Дневники св. Николая Японского. Том Ι - Святитель Японский (Касаткин) Николай (Иван) Дмитриевич. Страница 19

We do not know whether Goshkevich after his retirement had any opportunity to provide support to Nikolai. But E. V. Putiatin, the former Russian delegate to Japan (and under whom Goshkevich had worked as interpreter), succeeded Goshkevich and supported Nikolai’s missionary work in Japan. Putiatin had moved from the Navy to the political world, and was playing an active role there as a member of the National Congress.

There were many clergymen in Russia who were supporting Nikolai — for example, Isidor (Metropolitan of St. Petersburg), Fyodor Bystrov, Ioann Dyomkin. Among the lay believers supporting Nicholas, Putiatin was one of the most influential, and Nikolai made special mention of Putiatin’s support in his «Annual Report to the Executive Committee of the Orthodox Missionary Society» for 1878:

«Our Mission must express its deepest gratitude to Count Evfimii Vasilievich Putiatin. He is always providing for the Mission with love, and continues to perform good deeds for it not only by his own subscriptions, but also by explaining its needs and persuading others to contribute to it. The new stone building of the Mission, the foundation of which was made possible by the donations from the Grand Duke Aleksei Aleksandrovich when he visited Japan in 1872, would never have been completed if Count Evfimii Vasilievich had not undertaken to raise the funds for them».

Later, in 1879, when Nikolai was in St. Petersburg, he was able to meet Putiatin. Nikolai wrote in his diary for September 16: «When I was going out [from the Theological Academy — ed.], at the exit, I met Count Putiatin. It was just as though I met my true father. The Count dropped by my room. He promised to give me every support… He invited me to his house, to Gatchina. I promised to visit on Thursday».

We may know from Nikolai’s diaries in St. Petersburg that there was a very friendly relationship between Putiatin and Nikolai and that the former was like a patron of his missionary work in Japan.

Nikolai may have been introduced to Putiatin by Goshkevich during the time of his first return (1869 to 1870).

In October, 1883, Putiatin died in Paris. In October, 1884, his daughter Olga Evfimovna Putiatina arrived in Tokyo to serve in the Orthodox Mission as a deaconess, as if to succeed to her father’s dedication to thejapanese Mission.

Nikolai came to Japan in the twilight years of the Tokugawa shogunate and worked in the new Japan of the Meiji era. His way to Japan was prepared by Goshkevich and his missionary work was supported by Putiatin.

Hieromonk Nikolai, whose original name was Ivan Dmitrievich Kasatkin, was born on August 1, 1836, in the village of Beyroza in Smolensk prefecture. His father, Dmitrii Kasatkin, was the village deacon. Ivan’s mother, Kseniya, died when he was five years old. Ivan was the second son. There are many folksy expressions in Nikolai’s diary entries, which show him to be a man of common origins. After completing his courses at the theological school and the Smolensk Seminary with distinction, he entered the St. Petersburg Theological Academy on a scholarship.

While he was a seminarian at Smolensk, Ivan was already aspiring to join an Orthodox mission in a foreign country (specifically in China). However, during these years at the Theological Academy, he read Captain Golovnin’s famous Memoirs of a Captive in Japan, During the Years 1811, 1812, and 1813, and had a new dream — to go to Japan.

Some 44 years later, in 1904, Nikolai wrote from Tokyo to Archpriest N. V. Blagorazumov, his friend and classmate from the St. Petersburg Theological Academy:

«I wish to ask you a favor of you. Please send me a helper, that is, a good young missionary…. To tell you the truth, my friend Nikolai Vasilievich, our time was much better than now. You remember that as soon as an application appeared on the desk, it was filled up with names. Oh, what names! You and M. I. Gorchakov, the cream of the youth of the Academy, were included among them. And applying for what post? For the post of chaplain of a consular church». (Nikolai’s letter of April 8, 1904.)

Blagorazumov, the addressee, made the following memo about that letter: «At that time, ten or twelve student volunteers applied, all on condition of marriage, but Kasatkin alone decided to go as a monk and he beat the others». (See Nikolai Kedrov; Archibishop Nikolai in the Letters to Archpriest N. V. Blagorazumov.)

These young applicants represented the elite of the Theological Academy, and the post of chaplain of the consular church in Hakodate was only a small one for them. But ten or twelve student volunteers applied for the small post. They did not wish to protect their own interests, and did not desire to advance up the steps of the hierarchy in the Russian Orthodox Church. They wished to devote themselves to the cause of a Christian mission in one ’heathen’ country in the Far East.

Nikolai also wrote in his letter to Fr. Blagorazumov that «our time was much better than now». Herein lies one of the principal motives which spurred Nikolai and his classmates to missionary work. Their time was the 1860s, when Russia (having been defeated in the Crimean War) was trying to regenerate itself and build a new regime under the new Tsar Alexander II. This was the time of ’Great Reforms’, when Russia successively carried out new progressive reforms such as the emancipation of serfs, restructuring of judicial administration, establishment of local autonomy, and the like. Intense expectations for a new life pervaded the entire country.

The elite group of the students at the Theological Academy in the capital city of Russia were, although belonging to the naturally conservative world of the Orthodox Church, a kind of intelligentsia who had acquired high culture, had a good knowledge of European languages, and were well read in politics and ’belles lettres’.

Thus they were quite aware of the backwardness of their own country.

The application of elite students for the small post of chaplain in Hakodate clearly shows that they were influenced by the idealistic expectations of the 1860s. Though they were theological students, they were contemporaries of and held the high idealistic view of life in common with ’ Men of the 1860s (’Shestideshatniki’), the democratic writers noted for their criticism of the old regime of Russia.

In February, 1869, about eight years after his arrival in Hakodate, Nikolai published a long report entitled «Japan Also Will Be Fruitful — A Letter of a Russian in Hakodate» in Khristianskoe chtenie (The Christian Reading), in which he wrote: «Eight years ago I declared my wish to accept the post of chaplain of the consular church here with a missionary purpose. Who among the students at the Theological Academy would be determined to come here only in order to serve in a church, which is often completely empty, as there are not more than ten Orthodox Russians including babies here? At that time, by the way, there was much discussion about the necessity for a missionary academy in Russia and, if I am not mistaken, they set about to founding one. Thus I could expect that when it became necessary, comrades would join me and I would not remain here alone».

It must have been that the expectations of the advent of a new era had awakened the Russian religious world, paving the way for Orthodox missionary activity abroad was and prompting the plan to found a missionary academy. Stimulated by the renewed religious zeal of the time, Nikolai must have decided to go to Japan with the Word of God.

On June 23, 1860, Ivan Kasatkin was tonsured as a monk with the name of Nikolai and was ordained as a hieromonk on June 30. On August 1, 1860, the 24 year–old Nikolai set out across Siberia on his journey to the Far East. He arrived in Nikolaevsk–on–Amur at the end of September. By that late date, travel by ship had been halted and he was forced to spend the winter in Nikolaevsk.