The Move to Tokyo
From consular chaplaincy to national mission: the journey back to Russia in 1869–70 to petition for a formal mission; the establishment of the Russian Ecclesiastical Mission in Japan in 1870 and Nicholas’s elevation to archimandrite as its head; the move of the mission’s center from Hakodate to Tokyo in 1872 and the purchase of the hill at Surugadai; the lifting of the anti-Christian ban in February 1873 that turned a secret community into a public Church; and his consecration as bishop in 1880 and elevation to archbishop two decades later.
Tradition: Russian Orthodox / Japanese (canonized 1970)
The Petition for a Mission
By the end of the 1860s the work at Hakodate had outgrown the consular chaplaincy under which it had begun. There was now a small body of Japanese converts — the first of them baptized in secret, at the risk of their lives — and Nicholas had become convinced that what was needed was no longer one priest attached to a consulate but a properly constituted mission, sent and supported by the Church in Russia (Saint Nicholas of Japan, Equal-to-the-Apostles (Part 8), mission2nihon, drawing on the standard Russian Life; Nicholas of Japan, OrthodoxWiki). Leaving the Hakodate community in trusted hands, he traveled back across Siberia to Russia in 1869–70 to make the case in person before the Holy Synod (mission2nihon; Timeline of Orthodoxy in Japan, OrthodoxWiki).
The petition succeeded. On 6 April 1870 (Old Style), Tsar Alexander II approved a resolution of the Holy Synod establishing the Russian Ecclesiastical (Spiritual) Mission in Japan — its establishment to consist of a head of mission together with three hieromonk-missionaries and a sexton, with financial support granted from the Synod (mission2nihon; Timeline of Orthodoxy in Japan, OrthodoxWiki; Nicholas of Japan, OrthodoxWiki). Nicholas himself was elevated to the rank of archimandrite and appointed head of the Mission (mission2nihon; OrthodoxWiki). The undertaking that had begun as the private initiative of a young hieromonk now had the standing, the personnel, and the budget of an official mission of the Russian Church behind it.
This was the first of the three structural changes — mission, capital, and episcopate — that over the following decade and a half would convert a consular outpost into the seed of a national Church.
The Move to Tokyo (1872)
With the Mission established, Nicholas judged that its center could no longer remain in a provincial northern port. To reach Japan he had to be where Japan decided things — in the capital. In 1872 Archimandrite Nicholas moved the center of the Mission from Hakodate to Tokyo, in order to preach in the capital, leaving the Hakodate community and the consular Resurrection church under Hieromonk Anatoly (Anatolii Tikhai), one of the missionaries assigned to the new establishment (mission2nihon; Nicholas of Japan, Wikipedia). [Disputed: the Timeline of Orthodoxy in Japan (OrthodoxWiki) dates the move to Tokyo to 1871 and the Surugadai land purchase to 1873, whereas the narrative Lives give 1872; 1872 is presented here as the main figure, with the variance noted.]
On first arriving Nicholas lodged for a time in the Tsukiji foreign settlement, the quarter of Tokyo then set aside for foreigners, before a permanent site could be secured (the Lives generally). What he wanted was not a foreign enclave but a foothold in the Japanese city itself.
Surugadai
That foothold was found on Surugadai hill, in the Kanda district of central Tokyo — high ground overlooking the city. With donations that had been collected in Russia during his 1869–70 visit — notably through the patronage of Admiral Yevfimy Putyatin, the diplomat who had negotiated the first Russo-Japanese treaty — a plot on the hill was purchased, and within about a year a two-story Mission building was raised on it, containing a house-church and schools (mission2nihon; Nicholas of Japan, Wikipedia; Holy Resurrection Cathedral, OrthodoxWiki).
Surugadai became the permanent headquarters of the Mission, and it has remained the heart of Japanese Orthodoxy ever since: it would later become the site of the great cathedral and the see of the Archbishop of Japan (mission2nihon; Holy Resurrection Cathedral, OrthodoxWiki; see Nikolai-do). The choice of Surugadai was characteristic of Nicholas’s whole approach. He did not build at the edge of the city among the foreigners but at its center, in plain Japanese view — a sign that the Church he intended was to be a Japanese church and not a Russian colony (see An Indigenous Church).
The Lifting of the Ban (February 1873)
The single event that transformed the conditions of the mission came a few months after the move. Since the Tokugawa edicts of the early seventeenth century, Christianity had been a proscribed religion in Japan; the public notice-boards (kosatsu) condemning the “evil sect” still stood, and to accept the faith remained, in principle, a capital matter (see Arrival in Japan (1861)). In February 1873 the Meiji government quietly removed those boards. The instrument was the Grand Council of State (Dajōkan) Proclamation No. 68 of 24 February 1873 (Gregorian), which ordered the removal of the anti-Christian public notices; the Russian Lives record the same event as the imperial decree of 10 February 1873 (Old Style) — “On February 10, 1873, an imperial decree… repealing all anti-Christian laws” (mission2nihon, Part 8; Five Public Notices, Wikipedia; Japan Tourism Agency / MLIT, on the lifting of the ban). The two dates are the Old Style and Gregorian reckonings of one and the same act.
