[2] Juji Nakada was born on 27 October 1870 in the northern town of Hirosaki in what is now Aomori prefecture, the son of Heisaku, "a samurai of the lowest rank in the Tsugaru domain.
(Goodman 49) Nakada, while already an effective evangelist, experienced dryness in his soul: "'If I don't find the power of the Holy Ghost,' he told his wife before he left Japan, 'I'll come back, leave the ministry, and become a dentist.
Mrs Cowman records:As he earnestly sought to be filled with the HOLY SPIRIT, it was not long until his hungry heart was satisfied.
Having come so definitely into the blessings, he soon felt strongly impressed that GOD would send him back to his people to preach full salvation to them.
[3] Nakada was also influenced by the writings of John Wesley (McCasland 77); an association with J.R. Boynton, a Chicago physician who practised faith healing(Goodman 49); and Martin Wells Knapp, who later founded God's Bible School in Cincinnati, Ohio in 1901.
(McCasland 77) In September 1898 Nakada returned to Japan after meeting Barclay Fowell Buxton, leaders of the English holiness movement in England.
[6] The goal of the mission group, which by 1902 included Ernest and Julia Kilbourne and their three children, was to "establish self-supporting, self-governing, and self-propagating churches on the William Taylor model" (Bundy 711).
In 1904 the name was changed to the Oriental Missionary Society (Toyo senkyokai) with an enlarged focus on all of East Asia, including Korea and China.
Providentially, they met a Korean doctor who knew Nakada and had visited the OMS Bible Training Institute in Tokyo.
Uchimura, influenced by neo-orthodox thought, rejected the idea of a literal millennium and calculating the dates of Christ's Second Coming.
Toward the end of November 1919, as a result of evangelistic preaching and prayer, a revival broke out at the Yodobashi Holiness church in Tokyo.
576, “The Holy Spirit comes.”[9] McGavran indicates:When suddenly the prayer meeting turned into one of intensity and excitement, some students recognized this to be the revival and rushed to the homes of their professors with the news.
However, for the reason unknown the fire of the revival reached its peak at the meeting of the summer of 1933 (8th year of Showa) and it gradually cooled off.
"(Goodman 57) As Yamamori suggests: The doctrinal emphases had always been placed on justification, sanctification, divine healing, and the Second Coming of Christ.
"As Bishop of the Holiness Church, Nakada expected all seminary teachers and pastors to accept his new vision, but many leaders rejected his authority, which led to a schism.
(Bays 486) Juji Nakada first preached about Israel's restoration at a 1931 camp meeting on Japan's northern coast at Matsushima.
For three days he preached on God's promises to Israel and implored Japanese believers to pray for the restoration of Israel and the salvation of the Jewish people....He wrote, 'We should not read books that defame the Jewish people (The Elders of the Protocols of Zion was a popular book in Nakada's day) nor should we despise and ostracize them.'
He explained that the then current stream of immigrants back to Israel was 'to keep God's promise to Abraham and to prove the certainty of the prophesy [sic].
'[14] Nakada was also influenced in his thinking by the writings of Nicholas McLeod:The Japanese have been considered by some early travelers and explorers to be descendants of the Ten Lost Tribes.
Bishop Juji Nakada (1869-1939), of the Holiness Church Movement, Dr. Zen'ichiro Oyabe, and Dr. Chikao Fujisawa, a lecturer at Nihon University, were among the most outspoken supporters of the theory linking the origin of the Japanese people to the Ten Lost Tribes.
[15][16] In his 1933 book, Japan in the Bible, Nakada indicated: "I should like to prove that Israelitish blood runs mixed in the Japanese veins and in this we are not without historical evidences."
Nakada Juji, the son of a samurai who studied at the Moody Bible Institute in Chicago, came home to preach that even Japan's military forces were playing a divine role.
(Goodman 53) Nakada "saw the Jews as mystical saviors whose redemption would ensure the political and military, as well as spiritual, salvation of the Japanese."
(44-45)When the founder of a Māori church, Tahupotiki Wiremu Ratana was delayed by a dock strike in Japan in 1924 Nakada found the group suitable accommodation.
Even if one skillfully says that the religious content is negligible, to the average person’s life there could be nothing more intimately related than this existential religion.
The Tokkõ also knew from a number of church publications that many Holiness leaders held essentially the same eschatological views as the sectarian groups that had already been investigated.
Almost a decade later (1941), at the first general meeting of block six (one section of the Holiness congregations that were incorporated into the Kyõdan), the service began with singing the national anthem, obeisance in the direction of the Imperial Palace, and silent prayer for those who had given their lives on the battlefield for the Emperor.
On another occasion, the pastor leading a meeting of block six stopped the proceedings during a bombing raid by US planes and asked all those in attendance to pray for Japan’s victory and the safety of the emperor.
In the end, a total of 131 Holiness clergy were arrested for violations of the Peace Preservation Law and abandoned by the Kyõdan in their time of trial.
In the appeal, Fujikawa explained that the reference to the millennial reign of Christ appears in apocalyptic literature (Revelation 20:4) and should not be interpreted literally, as Nakada and some other groups had done.