SKETCH OF THE JAPAN MISSION Rf.vised and Brought Down to 1922 BY REV. H. V. S. PEEKE, D.D. BOARD OF FOREIGN MISSIONS Reformed Church in America 25 East 22d Street New York AN HISTORICAL SKETCH OF THE JAPAN MISSION OF THE REFORMED CHURCH IN AMERICA It is very difficult to write a sketch of a single period of history, since history is not like a succession of lakes, but an on-flowing river. Periods overlap, and there is never a distinct break in sequence. It is easy to give the details of the founding of a Mission, but the events of the subsequent decades are so interwoven with the activities of other Christian workers, and so bound up with the current of secular history, that a sketch, distinct in detail, is well nigh impossible. This is eminently true of a sketch of the history of a Mission in Japan. From the very beginning, in 1859, a number of Missions of different denominations have worked together in unusual harmony. Conditions have been un- favorable to the development of outstanding individualities of missionary leaders. Other conditions have worked toward the up-building of friendships that have ignored denomina- tional lines. Mission compounds have hardly existed at all, and there has never been any extensive delimitation of territory. Co-operative Activities The missionaries of the Reformed Church in America were prominent from the very beginning in a movement that obliterated the distinction between Presbyterian and Reformed, a movement which was followed by similar movements that wove together the various members of the Methodist family, the various members of the Baptist family, and others as well, into ecclesiastical family groups. Later they have been leaders in the movement that has amalgamated these groups into the Conference of Federated Missions. These movements, with the development of an independent Japanese church, and constantly increasing affiliation and co-operation, have made the task of the historian more and more difficult. The later chapters of the Mission sketch 3 succeeding this may well be simply a description of the Christian movement in Japan, with the relation thereto of the missionaries of the Reformed Church indicated in foot- notes. Even at present our Bibles and other religious books and tracts are published by all for each. We not only labor together in education, but educate for one another. We are on the threshold of an elaborate plan for advertising the Gospel together in the newspapers, and we will work together in the conservation of the results. Denominational lines are not entirely obliterated, and denominational ex- cellencies are not forgotten, but our missionaries have ever been leaders in the idea that it is first and foremost the Kingdom of Heaven that we are seeking to establish. PERIOD OF INDIVIDUAL ENDEAVOR It is so customary to study history by periods that in spite of the difficulties involved, we shall, in this sketch, consider first the Individualistic Period, the days before there were any institutions such as schools, and tract and publishing societies, the days when missionaries worked as it were with bare hands, without tools and devices. We will begin the period in 1859, the year in which mis- sionaries, and ours among them, first landed in the empire, and extend it down to 1875, in which year we record the opening of Ferris Seminary, the first school for girls in the islands, founded on the Bluff at Yokohama, and prosper- ously conducted by our Mission on the same site today. Japan As It Was Before proceeding to review the period itself, we should try to understand the conditions of the country at its opening. Five years before, in 1854, Japan had concluded treaties of amity and peace with Western powers — not because she wished to, but because she could not well refuse. She could see some advantages from trade, but she did not want intercourse, or opium, or the Christian religion. Opium she has kept out. She has prospered greatly by trade, and has benefited more from the insistent Chris- tian propaganda than she realizes. 4 At this time Japan had a civilization all her own, but in spite of its excellencies, it was hopelessly at variance with the outside world. There were no means of rapid communication, no posts, no telegraphs, no national school system, indeed, no recognized national organization. Its feudal organization was crumbling to a fall. Two ideas dominated the public mind, a fear and distrust of every- thing foreign, and a fear and hate of the Christian re- ligion. The notice-boards warning the people, under severe penalty, against having any relations whatsoever with Christianity, were still in evidence, and were not removed until 1873. The language was all unknown to Westerners, and there were no helps to its acquisition written in the English language, and almost none in any other language. Japan, from the very start, has presented peculiar diffi- culties as a mission field. While the mass of the people have not shown themselves unfriendly, they have always main- tained a marked reserve in revealing their deeper feelings and in coming into close social relations with foreigners. The Government has never shown itself unfriendly to the modern Christian enterprise. On the contrary, it has on many occasions apparently gone out of its way to make the path of the missionaries easy. There have been no persecutions, and no case of martyrdom among the mis- sionaries, but on the other hand it has never been easy to