Christian Road Warrior New Island

Japan is a country that has complicated religion, but since the modern times the proportion of Christians is very small, and most of the Christians in Meiji period were intellectuals who were born as Samurais. When they were faced with traditional Japanese Bushido Ethic and Western Christianity that has been forbidden in the Shogunate period, what kind of choice the had to make? Jo Niijima, who was the founder of Doshisha University, Japan’s famous private University in Kansai area, was one of them. This thesis briefly discusses Jo Niijima’s life, and why did he decide to believe in Christian even though he was born and raised as a Samurai, his education in the United States and experience of religion, as well as the hardships in founding a Christian University after returning back to Japan and the change of his thought in the process of Doshisha University’s development.This thesis mainly described three periods of Jo Niijima’s life and is to analyze the change of his thoughts in his short life by analyzing and answering to the question appeared when I read the materials about Jo Niijima, combined with some typical achievements of his career, especially in the process of founding Doshisha University. Thus we may know how he dealt with the relationship between traditional Japanese Samurai Ethic and Western Christian belief.This thesis is mainly divided into3parts. Part1is the research summary, introduced domestic and foreign research situation of Jo Niijima. Part2is about Jo Niijima’s life, including his adolescence experience, why he chose Christianity, people who had important influence to him and his education in the United States, and his missionary and educational activities after he return to Japan. Part2is in the form of interlocution. Part3discusses the partly regression to Japan in the later years of Jo Niijima. Part4is a brief conclusion of this thesis.