Protestant Missions in Japan: From the Treaty Ports to National Churches

The first Protestant contacts with Japan were brief meetings at sea, decades before any missionary could live there.¹In 1818 Captain Gordon of the brig Brothers, anchored in the bay of Edo (江戸), gave Japanese visitors two Testaments and some Christian tracts printed in Chinese.¹Ten years later Dr Walter Medhurst, who had studied Japanese, asked the Dutch for passage to Nagasaki (長崎) and was refused.¹In the same year a prayer meeting at Brookline, Massachusetts, inspired by a Japanese basket on the table, made the first Protestant missionary gift for Japan.⁹With interest, those gifts grew to over $4,000, which was credited to the American Board's Japan mission when it finally opened in 1869.⁹

Commodore Perry kept his negotiations of 1853 to 1854 to trade, reportedly believing that any mention of religious toleration would wreck his mission.¹⁰His treaty gave Americans neither permanent residence nor religious freedom, so no mission station could be set up.¹¹Even so, the squadron's chaplain, George Jones, held four Christian funerals on Japanese soil in 1854, with the shogunate's permission.¹²At Yokohama (横浜) he read the service unmolested beside a Japanese burial ground, and a Buddhist priest then performed his own rites.¹³

The American treaty of July 1858 allowed Americans to practise their religion and build places of worship, but Christianity stayed banned for Japanese.¹⁴On August 1, 1858, Chaplain Henry Wood held Protestant worship for American crews in Townsend Harris's residence at Shimoda (下田), a temple whose images still lined the walls.¹⁵That year at Nagasaki the chaplain and two companions agreed to write to the Episcopal, Reformed and Presbyterian mission boards, urging them to send missionaries to Japan.¹⁶

The first resident Protestant missionary, the American Episcopalian John Liggins, reached Nagasaki on May 2, 1859, two months before treaty residence was allowed.²³Channing Moore Williams soon joined him.³Dr James Curtis Hepburn (ヘボン), a Presbyterian physician, landed at Kanagawa (神奈川) on October 18, 1859.²The Reformed missionaries Samuel Rollins Brown and Dr Duane B. Simmons followed him there in November, and Guido Verbeck (フルベッキ) reached Nagasaki on November 7.²¹⁷

The newcomers found the old ban in full force.¹⁸Officials watched them closely, and at Kanagawa they could get no language teacher until March 1860, and then only a government spy.¹⁸In June 1861 Williams wrote: "There is no proper missionary work to report."¹⁹The missionaries worked instead through dispensaries, schools and Christian books.²⁰They taught languages, even to officials of the shogun's government, and educated Japanese could read Christian works written in Chinese.²¹Hepburn served in Japan from 1859 to 1892 in medicine, tracts, Bible translation and dictionary work.²²

The first Protestant baptism on record came in the mid-1860s.²³²⁴Yano Mototaka (矢野元隆), a doctor who taught Japanese to the missionaries, asked for baptism when bedridden and near death, and died soon after.²³²⁵Converts still faced real danger.²⁶Shimizu, a young Buddhist priest baptised by Verbeck in 1868, was imprisoned for his faith the next year and held in various prisons for five years.²⁷In 1871 Ishikawa Einosuke, the Japanese teacher of the missionary O. H. Gulick, was arrested at Kobe (神戸), and he died in prison in November 1872.²⁸The early missionaries also witnessed the arrest and imprisonment of Christians after 1868, most of them Catholics.²⁹Before spring 1872 only ten Protestant baptisms had been recorded.²⁷

Prayer meetings at Yokohama in the first weeks of 1872 led to the first Japanese Protestant church, organised there on March 10, 1872.⁴Nine young men baptised that day joined two earlier converts, chiefly through the work of the missionary James H. Ballagh, though two of the nine were later found to be Buddhist spies.⁴²⁴The church took the name "The Church of Christ in Japan" and wrote in its first rule that it was not partial to any sect.³⁰Its Japanese members insisted that it be independent of foreign bodies.³¹Ballagh became the first pastor, though he had tried from the start to find a Japanese one.³⁰³²

The notices against Christianity came down in 1873, and the Protestant missionary force more than doubled that year.³³³⁴A second church was organised in Tokyo (東京) on September 20, 1873, and churches followed at Kobe and Osaka (大阪) in 1874.³⁵³⁶Hopes of one undivided church soon faded, as some missionaries organised churches on a strictly Presbyterian basis.³⁷In 1877 the Presbyterian and Reformed churches united as the United Church of Christ in Japan, while the American Board churches later formed the Kumiai (Congregational) body.³⁸³⁹That same year Okuno Masatsuna (奥野昌綱), Ogawa Yoshiyasu (小川義綏) and Toda Tadaatsu became the first Japanese Protestants to be ordained.³⁸²⁴