disabuse one’s self of the idea that were it not for a subtle constraint, impossible to point out, but no less real, on the part of the authorities, the Japanese would have turned to the Church by scores where they now come as individuals. Shortly after the opening of the country in 1854, Dr. S. Wells Williams and Rev. E. W. Syle, missionaries to China, happening to be in Nagasaki, went with Chaplain Wood, of the U. S. S. Powhatan, to call on the governor of the city. During the conversation the governor said that now the country was open for trade, and the people would be glad to receive anything the foreigners had to bring, except opium and Christianity. The remark naturally im- pressed these Christian men, and they agreed each to write to a Mission Board, urging the sending of missionaries to the Japanese. One of these letters was received by the 5 Board of l^'oreign Missions of the Reformed Church in America, and was the first in a number of providences that led to the sending out of the first band of our missionaries to this empire. The First Missionaries In May of 1859 the first missionaries arrived. They were the Revs. Williams and Liggins, of the Protestant Episco- pal Church. They had been laboring for several years in China, and were now transferred to found the Japan Mis- sion. In October Dr. J. C. Hepburn was transferred from China to Japan to found the Mission of the Presbyterian Church of the United States. On November 1st, our first missionaries. Rev. S. R. Brown and Dr. D. B. Simmons, landed in Yokohama, and on November 7th Rev. G. F. Verbeck arrived in Nagasaki. The wives and families of three joined them on December 29th of that year. We can do no better for this period, 1859 to 1875, than to consider the individuals connected with the Mission and their work, showing the part each took in laying the foundations for the period that followed, when institutions and appliances caused missionary operations to assume a new form with a brighter outlook. Dr. S. R. Brown had had considerable experience in educational work before coming to Japan, and had already attained the maturity of forty-nine years. At the present day no Board would consider for a moment commissioning a man of that age, and yet Dr. Brown, during the twenty years of service he was able to give, made a marked con- tribution to the work, and left an enviable impression upon tbe Mission just being born. Someone writes of him that “He was a fine musician, a natural linguist, a careful student of the Japanese language, and a thorough teacher.” He taught classes of young men which were forerunners of later classes in the Meiji Gakuin, Tokyo. He was chairman of the New Testament translation committee from its inception until his retirement from the field in 1879, and took a prominent part in its activities. Through some of his pupils his impress upon the work is still felt. 6 Rev. S.'\muel R. Brown, D.D. 7 Di'. Guido F. Vei-beck, upon graduation from a Presby- terian Seminary, was commissioned by the Board of Foreign Missions of the Reformed (Dutch) Church, because, for one reason, he was a Hollander, and it was thought this would be of decided advantage in inaugurating work in Japan, especially if he were stationed in Nagasaki, which, for a couple of centuries, through a small settlement of Dutch merchants, had maintained a more or less close touch with the culture of Holland. His service extended over nearly forty years, and if any one name stands out prominently in the history of Japan Missions, it is the name of Verbeck. He was a man of liberal education and broad culture. He had clear and definite opinions on a wide variety of subjects, and yet was withal a man of sincere piety and deep humility. The first ten years of Dr. Verbeck’s service were spent in Nagasaki, teaching in a Government school and obtain- ing a singularly thorough and skillful use of the Japanese language. Indeed, during this period, and for many years after, there seems to have been no second to Dr. Verbeck’s first. It was his privilege to baptize two men in 1866, the first to be baptized in the southern part of the empire, preceded by only one other in the north. He made a deep impression on his pupils, and when some of them were afterward in Government circles in Tokyo, and it was nec- essary to find a man competent to organize Japan’s first college. Dr. Verbeck was invited to take up the task. For nearly ten years he was in Government employ, and was a friend and trusted adviser of men of important position. The details and extent of his service will probably never be fully known to outsiders. His connection with the Government did not in the least impair his fitness and enthusiasm for the tasks of a Mis- sionary. He returned to the work he loved best of all, and, for a score of years, labored, sometimes as an instructor in the theological seminary, again on the Revising Committee of the Old Testament, and always as a preacher and lec- turer. He never took much interest in the problems of Mission management or the organization of the church. When in attendance upon meetings of classis, or presbytery. 