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Kanamori's Life-Story Told by Himself
1921 · 112 pages
Kanamori's Life-Story Told by Himself
by Paul M. Kanamori
Paul M. Kanamori's own telling of a faith won, lost, and recovered. Samurai-born and a member of Japan's famous Kumamoto Band of converts, he became a pastor, lost his faith under the pressure of higher criticism, wandered for years as a "prodigal," and returned to Christ to become one of Japan's great evangelists.
The changed life
After abandoning the ministry and drifting for years in unbelief, he came back to Christ and preached his celebrated three-hour gospel sermon across Japan, credited with winning some fifty thousand converts.
Summary
Kanamori's Life-Story Told by Himself (1921) is a short, intense spiritual autobiography told entirely in the author's own voice. Paul M. Kanamori recounts his beginnings in Japan's samurai class, his early embrace of Christianity as one of the Kumamoto Band of young converts, and his rise to become a pastor in the Meiji-era church.
The heart of the book is a fall and a return. Under the influence of higher criticism and the intellectual currents of his day, Kanamori lost his faith, left the ministry, and spent years as what he calls a prodigal. He tells that season without flattery, tracing the emptiness of his wandering and the long road that finally led him back to Christ.
The final movement is his second life as an evangelist. Restored in faith, Kanamori took to preaching across Japan, best known for a marathon three-hour gospel sermon that drew great crowds and is credited with winning some fifty thousand converts. The book reads as a prodigal-son testimony in miniature — brief, direct, and shaped for a reader meant to hear the gospel in it.
Who was Paul M. Kanamori?
Paul M. Kanamori (1857–1945) was a Japanese pastor and evangelist of the Meiji and later periods. Born into the samurai class, he was among the Kumamoto Band, a celebrated group of young Japanese men who converted to Christianity together in the 1870s and went on to shape much of the country's early Protestant leadership. He was ordained and served as a pastor before a crisis of belief.
Swayed by higher criticism and modern doubts about Scripture, Kanamori abandoned his faith and his calling and lived for years apart from the church. His eventual return to Christ became the pivot of his life and the subject of this book. In his second career as an itinerant evangelist he became one of Japan's most effective preachers, remembered above all for the long, plain gospel sermon he delivered to audiences across the nation.
Common questions
- What was the Kumamoto Band?
- It was a group of young Japanese men who together pledged themselves to Christianity in the 1870s and became influential leaders in Japan's early Protestant church. Kanamori was one of them, and the book begins with that early faith before recounting how he lost and later regained it.
- Why is Kanamori called a prodigal?
- After serving as a pastor he lost his faith under the influence of higher criticism, left the ministry, and drifted for years in unbelief. His book is the account of that wandering and of the return to Christ that made him an evangelist, told in the pattern of the prodigal son.
A note on the text. Kanamori's Life-Story Told by Himselfis in the public domain. What you're buying is our edition — the careful typesetting and design. The original text is also available free here.