JOSEPH HARDY NEESIMA - BORN, JAN. 14, 1843; DIED, JAN. 23, 1890,
(Taken From - Fifty Missionary Heroes Every Boy and Girl Should Know By JULIA H. JOHNSTON)
PART 1
JOSEPH HARDY NEESIMA.
' PERHAPS no single private life can better portray
genuine Japanese characteristics than that of Joseph Hardy Neesima. In 1843,
ten years before Commodore Perry entered the Bay of Yedo, he was born. His father served a prince whose palace was in the city of
Yedo. The feudal system being in existence, boys were preferred to girls in the families of the
samurai, as male heirs alone could perpetuate their rank and allowance. Four
girls having preceded Neesima, his grandfather hearing of a male born into the family cried "Shimeta!" an exclamation of
joy at the realization of some long cherished hope ; and the boy was called
Shimeta, the name being written after Neesima, as is usual in Japan, Neesima's
parents were Shintoists, and in his fifth year Neesima was taken to the temple
of the god supposed to be his life guardian to offer thanks for his protection.
The occasion was a joyous one, and Neesima was as gayly dressed as the heirs of the nobility at an
English christening. Neesima's father was a teacher of penmanship, and many
pilgrimages were made to the temple of Japanese hieroglyphics. Several gods
were kept in the home, to which the family made offerings. Neesima worshipped
these gods until he was fifteen years of age, and then, seeing they did not
partake of the food provided for them, refused to do so.
At an early age
he developed studious habits, but was very shy, and having some slight
impediment in his speech, was sent to a school of etiquette, where he acquired
graceful manners and polite conversational style. He was selected by the prince
to attend a military school which had been established under the auspices of
the Shogun, but later he gave up these exercises and devoted himself to the
study of the Chinese classics. Again he was fortunate in being one of three
selected to take lessons in Dutch from a native teacher called by the prince to
the court to teach his subjects. Afterwards the prince promoted Neesima to the
position of assistant teacher in a Chinese school. Soon after this, Neesima's
prince and patron died, and was succeeded by his brother, a man of inferior
education. Neesima, now fifteen years of age, was obliged to commence service
to the prince, his business being to sit in a little office connected with the
front end of the castle and watch the hall, and, with other youths, to bow
profoundly as the prince went out or came in, and to pass the rest of the time
in gossip and tea-drinking. This life was intolerable to him, and he often
planned to escape it by running away from home; but love of family, a strong
Japanese characteristic, kept him under his father's roof until he was
seventeen years of age, when the war cloud caused by the imperial party rising
against the Shogun threw the country into fearful commotion, and Neesima was
chosen as a life-guard to his prince. While thus engaged he pursued his studies
under great difficulties, but always with untiring persistency; and he was
allowed time to go to the Shogun's naval school for lessons in mathematics.
Here one day he caught sight of a Dutch warship lying at anchor in Yedo Bay.
"This dignified sea queen," compared with the "clumsy disproportioned Japanese
junks," proved an " object lesson" to Neesima ; and there was
born within him the great desire for the improvement of himself and his country.
The winter of the same year he had an opportunity to go by steamer to
Tamashima. This was his first liberation from his prince's “square
enclosure," and his first experience with different and individual ideas;
his horizon widened, and he was filled with new desires for freedom.
Returning to
Yedo, and sympathizing fully with the "imperial party" yet bound by
the moral code of Confucius to " the services of love and reverence to
parents," Neesima became distrait and restless, and his life might have been entirely perverted had not
destiny intervened. In being asked of the formative influences of his life,
Neesima, looking back to this time, might well exclaim with Charles Kingsley, "I had a friend." This " friend" had
a small library, and among the books proffered for his use Neesima found a
Japanese translation of Robinson Crusoe, and among several Chinese books an
historical geography of the United States by the Rev. Dr. Bridgman of the North
China Mission, a brief History of the World, written by an English missionary in China,
Dr. Williams's little magazines, and a few books teaching the Christian
religion, and published at Hong- Kong or Shanghai. Speaking of these books, Mr.
Neesima in later life said, "I read them with close attention. I was partly
a sceptic, and partly struck with reverential awe. I became acquainted with the
name of the Creator through those Dutch books I had studied before ; but it
never came home so dear to my heart as when I read the simple story of God's
creation of the universe on those pages of a brief Chinese Bible History. I
found out that the world we live upon was created by his unseen hand, and not by
mere chance. I discovered in the same history that his other name was the '
Heavenly Father,' which created in me more reverence towards him, because I thought he was more to me than a mere Creator
of the world. All these books helped me to behold a Being, somewhat dimly yet,
in my mental eye, who was so blindly concealed from me during the first two
decades of my life."
