Not just surviving but thriving

Adjusting to life in Japan as missionaries is hard! For women, there are some particular challenges that make it difficult, including caring for family and children and the loss of community while in a bewildering life season.

But there is hope. While it takes many years to adjust to Japan, a missionary and their sending community can facilitate this process by understanding some of the needs of women during this time.

In my 2003 PhD dissertation, “Liminality and the North American Missionary Adjustment Process in Japan,” I analyzed the stories of forty missionaries from sixteen different mission agencies to see how they adjusted to life in Japan. The statistics show that it takes 7.8 years on average for a missionary to adjust to Japan! The women surveyed faced particular challenges to surviving and thriving in new locations. They often found themselves juggling the expectations and needs of children and family, and they were unable to find community or healthy ministry opportunities.

Here, I’ll summarize some of the findings concerning what women in particular have found difficult as they seek to adjust to life in Japan. More importantly, I will also share some habits and helps to navigate the process of feeling at home in Japanese culture.

Problems facing women missionaries

Support

An overwhelming 82% of the married women interviewed in my research talked about the lack of emotional and practical support they experienced in their roles as mothers and wives. Missionary mothers with young children find that while their husbands generally are able to engage in either full-time language study or ministry, they remain “stuck at home,” unable to move forward in the adjustment process. Meanwhile, many single women leave strong support bases in their home country only to find that, in Japan, being over thirty and single seems to be an anomaly. One single woman writes about her challenges:

Not having someone to be completely honest with on hard days . . . not having a built-in teammate in the midst of transitions . . . the oddity of being older and not married. In this culture, at least, people feel very free to tell me that I am too old now to get married, and aren’t my parents worried?

Communication

Women, more than men, expressed great frustration in the inability to communicate in their new culture. Women tended to define their previous identity based on their communication abilities, independence, and ability to build successful relationships. One missionary wrote this haiku about her adjustment journey:

Wants to speak her heart

Feels like a mute that can’t talk

Frustrated, lonely, despairs

These areas of identity formation can quickly feel invalidated by the inability to effectively communicate in Japanese:

• “My whole view of myself was turned upside down with that.”
• “I think that was very difficult for me and did a number on my self-esteem that I think took a long time to recover from.”
• “When I would go to church, I would become very withdrawn and that’s not my personality naturally.”

Alienation and loneliness

Most missionary women generally enter some sort of period of isolation as a result of their new setting and inability to communicate; the longer this season lasts, the more frustrating and lonely the experience becomes. Some missionary women move toward lifestyle choices of seclusion that further alienate them from the culture in which they are ministering; others find their journey toward cultural engagement long and difficult. Those with small children in the home already tend to feel isolated and withdrawn, and loneliness for single missionaries is often more pronounced in a new culture where they have not yet established deep relationships.

Insignificance

When the expectations and hopes that we have upon arriving in Japan do not happen in our desired time frame, the missionary finds herself asking such questions like “Why am I even here?” Women raising families tend to find their feelings of uselessness pronounced, as often their husbands are more quickly able to go out and have effective ministries while they are at home caring for children:

• “I felt like I could do nothing . . . a feeling of total uselessness.”
• “I battled feelings of jealousy—what am I doing here? I’m stuck. Horrible feelings came up.”
• “Am I worthwhile? Did God really call me? Does He really want to use me over here with these limitations?”

And for all women, the challenges of Japanese culture and language can lead to pronounced frustrations. A single woman shared that it took her twenty years to find a position in which she could find long-term effectiveness; until that point, she was not content and did not feel adjusted.

The search for identity—who am I?

Moving to Japan involves a complete pulling up of roots—people, location, job, and identity—which is particularly challenging for women. Women tended to choose metaphors like “rip” or “tear” to describe their feelings of adjustment from their home country to Japan. One woman began her haiku by simply stating: “Identity lost…” The process of establishing roots is long and arduous and often means a struggle of identity for women: “We hadn’t developed that root system and that network of support and so forth and we needed to be nourished.”

Moving toward adjustment

Transformation

The process of adjustment to Japan has led most women missionaries through a passage that has brought about personality transformation and different ways of thinking and doing. The majority of women who successfully adjusted to Japan experienced both a personality shift from being less self-reliant to being more resilient and open as well as a profound change in where their self-worth was based—no longer defined by accomplishments but rather in a deepening relationship with a personal God.

Adjustment and identity

The way women described their feelings once they had adjusted to a new culture were consistent: connected relationships, feeling purposeful/significant, and the ability to communicate. My research indicates that the majority of women missionaries in Japan thrive best when they have connected relationships and purposefulness. So it is no great surprise that a female missionary is often extremely frustrated during her early years in service! Without language ability, most of her options for building meaningful relationships and making a significant mark on the world are out of reach. It is only by “getting through” the language learning, isolation, young children, cultural issues, and rebuilding her web of relationships that she is able to redefine herself in the new environment.

Adjustment: How to get there

Success in the small things

It is unfortunate that many missionaries apparently do not have a taste of feeling successful or useful on the mission field until their second or third term! Many missionaries unfortunately leave Japan before they have found places in ministry that help them feel adjusted. I have found that those who are given even small ministry tasks early on in which they are successful can adjust more smoothly. Some positive experiences shared by first-term missionary women:

• “I was kind of like her sidekick in all of that and she just really, she wouldn’t let me just stay in my house and feel sorry for myself.”
• “She had some English things that she needed help with and I could help her. So I had some feeling that I had given something to her.”
• “But at that time thankfully I was working with students—as an outreach—and that’s the only thing that allowed me to make it through language school.”

