In 1877, an American educator named William Smith Clark began his one year contract with the Meiji government to head a new agricultural college in Sapporo, Hokkaido. While there, he taught the basics of Christianity to his Japanese students under the guise of moral education. This paper seeks to understand the religious and moral philosophy that was absorbed by the students at Sapporo Agricultural College and how this laid the foundation for two prominent Japanese Christian intellectuals who came out of the Sapporo Band: Uchimura Kanzô and Nitobe Inazô. In order to accomplish this, this thesis first examines William Clarks educational
and religious views as influenced by his background, followed by a discussion of what Christian-related activities took place at Sapporo Agricultural College before and immediately after Clarks departure. In the last chapter, the religious elements that were taken away by students like Nitobe and Uchimura from their Sapporo experience will be examined. Such an exercise will show that they and other graduates shared the basic elements of a Christianity run by laymen, with an emphasis on Bible study and a disregard for ecclesiasticism and denominationalism, as well as the addition of a spiritual lineage that they traced to William Smith Clark. Sapporo graduates also adopted a philosophical system that encouraged the development of self-cultivation and independence of thought not unlike that of certain Neo-Confucian schools.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:PITT/oai:PITTETD:etd-06302011-180336 |
| Date | 14 September 2011 |
| Creators | Czerwien, Christy Anne |
| Contributors | Richard Smethurst, William Crawford, Clark Chilson |
| Publisher | University of Pittsburgh |
| Source Sets | University of Pittsburgh |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | http://etd.library.pitt.edu/ETD/available/etd-06302011-180336/ |
| Rights | unrestricted, I hereby certify that, if appropriate, I have obtained and attached hereto a written permission statement from the owner(s) of each third party copyrighted matter to be included in my thesis, dissertation, or project report, allowing distribution as specified below. I certify that the version I submitted is the same as that approved by my advisory committee. I hereby grant to University of Pittsburgh or its agents the non-exclusive license to archive and make accessible, under the conditions specified below, my thesis, dissertation, or project report in whole or in part in all forms of media, now or hereafter known. I retain all other ownership rights to the copyright of the thesis, dissertation or project report. I also retain the right to use in future works (such as articles or books) all or part of this thesis, dissertation, or project report. |
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