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==History==
St. [[Nicholas of Japan]] ([[baptism|baptized]] as Ivan Dimitrievich Kasatkin) brought Orthodoxy to Japan in the 19th Century. In 1861 he was sent by the [[Church of Russia]] to Hakodate, Hokkaido, as a [[priest]] to a chapel of the Russian consulate. Though the contemporary Shogun's government prohibited the Japanese [[conversion]] to Christianity, soon some neighbors who frequently visited the chapel. In April 1868, among them three converted ‐-- Nicholas's first three converts in Japan. While they were his first converts in Japan, they were not the first Japanese to do so—some Japanese who had settled in Russia had converted to Orthodoxy.
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Apart from brief trips, Nicholas stayed in Japan, even during the Russo-Japanese War (1904-1905), and spread Orthodoxy nationwide, being appointed as the first [[bishop]] of Church of Japan. Nicholas founded the Cathedral of Tokyo in Kanda district and spent over fifty years of his life there; hence [[Holy Resurrection Cathedral (Tokyo, Japan)]] was nicknamed ''Nikolai-do'' by Kanda citizens.
