Anglican Church in Japan

The Nippon Sei Ko Kai has approximately 32,000 members organised into eleven dioceses and found in local church congregations throughout Japan.

In memory of these early Japanese Christians, and in common with the Catholic Church, the Nippon Sei Ko Kai commemorates the Martyrs of Japan every February 5 for their life and witness.

[2] George Jones, a United States Navy chaplain traveling with the Expedition of Commodore Perry, led the first recorded Anglican burial service on Japanese soil at Yokohama on 9 March 1854.

[3][4] More permanent mission priests of the Episcopal Church, John Liggins and Channing Moore Williams, arrived in the treaty port of Nagasaki in May and June 1859.

A British consular chaplain, Michael Buckworth Bailey, arrived in August 1862 and after a successful fundraising campaign Christ Church, Yokohama, was dedicated on 18 October 1863.

[7] Due to government restrictions on the teaching of Christianity and a significant language barrier, the religious duties of clergy were initially limited to serving as ministers to the American and British residents of the foreign settlements.

Following 1874, he was joined by H. Burnside at Nagasaki, C. F. Warren at Osaka, Philip Fyson at Yokohama, J. Piper at Tokyo (Yedo), H. Evington at Niigata and W. Dening at Hokkaido.

After the Meiji Restoration, significant new legislation relating to the freedom of religion was introduced, facilitating in September 1873, the arrival in Tokyo of Alexander Croft Shaw and William Ball Wright as the first missionary priests sent to Japan by the Society for Propagation of the Gospel.

[16] On Palm Sunday 1883, Nobori Kanai and Masakazu Tai, graduates of the Tokyo theological school were ordained by Bishop Williams as the first Japanese deacons in the church.

Hannah Riddell who established the Kaishun Hospital for people with leprosy in Kumamoto and Mary Cornwall-Legh who ran a similar facility in Kusatsu, Gunma, were both honored by the Japanese Government for their work.

[25] By 1906 the Nippon Sei Ko Kai was reported to have grown to 13,000 members, of whom 6,880 were communicants with a Japanese led ordained ministry of 42 priests and 22 deacons.

[26] Henry St. George Tucker, President of St. Paul's College and in 1913 appointed Bishop of Kyoto, was one of the foremost missionary leaders of the period who advocated that an independent, Japanese-led and self-supporting church was the only way in which Christianity could be carried to the wider population of Japan.

A more active period of government persecution began in 1937, particularly for Christian denominations such as the Salvation Army with its commitment to social reform, and for the NSKK with its historic links to the Church of England.

[29]: 241  Archbishop Lang's condemnation in October of Imperial Japanese Army actions in China, provoked hostile scrutiny of the NSKK and caused some in the church leadership to publicly disassociate themselves from links with the wider Anglican Communion.

Reflecting the distinctive doctrinal character of the Anglican Communion, many individual Nippon Sei Ko Kai congregations refused to join.

The cost of resistance to and non-cooperation with the government's religious policies was harassment by the military police and periods of imprisonment for church leaders such as Bishops Samuel Heaslett, Hinsuke Yashiro and Todomu Sugai, as well as Primate Paul Shinji Sasaki.

However, like many urban Nippon Sei Ko Kai churches, medical and educational facilities, St. Andrew's buildings were lost in the 1945 Allied incendiary bombing.

The pressure of an extended war caused damage to both internal church unity and the physical infrastructure of the Nippon Sei Ko Kai.

[32] Through individual and larger communal acts of reconciliation, and with the support of an Anglican Commission sent out by the Church of England's Archbishop of Canterbury, Geoffrey Fisher in 1946, the Nippon Sei Ko Kai was organizationally reordered in 1947, with a leadership consisting of Japanese bishops at the head of each diocese.

The Archbishop of Canterbury, Geoffrey Fisher, wore the cope at the opening service of the Lambeth Conference that year and again in 1953 at the Coronation of Queen Elizabeth II.

[41] Today the Nippon Sei Ko Kai continues its traditions of ministry and Christian witness in Japan through church congregational life, hospitals, schools, social advocacy, and support for non-profit organizations.

There are currently eleven dioceses in the Nippon Sei Ko Kai and over three hundred church and chapel congregations spread across the country.

The origin of St. Mary's College, Nagoya goes back to the Child care workers' school established by Margaret Young (1855 - 1940), another missionary from Anglican Church of Canada.

Depiction of the Nagasaki Martyrs (16th century)
Nippon Sei Ko Kai Clergy (c. 1888)
Plaque in Ely cathedral commemorating Gordon John Walsh , Bishop of Hokkaido
St. Andrew's Cathedral, Diocese of Tokyo
The inner cover of Ki Tō Sho , the Japanese Book of Common Prayer (1990)
The cover of Sei Ka Shū , the NSKK Hymnal (2006)
St. John's Church, Hakodate
St. Andrew's Church, Kiyosato, Yamanashi
St Agnes Cathedral, Kyoto
Rikkyo University, Tokyo
St. Luke's International Hospital, Tokyo