The Gist of Japan: The Islands, Their People, and Missions

by R. B. Peery

Missionaries are men of like appetites, passions, hopes, and desires with those at home. They long for and enjoy the comforts and amenities of life. They have wives and children whom they love as devotedly, and for whom they desire to provide as comfortable homes, as the pastor at home.

There was a time when missionaries were called upon to forego nearly all social pleasures and submit to endless discomforts, but that time is past. The mission home to-day is frequently as comfortable as that of the pastor in America. It is right that the standard of living in the home lands should be maintained by the missionaries abroad, and that they surround themselves with all available pleasures and conveniences. There is no reason why a man should lay aside all pleasures and comforts so soon as he becomes a missionary.

Those who live in the foreign ports in Japan have nice, roomy houses modeled after Western homes. Many of them are surrounded with beautiful lawns and fine flowers, and are a comfort and delight to their possessors. Most of the missionaries who live in the interior occupy native houses, slightly modified to suit foreign taste. By building chimneys, and substituting glass for paper windows, the native houses can be made quite comfortable, though they are colder in winter and do not look so well as foreign ones. The writer has lived in such a home during most of his residence in Japan, and has suffered little inconvenience. Some of the wealthier mission boards have built foreign houses even in the interior, and to-day there are a good many such scattered over Japan.

As has been before remarked, the mission home is one of the most important factors in connection with the work; it is a little bit of Christendom set down in the midst of heathendom. It presents to the non-Christian masses around it a concrete example of exalted family life, with equality and trust between husband and wife, and mutual love between parents and children—things not generally found in the native home. It is a beacon-light shining in a dark place.

This is one of the many reasons why a missionary should be a married man. The single man cannot create this model home, which is to teach the people by example what Christian family life should be. In this respect Catholic missions are deficient, the celibacy of the priests precluding family life.

First, then, the mission home is an example to the non-Christian people around it. It is frequently open to them, and they can see its workings. They often share its hospitality and sit at its table. Their keen eyes take in everything, and a deep impression is made upon them.

Just here arises one of the greatest difficulties the missionary has to contend with in his private life. The people are so inquisitive naturally, the mission home is so attractive to them, and our idea of the privacy and sanctity of the home is so lacking in their etiquette, that it is hard to keep the home from becoming public. People will come in large numbers at the most unseasonable hours, simply out of curiosity, wanting to see and handle everything in the house. It is often necessary, in self-defense, to refuse them admittance, except at certain hours. Not only are the seclusion and privacy of the home endangered, but the missionary also is in great danger of having his valuable time uselessly frittered away.

Notwithstanding all that the mission home is to the people, it is much more to the missionary. It should be to him a sure retreat and seclusion from the peculiarly trying cares and worries of his work. It should be a place where he can evade the subtle influences of heathenism which creep in at every pore—a safe retreat from the sin and wickedness and vice around it.

The mission home should be a Western home transplanted in the East. It may not become too much orientalized. It should have Western furniture, pictures, musical instruments, etc., and should make its possessor feel that he is in a Western home. It should be well supplied with books and newspapers, and everything else that will help to keep its inmates in touch with the life of the West. The missionary may not be orientalized, else he will be in danger of becoming heathenized.

For the sake of his children the missionary's home should be as exact a reproduction of the Western home as possible. These children are citizens of the West, heirs of its privileges; and to it they will go before they reach years of maturity. Therefore it is but fair that their childhood home should reflect its civilization.