The history of Catholic missions in Japan, according to the article «The History of Christianity in Japan» by Arimichi Ebisawa in the above–mentioned Cyclopedia, has not yet received a thorough study, except in the area referred to as ’ the revival of early Christianity in japan’. Studies of the diplomatic history of the Catholic Church and of monastic orders have been published, but we do not yet have a complete history of Catholicism in Japan.
The history of the Orthodox Church in Japan, though it was the second largest Christian sect after Catholicism, has received much less attention than that of the Catholic Church. The entire picture of its missionary activities, its relation with the Russian Orthodox Church, and the characteristics of its faith has not yet been provided. There have been few students of the history of the Orthodox Church in Japan.
It is true that we have basic data for the compilation of its history during the Meiji era — for example, the twice–monthly newsletters Kyokai–Hochi (1877–1880) and Seikyo Shimpo (1880–1912). And two attempts at the history of the Church, Nihon Seikyo Dendoshi, edited by Kisaburo Ishikawa, and The Life and Deeds of Archbishop Nikolai, edited by Fr. Peter Shibayama, were published in 1901 and 1936 respectively. But they don’t give us a ’bird’s–eye view’ of the whole history of the Church. We must say that the history of the Japanese Orthodox Church and the achievements of Nikolai and his faithful followers during the Meiji
era have long remained outside the mainstream of research interests concerning the history of Christianity in Japan.
Only recently have some researchers begun to shed light on this subject. Since the late 1970s, they have been writing books and papers about these subjects, and have produced Japanese translations of the papers and reports written by Nikolai which were published in Russian journals. Also, many local Orthodox churches in Japan, upon celebrating their centennials, published their own histories. As a result of these recent works, various aspects of the history of the Japanese Orthodox Church are gradually being brought to light.
The Diaries of St. Nikolai of Japan provide materials of inestimable value for the study of Church history. In these diaries, we find many interesting and valuable facts (especially about the main center of the Orthodox mission in Japan) which have remained hitherto unknown. With these diaries, the field of study will move forward with rapid strides and will rest upon much firmer and objective bases.
The Diaries contain the private diaries kept by Nikolai, founder and head of the Japanese Orthodox Church. They are the first and most reliable source for historical knowledge of the Church. There were many hidden facts in its history which were kept secret between Nikolai and the persons concerned, and which we could not possibly be aware of without seeing his diaries.
From that source we may learn, for example, how Nikolai was supported financially by the Holy Synod and Missionary Society, and how he felt about the living conditions of Russian prisoners of war in Japan, as well as how he rated the efficiency of his Russian colleagues and Japanese catechists.
Nikolai sometimes made extensive tours, visiting local churches throughout Japan. He kept up his diary during these tours, giving a full account not only of parish congregations but also of life in rural communities. We can know from his travel diary, for example, how eagerly Japanese Orthodox farmers of the early Meiji years were practicing new styles of Western singing, and under what conditions young women were laboring in provincial towns. Few foreigners knew Japanese provincial life of the time so well at first hand as did Nikolai. His travel diaries are, as it were, the field notebooks of a sociologist gathering materials on the rural life of Japan.
The Diaries of St. Nikolai possess, in addition to historical values, an autobiographical aspect. In Japan Nikolai had no trusted adviser with whom he could talk freely. His diary was thus an indispensable companion to which he had been making a full confession for many years.
For example, in the diaries for 1871 and 1872 we can read a long and harsh criticism of his first colleague Father Grigorii, which faithfully reflects the genuine missionary enthusiasm of the young Nikolai, which we could never know without his diaries.
In his diaries for the period of the Russo–Japanese War, we can learn his views of the Japanese people and Russo–Japanese relations. The comparison ofjapan (a maritime power) and Russia (a continental one), which he made in the diary entry for May 20, 1905, is an interesting topic even today.
Nikolai’s diaries are full of frank confessions and straightforward thinking. They will captivate not only those persons who are interested in the history of the Japanese Orthodox Church, but also those who are interested in vital human documents in general. Reading Nikolai’s diaries, we can reach the conclusion that he was of good health in both body and mind. He was not excessively intellectual or logical. He was very abundant in his feelings of both joy and anger. He was candid and sincere. Together with this richness in emotion, he was also a man of coolness and stoicism.
