"10,000 Reasons" in Japanese
It’s been a couple months since then, but I did the worship music for our church’s Good Friday service. The service is a combination of people from both the English-speaking and Japanese-speaking services, so the worship leader has to sing at least a few songs in Japanese.
I could do five songs, but I decided to sing all of them in Japanese while my other singer (in this case, Captain Caffeine) sang the lyrics in English at the same time. It’s a bit confusing, but I wanted the Japanese congregation to feel very included (which they don’t when the songs are in English).
The service went smoothly—well, I didn’t make any mistakes, at least! I had been practicing the songs in Japanese for weeks before the service.
One of the songs my pianist really likes is “10,000 Reasons”, and while it’s not really a Good Friday song, I thought it would be a good upbeat song to end the service with. So I had to search for the Japanese lyrics for the song and came across this version by Lauren Horii. Not only do the Japanese lyrics smoothly match the melody, but she has a really great voice.
The Japanese-speaking members of the congregation seemed to really like this song. One of the Japanese worship leaders even asked me for the link to the page where I got the lyrics and they sang it for the Japanese service a few weeks later.
We’re all used to hearing this song in English, but the Japanese lyrics struck a really strong chord in me (no pun intended). Lately God has been leading me to connect with my heritage more than I ever did when I was younger, and this song is part of that process.
Singing this song in Japanese made me really want to use all that I have to reach the Japanese people for Christ. Less than 1% of the population is Christian, and most have never heard the gospel except maybe in a religions study class. Their polytheistic culture can sometimes be very unforgiving and despairing. I can feel God’s burden for them, and it has become my burden, too.
So here’s the song on YouTube. Please pray for the non-Christians in Japan, that they will find the hope and salvation of Jesus.
As someone who, thanks to his interest in anime and manga, also loves Japan, I, too, have prayed for the Japanese people to begin coming to Christ more, especially since, as a rabid student of the WWII Pacific Theater, I am thoroughly convinced that the Japanese people were miraculously saved from destruction... by the atomic bombs. It's so fashionable today to criticize the atomic bombings, but as a student of history it is impossible to imagine any other WWII ending option that wouldn't have killed many more tens of thousands, even millions of Japanese. President Truman dropping the only two atomic bombs we had within three days of each other and bluffing about more got through to Emperor Hirohito, who pushed for a surrender that otherwise would not have happened... and saved Japan from total annihilation by starvation, fire bombing, and bayonet point.
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