St Nicholas of Japan

Ivan Kasatkin, a Smolensk priest's son, volunteered in 1861 to serve as chaplain to the Russian consulate in Hakodate, in a Japan where Christianity was still a capital crime. He gave his first eight years to language and culture, mastering Japanese, its classics, and Buddhist thought. His first convert was Takuma Sawabe, a samurai and Shinto priest who by his own account came intending to kill him and stayed to be catechized. Nicholas moved to Tokyo, translated the Scriptures and service books into Japanese, built the Holy Resurrection Cathedral — still called Nikolai-do, 'Nicholas's house' — and insisted on native clergy and catechists. When the Russo-Japanese War came in 1904 he remained with his flock, directing them to pray for their own country, Japan, while he abstained from public services rather than pray against his homeland; he also organized care for Russian prisoners of war. He died in 1912 leaving over thirty thousand Orthodox Japanese, and was canonized in 1970.