Inazo Nitobe papers

Inazo Nitobe (1862-1933) was a Japanese Quaker, author, educator, and politician. He rose to fame as an agricultural sugar expert, was the president of several colleges, and was a Carnegie exchange professor to the United States.

At age 13, Nitobe entered Tokyo English School. By studying English, he became acquainted with Christianity and the Bible. In 1877, he entered the newly founded Sapparo Agricultural College in the northern island of Hokkaido, and graduated in 1881. William S. Clark, from Amherst College, was the vice principal of the Sapparo Agricultural College, although he left the college before Nitobe started attending. He left a strong influence on the students, particularly in the teaching of ethics. He said the only way he could teach ethics was by teaching the Bible. All of his students became Christians and signed Clark’s “Covenant of Believers in Jesus.”

Nitobe subsequently became a Friend when he was 22 years old while doing graduate study at Johns Hopkins University. He joined Baltimore Yearly Meeting.

In 1885, Inazo and a Japanese classmate were invited from Baltimore to Philadelphia by the Women’s Foreign Missionary Association of Friends to advise them about establishing a Quaker mission in Japan. This ultimately resulted in the establishment of the Friends Girls School in Tokyo, as well as ten agricultural missions in Iberaki Province, just north of Tokyo.

Most notably, Nitobe was the leader of the Japanese delegation to the League of Nations in Geneva, Switzerland, in 1919, and when he arrived there he was promptly appointed under-secretary general of the League. Nitobe is famous for coining the phrase “Bridge across the Pacific,” for writing the history of William Penn, and for the book, Bushido: The Soul of Japan. He is the only known Quaker whose picture is on his country’s currency.