Bunji and Toshi Kida and Friends Missions to the Japanese in California

Bunji and Toshi Kida and Friends Missions to the Japanese in California By Stephen W. Angeli* Quaker missionary efforts with the Japanese began in 1885, when PhiladelphiaYearlyMeeting (Orthodox) sentJosephand SarahAnn Cosand to Tokyo to initiate a mission there. About the early stages ofthis mission, there is a fair amount ofliterature, much ofit by contemporary Quakers who were intimately involved in this mission work.1 It is clear that influential Japanese, including Inazo Nitobe, soon to be a prominent educator and diplomat, were very active in helping to spark the interest of American Friends for such a mission.2 Despite the well-known involvement ofNitobe and other Japanese in the beginning of this enterprise, however, most literature on Japanese missions follows the model ofChristianity radiating out from the Anglo-American Christian Quaker homeland. One implicit theme running through much of this literature (and indeed literature on nineteenth-century missions as a whole) is a lack ofreciprocity, built upon an inherently inegalitarian understanding that Christian Americans were rescuing darker-skinnedpeoples unacquaintedwiththe more sublime forms of religious truth.3 There is, however, an alternative model for the understanding ofQuaker missions, one ofa reciprocal flow ofmissionaries and ideas across oceans, developed ably in Frederick Tolles' Quakers and the Atlantic Culture in a discussion of the relationships between seventeenth- and eighteenth-century English and American Friends. "The principal cement ofthe Atlantic Quaker community was the traveling ministry. . . . The Quaker ministers, constantly circulating through the vast Atlantic world, were not only messengers ofthe gospel ofthe Inward Light; they were cultural 'carriers' who helpedto holdthe largerAtlantic Community together." Tolles defined the Quakers' Atlantic Community as "a community held together by the intangible yetpowerful bonds oflove, fellowship, and a common faith."4 If his analysis is in any way transferable to the vaster and far more culturally diverse Pacific region (in other words, if we can meaningfully talk about "Quakers andPacific Culture"), thenwe ought to be able to discern a similar reciprocity among the circulation of Quaker ministers in the twentieth century in that part ofthe world. This essay will examine the lives of Bunji and Toshi Kida and other Quaker ministers who came from Japan in the early twentieth century, in * Stephen W. Angeli is the Géraldine C. Leatherock Professor ofQuaker Studies at the Earlham School ofReligion. He would like to thank Brian Masaru Hayashi and Jacci Welling for their helpful comments on this essay. Quaker History Bunji and Toshi Kida part to explore whether the second, more reciprocal model of missions adumbrated by Tolles might better fit the reality of Japanese-American Quaker interactions than the more pervasive one-way model of Friends' missions in or to Japan. Thus, the major focus will be placed on Japanese Quakerministers who traversedthe ocean in an eastward directionto preach the gospel inAmerica. Themost important ofthese werethe Kidas, Japanese Quakers far more obscure thanNitobe, but nonetheless highly influential in their own quiet way. Tolles writes ofNorth Atlantic Friends that "it was a sign of the coming of age of American Quakerism when in the 1 690s a current began flowing in the opposite direction."5 The Kidas aspired to represent a similar "coming of age" in Japanese Quakerism, as those most involved in instigating outreach to the Japanese in southern California on behalf of Quakers. Their energetic work dominated the imaginations of white Quakers in California for many years. Scarcely a week went by without a prominent mention oftheir activities in the Pacific Friend. How this all came about is a fascinating, ifhitherto mostly forgotten, story. Bunji Kida was an optician when he began attending and volunteering at the Friends' mission in 1901. His exact birth date has not yet been discovered, but Kida most likely would have been in his twenties when he became associated with the Friends' mission. One year later, he was hired by the mission at an annual salary of$190, first as an assistant evangelist in Tokyo,6 and, within a year, as pastor ofthe Friends Meeting in the lakeside town of Tsuchiura in the Ibaraki Prefecture. He was a tireless and patient evangelist, "a most earnest and sincere Christian worker" according to one report. There were about 3,000 houses in Tsuchiura, and...