Дневники св. Николая Японского. Том Ι

Nikolai sometimes made extensive tours, visiting local churches throughout Japan. He kept up his diary during these tours, giving a full account not only of parish congregations but also of life in rural communities. We can know from his travel diary, for example, how eagerly Japanese Orthodox farmers of the early Meiji years were practicing new styles of Western singing, and under what conditions young women were laboring in provincial towns. Few foreigners knew Japanese provincial life of the time so well at first hand as did Nikolai. His travel diaries are, as it were, the field notebooks of a sociologist gathering materials on the rural life of Japan.

The Diaries of St. Nikolai possess, in addition to historical values, an autobiographical aspect. In Japan Nikolai had no trusted adviser with whom he could talk freely. His diary was thus an indispensable companion to which he had been making a full confession for many years.

For example, in the diaries for 1871 and 1872 we can read a long and harsh criticism of his first colleague Father Grigorii, which faithfully reflects the genuine missionary enthusiasm of the young Nikolai, which we could never know without his diaries.

In his diaries for the period of the Russo–Japanese War, we can learn his views of the Japanese people and Russo–Japanese relations. The comparison ofjapan (a maritime power) and Russia (a continental one), which he made in the diary entry for May 20, 1905, is an interesting topic even today.

Nikolai’s diaries are full of frank confessions and straightforward thinking. They will captivate not only those persons who are interested in the history of the Japanese Orthodox Church, but also those who are interested in vital human documents in general. Reading Nikolai’s diaries, we can reach the conclusion that he was of good health in both body and mind. He was not excessively intellectual or logical. He was very abundant in his feelings of both joy and anger. He was candid and sincere. Together with this richness in emotion, he was also a man of coolness and stoicism.

According to many of Nikolai’s Japanese pupils, he readily displayed feelings of joy and anger. In the diaries he himself acknowledges his weakness of having a hot temper, but he often had ample reason for angry. He was stirred to anger when the faithful of the Japanese Orthodox Church were persecuted by ’heathen’ Japanese, or when his Russian and Japanese colleagues were intolerably lazy in their missionary efforts, or when someone lied to him intentionally. Of course he felt deep sorrow when his Seminary pupils were drafted into the military and were killed in battle. In the diaries, he expressed his sincere gratitude to those colleagues and laymen who worked diligently for the Church. Nikolai was apt to become excited, but he was fair in his feelings and dealings.

As a monk, Nikolai held deep religious beliefs, which were ’unspoiled’ by modern rationalism. Nikolai was not a visionary mystic such as Fyodor Dostoevsky, who was anxiously expecting a sudden transfiguration of the universe. Nikolai kept his firm belief in the sacred invisible (about which he wrote, for example, in the entry for October 5, 1903). When he learned of the 1905 revolution in Russia, he had an eschatological foreboding that human history was drawing to an end. He firmly believed in miracles, though he did not speak of them in public. He had such a fear of blasphemy that he became furiously angry when he heard that the Church in Kyoto had been used as the site for an enlightening lecture foreign to religious worship.

Nikolai did not despise the popular beliefs of Japanese people, but regarded them as a rich ’soil’ full of religious feelings. He made extensive travels throughout Japan, and everywhere encountered archaic folk beliefs of Jizo (a guardian deity of children) and Inari (the fox deity), writing in his travel diary: «Along the way, I met groups of dressed–up pilgrim women. They were dragging themselves, it seemed, to Jizo… On the whole, there is everywhere the desire of the people for pilgrimage. It is remarkable. It is impossible not to bear in mind this desire of the people when you introduce Christianity among them». (June 10, 1881.)

American or English Protestant missionaries probably thought much differently of such cherished beliefs of the Japanese people.

Of Buddhism, Nikolai wrote, «the teachings of fullness of Buddha’s love, of his readiness to save men at their first appeal, of insufficiency of men’s power for salvation, and of grace (tariki) irresistibly amaze us. It is possible that, listening in a Buddhist temple to some sermon, you will forget yourself and imagine you were listening to a Christian preacher». («Japan from the Viewpoint of Christian Mission», 1869.)