American Missionaries, Christian Oyatoi, and Japan, 1859-73 (review)

Author of definitive studies of Canadian and British Protestants in Japan (The Cross and the Rising Sun and The Cross in the Dark Valley), Hamish Ion has now focused his formidable research skills on the Americans, producing a richly detailed account of the pioneering phase of U.S. Protestant missionary work in Japan, 1859-73. As in his earlier works, his objective in this new book is to highlight the role of Protestant missionaries not only as propagators of the Christian faith but also as "informal agents of their own country and civilization" (p. ix). It was as informal agents that the American, Canadian, and British missionaries exercised their major influence, making world knowledge more accessible to Japan and popularizing Japan in their home countries. Success here, however, was not matched by success in Christianizing Japan. Ion advances a number of reasons for the poor showing on this score, chief among them a deeply ingrained Japanese bias against Christianity, the result of two centuries of edicts proscribing the religion as a potential danger to the state.

Ion touches on the origins, policy impact, and persistence of this anti-Christian bias in the opening pages of chapter 1 of the book, "Beginnings in Bakumatsu Japan." Starting with the standard reference to the sakoku (closed country) policy, the discussion at this point covers mostly familiar ground. But the chapter moves quickly into new territory with an illuminating account of U.S. pressure to open Japan to foreign trade and diplomacy in the 1850s followed by a lively chronicle of what life was like in the newly opened treaty ports for two of the best-known Protestant missionaries, James Hepburn and Guido Verbeck. Both men arrived in Japan in 1859 and served there for over three decades.

"Beginnings in Bakumatsu Japan" and the two chapters that follow, "Hoping for Change" and "In the Midst of a Restoration," are perhaps the finest in the book. Ion documents how surprisingly adept the Japanese were in managing their first contacts with the Americans, particularly in getting agreed limits to Christian proselytizing. He introduces intriguing topics that merit further investigation such as the influence of the China missionary model on the approach taken in Japan and the role played by the missionaries' Japanese assistants. A particularly interesting figure is Hepburn's assistant Kishida Ginkō, who went on to fame and fortune in the pharmaceutical business. Chapters 4 through 8 are equally replete with fascinating stories and detail, though the shift in organizational focus from chronological to topical results in some repetition of material and loss in narrative force. Chapter 5, which describes Verbeck's determined push to promote overseas study programs for young Japanese, adds an important dimension to the literature on early relations between the United States and Japan.

Ion sets out to compile what he frequently refers to as a "new list" to add to the roster of ten clerical missionaries, Christian laypeople, and Japanese Christians covered in John Howes's seminal article, "Japanese Christians and American Missionaries," published in 1965.¹ In this he succeeds admirably. More than 40 such figures move across the stage under Ion's direction in principal or supporting roles. (Ion uses the term Christian oyatoi to refer to the Christian activists among the Americans hired as foreign experts by the Japanese government.) Ion is at his best in extracting from extensive archival materials warmly drawn portraits of major actors such as Hepburn, Verbeck, William Elliot Griffis, and Mary Kidder. He details everything about their efforts to teach and preach, from their professional hopes and money worries to social ties and personality quirks, creating a real, everyday picture of missionary life. Minor characters, too, make their appearance, however briefly, as people worth knowing. Louise Pierson who volunteered for Japan service on a sudden impulse after the death of her husband and four children is a case in point. There is, however, a problem with presenting this huge...