According to many of Nikolai’s Japanese pupils, he readily displayed feelings of joy and anger. In the diaries he himself acknowledges his weakness of having a hot temper, but he often had ample reason for angry. He was stirred to anger when the faithful of the Japanese Orthodox Church were persecuted by ’heathen’ Japanese, or when his Russian and Japanese colleagues were intolerably lazy in their missionary efforts, or when someone lied to him intentionally. Of course he felt deep sorrow when his Seminary pupils were drafted into the military and were killed in battle. In the diaries, he expressed his sincere gratitude to those colleagues and laymen who worked diligently for the Church. Nikolai was apt to become excited, but he was fair in his feelings and dealings.
As a monk, Nikolai held deep religious beliefs, which were ’unspoiled’ by modern rationalism. Nikolai was not a visionary mystic such as Fyodor Dostoevsky, who was anxiously expecting a sudden transfiguration of the universe. Nikolai kept his firm belief in the sacred invisible (about which he wrote, for example, in the entry for October 5, 1903). When he learned of the 1905 revolution in Russia, he had an eschatological foreboding that human history was drawing to an end. He firmly believed in miracles, though he did not speak of them in public. He had such a fear of blasphemy that he became furiously angry when he heard that the Church in Kyoto had been used as the site for an enlightening lecture foreign to religious worship.
Nikolai did not despise the popular beliefs of Japanese people, but regarded them as a rich ’soil’ full of religious feelings. He made extensive travels throughout Japan, and everywhere encountered archaic folk beliefs of Jizo (a guardian deity of children) and Inari (the fox deity), writing in his travel diary: «Along the way, I met groups of dressed–up pilgrim women. They were dragging themselves, it seemed, to Jizo… On the whole, there is everywhere the desire of the people for pilgrimage. It is remarkable. It is impossible not to bear in mind this desire of the people when you introduce Christianity among them». (June 10, 1881.)
American or English Protestant missionaries probably thought much differently of such cherished beliefs of the Japanese people.
Of Buddhism, Nikolai wrote, «the teachings of fullness of Buddha’s love, of his readiness to save men at their first appeal, of insufficiency of men’s power for salvation, and of grace (tariki) irresistibly amaze us. It is possible that, listening in a Buddhist temple to some sermon, you will forget yourself and imagine you were listening to a Christian preacher». («Japan from the Viewpoint of Christian Mission», 1869.)
Nikolai thought that Japanese people, although they were ’heathens’, were experiencing deep religious feelings and that Christianity could become firmly rooted in such natural religious feelings. This was how Nikolai intended to go about implanting Orthodox beliefs in the minds of Japanese people. He did not want to lure them out of their native religious feelings by Western learning, but attempted to transplant Christianity into the traditional religious ’soil’ of Japan — to infuse Orthodox Christianity into the Japanese spirit. His good knowledge of
Japanese religious culture and history must have suggested to him this way of propagating the Gospel. He was convinced that by this method, he could gain an advantage over Protestant and Catholic missionaries in Japan.
In general, the Japanese Orthodox Church has had a tendency to put more value upon Japanese traditional formalities than other Christian groups. It may be said that its conservatism has been partly due to Nikolai’s respect for Japanese culture.
During the Russo–Japanese War of 1904–1905, few Orthodox Japanese were tortured by spiritual conflict between their Orthodox faith (introduced by Russian missionaries) and their own patriotism. Although they were Orthodox Christians, they prayed fervently for divine favor to Japan. Nikolai himself, in one speech and two circular letters to his flock, summoned Orthodox Japanese to fulfill their duties as faithful subjects — to pray for the victory of the Japanese Imperial forces. His diaries also tell us that he thought it was natural for Orthodox Japanese to pray for the victory of their fatherland. Nikolai seems to have regarded the Orthodox belief, once implanted in Japan, as Japanese Orthodoxy.
Nikolai himself was a truly patriotic Russian. His patriotism was not an abstract idea but an ardent emotion. And so he was terribly depressed when he heard the news that Russian army had suffered defeats in Manchuria and that Japan won the naval battle in the Sea of Japan.
He also had a genuine and steadfast love for Japanese Orthodox Church, which had been established and developed by him, and which was like his child. When the Russo–Japanese War broke out, he was forced to devide his love into two — his mother country (Russia) and his ’child’ (the Japanese Church). He understood that it was natural for the Japanese people to openly rejoice over the news of Japanese victory, but he could not help feeling so sincere pity at Russia that he sometimes could not participate in the liturgy.