Supervisors can help by putting all missionaries from the very start into positions where they can experience even small measures of success. This includes those in full-time language study who need ministry outlets, even if just once a week. And women can also take responsibility for their own self-growth. In my first few months living back in Japan, I forced myself to attend the twice-monthly fabric-dyeing women’s circle in my community where I could learn and build new relationships.

Finding community

Women need community, which includes safe confidants who can listen and understand. Relationships help women find their voice, which is central to a woman’s identity. Carol Gilligan’s research concludes that women approach life through the connection of a web of relationships, which holds everything together.¹ Finding life-giving community needs to remain a high priority for women living overseas.

For missionary moms, this often involves other women in similar situations as themselves and may be as simple as weekly meetings at a local McDonalds or playgroup. It is also worth noting that many missionary moms have found early learning settings to be places where they found not only significant community but also an inroad to adjustment. The missionary and Japanese moms are thrown together into a new life stage where, like their children, they are starting something together. This setting then serves as a bridge into the wider local community, a means for learning more language and culture, and provides an “in” into the usually tight community. For single women, finding like-minded friends remains highly significant; some have found that Japanese roommates can serve not only as important friends but also as cultural guides and links into the community.

Starting something new

An interesting correlation emerged in my research that pointed to the importance of missionaries being part of something new in order to be allowed on the “inside” of a group in Japan. A new church plant, a new local volleyball team, a new group of yōchien moms, starting a neighborhood English class—these group examples in which missionaries and Japanese partner together in any kind of new ongoing activity can give the adjusting missionary the opportunity to be inside the group, which is extremely helpful in a society that clearly but invisibly demarcates those inside and outside the group. Being on the inside of a group can speed up the whole adjustment process, including language and cultural learning and building strong relationships.

Mentors and guides along the way

Effective mentoring² can come in numerous forms and remains significant to the successful adjustment of new missionaries! A missionary coach is the most important type of mentor, giving help by believing in the emerging missionary. Goodwin’s principle of expectation best describes this mentor: “Emerging leaders tend to live up to the genuine expectations of leaders they respect.”³ Missionaries reflected on what this encouragement looked like:

• “He believed in me and so he created opportunities.”
• “He stuck his neck out for me.”
• “He had confidence in me.”
• “She would correct me very gently.”
• “He gave me a good experience.”
• “He was really just a cheerleader.”
• “They didn’t treat us like . . . children, but like peers.
• Made me feel that he was saying, ‘I’m alongside of you—I’m taking you into my confidence.’”
• “She ‘poured into me.’”

This type of life-giving encouragement can come from Japanese or Westerners in spheres of influence, from a supervisor or more veteran missionary.

Cultural guides can model and/or teach Japanese language, culture, and everyday living by providing a safe environment of learning for the missionary. These mentors appear to play a necessary role during the first years of adjustment and each time another major adjustment takes place (i.e., moving to a new location, having a baby, etc.).

Finally, missionaries in all seasons of life also greatly benefit from finding extended “family” on the mission field. These individuals or families are able to provide for needs such as serving as “surrogate” grandparents to a missionary family’s children or providing a comfortable home that allows them to experience what they are missing back home.

Member care specialists tend to agree that the main thing all adjusting missionaries need is ongoing support, monitoring, and mentoring. Seasoned missionaries, officially or unofficially, can play significant roles by choosing to fill these roles for those still adjusting. Missionary leaders should proactively look for missionaries with gifts of mentoring, encouragement, and/or cultural aptitude to help newer workers. Providing ongoing small-group communities for missionaries will also allow some of these mentoring relationships to form in a natural way.

Opportunities for ongoing learning and reflection

Missionaries need opportunities for reflection and on-field learning. While many missions emphasize pre-field training, often little is being done to guide on-field reflection and growth. Providing retreats, conferences, and home assignment learning opportunities can bring perspective and enlightenment to a struggling missionary. In addition, reflection is essential for transformation and adjustment to occur. The missionary and the agency leadership need to be proactive in seeking opportunities for ongoing reflection, learning, and transformation. Understanding the needs and challenges of adjusting missionary workers can be a lot of work, but the agencies and individuals who proactively look for opportunities to meet those needs will be a huge benefit to the missionary!

Some concluding thoughts

The missionary experiences of adjustment to Japan generally reflect a period of great disorganization in a woman’s life. Yet this season also gives the gift of transformation.

It has been my privilege to meet and know many amazing missionaries in Japan who have emerged from their adjustment period with humility and greatness rolled into one. Along the way, they have had seasons in which their faith has faltered, they have failed vocationally, and they have struggled with loneliness and insignificance. Yet their perseverance and God’s faithfulness has resulted in beautiful and meaningful relationships, fulfilment in ministry, and a deeper and more integrated faith.

1. Carol Gilligan, In a Different Voice: Psychological Theory and Women’s Development, 2nd ed. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993).
2. Referencing J. Robert Clinton and Richard W. Clinton, The Mentor Handbook (Altadena, CA: Barnabas Publishers, 1999). Clinton and Clinton look at mentoring in broad strokes, defining it as various acts of empowerment. I have simplified some of their and my own research for the sake of this article.
3. J. Robert Clinton, Clinton’s Biblical Leadership Commentary (Altadena, CA: Barnabas Publishers, 1999), 690.