On the Day June 20 1880

Brown Brings Gospel to Japan

Khen Lim




Image source: kaikou,city.yokohama.jp

With 1.5 million Christians essentially in the western parts, Japan remains almost entirely secular. OMF International reports that today, 7 in 10 churches are attended by less than 30 members. Yet at one time, the number of actively-practising Christians had reached a peak of 25 percent of the entire population. Herein lies the foundation work of a precious few, one of whom was Samuel Robbins Brown who dedicated his life bringing Christ to China and then Japan.

Born in Connecticut in 1810, Brown was a Yale graduate twenty-two years later who then decided to go into theological studies where he was in the first graduating class of Union Theological Seminary. Thereafter he taught for four years at the New York Institution for the Deaf and Dumb. In his youthful days of struggling as a student, he found resourceful ways to pay off his college debts even if his father was sceptical. He waited at the tables, sang and taught music and soon, he was teaching as well. Before he knew it, he graduated free of debts. This experience taught him to respect businesspeople and brought him recognition of the importance of economics to missions.

All of this dovetailed nicely with his passion to be a Christian educator with an eye towards spreading the Gospel in Asia. His first exposure was in China when he went to Guangzhou in 1838 days after he married his sweetheart Elizabeth Bartlett in October under the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (ABFCM). 

Generously funded with an interest to share the Gospel with the local Chinese, he launched the first Protestant School for the Morrison Education Society in Macau, called the Morrison Memorial School in which he later became its principal. By the following year, five students enrolled. In 1840, Yung Wing joined as a student and two years later, the school relocated to Hong Kong on Morrison Hill.  

In 1847, the Brown family returned home owing to Elizabeth’s failing health. On his return, Brown brought along three Chinese boys from his school to pursue studies in America namely, Wang Seng, Wang Fun and Yung Wing himself. 

Yung Wing as illustrated in 'My Life in China and America' (Image source: wma.us)

All three acquitted themselves well and contributed substantially to the development of Christianity in mainland China. Wang Seng returned first because of poor health but he did work as a supervisor for the Hong Kong Mission Press. Wang Fun worked successfully in a mission hospital in Canton until his death. Yung Wing, on the other hand, graduated from Yale in 1854 and joined the business world and then entered politics.

Through the ten years at home, Brown pastored at the Dutch Reform-based Sand Beach Church. He also farmed and ran a school at Owasco Outlet, near Auburn. His zeal to serve Christ burned more strongly than ever.

A year after Japan’s trade doors were forced open by the 1858 Harris Treaty, Brown and his wife were despatched as missionaries to Kanagawa by the Protestant Church of America. It didn’t take long for the Japanese government to realise that Brown was not someone who used his classroom for political expediency and from that point, he earned their trust. In fact, even when troubling times plagued Japan, he dispensed with diplomatic immunity, a move that endeared himself to the Japanese who appreciated his integrity as someone resembling the honourable Samurai. All of this became an inspiration to many Japanese men and women who saw in him, one of the greatest of early Christian educators in their country.

Among the most important of his achievements in Japan was the work he did in translating the New Testament into the local vernacular. Because of his pioneering study of the Japanese language and experiences working in China, he and Dr James Curtis Hepburn, a Presbyterian medical missionary, collaborated to realise this dream.

Japan's first Protestant church, Yokohama (Image source: forgottenbooks.com)

From Brown’s preaching, a strong group of converts formed the nucleus from which emerged Japan’s first Protestant church in Yokohama in 1861, which was built on Lot 105 in the foreign settlement. Called the British Anglican Garrison Church (aka Christ Church), it became the inspiration for him to establish a Reformed Church (later called Union Church) also in Yokohama on Lot 167.

As he neared the end of his life, Brown founded Japan’s first Bible study college in 1872 called the Tokyo Union Theological Seminary (TUTS), which began operating out of his own home. In fact Brown taught its first theological class then. Testimony to his remarkable vision, TUTS still operates today.

Suffering from declining health, Brown returned to the United States in the fall of 1879 and a year later on June 20, 1880, he died in his sleep and was buried at Monson, Massachusetts, his childhood home.