9 Rev. G. F. Verbeck, D.D. Rev. J. H. Bali.agh. D.D. he liked nothing better than to get from the moderator an excuse for absence, and then, with some congenial Japanese brother, start off on a preaching tour. He was regarded with the deepest affection by all, and is still remembered as the “great Japanese preacher and the model Christian gentleman.” Dr. James H. Ballagh came to the Mission in 1861, and his connection lasted unbroken for fifty-nine years. He never engaged to any extent in educational work, and did not have special interest in problems of administration. He was rather a John the Baptist, of burning evangelistic zeal, casting up the highway, preparing the way of the Lord, and ever bidding men, by the wayside, in the home, and from the pulpit, to repent and believe the Gospel. He was unceasing and mighty in prayer. Yokohama was Dr. Ballagh’s home from the first. There he baptized the first Protestant convert, in 1864, and in 1872, organized, with nine members, the first church. But his activity was unbounded, and his name and work are remembered with gratitude and affection in such country districts as Shinshu and Izu. It was in large measure due to the activity of Dr. Ballagh that, in 1875, the Kaigan Church building, one of the first edifices to be seen on arrival at the port, was erected. The First Single-Lady Missionary Miss Mary E. Kidder was the first unmarried lady mis- sionary to come to Japan, the forerunner of scores of members of this useful and efficient company. She arrived in 1869, lived for a year in Niigata, and then, returning to Yokohama, took over a class of girls that had been gath- ered and taught by Mrs. Hepburn, of the Presbyterian Mission. This class prospered in a suburb, and developed into Ferris Seminary, which was opened on its present site in 1875, and is to this day one of the best schools of its kind. Miss Kidder married Rev. E. Rothsay Miller in 1873, and enjoyed his assistance in the school work for a time. Dr. Miller came to Japan in 1872, and joined the 10 mission of the Reformed Church in 1874, after his marriage with Miss Kidder. Dr. and Mrs. Miller severed their connection with Ferris Seminary in 1879, and their fruitful labors were con- tinued during many years, principally in the evangelistic field, for some time at Morioka, three hundred miles north of Tokyo. For a long time, indeed until her death, Mrs. Miller edited and published “Joyful Tidings,” a Sun- day-school paper widely read, and still hands. This couple was famed alike and generosity. Mrs. Miller fell on sleep in 1913, after forty-four years of service, and her husband followed her two years later. A number of names, such as Miss C. Adriance, Miss E. C. Witbeck, Dr. D. B. Simmons, and C. H. H. Wolff, belong to this period, but their connection with the Mission was of short duration, and no extended reference is called for. We may close the record with reference to Dr. and Mrs. Henry Stout, who arrived in Nagasaki in 1869, ten days before Dr. Verbeck left for Tokyo, which then, as now, was the center of the national life of Japan. This couple, like their predecessors, labored alone for ten years before asso- ciates joined them. Mrs. Stout continued in the Mission thirty-three years, till her death, in 1902. Dr. Stout retired from the Mission two years later. Dr. and Mrs. Stout were pioneers in a peculiar way. Mrs. Stout, during the early years gathered a class of girls that afterward developed into Sturges Seminary, and did capital work in training wives for the first evangelists. Dr. Stout, after a few years of teaching in a Government school, withdrew that he might devote himself to preaching and to the inception of his own school work. His classes developed into Steele Academy, which had for a number of years, as its cap-stone, a theological department in which not a few excellent young men were trained for Christian Rev. Henry Stout, D.D. conducted by other for culture, piety 11 service. This couple were strong in piety and purpose, and their imprint is left upon the Kyushu field today to a degree, perhaps, not fully realized by their successors. Their classes, made up of handfuls, prepared the way for the Steele Academy and Sturges Seminary of today, with their hundreds, and, until recently, the majority of the evangelists in the south were Dr. Stout’s hand-picked men. With this ends the period during which the individual looms up larger than the institution, — the pioneer period. At its close there were eight Missions working in the empire besides the original three. There must have been a couple of score of missionaries. Baptisms were no longer uncom- mon. Missionaries were free to preach in the open ports, and, in spite of difficulties, the Gospel was being pushed out into the interior. As to our own work, Ferris Seminary was just starting out on its organized career at its present location; classes of young men were being taught in Yoko- hama by Dr. Brown, and others, to be incorporated later in the Meiji Gakuin, at Tokyo, while classes for both young women and young men existed in Nagasaki, carried on by Dr. and Mrs. Stout. Attempts at evangelistic work were being made by Drs. Ballagh, Stout and Miller. Dr. Verbeck was still in the employ of the Government. THE INSTITUTIONAL PERIOD EDUCATIONAL INSTITUTIONS Coming to the Institutional Period of our Mission’s his- tory, we will review, first, the educational work for young men and young women carried on in the south. We begin here since we must begin somewhere, and since this work has never enjoyed the distinction of being the principal educational work of our Church in Japan, it will be some- thing of a compensation to give it a leading place in the recital. The Reformed Church has always stood pledged to higher education and to an educated ministry. It has always been true to this policy on its Mission fields. Besides that, in Japan, for many years, the contacts necessary for evange- listic endeavor were obtainable best, and in many places solely, by means of educational institutions. 