Hannah Riddell

At Honmyoji, the most popular temple in Kumamoto, she witnessed leprosy patients begging for mercy and made up her mind to dedicate her life to their care.

Hannah successfully approached influential people such as leaders of the CMS, university professors, industrialists and statesmen, and, later, the imperial family of Japan.

She created a close circle of supporters such as Grace Nott, one of the five missionaries who had come to Japan with her, and Professors Honda and Kanazawa.

However, Marquis Okuma, who had donated many cherry and maple trees for the grounds of the hospital, joined with Viscount Shibusawa to invite many officials and prominent persons to the Bankers' Club in Tokyo to listen to Hannah Riddell's appeal.

Although fundraising was delayed by the outbreak of the Great War in Europe, in 1924 a Japanese-style Anglican church was completed in the grounds of the Kaishun Hospital.

[1] Formally consecrated by Bishop of Kyushu, Arthur Lea on 24 June, the church was characterized by a long wheelchair ramp imported from England.

In 1940, however, she was questioned by police over her possession of a short-wave radio and on 3 February 1941, the closure of the hospital was suddenly declared, and patients were transferred to the Kyushu Sanatorium (Kikuchi Keifuen).

Traditionally Japan and Japanese leprologists at that time adopted a segregation policy, but Riddell's thinking was unique.

Kensuke Mitsuda, a noted leprologist, commented that Riddell believed that what ended leprosy in England in the Middle Ages was the legal abolition of cohabitation of the sexes.