And another twenty years have passed and they have lost another 298 congregations. That's nearly 1,000 congregations in the last 26 years.
Japan closes 638 Congregations!!!!! Why???
by Witness 007 81 Replies latest watchtower scandals
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slimboyfat
Indeed, a big drop. The days of fabulous Japanese growth are well and truly over. (Mexico, Brazil and Italy too)
It's worth bearing in mind that the population of Japan itself is also declining, so JWs are not declining as much in relative terms as the absolute numbers indicate.
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Earnest
slimboyfat : JWs are not declining as much in relative terms as the absolute numbers indicate.
26 years ago (1998) the ratio of publishers to population in Japan was 1:563 (1999 Service Year Report)
20 years ago (2004) the ratio of publishers to population in Japan was 1:583 (2005 Service Year Report)
Last year (2024) the ratio of publishers to population in Japan was 1:581 (2024 Country and Territory Report)
So there was a big drop (5,250 publishers) between 1998 and 2004 but nothing much has changed since then in relative terms.
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Anony Mous
Note that the way they are counting publishers now vs then is very different. People don’t seem to realize that as the “requirements” for being an “active publisher” drop to near zero activity, more people are now being included in that pool. It’s a statistical game to pretend they’re not losing a significant mindshare. Soon enough they’ll be relying on Pew surveys and visitors to forums like this to calculate membership.
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Witness 007
Looks like the big boom of publishers died off
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Vidiot
Earnest - “…nothing much has changed since then in relative terms.”
Assuming that any stats the WT cranks out aren’t complete horseshit.
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slimboyfat
Every single census that has been compared with WT numbers finds more claiming to be JWs than the WT figures. This surely counts as some evidence at least that WT numbers are reliable. The same isn’t true for other groups such as the Mormons who claim far more members than censuses ever show.
Plus WT does publish declines when they happen, such as after 1975, and now in Japan as is the subject of this thread, as well as Poland and even in the United States itself declines are published.
That’s not to say there isn’t some inflation in what a “publisher” is over the years. That’s true too, but not enough to invalidate all the reported numbers to a significant degree. It’s a feature of all kind of statistics, including GDP and other accepted measures, not peculiar to JWs. And anyway, it’s the reason I advocate using the number of congregations as the best measure of growth over the long term.
So there is a lot of evidence that WT numbers are broadly reliable. The only counter argument seems to be scepticism about WT in general. That’s not a great argument for determining the reality of the situation, it’s just an attitude disguised as an argument.
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Earnest
slimboyfat : And anyway, it’s the reason I advocate using the number of congregations as the best measure of growth over the long term.
If you use the number of congregations to measure growth then there is a relative drop in Japan between 2004 and 2024. In those twenty years the population dropped by 2%, the number of publishers dropped by 1.5% (a relative rise) but the number of congregations dropped by 9%.
In the same time the average number of publishers per congregation increased by 8.74% (from 68.6 to 74.6). As the number of congregations dropped faster than the number of publishers, the number of publishers per congregation increased.
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slimboyfat
Yes, congregation numbers show greater decline than publisher numbers, which is probably a fairer reflection of decline as experienced by JWs in Japan.
I wonder if the end of JW growth in Japan coincides with a broader disillusionment with American influence in Japanese culture in general. I don’t know much about Japan except that they experienced economic problems since the early 1990s and turned to a more nationalistic orientation as a result.
If Japan is experiences secularisation in any way similar to that in western countries in recent decades then the decline of JWs might be part of broader secularisation. Like in many western countries it may be the case that JWs are declining at a slower rate than other groups.
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Vidiot
slimboyfat - “…I wonder if the end of JW growth in Japan coincides with a broader disillusionment with American influence in Japanese culture in general…”
Absolutely.
Why else would JW.borg go out of its way to deny that it’s an “American” religion?