St. Andrew's Cathedral, Tokyo 2

is the Cathedral Church of the Tokyo Diocese of the Nippon Sei Ko Kai, the Anglican Church in Japan.The Diocese of Tokyo is one of eleven dioceses within the Anglican Church in Japan. There are over forty churches and chapels in the diocese with many church buildings, such as St. Andrew's, tracing their foundation back to the second half of the nineteenth century.HistorySt. Andrew's Church was established in 1879 by Canadian, SPG missionary, Rev. Alexander Croft Shaw.The original church building, a red brick, neo gothic structure, designed by Charles Alfred Chastel de Boinville, was dedicated on June 4, 1879. Construction was financed in part by contributions from foreign residents in Tokyo under the direction of British Envoy Sir Harry Smith Parkes as Chairman of the Church Committee.Located on elevated ground at Shiba Koen, south of the Imperial Palace, the church soon became the center of Anglican Christian worship and clergy training in Tokyo. In 1888, Bishop Edward Bickersteth established the St. Andrew's Brotherhood in buildings adjoining the church to provide living quarters for unmarried clergy and a structured educational environment for seminarians. The St. Andrew's Brotherhood was not a monastic order, but the timetable of daily offices and collegial academic environment echoed much of Bickersteths's earlier leadership initiatives at the Cambridge Mission to Delhi.