Theology in Japan: Takakura Tokutaro (1885-1934)

Abstract

Takakura Tokutaro was a Japanese Christian who lived during the years 1885- 1934. Despite having played important leadership roles within the Protestant Church in Japan during the 1920's and early 1930's, his name is scarcely known outside limited Japanese theological circles. This thesis seeks to give Takakura some of the recognition which his place in the Christian Church deserves.Takakura was reared as a young boy in a small, mountain town in Kyoto Prefecture. He then attended school during a period of politically-cultivated nationalism. These years were highlighted by the granting of the Meiji Constitution (1889), the promulgation of the Imperial Rescript on Education (1890), and major wars against China (1894-1895) and Russia (1904-1905). In 1906 Takakura began legal studies at the prestigious Imperial University in Tokyo, a major step towards fulfilling his lifelong dream of becoming a high-ranking government official.ng his lifelong dream of becoming a high-ranking government official. However, by the end of the same year Takakura had been baptised into the Christian Church; and, one year later he quit legal studies in order to pursue theological studies at a small, new ministerial training school begun by his pastor, Uemura Masahisa. This step in such an entirely new direction took him towards a lifelong career as pastor and teacher in the Nihon Kirisuto Kyokai (Japan Christ Church).After pastorates in Kyoto and Sapporo, followed by a three-year period of teaching and preaching in Tokyo, Takakura embarked in 1921 for over two years of study in Britain. He spent one academic year at New College, Edinburgh, one academic year at Mansfield College, Oxford, and then one academic term at Westminster College, Cambridge. In January, 1924, Takakura returned to Japan, where he spent the remaining ten years of his life in responsible positions as preacher, teacher, author, and speaker.This thesis focuses its examination on Takakura's thought, all the while emphasising his own particular, historical context. Takakura's life spanned a critical period in the life of a rapidly-changing Japan that had joined the "modern family of nations" since its mind-boggling growth from the Meiji Restoration of 1868. Moreover, the Church into which he was converted was just completing the first generation of its existence since the arrival in Japan of Western missionaries in 1859. Hence how Takakura understood and came to articulate the Christian faith says much about the Church of the incomparable Meiji period (1868-1912), as well as about his own generation of Christians who lived in the ensuing Taisho (1912-1926) and Showa (1926-1989) eras.Furthermore, Takakura's close interaction with Western thought is instructive concerning the universalisation of Christian theology during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Along with spending over two years in the West, Takakura did extensive reading in both British and German theology. How he received the Christian faith through these cross-cultural media, then adapted it into his own linguistic and religio-cultural context, demonstrates not only what happened with Takakura individually, but also what has been happening worldwide for the past two centuries. The thesis will thus seek to gain further insight from Takakura's example into the still relatively recent universalising trend in Christian thought.