From the Oct. 23, 1960, issue—

After a mission trip to Japan to evaluate the WELS mission work going on there, Edgar Hoenecke wrote:

“Mito is a promising mission area, as we soon learned from Pastor Poetter’s statistical report and the visits we made with him. You will recall that our Executive Committee for Japan and the Board for World Missions endorsed the plan of our missionaries to concentrate as much as possible at the beginning on the Ibaraki Prefecture, of which Mito is the capital. . . .

“Mito lies in the heart of the Kanto Plain with fertile farmlands surrounding it on all sides, while the other great source of Japan’s food supply, the Pacific Ocean, is only six miles to the east. It is a busy place and has a good educational system. . . .

“Japan is hard put to produce enough food to satisfy her almost 100 million people, and must regularly rely on imports from other countries. Her farmers have become some of the world’s best, and her per-acre yield is possibly the highest in the world; and yet, there is always a shortage because only one-eighth of her land is arable.

“She has need of other food, also, spiritual food, and the Bread and Water of Life in Christ the Savior. Would that she were to develop a real hunger and thirst in this way, now that so many of her people after the War have become disillusioned with the old superstitions of Buddha and the Emperor-worship of Shintoism, instead of lapsing into cynicism and atheism!

“With a total population of 94,206,756, Japan today has a total of only 884 male Protestant missionaries, and 530 single ladies who are engaged in mission work. There are 3,549 Japanese Protestant pastors. The ratio of all Protestants workers to the population is 1 to every 21,000! This prefecture has a population of almost 2,500,000. Pastor Poetter is the only Lutheran missionary in the entire state!”

Editor’s note: The WELS world mission field in Japan now includes nine organized congregations, 451 members, four WELS missionaries, and five national pastors.