P. Y. Saeki

(Peter) Yoshiro Saeki (1871–1965), was a Japanese scholar of religion and law. He is known for his theories about Nestorianism and Jewish culture in Japan and for his involvement in the planning of the new Hiroshima after the atomic bombing.

Religion

Saeki was a Japanese Christian who became an expert on the influence of the Christian Nestorian sect, which at one time existed in China. In 1893, after travelling to the United States, he moved to Canada to study languages at the University of Toronto, graduating in 1895. He became a professor of English at Waseda University in Tokyo.

In 1904 he turned his researches towards Chinese history. 1908 he published a book in which he theorised that the Hata clan, which arrived from Korea and settled in Japan in the third century, was a Jewish-Nestorian tribe. According to Ben Ami-Shillony, "Saiki's writings spread the theory about 'the common ancestry of the Japanese and the Jews' (Nichi-Yu dosoron) in Japan, a theory that was endorsed by some Christian groups."[1] Versions of this Japanese-Jewish common ancestry theory were taken up by other writers at the time.

In 1916 he published The Nestorian Monument in China, an analysis of the Nestorian Stele, a monument describing the Chinese Nestorian church in 781 AD. The book summarised the competing theories about the stele. He also published a number of other books and articles on the relics of the Nestorians.[2] His theories of religion were influenced by those of Max Müller.

Hiroshima

After World War II he was appointed mayor of Hatsukaichi, Hiroshima, during which time he consulted on the rebuilding of the city after the atomic bomb blast of August 6, 1945. He advised rebuilding the city as a relatively small and well-planned space.[3]

In 1962 he received an honorary doctorate from Waseda University.

Bibliography

A partial bibliography of his works as listed in the Library of Congress would include:

Sources

  1. Ben Ami-Shillony, The Jews and the Japanese: The Successful Outsiders, pp. 134-5 (Rutland, VT: Tuttle, 1991)
  2. D. E. Mungello, Curious Land: Jesuit Accommodation and the Origins of Sinology, University of Hawaii Press, Honolulu, 1989, p.164.
  3. Article on the Planning for Hiroshima's reconstruction.

External links

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