メリディアン
日本語
日本の末日聖徒イエス・キリスト教会歴史
Introducing Hattatsu
One of my heroes is Brother Takeo Fujiwara. Baptized as a teenager just before the first Japan Mission was closed in May of 1924, he remained faithful and when Franklin Harris, then president of BYU, attended an Agronomy conference in Sapporo in 1926, he met Brother Fujiwara. Impressed by the young man, President Harris invited him to study at BYU. Brother Fujiwara accepted the invitation and arrived in 1927. (He was likely there when my father, Elmer Fillmore, was attending BYU before his mission.)
Fujiwara did well at school obtaining a Master's Degree. He learned English well, studied the gospel and church organization. He went to the Temple and attended Church where he observed it at its best. He wrote an article about Shintoism and Mormonism which was published in 1933 in the Church magazine, The Improvement Era. (It is published on this website in English and Japanese.) At the time, he was surely the Japanese brother most qualified to lead the Church in Japan. In 1934, he was called by President Heber J. Grant, the first president of the Japan Mission, to return to Japan as Presiding Elder and Special Missionary. He accepted and was set apart for both callings.
On his way back to Japan, he stopped in Hawaii to work with Sister Tsune Nachie, the 8th convert to the Church in Japan who was then in Hawaii working with Japanese immigrants. She had been back to Japan where she gathered genealogical information from and for the Japanese Saints. Much temple work was completed using this information. Before she died in 1939, her work led directly to the successful missionary work among the Japanese-American youth in Hawaii including General Authorities Adney Y. Komatsu and Sam Shimabukuro and many others and their descendants who served in Japan. (She deserves her own story, of course).
The work in Japan was a daunting for Brother Fujiwara. The previous Presiding Elder, Fujiya Nara, had been transferred to Manchuria. The saints were scattered from Sapporo to Osaka. There was no bullet train in those days and travel was not easy. Brother Fujiwara's health was not good. One of the first things he did was publish a magazine. He called it Hattatsu, the same as in Sogo Hattatsu Kyokai, the Japanese name for the Mutual Improvement Association. But instead of translating Hattatsu as Improvement, he chose Progress. It was an ambitious project including articles and information in both English and Japanese.
In the next few issues, we will present what he wrote in English and in Japanese for the readers of Meridian Japanese.
Before he could publish the second issue of Hattatsu, Brother Takeo Fujiwara died of pleurisy on the 27th of January 1936 at his home in Hokkaido. When I first read this, I thought, "What a tragedy! The most capable Japanese brother dies before he really gets rolling in his new calling." Upon further reflection, however, I realize that the Lord knew what He was doing by calling Brother Fujiwara to the Spirit World. The Lord knew what would happen in the next ten years in Japan. He decided it would be more effective to call this capable brother to direct the work in the Spirit World where there were people who had received the ordinances of salvation and who were waiting to be taught, organized, and sent out to teach and preach among their people who had spent their time on earth in the land we have labeled Japan. I also believe that some of these good and faithful people along with the faithful saints who had died have been able to influence and prepare some of their friends and relatives still on earth to be ready to hear the missionaries when they began arriving in Japan to reopen the mission after the end of that great war which took so many lives across the world.