Nippon Sei Ko Kai Kumagaya Saint Paul's Church

Nippon Sei Ko Kai Kumagaya Saint Paul's Church

Nippon Sei Ko Kai Kumagaya Saint Paul's Church (日本聖公会熊谷聖パウロ教会) is an Anglican church in Miyamachi, Kumagaya City, Saitama Prefecture, whose brick chapel and gate, both completed in 1919, were registered as Registered Tangible Cultural Properties (structures) on November 10, 2005 (Agency for Cultural Affairs). Nippon Sei Ko Kai is the Anglican Church in Japan, and both structures belong to its Diocese of Kita Kanto. Kumagaya City describes Saint Paul's as a working church where services are still held.

The Kumagaya Digital Museum, run by the city's cultural properties centre, traces the congregation to 1882, when local people who had encountered the Church of England's teaching in Tokyo began meeting. A preaching meeting by a Japanese Anglican priest followed in 1885, and in 1886 a priest was sent to found the Kumagaya Church. Research by the Utsunomiya Museum of Art dates the consecration of a first chapel on the present site to 1888.

Plans for a new chapel were raised in 1915, and the American architect William Wilson drew the design in 1916, the year he arrived in Japan to supervise construction of Rikkyo University's Ikebukuro campus (Kumagaya Digital Museum; Utsunomiya Museum of Art). The chapel was finished in 1919.

The Chapel and the Gate

The site holds a single-storey brick chapel with a bell tower and, on its north side, a brick gate (Kumagaya City). The gate is set squarely opposite the porch at the foot of the tower, and its brickwork follows the bond of the chapel (Agency for Cultural Affairs), so a visitor stepping through it from the street faces the chapel door.

Kumagaya City notes that the chapel came through the Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923 and escaped the Kumagaya air raid of 1945. The Digital Museum credits careful design and good Japanese-made brick for its survival through that earthquake and the later West Saitama earthquake. The original Western roof tiles were replaced with Japanese tiles after the war.

The Nippon Sei Ko Kai Kawagoe Christ Church Chapel, consecrated in 1921, closely resembles this chapel in plan and windows because the priest then serving Kawagoe saw the Kumagaya drawings and asked for something similar (Utsunomiya Museum of Art). The chapel and the gate are each described on their own pages.

Visiting

Saint Paul's stands in the Miyamachi district of central Kumagaya, the same district as Kumagaya City Hall, and a Saitama Prefecture walking guide lists it as a stop alongside Takagi Shrine and Yukokuji Temple. The gate and the chapel exterior can be seen from the street.

The church is still in use for worship, and no official information on interior access was found. Avoid service times, and ask the church before entering the grounds.