Paul Shinji Sasaki

Paul Shinji Sasaki (パウロ 佐々木 鎮次)、(March 11, 1885 – December 21, 1946) was an Anglican bishop of the Diocese of Mid-Japan and later of Tokyo, in the Nippon Sei Ko Kai, the Province of the Anglican Communion in Japan.

Early life and education

Sasaki studied at Kelham Hall of the Society of the Sacred Mission and at Westcott House, Cambridge, England. He was ordained deacon on December 21, 1912, and priest on April 25, 1917, by the Right Reverend Cecil Henry Boutflower, Bishop of South Tokyo.

Sasaki worked as Professor of Liturgics and Applied Theology at Central Theological College, Tokyo and on July 25, 1935, was consecrated in Nagoya as the first Japanese diocesan bishop of Mid-Japan, a region stretching from Nagoya to Niigata, formerly served by the missionary work of the Anglican Church of Canada. As bishop he succeeded Canadian Heber J. Hamilton.

Leadership During the Second World War

Sasaki served as the Primate of the Nippon Sei Ko Kai throughout much of the Second World War. During this period the majority of Protestant churches in Japan were forcibly brought together by the Japanese wartime government to form the United Church of Christ in Japan, or Kyodan. Reflecting the distinctive doctrinal character of the Anglican Communion, and a fear of state intervention in religion, many individual Nippon Sei Ko Kai congregations refused to join.

Sasaki, in a written statement issued in October 1942 and signed by the majority of the Japanese bishops, was adamant in rejecting the proposed union with Kyodan. The statement upheld the authority of the Anglican church's episcopacy and Apostolic succession and highlighted, among other reasons for rejecting the government proposal, the failure of Kyodan to adopt the Apostles Creed as one of its main theological tenets.