12 Dr. and Mrs. Stout early shaped their endeavors in this direction. On a corner of their residence lot a small build- ing was erected that sheltered, alternately, classes for 30ung men and classes for young women. Mrs. Stout will always be thought of as the pioneer of education for women in the south, but she also spent many hours teaching young men. The early years were very disappointing. They had been in Japan ten years when the Misses Farrington came out for the work of the school for girls, only to retire almost immediately for health reasons. A year later Dr. and Mrs. Booth came out. On Dr. Stout’s return from fur- lough, they moved to Yokohama, to take up work in Ferris Seminary, leaving education in the south in the hands of Dr. and Mrs. Stout, as before. Permanency was not attained for the young women’s work until the arrival of Miss M. E. Brokaw, in 1884, and, for the young men’s work until the coming of Dr. and Mrs. Oltmans, in 1886. Even at that, the work can hardly be said to have been really established till the fall of 1887, nearly thirty years after the arrival of Dr. Verbeck, when Sturges Seminary proudly took possession of new buildings, largely the gift of Mrs. Jonathan Sturges, and Steele Academy moved into its new property, provided by Dr. William H. Steele, in memory of his son. Steele Academy in 1888 Education in Japan was at that time by no means the finely organized thing it has since become, and our schools, also, were very crude, but it is no exaggeration to say that from the very first, viewed from either a religious or edu- cational standpoint, they were effective institutions. In the new buildings, Steele had a little over one hundred pupils. There was much coming and going; perhaps a hundred entries a year, with the total changing almost none at all. As the years went on, there were many changes in the personnel. Down to the present Messrs. Stout, Oltmans, Peeke, Pieters, Myers, Davis, Hoekje, Walvoord, Shafer, Ruigh, and Miss Taylor have been connected with Steele, some for a longer, some for a shorter period. The out- standing names are Stout, Pieters and Walvoord. Dr. 13 stout founded the school and stood by it through thick and thin. Mr. Pieters took charge at a critical time, reorgan- ized the institution, and brought it into affiliation with the Government system. Mr. Walvoord’s contribution was per- haps greatest of all. He was a man of vision. Early in the fourteen years of his connection with the school he began to picture to himself what the school should be in numbers, discipline and equipment, and worked steadily to achieve his ideal. When he suddenly died, in September, 1919, he had carried the school quite as far along these lines as it was possible for any one man to do. In the late eighties, the school was in charge of a Japa- nese principal, but, as the arrangement, due largely to the lack of vigor on the part of the appointee, was unsatis- factory, a Missionary was again put in charge. In 1916 the conduct of the school was entrusted to a board of six directors, a number of whom were Japanese. This arrange- ment is satisfactory and will be continued. As soon as a suitable candidate can be found, it is likely that once more a Japanese principal will be installed. From the beginning until 1897 theological instruction was carried on in connection with the school, principally by Dr. Stout, assisted most of the time by Rev. A. Segawa, and for a short time by Dr. R. B. Grinnan of the Southern Presbyterian Mission. The high-water mark was reached in 1894, when twenty-four students were in attendance. Some of the graduates of this department are still doing yeoman service in the Church. The department was sus- pended in 1897. Steele Academy, or Tosan Gakuin, as it is called in Japanese, is an institution of which the Church may well be proud. It has a staff of two American and eighteen Japanese teachers, with three hundred and sixty pupils. It is located on a handsome site, overlooking Nagasaki harbor, and has an excellent reputation in that region. The chang- ing years have made considerable differences in the per- sonnel of the students. These were at first drawn from all parts of the island of Kyushu but today, with perhaps thrice the number of students, the patronage is principally from Nagasaki city and prefecture. However, the efficiency 14 IS Steele Academy of the school as an evangelizing agency is not impaired, and it is as useful as ever as a place in which to try ou candidates for the ministry. Sturges Seminary The American missionary teachers in Sturges Semi- nary have been numerous. Among the names are those of the Misses Brokaw, Lanterman, Irvine, Couch, Lansing, Duryea, Stryker, Stout, Thomasma, Pieters, and, after the removal of the school to Shimonoseki, Noordhoff and Olt- mans. In 1891 the school was put in charge of a Japanese principal. This arrangement proved quite satisfactory, and has continued till the present. The names of Mrs. Henry Stout and of Miss S. M. Couch will ever be most closely identified with the history of the school, the former as a sort of forerunner of its succes- sion of teachers and the latter as one who very deeply impressed her character on the school during the long