increased placements of literature, magazines and subscriptions. The following table indicates how tremendous this increase has been:

Placements: Bound Books Magazines New Subscriptions

Service year of 1950 2,026 2,626 51

Service year of 1955 4,050 105,671 3,399

Service year of 1960 15,605 538,088 7,444

Service year of 1965 53,937 1,575,597 32,193

Service year of 1972 797,423 5,907,404 123,567

In September 1971, an all-time peak of 114,133 bound books was placed by the publishers in the field in just one month.

During the course of the years, the flimsy two-story Japanese house became entirely inadequate for the work. So Brother Knorr gave permission for replacing the old branch with a new, modern building. Construction took just six months, and by October 1963 the new six-story ferroconcrete structure was ready for moving in the family of ten branch workers and six missionaries. How things continued to grow! When the Kingdom Ministry School was held, with the visiting brothers being accommodated in the Japanese-style tatami mat rooms, as many as fifty persons have lived in this home at one time.

Brother Haslett had had a big part in planning the new Tokyo branch building.

Whereas there were 106 congregations when the present Tokyo branch started to operate in October 1963, Jehovah’s witnesses are now working in 538 locations in Japan, and almost all of these will be congregations under the new organizational arrangements. So the branch work is about five times as big as it was nine years ago.