On December 20, 1872, Shaw attended a meeting at the Royal Albert Hall in memory of murdered missionary Bishop John Coleridge Patteson.

Bishop Samuel Wilberforce was the main speaker at the Royal Albert Hall meeting and Shaw subsequently resolved to volunteer for church mission work in either China or Japan Journeying first via the United States and landing in Yokohama on September 25, 1873, Shaw arrived with William Ball Wright under the auspices of the Society for Propagation of the Gospel as the Society's first missionaries to Japan.

After consultation with British Envoy Sir Harry Smith Parkes, Shaw and Wright chose to live outside the confines of the foreign concession at Tsukiji in order to better minister and engage with the local population.

In the four years from 1873 to 1877, Shaw and Wright were able to draw 150 people to Christianity including Yamagata Yokoni, subsequently ordained as the first Japanese deacon in the Anglican Church in Japan.

[5] In 1879 Shaw was able to establish St. Andrew's Church on an elevated piece of ground at Shiba Koen, which soon became the center of Anglican Christian worship and clergy training in Tokyo.

[8] From its earliest days the church building was a shared resource between Japanese and English-speaking congregations with members of the foreign community attending services conducted by Armine F.

Serving in the British Army as a Captain in the 1st Battalion, Kings Own Scottish Borderers, he was killed in action during the Battle of the Somme near Beaumont-Hamel France on 9 July 1916.

[16] Norman Shaw wrote articles for Imperial Maritime Customs of China on "The Soya Bean of Manchuria" (1911), "Silk" (1917) and "Chinese Forest Trees and Timber Supply".