When the Samurai tried to kill an Orthodox Priest.

When the Samurai tried to kill an Orthodox Priest.

Hieromonk Nikolai Kasatkin (born Ivan Dmitrievich Kasatkin in 1836 in Russia) arrived in Hakodate, Japan, in 1861 as a chaplain at the Russian consulate. He spent years intensively studying Japanese language, history, culture, and religions (including Buddhism and Shinto) while Christianity remained illegal and foreigners were widely resented.

Around 1865, Takuma Sawabe (born Yamamoto Kazuma, c. 1833/1834; a former samurai from Tosa, skilled swordsman, and Shinto priest with strong nationalist/anti-foreign views) confronted him, intending to kill him as a representative of harmful foreign influence and Christianity. Nikolai calmly asked why Sawabe would judge/kill him without first hearing what he preached. Bound by a sense of fairness/honor, Sawabe listened.

Sawabe returned repeatedly, took notes, and studied. He brought friends (including a physician named Sakai). In April 1868 they were secretly baptized (with a guard at the door) as the first Japanese Orthodox Christians: Sawabe as Paul, Sakai as John, and Urano as James. Christianity still carried severe risks.

Paul Sawabe later became the first native Japanese Orthodox priest (ordained 1875), helped spread the faith (including during periods of persecution), and outlived St. Nicholas (who died in 1912; Sawabe died in 1913). St. Nicholas went on to build a substantial indigenous Japanese Orthodox Church (translating scriptures and liturgy, ordaining Japanese clergy, establishing schools and the Tokyo cathedral known as Nikorai-do), and was canonized as Equal-to-the-Apostles.

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