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日本の末日聖徒イエス・キリスト教会歴史
Tragedy or Destiny-Takeo Fujiwara-Japan's first native full-time missionary
Why I believe Takeo Fujiwara was called home
Wade W. Fillmore, 8/21/07
When I first came to know the story of Takeo Fujiwara, the first native Japanese missionary called to serve as a full-time missionary, I thought it tragic that he died less than a year after he arrived back in Japan. As I pondered this matter longer, however, another thought pressed itself upon me.
When Dr. Franklin S. Harris, president of BYU, attended an agronomy conference in Sapporo, Japan in 1926, he looked up members of the Church while he was there. The first mission to Japan had been closed for two years, but he was able to meet with some of the members including young Takeo Fujiwara who had been baptized in May of 1924, just before the mission was closed in July of that year. Dr. Harris offered a BYU scholarship to Brother Fujiwara who accepted.
Arriving in Provo to start the 1927 school year, Brother Fujiwara did well. Eventually he obtained his Master’s Degree. He also learned much about the Church and its operations and about the Gospel. He was ordained to the Melchizedek Priesthood and received his endowment. He even published an article about Mormonism and Shintoism in the September 1933 Improvement Era (which is also published on this website).
In 1934, before Brother Fujiwara returned home to Japan, President Heber J. Grant called him as the Presiding Elder in Japan and set him apart for this calling and also as a special missionary. On the way home, Elder Fujiwara stopped in Hawaii to spend a few weeks with the dynamic Sister Tsune Nachie, the 8th member of the Church to be baptized in Japan. Full of a boldness borne of love, Sister Nachie had been sharing the gospel effectively among the Japanese immigrants living in Hawaii.
Arriving in Japan in 1935, Elder Fujiwara traveled to prior branch locations to find members of the Church. It was a difficult task. He wrote and published one issue of a Church magazine, Hattsu (Improvement), in both English and Japanese. After having some success contacting older members, at the beginning of the year 1936, he became ill and died of pleurisy on January 29, 1936.
He was the only Japanese male member of the Church in the world who was endowed and who was knowledgeable of Church organization and procedures and who knew the gospel well. Why did the Lord take him home when he as just getting started in his work. I believe the answer lies partially with temple work previously accomplished by Sister Tsune Nachie during the mid-1920’s. After moving to Hawaii, Sister Nachie had returned to Japan, looked members of the Church and gathered their genealogical information which she took back to Hawaii where the necessary ordinances were performed.
The Lord knew what the next ten years (1936-46) would be like in Japan. Had he remained alive in Japan, it is likely that Takeo Fujiwara would have been drafted into the military services of Japan and perhaps killed. Under the strict anti-Christian government of Japan at the time, living in Japan, there would be little he could do to advance the cause of the Church.
But in the Spirit World, as an endowed holder of the Melchizedek Priesthood, knowledgeable of the Gospel and the Church, he could be called as the Mission President among the Japanese people. He could look up those who had temples ordinances performed in their behalf through Sister Nachie’s efforts. Of these who accepted the work, he could organize a missionary force to teach others. Those who were taught and believed would be given permission to influence their earthly relatives and descendants to help prepare them for the time when the work in Japan would be reopened. The Spirit World is where Elder Fujiwara could do the most good at that time. So he was called to serve there.