As we have seen, The Diaries of St. Nikolai of Japan are a document of great value both to historians and to the reading public. With these diaries, together with the newsletters Kyokai Hochi and Seikyo Shimpo, we will be able to obtain a complete picture of the Japanese Orthodox Church in the Meiji era. In other words, we cannot relate the truth of the Church history without these diaries.
It had been known that Nikolai was writing a diary. Bishop Sergii (Tikhomirov), Nikolai’s successor in the overall control of the Japanese Orthodox Church, wrote in his memoirs on Nikolai («Before and After the Passing Away of Archbishop Nikolai» of 1912), that Nikolai was writing about the state of his disease in his diary. However, it was not expected that his diaries would come down to us. Most of the archives relating to Nikolai had disappeared during the chaos following the Great Earthquake of 1923, and no diary was found at the Cathedral of the Resurrection in Tokyo (Nikolai–do, Nikolai’s Cathedral). No Soviet Japanologists or historians were aware that Nikolai’s diaries had been safely kept at the Central State Historical Archive in Leningrad (now St. Petersburg).
It appears that between the time of Nikolai’s passing away (1912) and the Great Kan to Earthquake (1923), a certain Russian who was close to Nikolai sent the diaries to Russia, perhaps into the keeping of the Archive of the Holy Synod. The person who sent them to Russia must have been Bishop Sergii.
A few clergy of the Russian Orthodox Church during the Soviet era knew of the preservation of Nikolai’s diaries in the Archive, but during that time Soviet sciences and the Church were under the complete control of the Communist Party. There was so little interdisciplinary communication or interchange that research fellows of the Soviet scientific institutions never learned of the existence of the diaries from the churchmen. Of course, there was no attempt made to decipher the handwritten diaries and publish them.
The first Japanese reader of Nikolai’s diaries in the Archive at Leningrad was Prof. Kennosuke Nakamura of Hokkaido University, the author of this preface. In the autumn of 1979, he confirmed the existence of the dairies and acquired a microfilm copy of them from the Soviet Academy of Sciences. Since then, Nikolai’s diaries have become the focus of much academic research.
In December, 1981, K. Nakamura asked Mr. Konstantin Ivanovich Logachev (a Slavic researcher in Leningrad) and his wife Larisa Nikolaevna Logacheva, a couple to whom he had been introduced by Prof. S. Batalden of Arizona State University in 1979, to decipher the texts of the didaries for him. They readily consented to his request.
Subsequently, K. Nakamura, Yoshikazu Nakamura (Hitotsubashi University), Ryohei Yasui (Waseda University), and Mitsuo Naganawa (Yokohama National University), collaborated in translating a portion of the deciphered diaries into Japanese and published them serially in the quarterly Mado (The Window) (Tokyo), from 1986 to 1988.
K. Nakamura
June 1994
ДНЕВНИКИ
СВЯТОГО
НИКОЛАЯ
ЯПОНСКОГО
Дневник в С.-Петербурге и в Хакодате
1870–1876
Чтоб научить других, научись сам.
Чтоб направить других, направь себя самого.
1870 г.
1 марта 1870. 9 часов вечера.
СПб. Александро–Невская Лавра
Прилично начать мне свой дневник описанием виденного мною второй и, быть может, последний раз в жизни «Торжества Православия», совершавшегося сегодня в Исаакиевском Соборе. Собор был залит народом: то было живое море, тихо, без шума колебавшееся тем колебанием, когда на море видны только легкие струйки. Если в Пасху Собор вмещает, как мне говорил староста соборный, до 20 тысяч народу, то сегодня, наверное, было не меньше 15–ти тысяч, так как народ втеснился и на клиросе, и между певчими, и везде, где было место. Трогательно зрелище такой массы народа, стоящей как один человек в молитвенном духе пред Лицом Всевышнего! Не кажется особенно великолепным и Исаакиевский пред этим живым храмом; понимаешь тут нужду предстателей пред Богом и правителей Церкви Божией — иерархов и священнослужителей; понимаешь даже нужду сильных диаконских голосов… Но что за трогательная и торжественная минута, когда в конце молебна