Thursday, September 24, 2026

It is the 24^th of September 2026. Welcome to the Christian History Almanac brought to you by 1517 at 1517.org. I'm your guest host, Sam Leanza Ortiz.

 

There are some amazing stories about the church in Japan. We know about Francis Xavier and the martyrdoms dramatized by Shusaku Endo in his excellent novel, Silence. Today we turn to Japan for a story of an evangelist with a complicated legacy, nicknamed the “Dwight Moody of Japan,” Juji Nakada, who died on this day in 1939.

Juji, his primary name (Nakada being his family name) was born to a lower-class samurai family in 1870 in Hirosaki. The age of the samurai had functionally ended two years earlier, as the Meiji Restoration toppled the Tokugawa Shogunate in favor of the return of the emperor.

For the Nakada family, this meant trouble, trouble that was only intensified by the death of Juji’s father when Juji was just four years old. Juji’s mother, Chiya, had converted to Methodism and raised Juji and his older brother, Kyukichi, in the church.

Kyukichi dove into the faith, becoming a Methodist minister, but Juji was a mischievous younger brother, caring more about his prowess in martial arts than his studies. Though Juji enrolled in university, he never finished and instead received a preacher’s license from his local church.

By the mid-1890s, he would marry his wife, Katsuko, with whom he would have six children, including their second son, Ugo, who would go on to become a notable hymn writer.

Early in their marriage, the family traveled to the northern prefecture of Hokkaido to spread the gospel, a journey which would break Juji’s heart over the barrenness of the hearts that did not receive his message.

After the death of his first son and the resistance he met in Hokkaido, Juji was despondent until he learned of the exciting revivals of the United States, and particularly the work of Dwight L. Moody, going on in Chicago, Illinois. In 1896, at the age of 26, he traveled there to study at the Moody Bible Institute for two years.

During his time there, he would be refreshed in the ministry and connect with his future ministry partner, Charles Elmer Cowman, then an executive for Western Union.

Juji returned to Japan in 1898, ready to re-embark on his traveling missionary work. Soon, though, his ministry work would be under a different banner, as he would leave the Methodist tradition of his youth for the Holiness movement.

Charles Cowman would move to Japan, with his wife, Lettie, to partner with Juji in the founding of the Oriental Missionary Society, seeking to expand their mission field into eastern Asia.

That opportunity came quickly for Juji, as the Russo-Japanese War provided an opportunity for him to preach to soldiers in Korea and Manchuria.

Once the war subsided, Juji left Japan once more to travel to the United States and to the United Kingdom, where he would befriend the Scottish evangelist, Oswald Chambers.

Several years after his return to Japan, Juji’s life entered a difficult period as his wife, Katsuko, died early in 1911, and in the same year, he split with Cowman over the leadership of the Oriental Missionary Society.

By the end of the year, he would remarry, a woman named Ayame, and become the head of the new Japan Holiness Church, which was a precursor to the Oriental Missionary Holiness Church that would formalize in 1917. Juji would be its first bishop.

The 1920s for the church in Japan, and Tokyo in particular, would be a period of revival, and the Japanese Holiness tradition would grow and expand among the Japanese in Japan and the immigrant populations in the United States.

This would be the high point of Nakada’s ministry, as his later years were beset with deeper schisms caused by an extreme turn in his views. In his later years, Nakada got caught up in the Japanese nationalism and anti-Western imperialism sweeping his nation. In his case, that was expressed as an emphasis on national salvation rather than the salvation of individual souls.

He would also more openly express an intense form of Japanese Zionism that not only proclaimed the restoration of Israel to the Holy Land as a precursor to Christ’s return, but also suggested that the Japanese and Jews shared a common ancestry. Ultimately, the Holiness Church he had helped to lead for twenty years would break in two by 1936.

In 1939, Nakada’s wife, Ayame, would die on the 14^th of September, and Juji would die just 10 days later, leaving behind a complicated legacy for a nation on the brink of war. Juji Nakada, the “Dwight Moody of Japan,” was born in 1870 and died on this day, September 24th, in 1939. He was 68 years old.

 

The final word for today comes from James 4:

¹¹ Brothers and sisters, do not slander one another. Anyone who speaks against a brother or sister^[a] or judges them speaks against the law and judges it. When you judge the law, you are not keeping it, but sitting in judgment on it. ¹² There is only one Lawgiver and Judge, the one who is able to save and destroy. But you—who are you to judge your neighbor?

¹³ Now listen, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business and make money.” ¹⁴ Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes. ¹⁵ Instead, you ought to say, “If it is the Lord’s will, we will live and do this or that.” ¹⁶ As it is, you boast in your arrogant schemes. All such boasting is evil.

 

This has been the Christian History Almanac for the 24^th of September 2026, brought to you by 1517 at 1517.org.

This show has been produced by the “Dwight Moody of Random Lake,” Christopher Gillespie.

This episode has been written and read by Sam Leanza Ortiz, filling in for Dan van Voorhis, who’s glad that another losing Angels’ season vanishes like a mist this coming Sunday. Sorry, that’s all I got for today.

You can catch us here every day- and remember that the rumors of grace, forgiveness, and the redemption of all things are true…. Everything is going to be ok.