St. Mary's Cathedral, Tokyo
seat of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Tokyo
St. Mary's Cathedral (in Japanese: 東京カテドラル聖マリア大聖堂, romanized: Tōkyō katedoraru sei Maria daiseidō) is the seat of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Tokyo. It is located in the Sekiguchi neighborhood of Bunkyo, Tokyo, Japan.
History
The first cathedral of Tokyo was a wooden structure, built in 1899 in the Gothic style, on the behalf of French missionary interests. It survived the Great Kantō Earthquake of 1923, but was destroyed during the air raids on Tokyo during World War II. The Catholics of Tokyo gathered in the ruins of the cathedral before, in 1947, its functions were moved to a Quonset hut, before being moved to the first floor of an adjacent Catholic school building. Due to space limitations in the school building, St. Ignatius Church, Tokyo was used for diocesan services upon its completion in 1949. Additionally, the Church of Francis Xavier, which survived the war, was used as a pro-cathedral from 1953 to 1964.
To celebrate the 100th anniversary of the reintroduction of Catholicism to Japan, in 1960, the Archdiocese of Tokyo, with the support of the Archdiocese of Cologne, held a competition for the rebuilding of St. Mary's, with a 1962 deadline.
“St. Mary's Cathedral, Tokyo” enters the record as seat of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Tokyo. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Mary's, Cathedral and Tokyo can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 28, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1193480. Authority coordinates are 35.714, 139.727. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1899, 1923, 1947 and 1949.
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This entry incorporates text from “St. Mary's Cathedral, Tokyo” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.