Religion: Christ in Japan

The Lamb of God, an ancient symbol dear to most Christians, is an offensive notion to the Japanese. To them the lamb is "a dirty, stupid and cringing animal." The word lamb is "an epithet of contempt and derision . . . perhaps the vilest word in the language." Thus, in Christianity and Crisis last week, wrote George S. Noss, Japan-born son of U.S. missionaries, himself a missionary in rural Japan for eleven years, now a teacher of Japanese at Columbia University. His thesis: the reason Christian missionaries to Japan have converted only one-half of...