A passion for words
Creating resources so Japanese people can read more widely and be raised up as faithful teachers of God’s Word
I had the pleasure of interviewing Nozomi Kusunoki. She has always enjoyed the challenge of translating words from English to Japanese. She studied in New Zealand during high school and university. At that time, she had the opportunity to translate the material for her Bible study group so that other Japanese students could better understand what was going on. It was also during that time that she met with a missionary to study the Bible.
Although Nozomi comes from a Christian home and had learnt many Bible stories as a child, that was the first time she had learnt about theology as well as how the Bible fits together as a whole. As a university student, she also realised that, although she believed in the gospel, she struggled to explain it to her non-Christian friends.
She recognised that reading good books would help her to build a solid foundation of understanding and help her continue to grow in her relationship with Jesus. Nozomi was able to read Christian books in English, and she wanted her Japanese friends to be able to have the same opportunity to read Christian books. Unfortunately many of the books she had found particularly helpful were not available in Japanese, so by the time she was finishing university in New Zealand, she realised that God had given her the work of translation.
Her passion grew
Nozomi is passionate about Japanese Christians being able to defend their faith with confidence, to know what they believe, and to speak about faith with those around them. She wants to see joy and freedom flow in people’s lives, and that only comes through confidence in the goodness of the gospel. She had considered Bible translation in another country, but her heart really was to serve the Japanese church.
After university, she went on to study at a Bible college in the US. There she experienced more of the riches of resources available in English and continued to become aware of the need for more biblical resources to be made available in Japanese to help Christians grow.
TREE Resources began
Her passion and convictions came together, and in 2019, she gathered a group to meet together online to start thinking about translation of good theological resources. And in 2021, TREE Resources was born.1 The group consists of Nozomi, her brother-in-law Nozomu Oimatsu (lecturer at Osaka Bible Seminary), Makito Miyashita (Samurai Projects), Moe Higa Otsuka (student at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School), and myself (KGK Kansai staff worker). We all have a passion for books and a desire to see the Japanese church be strengthened and grow.
We want to see the number of Japanese people studying at Bible colleges increase. We hope to make more great resources available so that Japanese people can read more widely and be raised up as faithful teachers of God’s Word.
The first book in this project was How to Read Proverbs by Tremper Longman III. Last year, Show Them Jesus by Jack Klumpenhower was translated to help those who are teaching children. A great children’s book called The Garden, the Curtain, and the Cross by Carl Laferton (translated by Makito Miyashita) has just been published. There are also a number of other projects in the pipeline.
A version of this article was previously published in CMS Australia’s magazine as “Translating Truth, Transforming Lives,” https://www.cms.org.au/resources/cms-checkpoint-july-2025
1. TREE Resources: Translating Reformed Essentials into Japanese: “We want to provide quality theological materials for pastors, seminary students and lay ministry in Japan, and for use in Japanese communities throughout the world.” https://treeresourcesjapan.org