Send Us Men

A quizzical little Japanese with black-rimmed spectacles, thinning black hair and a rumpled black suit stepped off a B.O.A.C. plane in New York City last week. He was immediately swept up in a round of lunches, lectures and broadcasts that would last through December. Fortunately, he was used to such treatment. Dr. Toyohiko Kagawa, 62, well known to U.S. lecture audiences before the war as the "foremost Christian leader in Japan," had just finished a six-month tour of Europe.

He made his first speech at lunch, a few hours after his arrival. "Dear brothers and sisters in Christ," he began in his brisk, high voice. "I am going around the U.S. to say thank you, thank you, thank you. But I wish you would dare to send more missionaries to Japan--even lay leaders. I divide my country's 46 provinces into four classes: class A, where we could get 500 converts in a day; class B, where we could get 300 a day; class C, where we could get 200; class D, 100 or less. Only three or four provinces are class D. So you see, in the majority of provinces it is very easy to propagate Christianity . . .

"In the last three years 200,000 people gave me name cards declaring their willingness to join Christ. I do not say I persuaded them. We have 60 volunteer workers to follow up those who confess, but it is not enough . . .

"Send us your laymen. Don't take them as a poor second. Even laymen can do wonderful things. Please encourage laymen retired from business life to come--people who when they were in business were too busy to do much."

Kagawa expressed his feeling about his homeland in a poem printed in the current issue of the Christian Century. Excerpts:

If I fail to do my utmost

To reconstruct this defeated nation that I love,

How can I make apology to God our Father--

Since I went about praying to him

As fervently as a madman

In the midst of those terrible air raids,

Showers of incendiary fire

And fearful war-bombings.

O Almighty God, graciously arouse Japan after her long stupor,

For the day of her resurrection is overdue.

Even the morning star at dawn is waiting

For Japan to awake . . .

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