years of her connection with it. Miss Couch came to Japan for evangelistic work, but the necessities of the situation soon drew her into the school, and she worked in it almost continuously from her arrival in 1891 until the removal of the school in 1914, and she still has a close acquaintance with the graduates of the school. During the early years of the school’s history, it suf- fered, as all our work suffered, from the reaction of the late eighties, but, after that, it gradually improved in attendance until the accommodations, originally prepared for forty odd, were crowded with nearly a hundred stu- dents. The difficulty was now no longer to draw pupils, but to find the means with which to maintain a really good school, a credit to the Church and a blessing to its patrons. At Yamaguchi, one hundred and fifty miles to the north, the Presbyterian Church in the United States had, for a couple of decades, been maintaining a girls’ school, called Kojo Jo-gakko. It was not so large or so well equipped as ours, but it had rendered excellent service under the man- agement of Miss Gertrude Bigelow and others. A portion of the Kennedy bequest had been assigned to this school, and it was debated whether to rebuild at Yamaguchi or 16 Sturges Seminary move southward to Shimonoseki, a point midway on the road to Nagasaki. They felt they did not have funds suf- ficient to erect and carry on a first-class school, so it was proposed that we sell out our Nagasaki property to the contiguous Methodist Girls’ School, and that a joint work be instituted at Shimonoseki. This was eventually carried out, and now the heights on the north side of the Shimono- seki Straits are crowned by an excellent institution, super- vised by a joint board of directors and efficiently conducted by Mr. T. Hirotsu, formerly principal of the Nagasaki school. The new school has a staff of four American Missionaries and sixteen Japanese teachers. The pupils number two hundred and twenty-one in all, and, in spite of limitation in accommodations, the school is ministering not only to the young women of the immediate vicinity, but to the daughters of Japanese families from Korea, China and For- mosa, the returning steamers from which countries all call at the beautiful harbor upon which the school faces. 17 ]''ekkis Seminary The mission of the Reformed Church was very early in the educational field in the Tokyo-Yokohama region. In 1870 Miss Kidder took over a class that had been gathered by Mrs. Hepburn, of the Presbyterian Mission, at a time when it was not easy to get pupils of any kind. She soon passed the boys on to others, and retained six girls. Dur- ing the second year these became twenty-two, and the school moved to the suburbs of Yokohama, but later came back and located on the Bluff, at the present site of Ferris Seminary. The school was formally opened as Ferris Seminary on June 1, 1875, and, after various experiences of prosperity and adversity, is, at the date of writing, 192d, enjoying the most prosperous period of its history. The school is not, as formerly, pre-eminently a boarding school, and, while still famous for music and cultural education, it has been influenced by the demands of the times to inaugurate busi- ness courses. The school has maintained a high grade religiously and socially from the beginning. Since 1881 the school has continuously been in charge of Dr. E. S. Booth, and a great deal of the success is due to the persistency with which he has put into operation his educational policies. He has enjoyed the co-operation of a large number of excellent women workers, among whom we may mention his wife, Emily Stelle Booth, Miss Winn, Miss Witbeck, Miss Carrie Ballagh, Miss Anna Ballagh, Miss Dick, Miss Moulton, Miss Kuyper, Miss Demarest and Miss Oltmans. The school now has an enrollment of four hundred and fourteen pupils, of whom fifty-seven are in the boarding department. Its buildings stand prominently on a hill, and catch the eye of all travelers as they enter Yokohama har- bor. Similarly, the school stands prominent in the com- munity, and is doing its full mead of duty in enlightening and leading. Meiji Gakuin Our participation in the education of boys began in 1881, when Dr. Martin N. Wyckoff opened the Seishi 18 Ferris Seminary Gakko in Yokohama. In 1883 this was removed to Tokyo and united with a prosperous school conducted by the Pres- byterian Mission. Previous to this the Presbyterian and Reformed Missions had been united in theological instruc- tion in Tokyo. In 1886 these institutions were combined in a school known as the Meiji Gakuin, and, in a year or two, both departments were suitably housed on a commodious compound in the southern part of the city. A collegiate department was later added, and today (1922) the combined school is still going strong, with seven hundred and forty pupils in the Academy, one hundred and fifty in the College, and sixteen in the Theological Department. The school is supported about half by fees and about half by grants from the Presbyterian and the Reformed Mis- sions. It is managed by a Board of Directors, about half of whom are Japanese gentlemen. Dr. Ibuka has been the president for thirty years. Our Missionaries who have been for considerable periods connected with the school are Drs. Amerman, Oltmans, Wyckoff, Hoffsommer, Peeke, and Mr. Ruigh. EVANGELISTIC OPERATIONS The above gives a fairly comprehensive account of our institutional work, but it would