The Meiji state had not embraced Christianity — it had, under foreign pressure and in pursuit of its own modernization, ceased to actively persecute it. But for the mission the practical effect was decisive. For the first time since 1614 it was possible to preach openly. The community that had been gathered in secret could now become a public Church; converts no longer risked execution for their baptism; and the careful, patient catechizing that Nicholas had been doing under cover could at last be carried out in the open and on a national scale. This is the hinge on which the whole later history turns (cross-reference The First Community). Everything that follows — the schools, the catechists, the cathedral — was made possible by the removal of those notice-boards in the spring of 1873.
Consecration as Bishop (1880)
As the open mission grew, it became clear that a missionary Church of any size needed a bishop of its own — to ordain the Japanese clergy it was beginning to produce. In 1879 Archimandrite Nicholas again traveled to Russia, this time to seek the consecration of a bishop for Japan and to raise further support. On 30 March 1880 (Old Style) he was himself consecrated bishop, at the Trinity Cathedral of the Alexander Nevsky Lavra in St. Petersburg, with the title Bishop of Revel (Reval — modern Tallinn), a vicariate of the Diocese of Riga (mission2nihon; Nicholas of Japan, Wikipedia, which gives “consecrated bishop on 30 March 1880, as Bishop of Reval (Tallinn), auxiliary to the Archdiocese of Riga”).
The title was, in the manner of the time, a courtesy attachment to a Russian see rather than a residential charge: Nicholas never visited Reval, and his whole episcopate was spent in Japan. The connection ran the other way — the Reval parish helped to fund his mission. What mattered was not the territorial title but the consecration itself: Japan now had its own bishop, resident at Surugadai, able to ordain Japanese deacons and priests for the Japanese Church (mission2nihon; Wikipedia). The catechist-founded communities scattered across the country could henceforth be served by clergy raised up from among the Japanese themselves (see The Catechist System).
Archbishop of Tokyo and All Japan
The final elevation came after the Russo-Japanese War, in recognition — in part — of the conduct by which Nicholas had held the Japanese Church together while his own homeland and his adopted country were at war (see Staying With His Flock). He was raised to the rank of archbishop, with the title Archbishop of Tokyo and All Japan, and an independent Diocese of Japan was formally constituted. [Disputed: the OCA gives the date as 24 March 1906, while Wikipedia and the Timeline of Orthodoxy in Japan (OrthodoxWiki) give 6 April 1907 and date the formal erection of an independent Diocese of Japan to 1907; the likeliest reconciliation is that 1906 marks the elevation to archbishop and 1907 the formal constitution of the diocese — both are presented here.] (Saint Nicholas, Enlightener of Japan, OCA; Nicholas of Japan, Wikipedia; Timeline of Orthodoxy in Japan, OrthodoxWiki.)
Taken together, these four changes tell a single story. The mission of 1870, the move to Tokyo in 1872, the lifting of the ban in 1873, and the episcopate from 1880 turned what had been a consular chaplaincy on the northern frontier into a Church with a center in the capital, a bishop of its own, schools to train its workers, and the legal freedom to preach. The engine that would now drive its growth across the country was the lay catechist — the subject of the next file (see The Catechist System) — and its crowning monument would be the cathedral on Surugadai (see Nikolai-do).
See Also
- Arrival in Japan (1861) — the hidden Hakodate years under the ban that this period brought to an end
- The First Community — the secret converts who could become a public Church once the boards came down
- The Catechist System — the lay-evangelist method that drove growth once preaching became legal
- Nikolai-do — the cathedral later raised on the Surugadai site secured in this period
- An Indigenous Church — the Japanese Church that the move to the capital was meant to serve
- Orthodoxy Guide: World Orthodoxy — the family of local Churches and missions into which Japan was entering
References
- Saint Nicholas of Japan, Equal-to-the-Apostles (Part 8). mission2nihon (mission2nihon.substack.com/p/st-nicholas-of-japan-equal-to-the-574), drawing on the standard Russian Life. (The 1869–70 petition; the 1870 mission and elevation to archimandrite; the 1872 move and Surugadai; the 10 February 1873 decree; the 1880 consecration.)
- Timeline of Orthodoxy in Japan. OrthodoxWiki (orthodoxwiki.org/Timeline_of_Orthodoxy_in_Japan). (The 1870 Synodal resolution and Tsar’s approval; the move dated 1871 and the Surugadai purchase 1873; the 1907 diocese.)
- Nicholas of Japan. OrthodoxWiki (orthodoxwiki.org/Nicholas_of_Japan). (The mission’s establishment and personnel; the move to Tokyo; the episcopate.)
- Nicholas of Japan. Wikipedia. (The 1872 move; Putyatin and the Surugadai purchase; “consecrated bishop on 30 March 1880, as Bishop of Reval (Tallinn), auxiliary to the Archdiocese of Riga”; the 1907 figure.)
- Saint Nicholas, Enlightener of Japan. Orthodox Church in America (oca.org/saints/lives/2026/02/03/100455-saint-nicholas-enlightener-of-japan), February 3. (The elevation to archbishop, dated 24 March 1906.)
- Holy Resurrection Cathedral. OrthodoxWiki (orthodoxwiki.org). (Surugadai as the permanent headquarters and later cathedral site.)
- Five Public Notices. Wikipedia. (The anti-Christian notice-boards and the Dajōkan Proclamation No. 68 of 24 February 1873.)
- Japan Tourism Agency / Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism (MLIT), PDF on the lifting of the anti-Christian ban. (The 1873 removal of the kosatsu.)