A New Tower for Tokyo
Diocesan Press Service. April 7, 1964 [XX-3]
It's a long jaunt, even at jet-age speeds, between an Episcopal parish in Baltimore and a plot of land in downtown Tokyo. But there's a strong human link between those two locations, in the person of the Rev. Bennett J. Sims, rector of Baltimore's Church of the Redeemer.
Mr. Sims is spearheading a drive to build a contemporary cathedral and Christian center in the heart of the world's largest city--on land already owned by the Episcopal Church. The land is just across the street from Tokyo Tower, a tall steel shaft atop a five story building. The tower houses TV studios, commercial exhibits, a science museum, restaurants, and other tourist attractions.
Why a cathedral in Tokyo ?
The story goes back to 1960, when the Baltimore clergyman visited Japan. What he saw both depressed and excited him. On the depressing side was his observation that the Christian Church in Japan (where Christians make up less than one per cent of the population) is not putting its best foot forward. Churches generally are in out-of-the-way streets, often shabby, with inadequate staff and equipment.
Yet in the very center of Tokyo the Episcopal Church owns land, acquired years ago, that is now immensely valuable. Mr. Sims saw it as an ideal site for an Episcopal Diocesan center- a building that would be "a power center for the Christian mission, a house of worship for a thousand or more, a training ground for young clergy, a teaching and administrative facility for the Diocese of Tokyo." It would not be a stone-and-mortar cathedral of the type most Americans associate with that word, but a "building in creative, contemporary Japanese architecture with a soaring, cross-capped spire to announce the presence of Christ in Japan."
An American committee has been organized with the aim of raising $1, 500, 000 toward the Tokyo cathedral project. This group, the Inter-Anglican Committee for the Tokyo Cathedral Center, has its U. S. headquarters at Mt. St. Alban, Washington, D. C.