be a mistake not to endeavor to give some idea of the effort that has been put forth along general evangelistic lines during this period of the history of the Mission, even though the work of this kind does not readily lend itself to portrayal. The Mission has ever stood for the principle that the ultimate object of all our operations is evangelism, and, although it has some- times seemed necessary to curtail our evangelistic work on account of crises developing in the schools, it has been pos- sible, in the main, to be true to our principle. Kyushu The evangelistic work in Kyushu was begun by Dr. Henry Stout. Dr. Verbeck had preceded him, but confined his efforts almost entirely to the city of Nagasaki. Indeed, he could have done little else in view of the restrictions on travel. For many years Dr. Stout worked single-handed, 20 Meiji Gakuin, Tokyo View From Second Story of Dr. Oet man’s Nousk and, though he did some touring in the interior he felt that his best service could be rendered by training a number of young men for working among their own people in the inland cities. Among his earliest students were A. Segawa and I. Tomegawa. Mr. Segawa was the first ready to be sent forth, and, in 1878, went to Kagoshima, the capital of the Province of Satsuma. Kagoshima was an important city at that time, and its people were distinguished for their progressive spirit. Early in the eighties. Rev. N. S. Demarest was ready to undertake more aggressive evangelistic work, and by that time there were a number of Japanese evangelists located in the southern, northeastern and central portions of the large island. About 1890, on the withdrawal of Mr. Dem- arest, Rev. A. Oltmans was diverted from work in the academy, and gave himself up to touring the out-stations. These were the days when there were no railroads, and the travel of the Missionary meant riding day after day in jin- 21 rikisha or in small and uncomfortable coasting steamers. However, the foreigner was a novelty, and his seconding of the efforts of the Japanese evangelist was singularly effective. Interior Stations In 1893 Rev. and Mrs. H. V. S. Peeke joined the Mission, and were stationed in Kagoshima. This was our first inland station in the south, and residence at that point made it possible for Mr. Peeke to develop the region until there were six evangelists stationed at various points in the south of the island. In 1895, upon their return from furlough, Mr. and Mrs. Oltmans were stationed at Saga, thus opening our second interior point. Owing to passport difficulties and incon- veniences of travel and residence, the transfer of evangel- istic Missionaries from the port to interior cities was not easy to carry out, but the movement, once started, has con- tinued to this day. Kagoshima, Saga, Oita, Kurume, Fukuoka, and even smaller towns like Miyakonojo and Karatsu, have been, and most of them still are, the loca- tions of our Missionaries, and the names of Revs. Oltmans, Peeke, Pieters, Kuyper, Ryder, Hoekje, Van Bronkhorst, Van Strien, and the Misses Lansing, Couch, Buys, Hospers, Evelyn Oltmans and Kuyper, are found among those who, most of them for many years, have witnessed for Christ in the interior of the island. Four Fields For geographical reasons, our work in Kyushu covers three fields, one in the south, with Kagoshima as the cen- ter; another in the northeast of the island, centering at Oita, and the other in the center of the island, including the large cities of Saga, Fukuoka and Kurume. Perhaps a fourth should be added, the region at the west, with Naga- saki as a center, including, also, the large city of Sasebo. It is fairly easy to acquire a working knowledge of the Japanese language, but, to reside in an interior city, to make contacts of a vital and friendly nature with Japa- nese men and women, and to bring constantly to bear upon 22 23 Rev. Ickiro Tomeg,\wa Rev. A. Segawa them in a winning manner the claims of Jesus Christ, demand courage, patience and faith of no slight degree. It is easy to fall into routine, to dissipate one’s energies, to become inactive, to grow weary on account of lack of adequate response, but our Missionaries confer often for the mutual stimulation of faith and improvement of method, and, at the close of the first quarter of the century, are effective as never before. With the exception of the estab- lishment of kindergartens, it would seem that every known method of evangelism is being tried. From the very beginning the ordained Missionaries have persisted in touring and preaching at towns where Japa- nese evangelists have been stationed, as well as in smaller places round about. Believers have been organized into small groups, and later into churches. In the Tokyo region there are now many churches that, as the offshoots of other churches, have never known the helping hand of a Missionary, but in Kyushu, with one exception, every con- gregation owes its existence to the planting and watering of some Missionary. Su nday Schools The Sunday-school work of Miss Lansing, Miss Couch and others, as well as that of students of Sturges and Ferris, has for many years been a source of pride. The difficulties of organization connected with kindergartens have been obviated, and yet large numbers of children have obtained their first lessons in Gospel truth, and many par- ents have been reached through their children. Newspaper Evangelism Since 1912, Rev. A. Pieters has been carrying on what is called