He had volunteered for the appointment to this duty, attracted since the day he noticed a poster calling for a priest for this chapel when he was a seminary student.

[5] While at the consulate chapel, he converted three Japanese, one of whom, a former samurai and Shinto priest named Sawabe Takuma, had originally come to his home to kill him.

[6] He presided over the consecration of the Tokyo Resurrection Cathedral in 1891, and was elevated to the dignity of Archbishop of All Japan by the Russian Orthodox Holy Synod on 6 April 6, 1907.

In the Orthodox liturgy at that time, priests had to explicitly pray not only benediction on the sovereign and his army but also for the defeat of his enemies in the intercession.

Nicholas, therefore, did not participate in any public services during the war; instead, he encouraged his Japanese faithful both to pray for and to contribute to the Army and the Navy.

Some encouraged him to go back to Russia, but he refused and worked eagerly for Japanese faithful and Russian prisoners of war.

In a letter on the conditions of a camp in Hamadera, Osaka, Nicholas wrote of his astonishment at the Russians soldiers' illiteracy: nine of ten captives could not read.

Even Emperor Meiji was impressed with his character, especially his diplomatic efforts between the Russian Imperial Household and the Japanese government.

His diary was believed to have been burned and lost in Great Kantō earthquake of 1923, but rediscovered by Kennosuke Nakamura, a Russian literary researcher, and published in 2004 as Dnevniki Sviatogo Nikolaia Iaponskogo (5 vols.

[9] Nicholas offered an integral study of Buddhism in his work, "Japan from the point of view of Christian mission", published in 1869.