Joseph Hardy Neesima
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Joseph Hardy Neesima (新島 襄 Niijima Jō?, 12 February 1843—23 January 1890) was the founder of Doshisha University and Doshisha Women's College of Liberal Arts in Japan.
Niijima was born in Edo (present-day Tokyo).
In 1864, laws on national isolation were still in effect in Japan, and Japanese people were not permitted to travel overseas without government permission. However, Niijima had read extensively on various rangaku topics, and at the age of 21, managed to find illegal passage on a foreign ship for the United States, in order to further study Western science and Christianity.
When he arrived in Andover, Massachusetts, he was sponsored by Alpheus and Susan Hardy, who also saw to his education. He attended Phillips Academy from 1865 to 1867 and then Amherst College from 1867 to 1870. Upon graduating from Amherst, Niijima became the first Japanese to receive a degree from a western college.
In the meantime, in 1866, he was baptized and from 1870 to 1874 he studied at the Andover Theological Seminary. In 1874, he became the first Japanese to be ordained as a Protestant minister.
When the Iwakura Mission visited the United States on its around-the-world expedition, he assisted as an interpreter.
Niijima attended the 65th annual meeting of the Congregational church in Rutland, Vermont in 1874, and made an appeal for funds to start a Christian school in Japan. With the support and funding received, he returned to Japan, and in 1875 founded a school in Kyoto, which grew rapidly and became Doshisha University.
In 1889, Amherst College honored him with an honorary doctorate, the first ever awarded to a Japanese person. He died in Oiso, Kanagawa Prefecture, and was buried in Kyoto.
He was honored on a Japanese postage stamp in 1950.
[edit] External link
- Life and Letters of Joseph Hardy Neesima, by Arthur Sherburne Hardy; Houghton, Mifflin and Company, 1894.