Newspaper Evangelism, thus pioneering in a new field of endeavor and working out a method that is being extensively copied in other mission fields. By this method, not only are strong articles setting forth Christian doc- trine published broadcast in the papers, but various fol- low-up methods are pressed, with the result that, not only are converts won and worshiping groups established in remote districts, but a general knowledge of Christian truth is widely disseminated, and very much prejudice broken down. 24 i i RrR.vr. Church riR(un' CiiUKCH Erection The Mission has considered it wise policy to bear the heaviest part of the burden in the erection of churches for small congregations. Nothing seems so effective in bring- ing a congregation on to self-support as the possession of an adequate church and parsonage. It has erected, or helped to erect, buildings in Nagasaki, Saga, Sasebo, Ka- ratsu, Fukuoka, Oita, Usuki, Miyakonojo, Yamagawa and Kagoshima. Four of these congregations are now entirely independent of the Mission, and others well on the way to independence. In a sketch of this kind the development of the congre- gational life must be noted. It was in 1859 that Dr. Ver- beck arrived in Nagasaki, and in 1866 that he baptized the first convert, one Wakasa, who came to him from Saga. For years the increase of members was very slow, and, in the congregations, and in the classis which was later formed, the Missionary was not only the leader but the principal burden bearer. Today the congregations, larger and smaller, all contain more or less of people who are competent to attend to matters of detail, and the classis is able to take general care of the churches, leaving the Mis- sionary free to undertake operations of a more directly evangelistic nature. Tokyo. Yokohama and Izu In the region centering at Tokyo, the first evangelistic operations were confined to the cities of Tokyo and Yoko- hama. In 1872 the first Protestant church in the empire was organized in Yokohama, largely through the efforts of Rev. J. H. Ballagh. This church is now large and influen- tial, though at its organization there were but nine mem- bers. It is known as the Kaigan (Seashore) church. Mr. Ballagh was a man of great energy and profound faith, and it was inevitable that he should overcome all difficul- ties and engage in wide evangelistic endeavor. During the years that followed, we find him working south along the Tokaido, with congregations at Mishima, Koyama and Gotemba resulting. He passed over into Shinshu, and con- gregations at Matsumoto, Ueda, Nagano and other towns 26 27 AT Ki’KUOK. resulted. During his whole life he felt the burden espe- cially of the spiritual welfare of these and other congre- gations, and was never so happy as when visiting them and preaching for them. Shinshu and the Northwest In 1897 Mr. and Mrs. F. S. Scudder took up their resi- dence at Nagano, and worked for that city and the other towns in that neighborhood. The Misses Deyo and Brokaw at one time lived at Ueda, on the same field. Ten years before this. Rev. E. R. Miller and wife had gone to the northern part of the island and opened up work in Morioka. For many years Mr. Miller was the apostle of that region, the extreme northern city of Aomori being finally opened up, and Miss Leila Winn taking up residence there. Miss Winn was connected with the Mission for thirty-eight years, engaging in evangelistic work at Aomori, Mishima and other interior points most of the time. Messrs. Kuyper, Shafer and Ruigh all resided for a longer or shorter period at interior points on this field, and did their share in the gathering and building up of congregations. Union and Withdrawal It is the experience of every Mission that, as the work develops and enlarges, and new methods are called for, it is necessary either to restrict the field, make combinations with other Missions, or increase the number of workers. Ours has been no exception. Meiji Gakuin and Sturges Seminary are now both union schools, carried on in con- junction with the Presbyterians. There has been some increase in the number of Missionaries, but by 1917 it had become necessary to withdraw from some of our fields in the north and concentrate our evangelistic efforts in Kyushu. It required considerable time to effect the change, but eventually the far northern field, with work at Morioka, Aomori and some smaller towns, was handed over to the Mission of the Reformed Church in the United States, and the work west of Tokyo, in Shinshu, was undertaken by the Missionary Society of the Church of Christ in Japan, 28 with which we have long co-operated, in consideration of a decreasing subsidy. This leaves still in our hands a cer- tain amount of evangelistic work in Tokyo and in the province of Izu, about eighty miles south of it. In rapidly sketching the work of so many years, covering so wide a territory, we are in some danger of fixing our thought too closely on the growth of congregations and their development, especially as brought about by the efforts of ordained Missionaries and Japanese evangelists. We must not overlook the fact that much of the work for the Kingdom brings forth invisible results also ; results not readily tabulated. In both north and south our unmarried Missionary ladies and Missionary wives, laboring in season and out of season, have accomplished results that can never be fully known and appreciated. It is very easy to forget the past, and one