• ‘Lengthening the Tent Cords’ in Japan
    The Watchtower—1985 | June 15

    • ‘Lengthening the Tent Cords’ in Japan

      “MAKE the place of your tent more spacious. And let them stretch out the tent cloths of your grand tabernacle. Do not hold back. Lengthen out your tent cords, and make those tent pins of yours strong.”​—Isaiah 54:2.

      By those words, the prophet Isaiah pointed to the time when true worship of Jehovah God would undergo rapid expansion. Today, in one country after another around the world, we are witnessing just such marvelous theocratic expansion. This is, perhaps, nowhere more evident than in Japan, where there are some 96,000 worshipers of the true God.

      Growth Through the Years

      It was early in the second decade of this century that the good news of God’s Kingdom first reached Japan. Charles T. Russell, the first president of the Watch Tower Society, made a 700-mile (1,100-km) tour through the Japanese islands and saw the need for preaching true Christianity. In 1926 an American-Japanese was assigned to Japan as the Watch Tower Society’s first missionary.

      For some 20 years, many seeds of truth were sown and scores of persons learned about Jehovah’s Kingdom. Many of them underwent severe trials for their faith at the hands of the military government during the period of 1933-45.a

      In 1949 the preaching work in Japan got a fresh start. Gilead-trained missionaries began arriving. By August, there were seven missionaries working in Tokyo, and, on an average, nine persons shared in the evangelizing work each month. Six more missionaries arrived in October, five of these starting the preaching work in Kobe. How would this preaching be received in this country of Buddhist and Shinto believers, recovering from the shock of World War II?

      In less than ten years the number of Kingdom preachers grew to 1,000. But the ‘place of the tent was yet to be made more spacious.’ By November 1970 the number of Witnesses had multiplied tenfold, and three years later it reached 20,000. In another three and a half years that number was to double again​—for a new peak of 40,000-and-more Kingdom preachers! However, there were many sheeplike ones yet to be found, and Jehovah continued to pour out his blessing on the zealous activities of his people in Japan. In a little over six years, by June 1983, the 40,000 had doubled once again to over 80,000, and, as of this report, the number of Kingdom publishers in Japan has reached 97,305!