RJCPN creates Unchurched Area Map for Japan. Each map indicates church presence/absence within Pre-Heisei merger municipal boundaries. Maps are available for downloading either in PDF or JPEG format.
National (unchurched areas in yellow)
National (matches colors of prefectural maps)
Missionaries in each prefectures
In recent decades, almost all missionaries serve in Mega Cities or other urban areas, and very few in rural areas. At present, less than 100 of Japan’s 1560 foreign missionaries serve in rural areas. 90-95% serve in urban areas that already have one to several churches. There are needs in all segments, but the data and the map below reveal an imbalance in the proportion of urban and rural missionaries and also in their geographical distribution among prefectures. For example, in the prefectures with a high proportion of unchurched areas, there are almost no missionaries, and in the few with a high proportion of churched areas, there are many.
Given the shortage of workers and tremendous need in rural Japan’s unchurched areas, 1) many pioneer missionaries from overseas and within Japan need to be raised up, commissioned, and released to plant churches in areas that lack their first church and 2) many urban churches in Japan need to be plant daughter churches in the subset of unchurched rural areas that are nearby.
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NOTE:
RJCPN defines rural areas as communities under 50,000 in population based on community boundaries prior to the widespread governmental mergers of rural towns and villages with urban areas that occurred between 1999 and 2014 (Heisei merger). Even though most rural towns ceased to exist as separate legal entities, missiologically they still are just as much in need of a church in their community as before because these communities remain psychologically, socially, and geographically largely distinct from the urban areas with which they were amalgamated. Since they are technically no longer separate cities, towns, or villages, the term URA (Unchurched Rural Area) and churched rural area (CRA) are used by RJCPN to refer to the municipal-like areas that were cities, towns, or villages of 3K to 50K in population prior to the Heisei mergers.
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