looking over the Japanese Church in Tokyo and Yokohama, to say nothing of Shinshu and the Tohoku, might very easily fail to appreciate that work that is now self-supporting, or near- ing self-support, would never have come into existence at all had it not been for the work of our own and other Mis- sions. Similarly, there is nothing to indicate that the very prosperous Fukuin Shimpo, the best Christian newspaper in the country, and proudly self-supporting, depended on Mission backing for its life through its years of infancy. These papers have been written from the standpoint of a single Japan Mission of the Reformed Church in America. It would be historically inexcusable to fail to note that while for many years at the beginning, and since 1917, the Mission has been one, there was a period of nearly thirty years when, on account of the wide separa- tion of the parts of the field and the difficulty of adminis- tration, the work was organized as the North and the South Japan Missions. Conclusion Great changes are taking place in Japan. It would be a bold man who would dare attempt anything like a detailed prophecy of the future. . But some boldly outlined facts may well be borne in mind. Our Mission schools are pros- 29 perous as never before, although it is much harder to hold them closely to their spiritual purpose. The Japanese Church is growing in strength and evangelistic zeal. Japan- ese Christians will take an ever-increasing share in the conduct of our schools, and may at a not far distant day succeed to their management and support. The methods of evangelistic work, and the relations of the churches to it, are all subject to great change, although it is yet far from clear what these changes are to be. It is clear, how- ever, that to an increasing degree God’s Spirit is manifest- ing itself in and through the Church, and spirit-filled men and women, foreigners and Japanese, have a great oppor- tunity to join hands and respond to the loud call of the spiritual needs of the Japanese Empire. MISSIONARIES OF THE JAPAN MISSION WENT OUT RETIRED Rev. S. R. Brown 1859 1879t Mrs. S. R. Brown 1859 1879 Rev. G. F. Verbeck 1859 18981 Mrs. Maria (Manion) Verbeck 1859 1898 D. B. Simmons, M.D 1859 1860 Mrs. D. B. Simmons 1859 1860 Rev. James H. Ballagh, D.D 1861 19201 Mrs. Margaret (Kinnear) Ballagh 1861 1909t Rev. Henry Stout 1869 19051 Mrs. Elizabeth (Provost) Stout 1869 1902t Rev. C. H. H. Wolff 1871 1876t Mrs. L. (Buboc) Wolff 1871 1876 Mrs. S. K. M. Hequembourg 1872 1874 Miss Emma C. Witbeck 1874 1882 Rev. E. Rotbesay Miller 1875 19151 Mrs. Mary E. (Kidder) Miller 1869 lOlOf Rev. J. L. Amerman, D.D 1876 1893 Mrs. Rebecca (Ely) Amerman 1876 1893 Miss E. F. Farrington 1878 1879 Miss M. J. Farrington 1878 1879 Miss Harriet L. Winn 1878 1887 Rev. Eugene S. Booth, D.D 1879 Mrs. Emilie (Stelle) Booth 1879 1917t Mrs. Florence (Dick) Booth (1915-1919)* 1912 30 WENT OUT RETIRED Miss Carrie Ballagh 1881 1885 Prof. Martin N. Wyckoff, Sc D 1881 19111 Mrs. Anna (Baird) Wyckoff 1881 1920t Miss M. Leila Winn 1882 1920 Rev. N. H. Demarest (1890-1912)* 1883 1914 Mrs. Annie (Strong) Demarest 1883 1890t Rev. Howard Harris 1884 1905t Mrs. Lizzie B. (Disbrow) Harris 1884 1905 Miss Mary E. Brokaw 1884 1899 Miss C. B. Richards 1884 1885 Rev. Albert Oltmans 1886 Mrs. Alice (Voorhoorst) Oltmans 1886 Miss Anna DeF. Thompson 1887 1913 Miss Rebecca L. Irvine 1887 1893 Rev. H. V. S. Peeke, D.D (1891-1893)*.. 1887 Mrs. Vesta (Greer) Peeke 1893 Miss Mary Deyo 1888 1905 Miss Julia Moulton 1888 1922t Miss Carrie B. Lanterman 1890 1892t Rev. Albertus Pieters 1891 Mrs. Emma (Kollen) Pieters 1891 Miss S. M. Couch 1892 Miss Harriet M. Lansing 1893 Miss Martha E. Duryea 1893 1897 Mr. A. A. Davis 1896 1898 Rev. Jacob Poppen, Ph.D 1896 1898t Mrs. Anna (Van Zwaluwenburg) Poppen. 1896 1898 Miss Anna K. Stryker 1897 1900 Rev. Frank S. Scudder 1897 1907 Mrs. Florence (Schenck) Scudder 1897 1906t Mrs. J. DuMont Schenck 1897 1902 Miss Harriet J. Wyckoff 1898 1905 Miss Anna B. Stout (1895-1898)* 1891 1905 Rev. Charles M. Myers 1899 1904 Rev. Garret Hondelink 1903 1908 Mrs. Grace (Hoekje) Hondelink 1903 1908 Miss Grace Thomasma 1904 1912 Miss Jennie A. Pieters 1904 Rev. Douwe C. Ruigh (from Amoy) 1905 31 Mrs. Christine (Carst) Ruigh (from went out retired Amoy) 1905 Mr. Anthony Walvoord 1905 1919t Mrs. Edith (Walvoord) Walvoord 1905 1919 Miss Jennie M. Kuyper 1905 Walter E. Hoffsommer, Ph.D 1907 1920 Mrs. Grace (Posey) Hoffsommer 1907 1920 Rev. Willis G. Hoekje 1907 Mrs. Annie (Hail) Hoekje 1912 Miss Jennie Buys 1909 1914t Rev. Hubert Kuyper .'. 1911 Mrs. May (Demarest) Kuyper (1914- 1918)* 1912 Miss Jeane Noordhoff 1911 Rev. David Van Strien 1912 1920 Mrs. Eleanor (Orbison) Van Strien 1912 1913t Mrs. Lillian (Orbison) Van Strien 1917 1920 Rev. Luman J. Shafer 1912 Mrs. Amy (Hendricks) Shafer 1912 Rev. Stephen W. Ryder 1913 Mrs. Reba (Snapp) Ryder 1914 Miss Hendrine E. Hospers 1913 Miss Evelyn F. Oilmans 1914 Miss Janet Oilmans 1914 Rev. Alex. Van Bronkhorst 1916 Mrs. Helena (DeMaagd) Van Bronkhorst. 1916 Rev. Henry V. E. Stegeman 1917 Mrs. Gertrude (Hoekje) Stegeman 1917 Miss Anna M. Fleming 1918 Mr. A. L. Harvey 1920 1921 Miss Edith V. Teets 1921 Miss J. Gertrude Pieters 1921 Mr. George W. Laug 1921 Miss Dora Eringa 1922 Rev. John Ter Borg 1922 Miss Amelia Sywassink 1922 Mr. Gerald A. Mokma 1922 Miss Florence C. Walvoord 1922 Miss Flora Darrow 1922 Miss Gladys W. Hildreth 1922 Miss Florence V. Buss 1922 * Service intermitted. t Deceased.