Tokyo Orthodox Seminary (Tokyo, Japan)

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This article forms part of the series
Orthodoxy in Japan
Holy Resurrection Cathedral (Tokyo, Japan)
Timeline of Orthodoxy in Japan
Church of Japan
Nicholas of Japan
Andronik of Perm
Sergius (Tikhomirov)
Nicholas (Ono)
Benjamin (Basalyga)
Ireney (Bekish)
Nikon (de Greve)
Vladimir (Nagosky)
Theodosius (Nagashima)
Seraphim (Sigrist) of Sendai
Daniel (Nushiro) of Japan
Seraphim (Tsujie) of Sendai
Fr Paul Sawabe
Fr Simeon Michiro Mii
Fr Anatoly Tikhai
Yakov Tikhai
Victor Pokrovsky
Irina Yamashita
Holy Resurrection Cathedral
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Early Years

When Archimandrite Nicholas moved the center of his mission from Hakodate to Tokyo in 1872, his initial efforts were to establish a school for catechists and the Russian language as he had recognized the need to establish a ‘native’ base for evangelizing Orthodox Christianity. His early converts, Paul Sawabe, John Sakai, and others had been very successful in reaching out to the Japanese population. As money was raised, this move was followed a year later by a new building to support the schools. Additionally he started a school for women. After teaching music himself for two years, Nicholas began looking for a professor of Church Music. Hieromonk Anatoly Tikhay, who had succeeded to Nicholas’ Hakodate position, recommended his brother [Yakov Tikhai]] who was graduating from a seminary in Moldavia. Jakov accepted the position and arrived in Japan in late 1874 and quickly began learning the Japanese language.

Nicholas established the seminary in 1880 by combining the mission schools and the language school. In time the Theological Seminary became the center of Orthodox Christian religious education in Japan as other institutions were added to the language, catechists, and women’s schools. These included adding a women’s college, an orphanage, an iconography studio, and choral schools, as well as a printing facility.






After Nicholas

After Abp. Nicholas died in 1912, he was succeeded by his assistant Abp. Sergius who continued his predecessor’s work with the seminary.

The Great Kanto earthquake of 1923 caused a set back for the seminary as for the whole Church as all the main buildings of the Kanda Suragadai complex were destroyed or seriously damaged, including the library that held over 30,000 volumes. Abp. Sergius and the Japanese Church not only had to rebuild the Holy Resurrection Cathedral (Nicolai-do) but the administrative facilities also, including the seminary, with only resources of the Japanese Church to accomplish this work. After recovering from this catastrophe the Church and its seminary were disrupted again by World War II and its aftermath. The seminary was closed for most of the 1940s and early 1950s until it was reopened by Bp. Ireney in 1954, after he assumed leadership of the Church of Japan. As part of the recovery the Church and Seminary began again publishing Bibles and theological books as well as sending graduates of the Tokyo Seminary to the seminaries in the United States for advanced studies.

Today, the Tokyo Seminary continues to grow and continue on its path to the excellence it possessed during the turn over of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.


  • A. Ishido, The Achievement of St. Nicholas, Thesis for Master of Divinity, St. Vladimir’s Orthodox Theological Seminary, Crestwood, New York, 1974
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