Japan: Growth and strength
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TOKYO, Japan — Twenty-nine branches scattered throughout various cities comprised the Church in Japan when young Elder William R. Walker was serving a mission here in the mid-1960s.
Now, as he presides over the Asia North Area 40 years later, Elder Walker of the Seventy notes there are about the same number of stakes as there were branches.
The Church grew where it was planted, he acknowledged, with the greatest strength in Tokyo and other large cities.
During a Church News interview in his Tokyo office that overlooks the Tokyo Japan Temple, Elder Walker reflected that while he was serving his mission, President Gordon B. Hinckley, then of the Quorum of the Twelve, visited Japan.
"He said some things about the future growth of the Church that caused me to think that things really would be wonderful here," Elder Walker said. "But frankly, I don't think I imagined that it would be this big and this strong with this many beautiful buildings and two temples — and the hope that in the future there will be more, and missionaries from one end of the country to the other, and faithful devoted members. We have great members here."
Japan was opened for missionary work in 1901 by Elder Heber J. Grant, then a member of the Quorum of the Twelve. But, Elder Walker noted, the mission was closed by President Grant 23 years later. The real growth of the Church in the island nation took place after World War II.
The Church continues to grow larger and stronger, Elder Walker said. One sign of that is multi-generational member families.
"When I was a young missionary here 40 years ago, everybody was a convert," he said. But now, he continued, "We have many families where you've got grandparents, their children, and their children's children — three generations. We even have some four-generation families.
"That's a source of great happiness and strength in the Church. . . . It will have a wonderful, long-term, positive effect on the growth of the Church."
The result: "We're now seeing more members called to leadership positions who grew up in the Church. They've been raised in LDS homes, they've been on missions, they went to Primary, they went to Young Men and Young Women, they married in the temple."
One of those leaders, Elder Walker said, is President Nobuyuki Yoshimura of the Matsudo Japan Stake. He is an architect for the Church who, when his stake qualified for a new stake center, was its designer.
A positive sign of strength in the Church in Japan is the number of senior couples serving full-time missions. "They have a marvelous impact," Elder Walker said, because they are working with their fellow citizens and they understand the lives of those they work with. He mentioned Elder Seiji Katanuma from Sapporo who, when he was released as an Area Seventy, joined his wife, Yoko, on a full-time mission in the Tokyo Japan South Mission.
"The mission president assigned them to a ward and the report we received was that through their reactivation efforts, sacrament meeting attendance in the ward increased by 35 percent," Elder Walker said. Many of those reactivated were former leaders who Elder Katanuma knew of through his own leadership callings.
Area president since August after two years as a counselor, Elder Walker speaks with deep affection for the people he also served as a missionary and mission president, and with faith that the Church will continue to grow larger and stronger in Japan.
E-mail: ghill@desnews.com
