The Japanese Orthodox Church

Founded by one man. St Nicholas Kasatkin arrived at Hakodate in 1861 as chaplain to the Russian consulate, spent eight years learning the language and the classics before he preached at all, and converted the samurai priest who had come to kill him. By his death in 1912 there were more than thirty thousand Japanese Orthodox, a cathedral in Tokyo that Tokyo still calls Nikorai-do, and the services and the Scriptures in Japanese. During the Russo-Japanese war he told his flock to pray for the victory of their own country and stayed to minister to Russian prisoners. Autonomous under Moscow since 1970.