Providing a center of worship for both Japanese and English-language congregations the church traces its foundation to shortly after the formal opening of the treaty port of Yokohama in 1859.

The church building has been rebuilt and refurbished on several occasions as a result of fires, earthquakes and the incendiary bombing experienced during the later stages of the Second World War.

Syle was born in Barnstaple, England, but after emigration to the United States as a young man graduated from Kenyon College, Ohio, and the Virginia Theological Seminary.

Edward Champneys Irwine, a graduate of Trinity College, Dublin,[6] was appointed rector, a role in which he continued to serve for 21 years before being forced to resign amid untried allegations of criminal offenses against children.

[7] A second, much larger building, constructed in red Glasgow brick, at the current church’s location overlooking the foreign settlement, was designed by the influential British architect Josiah Conder[8] and dedicated on Trinity Sunday, 2 June 1901.

In 1922 the church was visited by Edward, Prince of Wales, on the occasion of the dedication of memorials to the First World War at the adjacent Yokohama Foreign General Cemetery.

Constructed on a steel reinforced concrete frame, the exterior facade mixes both traditional Anglo-Saxon and Norman church design elements.