Vill. 
Bible Translation and Circulation in Japan. 
Soon after missionary work commenced in Japan in ear- 
nest, the need of a Japanese translation of the Bible began 
to appear. This work of translation had received but little 
attention from the Roman Catholic missionaries. Francis 
Xavier, and his band of priests, had translated the Lord's 
Prayer and the Ten Commandments into the native tongue, 
together with a few short portions of Scripture ; but of 
these efforts, no fruit remains at the present day. In 1836, 
however, the Rev. Charles GutzlafF, missionary to China, 
met with a shipwrecked sailor in Macao, and learnt the 
Japanese language of him, sufficiently to undertake a trans- 
lation of the Gospel of John. Mr. Gutzlaff completed this 
translation by 1838, and it was printed at Singapore by the 
press of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign 
Missions. This effort seems to have been the first serious 
one put forth towards the noble work. We are told that Mr. 
Gutzlaff adopted the Buddhist term Gokuraku, for paradise ; 
Raskikoi Mono^ the wise and clever person, for the Word ; 
and Kami^ God, for the Holy Spirit. This work had but a 
imited circulation ; but by its means, the people obtained 
some notion of the tenor of the Christian Scriptures. 
About ten years after this, the Rev. S. W. WilHams, 
American missionary to China, learnt Japanese, also from a 
shipwrecked sailor, and translated the book of Genesis, 
together with one of the Gospels, into that tongue. This 
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