Most early converts were young former samurai, gathered in groups later called bands at Yokohama, Kumamoto (熊本) and Sapporo (札幌).⁴⁰⁴¹Their leaders included Uemura Masahisa (植村正久), Honda Yōichi (本多庸一), Ebina Danjō (海老名弾正), Kozaki Hiromichi (小崎弘道), Uchimura Kanzō (内村鑑三) and Nitobe Inazō (新渡戸稲造).⁴⁰In March 1877 thirty-one students of William S. Clark at the agricultural college in Sapporo signed a covenant declaring their faith in Christ.⁴²In 1889 a missionary reported that former samurai made up about 30 per cent of Protestant members, though they were only 6 per cent of the population.⁴⁰The faith also spread beyond them: in Gunma (群馬) the work began when Niijima Jo (新島襄) returned to his family home at Annaka (安中), and by 1878 there were 30 converts, among them rich farmers and a miso and soy merchant.⁵By one count, Protestant Christians grew from 59 in 1873 to 31,361 in 1891.⁴³

A revival began at an interdenominational prayer meeting in Yokohama in 1883 and spread to churches across the country.⁵⁶At a fellowship meeting in Tokyo that May, Uchimura wrote, "a veritable Pentecost did set in."⁴⁴Missionaries meeting at Osaka in April 1883 heard some predict that Japan could be evangelised within ten years.⁴⁵By 1888 there were 249 Protestant churches with 25,514 members.⁴⁶In February 1887 Anglican missionaries and Japanese delegates founded the Nippon Sei-Ko-Kwai, meaning Holy Catholic Church of Japan, with about 1,300 members.⁴⁷

Growth then slowed sharply from the late 1880s, amid rural hardship, pressure for self-support and rising nationalism.⁴⁸⁴⁹A planned union of the Presbyterian and Kumiai churches failed in May 1889, partly because a telegram went astray.⁵⁰Japanese leaders pressed the missions for independence, and the worst clash came in the 1890s, when the Kumiai churches and the American Board fought over control of Dōshisha (同志社).⁴⁰⁵¹Niijima died at Oiso (大磯) on January 23, 1890, and a temple in Kyoto (京都) refused to let him be buried beside his father.⁵²

Before 1899 missionaries outside the open ports had to be employed by Japanese, which is why many of them worked as teachers.⁵³The revised treaties then allowed foreigners to live and travel in the interior.⁵³New groups kept arriving, among them the Salvation Army, which began work in Japan in September 1895.⁵⁴By 1900 there were 416 Protestant churches with 43,273 members.⁵⁵

The new century opened with the Taikyo Dendo, a Twentieth Century Forward Movement of 1901 with street processions, banners and lanterns.⁷At the Osaka National Exhibition of 1903, a Christian hall at the main gate drew 246,000 people to its meetings.⁵⁶In 1904 Uemura Masahisa founded the Tokyo Shingakusha, described as the only indigenous Protestant seminary before the Second World War.⁵⁷

Japanese churches moved steadily toward self-government.⁴⁰From January 1906 the Kumiai body of 91 churches was wholly independent of mission funds.⁵⁸On May 22, 1907, three Methodist churches united as the Methodist Church of Japan, and Honda Yōichi was consecrated its first bishop on June 2.⁵⁹⁶⁰In April 1907 Tokyo hosted a World's Student Christian Federation conference, the first international gathering ever held in Japan.⁶¹After the campaign of 1900, Protestant Christianity in Japan took on a markedly urban and middle-class character.⁴⁸By 1930 there were 58 Protestant societies in Japan, with 1,198 foreign staff and 214,970 Japanese Protestants.⁶²

Catholic missionaries saw the Protestant advance as a serious challenge.⁸In 1876 Bishop Osouf wrote that Protestantism was growing and was hindering Catholic work through its publications and schools.⁸Ten years later he noted that "the English language is today in Japan the key to a host of positions" (translated).⁶³In 1888 Father Midon counted 80 to 90 Protestant ministers in central Japan alone, and singled out Dōshisha in Kyoto, with its seven hundred students.⁶⁴

Ordinary Catholics noticed the difference too.⁶⁵Before their own church was finished, Christians of Urakami (浦上) visited a small Protestant church in Nagasaki because of the cross on its roof.⁶⁵When the minister invited them to bring their wives and children and said his own wife would be glad to meet them, they understood he was not like their old missionaries, and did not return.⁶⁵

The Japanese word Kirisutokyō, now used for Christianity as a whole, originally meant Protestant Christianity.⁶⁶Protestants also learned to share across their own divisions: at Hakodate (函館) by 1903, Anglicans, Presbyterians and Methodists held a joint Communion each Week of Prayer.⁶⁷