Alexander Croft Shaw
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The Venerable Alexander Croft Shaw |
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Alexander Croft Shaw
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| Personal details | |
| Born |
June 26, 1846 Toronto, Canada |
| Died | 13 March 1902 (aged 55) Tokyo, Japan |
Alexander Croft Shaw M.A. (26 June 1846 – 13 March 1902) A minister of the Anglican Church of Canada remembered as Archdeacon Shaw, minister to the British Legation in Tokyo and a leading figure in the early years of the Anglican Church in Japan.
Born in Toronto, Canada on June 26, 1846, the eldest son of Major Alex Shaw and his wife Grace McQueen, Alexander Croft Shaw was a descendant of a noted Scottish family of professional soldiers. Educated at Trinity College a constituent college of the current University of Toronto, Shaw graduated with a First-class B.A. in Theology in 1867 and received his master's degree two years later. Following a brief period as a parish priest in Canada, Shaw travelled to London and served under the Rev. Edward Lewes Cutts, Vicar of Holy Trinity, Haverstock Hill.
On December 20, 1872, Shaw attended a meeting at the Royal Albert Hall in memory of murdered missionary Bishop John Coleridge Patteson. Bishop Samuel Wilberforce was the main speaker at the Royal Albert Hall meeting and Shaw subsequently resolved to volunteer for church mission work in either China or Japan
Journeying first via the United States and landing in Yokohama on September 25, 1873, Shaw arrived with Rev. William Ball Wright under the auspices of the Society for Propagation of the Gospel as the Society's first missionaries to Japan. After consultation with British Envoy Sir Harry Smith Parkes, Shaw and Wright chose to live outside the confines of the foreign concession at Tsukiji in order to better minister and engage with the local population. With the help of British Legation staff both were able to find living quarters in the Daishoji Temple (大松寺) in the Mita district of central Tokyo.
In the Spring of 1874 Shaw took up residence in the home of Fukuzawa Yukichi, founder of Keio Gijuku Daigaku, initially as the teacher of Fukuzawa's three eldest children, but also having the opportunity to teach ethics classes to students at Keio Gijuku Daigaku itself.
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