Linguistic Gap Analysis

Some Romans concepts have a settled Japanese word that is nonetheless doctrinally unsafe to use unqualified, or a genuinely unique linguistic risk arising from Japanese orthography rather than meaning.

Terms requiring a mandatory qualifying phrase

• God (神, kami): the single word is both correct and dangerous — correct because it’s the settled Bible-translation choice, dangerous because it’s also the ordinary generic word for any Shinto deity. Doctrinally weighty passages require 唯一のまことの神 (“the one and only true God”) rather than 神 alone.
• Kingdom of God (神の国): the phrase’s pre-1945 political history (神国日本, State Shinto ultranationalism) means it can never be left to stand without an immediate anchor to its meaning in Romans 14:17.

Terms requiring active weight-restoration against secular dilution

• Resurrection (復活): doctrinally correct, but heavily used in ordinary Japanese for a pop-culture “comeback.” Needs restated gravity every time it appears in a doctrinal context, not just correct word choice.
• Covenant (契約): the only common word for both “covenant” and an ordinary commercial contract. Needs active relational/gracious framing to avoid a transactional-contract reading.

A uniquely Japanese orthographic risk

• Prophet/Prophecy (預言者/預言 vs. 予言者/予言): these are true homophones, differing only in a single kanji (預 “entrust/deposit” vs. 予 “beforehand”). Spoken teaching, furigana-less text, and IME auto-conversion can all silently produce the wrong kanji, converting “one who speaks God’s word” into “a fortune-teller” with no change in pronunciation. This risk has no equivalent in the other three languages in this pipeline, which don’t share Japanese’s kanji-homophone structure.

Gap-filling strategy

Where the existing Shinkaiyaku term is doctrinally sound but culturally under-loaded (biblical illiteracy) or over-loaded (secular dilution, political history), this Language Package keeps the established term and adds mandatory qualifying language or teaching notes, rather than inventing a new coinage that would break consistency with existing Japanese Christian literature.