In 1883, with Tsuda Sen, his was the first Japanese Christian missionary endeavor to Korea. This was a decade before formal Japanese colonial expansion and appeared to be motivated by a Christian transnational cosmopolitanism. He viewed the foreign mission of Japanese Christians as an extension of "Western" Christian missionary activity in Japan; for him the mission was an "obligation." In 1894 with other Christians he established the Greater Japan Overseas Education Society, a strictly Christian organization. They established Japanese language schools in Korea. Although Christian and educational in mission, "it cannot be denied ...that the establishment of these schools was the cornerstone of Japanese influence in Korea." Later activities went beyond Christian mission, and he actively intervened in Asian politics against political oppression in Asia. He supported Emilio Aquinaldo's Philippine war against the United States and the Mongolian independence movement; in 1918 he criticized the Japanese people for their neglect of Japan's responsibility to improve Asian societies.