ST. NICHOLAS OF JAPAN, AN ENLIGHTENER OF THE FAR EAST (FEB. 3RD)

St. Nicholas of Japan in a Contemporary Byzantine-Japanese Icon, Now Streaming Myrrh in Romania

Edited by Bp. Joseph (Ancient Church of the West) 

In the history of the Christian Church, there are those who, like the Apostles themselves, bear the Gospel to lands untouched by the light of Christ, breaking through walls of hostility and ignorance with the sword of the Spirit and the word of truth. Among these is counted St. Nicholas of Japan, a man who, by patience, wisdom, and love, turned a nation once closed to the Gospel into fertile ground for the Orthodox Christian Faith. 

Born in AD 1836 in the Smolensk region of Russia, Ivan Dmitrievich Kasatkin entered the monastic life as Nicholas and soon felt the divine call to missionary labor. In AD 1861, at the age of twenty-five, he was sent as a chaplain to the Russian Consulate in Hakodate, Japan, at a time when the land was still shrouded in the darkness of enforced isolation. For more than two centuries, Japan had outlawed Christianity, seeing it as an invasive force of foreign corruption. Those who professed Christ risked imprisonment, exile, or death. 

Yet Nicholas, discerning that the true conversion of a nation must be born from within, devoted himself first to learning the language, history, and culture of the Japanese people, quickly acquiring a “Japanese Mind” that was able to reach this ancient and noble people with the message of the Gospel. He studied their literature and customs, not to subdue or overturn them, but to bring Christ into their very heart. By divine providence, he encountered Sawabe Takuma, a samurai and shinto priest, who at first sought to drive him from Japan with threats of violence. But upon hearing the Gospel, the warrior was pierced with the love of Christ, and was soon baptized as one of Japan’s first Orthodox Christians. 

St. Nicholas Winning His First Convert for Christ

From that small beginning, the faith spread. The fires of persecution flared against the fledgling community, yet through patient endurance, Nicholas built a Church that no storm could overthrow. The Meiji government, which initially resisted all foreign religions, came to respect him as a man of peace. He translated the Holy Scriptures, the Divine Liturgy, and the writings of the Fathers into the Japanese tongue, ensuring that the faith would take deep root, not as an alien import, but as the living vine of Christ, planted in Japanese soil. 

As the years passed, his labors bore abundant fruit. By the time of his repose in AD 1912, the Orthodox Church in Japan numbered over 33,000 baptized believers in 266 communities, with forty-three clergymen, including an archbishop, a bishop, thirty-five priests, and six deacons. It was not merely the work of a foreign missionary but the emergence of a truly indigenous Japanese Orthodox Church, led by its own native clergy, shaped by its own saints, and sanctified by the blood and witness of its own martyrs. 

When war broke out between Russia and Japan in AD 1904, St. Nicholas faced the greatest trial of his life. He refused to betray either his homeland or his adopted people. Instead, he remained steadfast in prayer, tending to the faithful and offering intercession for the wounded on both sides. This, more than any words, won him the love of the Japanese people, who saw in him not an enemy, but a father. 

He fell asleep in the Lord on February 3rd, AD 1912, and was buried in Tokyo, mourned by thousands. His sanctity was evident to all, and in AD 1970, the Church glorified him among the saints as “Equal to the Apostles”, for he had labored as St. Paul among the Gentiles, bringing the Gospel to those who had never known the name of Christ. 

His great cathedral, the “Tokyo Resurrection Cathedral”, still stands as a monument to his life’s work, and the Orthodox Church in Japan, though small, remains steadfast in the faith he planted, a lamp shining in the East, bearing witness to the unchanging Gospel. 

A Beautiful Icon Depicting St. Nicholas of Japan Amongst Cherry Blossoms and Beneath Mount Fuji

May his life remind us that the call to evangelism is not merely for the few, but for all who bear the name of Christ—that we too must labor, whether in foreign lands or among our neighbors, to bring souls to the knowledge of the truth. 

COLLECT

O GOD, who didst call thy servant Nicholas to be a herald of the Gospel unto the people of Japan, and through his labors didst establish a Church that might bear fruit in thy name: Grant that we, following his example, may ever seek to bring the nations into the light of thy truth, that all the world may know thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent; through the same Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Ghost, ever one God, world without end. Amen.

St. Nicholas of Japan, pray for us!