St. Nicholas of Japan

Ivan Kasatkin, a seminarian from Smolensk, read an account of Japan and volunteered for the consular chapel at Hakodate in 1861. He gave eight years to the language, the history and the Buddhist and Shinto classics before he attempted to preach, on the principle that a missionary who has not understood a people has nothing to say to them. His first convert was Sawabe Takuma, a Shinto priest and swordsman who came to kill him and stayed to argue. He translated the services and much of the Scriptures into Japanese, built the cathedral in Tokyo, and in the war of 1904 told the Japanese Orthodox to pray for their own country while he himself did not serve, and cared for the Russian prisoners. Glorified in 1970. Feast: February 3.