Makiki Christian Church is a

Christian church In ecclesiology, the Christian Church is what different Christian denominations conceive of as being the true body of Christians or the original institution established by Jesus. "Christian Church" has also been used in academia as a synonym fo ...

located in

Honolulu, Hawaii Honolulu (; ) is the capital and largest city of the U.S. state of Hawaii, which is in the Pacific Ocean. It is an unincorporated county seat of the consolidated City and County of Honolulu, situated along the southeast coast of the island o ...

. It was built in 1931, and is the only Christian church in the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...

designed to look like a 16th-century Japanese castle.

History

In 1903,

Takie Okumura Takie Okumura (May 12, 1865 – February 10, 1951) was a Christian minister from Japan. He was the founder of the Makiki Christian Church in Honolulu, Hawaii, the "Okumura Boys and Girls Home", and some of Hawaii's first Japanese language schools. ...

, a pastor from Japan, left his congregation at the Honolulu Japanese Christian Church (now the Nuuanu Congregational Church) to start the Aiyū kai. On April 8, 1904,

founded the Makiki Church, but there wasn't an actual building until a few years later. In 1905, George Castle, a local businessman, donated a plot of land to the church so that they could build the actual church, which was built in 1906. It could hold up to 500 people. In 1927, after the existing church building had been infested by

termite Termites are small insects that live in colonies and have distinct castes (eusocial) and feed on wood or other dead plant matter. Termites comprise the infraorder Isoptera, or alternatively the epifamily Termitoidae, within the order Blattode ...

s, the congregation decided to buy another plot of land and build another church. This became the "Castle Church", which still exists today. The church was modeled after the Kochi castle in Kochi prefecture, Japan, where Okumura was from. Okumura chose the design to symbolize peace and protection, though at the time it was criticized because it was misunderstood to represent militarism.

Hego Fuchino Hego Fuchino (1888–1961) was an architect from Hawaii. He designed the Makiki Christian Church, the Izumo Taishakyo Mission, and the Hawaii Shingon Mission. Biography Fuchino was born in Saga, Japan in 1888. He immigrated to Hawaii in 1905 ...

was the architect who created the plans for the church. It is the only church in the United States that has been designed to look like an

Edo period The or is the period between 1603 and 1867 in the history of Japan, when Japan was under the rule of the Tokugawa shogunate and the country's 300 regional '' daimyo''. Emerging from the chaos of the Sengoku period, the Edo period was characteriz ...

Japanese castle. The new church was dedicated on November 6, 1932. In 1936, a dining hall and classrooms were added to the building. The Christian Education building was built in 1960.

References

External links

Official website
{{Authority control Churches in Honolulu Japanese architectural features United Church of Christ churches in Hawaii 1904 establishments in Hawaii Churches completed in 1932