Juji Nakada was one of the founders of the Oriental Missionary Society (OMS).
Indeed, he probably could be described as the instigator.
Friendship with the other founders
Even as he attended the Moody Bible Institute in 1897, Juji dreamed of setting up an evangelistic ministry in Japan.
He, Ernest Kilbourne, and Charles Cowman discussed and prayed about the idea together.
It excited them all and a few years later the Cowmans both “got a Word from God,” they should go to Japan as missionaries. Kilbourne and his family followed a year later.
Juji’s role in beginning the Tokyo ministry
A beaming Juji met the boat when the Cowmans arrived on Thursday, February 21, 1901!
Three days later, they gathered at the First Methodist Episcopal Church in Tokyo, where Juji preached the sermon.
The westerners met the entire Nakada family that weekend as well.
Monday morning, they began the search for a suitable building for a Gospel Hall and a Bible school.
The school began as soon as possible with both men and women studying the Bible.
Nakada gave up a salary and trusted God for his family’s financial support. The ministry had begun.
Preaching at the Central Gospel Mission Hall
Cowman, center.
Lettie & Katusko in front (OMS Archives)
This was an evangelizing organization. Central to it all was Nakada’s dynamic preaching at the Central Gospel Mission Hall.
The Bible Training Institute students studied the Scriptures every morning and fanned out into the community to evangelize every afternoon.
Along with the Cowmans, they handed out tracts everywhere, inviting people to the mission hall every night at 7.
Juji Nakada’s dynamic preaching inspired many. Afterward, the students and Cowman remained to the end of the evenings to answer questions.
The first time Juji found an English-speaking Japanese man in the crowd, he directed him to Charles Cowman. An hour later, the man gave his life to Christ.
The Central Gospel Mission Hall sponsored an evangelist, frequently Juji, for 3000 straight nights.
Juji Nakada: Preaching and traveling
Once the ministry was established as the Oriental Missionary Society (OMS), Nakada continued as an evangelist.
During the Russo-Sino War in 1904-1905, Japanese soldiers fought the Russians in both Manchuria and on the Korean peninsula.
Juji Nakada traveled through Korea during the war to encourage Japanese soldiers and to preach the Gospel.
While riding on horseback one day, Nakada heard a Japanese workman shout, “Aren’t you from the Central Gospel Mission in Tokyo?”
The man had attended services when he lived in Tokyo. Juji stopped to fellowship with him.
But while in Korea, he preached to local groups as well. The result?
In 1905, three Korean students arrived to study at the Bible Training Institute–and from them ultimately came the Korea Holiness Church. (One of the largest denominations in 2021 Korea).
Nakada traveled to Great Britain and the United States to raise funds in 1906. In England, he met Oswald Chambers. The two enjoyed each other’s company, and Juji Nakada invited him to visit the US and then Japan.
I wrote about their trip here.
He had plenty of evangelizing and preaching to do!
The Great Village Campaign
This fit right up Juji Nakada’s alley–sharing the gospel all over Japan.
Between 1912 and 1919, the OMS sponsored a massive Gospel literature campaign. Students, evangelists, and eventually Americans, visited every home in Japan to leave a tract and Gospel excerpts.
It took everyone to engage in the effort, and Nakada certainly helped train the men.
As the result of the campaign, the number of OMS-sponsored churches grew. By the the early-1920s, OMS declared the the Japan Holiness Church independent of the ministry.
The OMS shifted their ministry’s focus to Korea and China.
Bishop of the Japan Holiness Church
Juji Nakada’s heart remained in Japan and he became the first and head bishop of the Japan Holiness Church.
(The organization’s first name was the Oriental Missionary Holiness Church.)
Nakada wrote,
as the name indicates, a missionary society. Our purpose is simple: to propagate the complete Gospel, that is, the Foursquare Gospel (salvation, holiness, the Second Coming of Christ, and healing) all over Japan”
Jews in the Japanese Mind: The History and Uses of a Cultural Stereotype
The church remained affiliated with the OMS, though it was now self-supporting. (In the beginning, the church consisted of forty-six churches and fifty ministers.)
