St. Nikolai of Japan on the Gregorian Calendar

 

Already in 1883, he [St. Nikolai] wrote that he was ‘disgusted’ by the adoption of the Gregorian calendar in Japan in place of the traditional [Julian] equivalent, observing that the government is ‘aping Western Europe.’ [453]

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Nikolai harboured doubts about the success of Protestantism in Japan because he believed that it was based on the principle of ‘believe whatever you want’ and not on true faith. ‘The Protestants fear dogma almost as much as the devil fears incense,’ Nikolai wrote in December 1907:

…but in the same way that the devil does not prevent the incense from ascending to God, neither does the Protestant prevent the dogma from standing and shining. This means that their successes are ephemeral, will soon pass, and must eventually give way to other successes, if the Japanese are worthy before the court of God to accept the true teachings of Christ about the Holy Trinity, God the Saviour, the miraculous signs of the redeeming Power of God, and so on.

According to Nikolai, ‘if the gates to the Orthodox Church were opened just as wide,’ many extra people would wander in and later leave, as would happen with Protestantism. [621]

Of course, even in Orthodox Churches, certain elements of indigenisation can be used in rituals and services but even with this attribute, Orthodoxy adopts a much stricter line than many other religions. Nikolai understood that a certain degree of indigenisation is possible and in this, he acted in line with the tradition of Orthodox missionary work. This kind of adaptation occurred, for example, when the Bible and liturgical texts were translated into Japanese, in the clothing and conduct of the clergy and the faithful during church services, in the style of icon-painting, and the type of calendar used. In 1880, Nikolai considered asking the Synod for permission to celebrate fixed religious holidays in the Japanese Church according to the Gregorian calendar, which had been used in Japan since 1873 but was not used by the ROC, because according to the Gregorian calendar, the New Year holiday would otherwise fall during a fasting period, which most believers would not observe. [622] This was not a dogmatic problem and later, several Orthodox churches switched to a Revised Julian calendar that aligns its dates with the Gregorian calendar until February 28, 2800.

 

FOOTNOTES

453. Dnevniki svjatitelja Nikolaya Yaponskogo 5 (1904–1912), pp. 830–31. 

621. Dnevniki svjatitelja Nikolaya Yaponskogo 5 (1904–1912), p. 340. 

622. Dnevniki svjatitelja Nikolaya Yaponskogo 1 (1870–1880), p. 216. 

 

Source: “Nikolai Yaponsky and the Russian Orthodox Mission to Japan during the Meiji Period: Encounters and Tensions between Russia, Japan and the West,” by Olga Puzanova, Ph.D. dissertation, Oxford University, 2020, page 143, and pages 191-192, respectively.