William Imbrie (1 January 1845 – 4 August 1928) was an American

missionary A missionary is a member of a Religious denomination, religious group which is sent into an area in order to promote its faith or provide services to people, such as education, literacy, social justice, health care, and economic development.Tho ...

Japan Japan ( ja, 日本, or , and formally , ''Nihonkoku'') is an island country in East Asia. It is situated in the northwest Pacific Ocean, and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, while extending from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north ...

Early life

William Imbrie was an 1865 graduate of the College of New Jersey (now

Princeton University Princeton University is a private university, private research university in Princeton, New Jersey. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth, New Jersey, Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the List of Colonial Colleges, fourth-oldest ins ...

) and an 1870 graduate of

Princeton Theological Seminary Princeton Theological Seminary (PTSem), officially The Theological Seminary of the Presbyterian Church, is a private school of theology in Princeton, New Jersey. Founded in 1812 under the auspices of Archibald Alexander, the General Assembly of ...

. He was ordained as a Presbyterian pastor in 1873.

Missionary in Japan

Imbrie arrived in Japan in 1875, where he became a professor of New Testament Exegesis at

Meiji Gakuin University is a Christian university in Tokyo and Yokohama that was established in 1863. The Reverend Dr. James Curtis Hepburn was one of its founders and served as the first president. The novelist and poet Shimazaki Toson graduated from this colleg ...

and later served as senior missionary in Tokyo. He was also the president of the Japanese Book and Tract Society and prepared materials to help Westerners learn the Japanese language. He was instrumental in working for Christian unity in Japan and helped shape what became the Church of Christ in Japan. In the so-called "Imbrie Affair" of 1890, Japanese students assaulted Imbrie during a baseball game. Imbrie arrived late to a game between students at the First Higher School of Tokyo (

Ichiko Ichiko (written: 一子, 市子, 伊知子, 以知子 or イチコ in katakana) is a feminine Japanese given name. Notable people with the name include: *, Japanese singer-songwriter *, Japanese singer-songwriter *, Japanese musician, composer and ...

) and Meiji Gakuin University, climbing over a hedge to gain admittance since the gates were locked. This action angered the supporters of the First Higher School, some of whom beat him until he fled from the field. While the press likely exaggerated the severity of the beating, the incident inflamed public opinion in the expatriate community. The American embassy complained about the incident, leading to an official apology from representatives of the Japanese government. As Robert Whiting relates, "foreign ministry officials, ranking Ichiko representatives, and several of the students involved paid a visit to Professor Imbrie's residence to beg his forgiveness, which the good professor granted." Imbrie played a minor diplomatic role during the

Russo-Japanese War The Russo-Japanese War ( ja, 日露戦争, Nichiro sensō, Japanese-Russian War; russian: Ру́сско-япóнская войнá, Rússko-yapónskaya voyná) was fought between the Empire of Japan and the Russian Empire during 1904 and 1 ...

. The commencement of hostilities in 1904 unsettled Christian missionaries. "At the outbreak of the war between Russia and Japan," reported Galen Fisher, national secretary of the Y.M.C.A. Union of Japan, "fanatical or ignorant Japanese Buddhists started the slogan, 'Buddhism vs. Christianity,' which boded no good to missionaries and the Christian cause in Japan." Later that year, Count

Katsura Tarō Prince was a Japanese politician and general of the Imperial Japanese Army who served as the Prime Minister of Japan from 1901 to 1906, from 1908 to 1911, and from 1912 to 1913. Katsura was a distinguished general of the First Sino-Japanese W ...

held an audience with Imbrie to articulate Japan's rationale for the war. In the interview, Katsura denied that any religious motive was at work. "With differences of race or religion…it has nothing to do; and it is carried on in the interests of justice, humanity, and the commerce and civilization of the world." The dissemination of this interview paradoxically cast Japan as a defender of

Christian civilization Christianity has been intricately intertwined with the history and formation of Western society. Throughout its long history, the Church has been a major source of social services like schooling and medical care; an inspiration for art, cultur ...

against Russian barbarism. In 1909, Imbrie was awarded the Fourth Degree of the

Order of the Rising Sun The is a Japanese order, established in 1875 by Emperor Meiji. The Order was the first national decoration awarded by the Japanese government, created on 10 April 1875 by decree of the Council of State. The badge features rays of sunlight ...

by the Japanese government. Imbrie also served as the delegate of the American Presbyterian Mission in Japan (along with Ibuka Kajinosuke) at the

1910 World Missionary Conference The 1910 World Missionary Conference, or the Edinburgh Missionary Conference, was held on 14 to 23 June 1910. Some have seen it as both the culmination of nineteenth-century Protestant Christian missions and the formal beginning of the modern Prot ...

in Edinburgh, Scotland.

Legacy

At the time of his death, the Board of Foreign Missions of the Presbyterian Church in the USA commended Imbrie as "one of the oldest, most honored and most beloved of the foreign missionaries of the church...He was again and again relied upon in every crisis of missionary work or the Christian cause in Japan to propose the wisest course of action and to draft statements of policy and of public declaration. No one in the last half century has rendered more notable service in Japan than Dr. Imbrie." Imbrie's former residence at Meiji Gakuin University in Tokyo has been designated the "Imbrie Pavilion" in his honor. Imbrie's descendants include his grandson

John Imbrie John Imbrie (July 4, 1925 – May 13, 2016) was an American paleoceanographer best known for his work on the theory of ice ages. He was the grandson of William Imbrie, an American missionary to Japan. After serving with the 10th Mountain ...

, an American paleoceanographer best known for his work on the theory of ice ages.

References

Bibliography

;Books * Imbrie, William (1889)
Handbook of English-Japanese Etymology
' Tokyo: R. Meiklejohn. * Imbrie, William (1906)
The Church of Christ in Japan: A Course of Lectures
'. Philadelphia, Westminster Press. * Imbrie, William (1914)
Wa and Ga
'. Tokyo: Kyo Bun Kwan.

External links