Nakada continued to write and edit his Tongues of Fire magazine, continued speaking in evangelization meetings whenever they occurred and kept in touch with his former colleagues.
During this time, Juji Nakada became passionate about Jesus’ second coming (particularly after reading W. E. Blackstone‘s Jesus is Coming).
His evangelism efforts, already profound, increased.
He also lost his first wife and remarried. His oldest child, Ugo, wrote hymns in Japanese.
Heartbreak at the end
Charles and Lettie Cowman returned to the United States for good in 1918. While Ernest Kilbourne remained, he was very much involved in the practical aspects of the OMS.
Juji Nakada had a new church body to oversee. He continued preaching and saw large growth in the Japanese Holiness churches.
The 1924 Tokyo earthquake, which leveled most of the city, became in Nakada’s mind,
“a judgement on the nation like Sodom and Gomorrah. He proclaimed this message boldly and called upon people to repent of their sins. He also felt that the earthquake signaled the beginning of the end of the world.”
John Merwin dissertation, The History of the Oriental Missionary Society
This added even more impetus to the need to evangelize Japan. The Bishop focused his church organization to encourage evangelists. He also began to preach on the radio–a new concept for Japan.
Merwin observed much of the church growth during these years came from the inspiring Juji Nakada.
But during the heightened political events in his country, he also became engaged in an effort to marry Christianity with Japanese culture. According to David Goodman, that led Juji to see “Japan’s national salvation as inextricably intertwined with the national redemption of the Jewish people.”
Juji Nakada’s focus
Became his obsession with Japan Israelism–a strange teaching which held that the sole task of the church was to hasten the return of Christ by praying for the Jews’ restoration to their homeland.”
No Guarantee But God by Edward and Esther Erny
This caused a divide between the Oriental Missionary Society proper with Juji Nakada.
Despite many attempts to bridge the gap in their understanding, the OMS relationship with Nakada was never resolved. It broke Lettie Cowman’s heart.
Juji Nakada and Lettie Cowman: the final visit
Lettie Cowman traveled to Japan to see Juji Nakada twice in the last ten years of his life. Despite their love and friendship, they could never resolve their differences.
She made one last effort in 1939.
(OMS Archives)
They spent a lovely evening together on the OMS compound, remembering old times and all the good God did through them and OMS. As she got up to leave, Juji asked her to return and spend time in her old home.
Lettie agreed. She was headed to Korea for an OMS board of trustees meeting.
Two weeks later, only a few days after the death of Juji’s second wife, Lettie received a wire.
On the fifteen anniversary of Charles Cowman’s death, the sixty-nine year old Juji Nakada died.
A sobered Lettie wrote:
How strange it is that these two, the founder and co-founder, of The Oriental Missionary Society should have gone to the glory land on the exact date.
It seemed to me as if dear Brother Nakada went to spend the anniversary of Mr. Cowman’s translation with him and the heavenly city was so beautiful and attractive that he never wished to return again into the land of pain and suffering.
The Oriental Missionary Standard, December 1939, p. 12
In the events leading up to World War II in Japan, many Christian pastors were arrested and tortured.
Those of the Japan Holiness Church sustained a great deal of pain and suffering, but they never broke.
Juji Nakada had taught them well to love their Savior.
Nakada’s Ministry in the 21st Century Part 3
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The Japanese founder of the Oriental Missionary Society. Click to Tweet
The D L Moody of Japan’s ministry in his home country. Click to Tweet
You have done a lot of research to dig up all this information! Thanks for sharing.
Have you found any information about a missionary conference or gathering in Korea, I think it was in July 1938. I’m not sure who arranged it. Maybe Assemblies of God. My parents went there. My mother wrote about it to her parents.
I might find more info from an old Finnish mission magazine my father published.
I hope we can be in touch.
The only missionary conferences I know about were the OMS board of trustees. I imagine there are others, I just don’t know beyond OMS.