Japanese Orthodox Church
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The Japanese Orthodox Church (日本ハリストス正教会) is an autonomous church of Eastern Orthodoxy under the omophorion of the Russian Orthodox Church.
St. Nikolai of Japan (baptized as Ivan Domitrievich Kasatkin) brought Eastern Orthodoxy to Japan in the 19th Century. In 1861 he was sent by the Russian Orthodox Church to Hakodate, Hokkaido as a priest to a chapel of the Russian Consulate. Though the contemporary Shogun's government prohibited the Japanese conversion to Christianity, soon some neighbors who frequently visited the chapel converted—Nikolai's first three converts in Japan. While they were his first converts in Japan, they were not the first Japanese to do so—some Japanese who had settled in Russia had converted to Orthodoxy.
Apart from brief trips, Nikolai stayed in Japan, even during the Russo-Japanese War (1904–1905), and spread Eastern Orthodoxy nationwide, being appointed as the first bishop of Japanese Orthodox Church. Nikolai founded the Cathedral of Tokyo in Kanda district and spent the majority of the last half of his life there, hence Tokyo Resurrection Cathedral was nicknamed Nikorai-do by Kanda citizens.
The early mission to establish the Japanese Orthodox Church depended on the Russian Orthodox Church, especially in financial matters. The war between Russia and Japan created a politically difficult situation for the church. After the Russian Revolution the Japanese government had new suspicions about the Japanese Orthodox Church, in particular, that it was used as a cover for communist Russian espionage. The second bishop of Japan, Metropolitan Sergii (Tikhomirov) suffered severely from such governmental suspicion, and he was forced to resign his episcopacy. The Russian Church similarly suffered from Stalinist policy and had no ability to help the young church in Japan.
During the Fifteen Years War (1930–1945), which from 1939 to 1945 was part of World War II, Christianity in Japan suffered severe conditions, the Orthodox Church especially. After the Japanese surrender, the Allied occupation had a generous attitude to Christianity, given its predominantly American composition. As the majority of the Slavic- and Greek-Americans would attend local Orthodox parishes, Orthodoxy in Japan took a step forward. During the war, the Japanese Orthodox Church had almost no foreign contact. After the war, instead of the Russian Church, the precursors of the Orthodox Church in America (OCA) helped re-invigorate the Japanese Orthodox Church, and several youths who studied at the OCA's Saint Vladimir’s Orthodox Theological Seminary, then in New York City, are now the leaders of Japanese Orthodox Church.
Later, as the situation of the Russian Orthodox Church improved, the Japanese Orthodox Church came under their leadership again. In 1970 Nikolai Kasatkin was glorified by the Patriarch of Moscow and is recognized as St. Nikolai, Apostle to Japan. His commemoration day is February 16. In 2000 the Russian Orthodox Church canonized Bishop Andronic Nikolsky as a Saint and Martyr who was appointed to the first Bishop of Kyoto and later martyred as the archbishop of Perm during the Russian Revolution.
As of 2004, the leader of Japanese Orthodox Church is Daniel Nushiro, the Metropolitan Bishop of Japan and Archbishop of Tokyo. It is estimated that the Church has some 25,000 adherents today.
External link
- Japanese Orthodox Church Official Site (Japanese/English)de:Christentum in Japan