Sakunoshin Motoda

Japanese: 元田作之進 - もとだ・さくのしん

Year of death: April 16, 1928
Year of birth: Bunkyu 2.2.22 (1862.3.22)
A pastor and educator during the Meiji and Taisho periods. The first Japanese bishop of the Anglican Church in Japan, and the first president of Rikkyo University. Born as the eldest son of a samurai of the Kurume domain, he lost both his parents when he was an infant. He studied hard and entered Kurume Normal School in 1875, becoming the youngest student in the school's first class to graduate, and at the age of 16, he became an elementary school principal. After working as a junior high school teacher, he studied at the Osaka Eiwa Gakusha School run by the Episcopal missionary T. S. Ting in 1881, and was baptized the following year. In 1884, he traveled to the United States. In the 10 years before returning to Japan, he earned a doctorate in philosophy at the Philadelphia Theological Seminary and the University of Pennsylvania, and became a priest of the same sect. After returning to Japan, he became the principal of Rikkyo Junior High School, and recruited badly behaved students who had been expelled from other schools to Rikkyo Junior High School. In response to the ban on religious education enacted by Ministry of Education Instruction No. 12 (1899), he sought to continue extracurricular religious education on the condition that the authorities approved, and gained the understanding of his own faction's Mission Bureau, but he set himself apart from other mission schools that struggled for complete freedom in religious education by taking a confrontational stance. In March 1908, he became editor-in-chief of the Christian Weekly News, and displayed his literary talent under the pen name Ryozan. He worked to establish a university, and in 1908 he became principal of Rikkyo University when it was founded (later it became a university under the University Act, and he became its first president). In 1923, he was elected by the Tokyo Diocese as the first Japanese bishop of the Anglican Church in Japan. He was an educator who spoke of his hobby as being "like a gentle ball," and of overcoming difficulties with self-sacrifice. <Works> History of the Anglican Church in Japan, Old Bishop Williams <References> The Witnesses, edited by the Anglican Church History Editorial Committee, and History of Christian Education in Japan/People Edition, edited by the same committee

(Oe Mitsuru)

Source: Asahi Japanese Historical Biography: Asahi Shimbun Publications Inc. About Asahi Japanese Historical Biography

Japanese:

没年：昭和3.4.16(1928)
生年：文久2.2.22(1862.3.22)
明治大正期の牧師,教育者。日本聖公会初代邦人主教,立教大学初代学長。久留米藩士の長男として生まれるが幼児期に両親と死別。苦学し,明治8(1875)年,久留米師範学校に入学,最年少で第1回卒業生となり16歳で小学校校長となる。中学校教員を経て,同14年米国聖公会宣教師T.S.ティングの大阪英和学舎に学び,翌年受洗。同19年渡米。帰国するまでの10年間でフィラデルフィア神学院,ペンシルベニア大学で哲学博士号を得るなどし,同派司祭となる。帰国後,立教中学校長となり,他校を放逐された素行不良の生徒を立教中学校に集めた。文部省訓令第12号(1899)の宗教教育禁令では,当局の認可前提で課外宗教教育の存続を図り自派伝道局の理解を得るが,完全な宗教教育の自由を求めて苦闘した他のミッション校とは対決姿勢で一線を画した。同33年3月『基督教週報』主幹となり,良山のペンネームで文才を発揮。大学設置に努め,同40年に立教大学設立とともに校長となる(のち大学令大学となり初代学長に就任)。大正12(1923)年東京教区から日本聖公会初代邦人主教に選出。「温厚玉の如」く,捨身で困難を打開することが道楽と語る教育者。<著作>『日本聖公会史』『老監督ウイリアムス』<参考文献>日本聖公会歴史編纂委員会編『あかしびとたち』,同『日本キリスト教教育史/人物編』

(大江満)

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