Kiyoto
May 5th 1883
Dear Sir: Whereas, we, the members of the Doshisha Company have formed a project to found a Medical department in connection with the Doshisha school, we desire to invite your early attention to the following views and reasons and request you also to cooperate with us in founding it if it seems to you to be a wise and desirable way to promote Christ's kingdom in this country as well as for the welfare of this people.
l. As our Doshisha school is growing larger year by year we cannot expect that every graduate of the school will enter the Theological Department.
Hence it is quite desirable for us to provide other departments to supply their different demands, or else those, who have chosen other professions, will certainly leave us to pursue their desired studies and will be likely to lose all the Christian influence they received from us by entering into institutions, whose opinions and influences may be altogether against Christianity.
2. As we have already received several promises of donations from some friends outside of the Christian churches to help to found a legal department in the Doshisha we sincerely hope that our churches will take an active part in founding a medical school by a combined effort with our American friends.
3. Our churches may naturally desire to commit their health and lives to the hand of well educated Christian physicians.
4. Wherever churches are, there are at least one or two physicians connected with them. If the present practice continue in future, fathers will likely persuade their sons to follow their professions, and will doubtless send them to us to be educated if we provide a medical school in the Doshisha.
5. Some Christian Physicians can exert an influence much wider, in some respects, than regular pastors because the former can have easy accesses to all the different grades of the people while the sphere of influence of the latter is still some what limited.
6. As most of the physicians are sadly corrupted in this country we hope Christianity will reach them and purify, ennoble and make them better fitted for that noble profession.
7. Some one may possibly raise up an objection against our undertaking by saying that so many medical schools are already founded and well managed by the Central and local governments in this country and hence there is no use at all to found one by a private company. But we hope such an objector will try to inquire whether there is any Christian sentiment and influence in those institutions. So far as we know their object is purely scientific and professional and they care for nothing about religion and morals. We believe that the opinions of their foreign (German) instructors are generally against Christianity.
8. In those institutions the German language or German system is used altogether. We admit that Germans have a high reputation in that special profession but we fear if we confine ourselves too much to that system there may be a danger of making ourselves narrow and egotistic.
Hence we desire to use the English language for instruction to a great extent and require the students to have a sufficient qualification for their admission. The chief gain of our using English will be that we could have wider access to the medical publications issued both in England and America.
9. We learn that the students in the government schools get very little practice in dealing with patients. It is our hope to provide a hospital in connection with the medical school to give the students an ample opportunity to practice before their graduation.
It is our hope also to have a nursery school for raising up good nurses. As there is no such provision in other medical schools it may be a great addition as well as an improvement to their medical work.
10. We believe that a well equipped and thoroughly Christian institution such as we are aiming at, will be a great power in the country to raise the people up to a high state of civilization.
Having the above mentioned views and reasons we have made a resolution among ourselves to appeal to the sympathy and help of churches and philanthropists both at home and abroad for this great undertaking.
We engage to furnish the land and buildings for the proposed Medical School as soon as we are able to secure the funds from our Japanese friends and we hope to be able to furnish them as fast and as soon as needed.
At the same time the school must be supplied with a strong set of instructors, i.e. men of high education and of noble Christian character. It will be also necessary to have a sufficient supply of medical apparatus. So there must be an ample supply of funds to meet all necessary expenditures. At present we fear that what we shall receive from our native friends will be too little for such a large undertaking, and we feel that it is almost beyond our power to meet it successfully unless we receive sympathy and help from our American friends.
As they have been so kind and have given to us thus far, we hope our pleasant relations and friendship will ever continue and we feel bold enough to appeal to their sympathy and help to furnish us some fund to sustain one or two foreign professors with a few associating native instructors besides securing the medical apparatus etc. We believe such a generous gift from the American friends will not simply serve to promote the great cause for our Common Master but that it will be a perpetual legacy to future generations, that in fact it will remain a beautiful monument of friendship between America and Japan.
Therefore resolved that we, the members of the Doshisha Company, respectfully request you to present this subject to your mission for consideration and through it to the American Board to appoint and send you and one other professor to be associated with you to come to Kiyoto and cooperate with us in starting the said institution and furthermore we request you to write to your home friends asking them to participate in this noble and humane object. It is our purpose that you and your foreign associates will be responsible for the fund raised in America so long as it may seem best to satisfy your home friends. If you kindly comply with our request we will try to render you our best possible service and assistance and will unite with you hand and heart to promote the grand Kingdom of our Common Lord through this instrumentality for good.
May God lead you and us in carrying out this great object for the highest and noblest End!
Yours in the Lord
T. Matsu-yama T. Ise Y. Nakamura K. Yamamoto J. H. Neesima Members of the Doshi-company With the approval of the following churches and their pastors Osaka Church and her pastor T. Miyagawa Naniwa Church and her pastor P. Sawayama Tenma Church and her pastor T. Koki Shimanouchi Church and her acting pastor M. Wuyehara Tamon Church and her pastor G. Sugiura Kobe Church and her pastor T. Matsuyama Hiogo Church and her acting pastor Y. Nikaido Sanda Church and her acting pastor G. Watanabe Okayama Church and her Pastor M. Kanamon Imabari Church and her pastor T. Ise Hikone Church and her pastor S. Honma Kiyoto 1st Church and her acting pastor W. Sugita Kiyoto 2nd Church and her acting pastor M. Ichihara Kiyoto 3rd Church and her acting pastor K. Tsunashima