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Preface The vast canon of literature about Christian missions, the extensive archival holdings of the various Missionary Societies, and the extraneous materials held in government archives make the records of the Protestant missionary movement one of the richest veins of information about the history of Canadian-Japanese relations. Compared with the missionary movements from Great Britain and the United States, however, the missionary movement from Canada has attracted little attention. This neglect stems partly from the lack of a purpose for investigating missionary activities abroad and from the lack of a suitable methodological approach in analyzing missionary records. These problems have been circumvented in this study, for its purpose is to stress the importance of Canadian missionaries in the Japanese Empire as agents of informal relations between Canada and Japan. My approach to the problems of the history of the Canadian missionary experience in theJapanese Empire is an amalgam that owes a good deal to different approaches adopted by other authors. A brief and highly selective look at how other authors have regarded missionary endeavour is useful as a means of pointing out the broader context of the Canadian missionary movement in the Japanese Empire. Much of what has been written about the history of Canadian missions has been undertaken by missionaries, their families, or mission supporters, largely because publicity was necessary to sustain interest in or support for any missionary endeavour. The bulk of this writing was directed toward a church audience, the most likely group to contribute financial support. Much of it has a puerile tone, for many mission stories were aimed at Sunday school children whose pennies could be more easily garnered than the dollars of their parents. Another highly developed and often quite sophisticated form is the hagiographic biography. The continued success of a mission owed much to a sympathetic biography of one of its pioneer missionaries. Indeed, the exploits of the founder of a mission could turn that missionary into a virtual household name. Notes for the Preface are found on pp. 222-24. Xl xu THE CROSS AND THE RISING SUN The British were particularly adept at such hagiography. David Livingstone, the most famous of all nineteenth-century missionaries, became not only a household name but also a Scottish national hero.1 Mary Slessor of the Calabar mission was another who became well known in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.2 During that time, a particular mission often became largely associated with the name of a single missionary; ]. Hudson Taylor of the China Inland Mission is only one example.3 Families also often became intimately involved in helping to sustain missions in which their relations had served. Such is clear in the case of the Bickersteth family in England after Edward Bickersteth became British Anglican Bishop of South Toyko in the late 1880s.4 Although Canadians were much more reticent than the British when it came to missionary biography, the Canadian Presbyterian mission in north Taiwan cultivated the image of George Leslie Mackay, its pioneer missionary, in order to attract funds.5 Johnathan Goforth, a Canadian who served in northern China and was deeply influenced by Mackay'S example, was another Presbyterian subject of a biography.6 William]. McKenzie, whose tragic death in Korea in 1895 stimulated the Canadian Presbyterians to open their Korean mission three years later, was the subject of a book.7 The life and work of another Canadian , Dr. W.]. Hall from Glen Buell, Leeds County, Ontario, who also died in Korea during the early 1890s while serving with the Methodist Episcopal (North) mission, was written by his widow.s The existence of hagiographic biographies is one indication not only of familial commitment, but also ofchurch commitment to a particular mission. It is of some interest, therefore, that Mackay, McKenzie, and Hall were the only Canadian missionaries in what became theJapanese Empire to be the subjects of a major contemporaneous biography. Davidson McDonald, one of the two founding missionaries of the Canadian Methodist mission, and Caroline Macdonald, an independent missionary, were the only two missionaries in Japan who came close to having a biography written about them. In Korea, Malcolm C. Fenwick, another independent missionary, solved the problem by writing his own autobiography.9 It is not too far-fetched to suggest that a major reason why Canadians in the Japanese Empire did not become subjects of more hagiographic biographies was simply because they were Canadians. In the United States, a broader church constituency allowed the fluent pen...

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