page_title: Anglican Church in Japan
section_title: Continued growth and wartime challenges (1900–1945)
hierarchical_section_title: Anglican Church in Japan / History / Continued growth and wartime challenges (1900–1945)
caption_attribution_description: English: Plaque in Ely cathedral commemorating Gordon John Walsh, Bishop of Hokkaido
context_page_description: The Nippon Sei Ko Kai, abbreviated as NSKK, or sometimes referred to in English as the Anglican Episcopal Church in Japan, is the national Christian church representing the Province of Japan within the Anglican Communion.
  As a member of the Anglican Communion the Nippon Sei Ko Kai shares many of the historic doctrinal and liturgical practices of the Church of England, but is a fully autonomous national church governed by its own synod and led by its own primate. The Nippon Sei Ko Kai, in common with other churches in the Anglican Communion, considers itself to be a part of the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church and to be both Catholic and Reformed.
  With an estimated 80 million members worldwide, the Anglican Communion is the third largest Christian communion in the world, after the Roman Catholic Church and the Eastern Orthodox Churches. The Nippon Sei Ko Kai has approximately 32,000 members organised into eleven dioceses and found in local church congregations throughout Japan.
context_section_description: By 1906 the Nippon Sei Ko Kai was reported to have grown to 13,000 members, of whom 6,880 were communicants with a Japanese led ordained ministry of 42 priests and 22 deacons.  Henry St. George Tucker, President of St. Paul's College and in 1913 appointed Bishop of Kyoto, was one of the foremost missionary leaders of the period who advocated that an independent, Japanese-led and self-supporting church was the only way in which Christianity could be carried to the wider population of Japan. Initiatives were put in place to help grow the financial self-sufficiency of church congregations and the first Japanese bishops, John Yasutaro Naide, Bishop of Osaka and Joseph Sakunoshin Motoda, Bishop of Tokyo, were consecrated in 1923.
  During the 1930s, as overseas funding and the number of foreign Anglican missionaries in Japan declined, new challenges arose for Nippon Sei Ko Kai church leadership and laity from the increasing focus on Shinto as a state prescribed religion and the growing influence of militarism in domestic and foreign policy.  Christianity was portrayed by many nationalist politicians at the time as incompatible with the loyalty of Japanese subjects. In response the Nippon Sei Ko Kai issued periodic statements in support of the Imperial Army. And the first half of the 20th century saw NSKK's overseas expansion. Taiwan Sheng Kung Hui was established, several Japanese-language churches, such as Dalian Sheng Kung Hui Church, were built in Chung Hua Sheng Kung Hui's Northern China Diocese in Manchuria, and the Anglican Church of Korea was absorbed by the NSKK.
  A more active period of government persecution began in 1937, particularly for Christian denominations such as the Salvation Army with its commitment to social reform, and for the NSKK with its historic links to the Church of England.  Archbishop Lang's condemnation in October of Imperial Japanese Army actions in China, provoked hostile scrutiny of the NSKK and caused some in the church leadership to publicly disassociate themselves from links with the wider Anglican Communion.
  During World War II, the majority of Protestant churches in Japan were forcibly brought together by the Japanese wartime government to form the United Church of Christ in Japan, or Kyodan. Reflecting the distinctive doctrinal character of the Anglican Communion, many individual Nippon Sei Ko Kai congregations refused to join. The cost of resistance to and non-cooperation with the government's religious policies was harassment by the military police and periods of imprisonment for church leaders such as Bishops Samuel Heaslett, Hinsuke Yashiro and Todomu Sugai, as well as Primate Paul Shinji Sasaki.
  St. Andrew's Tokyo, now the Cathedral church for the Diocese of Tokyo, was one such congregation that resisted government pressure, struggling to retain its land, church buildings and Anglican identity to the war's end in 1945. However, like many urban Nippon Sei Ko Kai churches, medical and educational facilities, St. Andrew's buildings were lost in the 1945 Allied incendiary bombing.
caption: Plaque in Ely cathedral commemorating Gordon John Walsh, Bishop of Hokkaido
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