The Nunobiki, Japanese “Native” Branch, Eisei-in [Health Institute] or Kobe Eisein Sanitarium (1903–1927)
By Michael W. Campbell
Michael W. Campbell, Ph.D., is North American Division Archives, Statistics, and Research director. Previously, he was professor of church history and systematic theology at Southwestern Adventist University. An ordained minister, he pastored in Colorado and Kansas. He is assistant editor of The Ellen G. White Encyclopedia (Review and Herald, 2013) and currently is co-editor of the forthcoming Oxford Handbook of Seventh-day Adventism. He also taught at the Adventist International Institute for Advanced Studies (2013-18) and recently wrote the Pocket Dictionary for Understanding Adventism (Pacific Press, 2020).
First Published: October 8, 2024
In 1902, Drs. Sheridan A. (1874-1934)1 and Myrtle S. (1879-1947)2 Lockwood, graduates of American Medical Missionary College, arrived in Japan to open a new medical mission. After studying the language, they searched for a suitable location. They decided to start in Kobe, an important port that is about 375 miles southwest of Tokyo. After some delay, they rented a “suitable house” and were ready to receive patients on June 1, 1903. This early sanitarium attracted the attention of the American consul and other well-known people in Kobe, in addition to other missionaries. When the sanitarium opened on June 1, 1903, Dr. Kiku Kumashiro Noma,3 who became a Christian in 1894 and accepted the seventh-day Sabbath in 1900 and was director of a Ladies’ Hospital in Nagasaki, left his thriving medical practice to join the Lockwoods in this new medical mission.
Dr. Kumashiro worked from the beginning with the Lockwoods to open the Kobe Sanitarium for “foreign patients.” In November 1903, she decided “to step out in faith and start sanitarium work” for her own people with “a small salary guaranteed by the Mission Board for a few [three] months.”4 She started with a pail (bucket) and some fomentation cloths. She taught herself how to treat and run a sanitarium with friends who translated medical missionary materials, especially from Dr. John Harvey Kellogg. The earliest medical missionary work was conducted near the famous Nunobiki Falls5 (some of the earliest references to the sanitarium appears as the “Nunobiki Sanitarium”) at The Esei-in, No. 4, Kano-cho, Nichome, Kobe, Japan. They were also joined by another “native physician,” M. Kawasaki, and later joined by Brother Kawano, a graduate from the St. Helena Sanitarium Training School. Now with two physicians and Brother Kawano, they obtained the other three houses on the block and built an operating room in the central courtyard., Brother Kawano acted as cook, business manager, steward, and gave treatments to the male patients.6
As she described its beginning: “The enterprise was started by a few ladies as a missionary venture.” The house was secured on a monthly rental basis. Unfortunately, by 1905, Dr. Kawasaki had to “retire from the work, on account of his health” as well as to withdraw the money he invested in the project.7 It was also about 1905 that Dr. Kumashiro married Pastor Noma and was afterward known as Dr. Noma.
As the work grew and conditions permitted, ground was purchased on which a building was eventually erected, being completed in July 1908.”8 By this time, she employed 14 workers, with T. Kawano listed as business manager.9 Also during the previous year (1907), Dr. Myrtle Lockwood went to the Loma Linda Sanitarium due to poor health, and Dr. S. A. Lockwood hoped to go to China, but eventually went to assist with the fledgling Portland Sanitarium. This left Dr. Noma in charge of the work, and she was more effective in reaching her own people.10 The 1907 SDA Yearbook listed the enterprise as a “Japanese Branch Sanitarium” from the original Kobe or Japanese Sanitarium that was focused mainly upon foreigners, and in particular, missionaries from other denominations.11
Dr. Noma had a burden to expand the medical missionary work for her own people. One of her early patients was the daughter of a rich Japanese gentleman, Miss Fukuzawa, who came to Eisei-in for treatment. She was brought up as a Roman Catholic convent and was converted to the SDA Church, speaking fluent English and French. She afterward joined a Miss Young in conducting a school for Japanese children. The father was so grateful he advanced money, about $20,000 gold, to build the facility. The sanitarium overlooked the sea, so it had a fresh sea breeze even during the hot summer months. The new building was constructed in three or four months.12 It was located at 42 Yamamoto-dori, Japan.13
H. Evans reported during his visit to Japan in late 1908 about “a nice little sanitarium at Kobe” erected without any investment on the part of the General Conference. “This little institution is bringing many people into the truth. A good spirit permeates the work, and I have never been in an institution where there seemed to be a more earnest desire on the part of those who were conducting the work to lead the employees and the patients to Christ than in the Eisein Sanitarium.”14 During that same year she reported that she had 30 helpers and, despite high interest, she had paid all the expenses and paid off several thousand dollars of indebtedness.15
Evans returned as president of the newly formed Asiatic Division in July 1910. Despite workers dispersing across the country, he noted that the church attendance remained strong. He wrote:
The sanitarium in Kobe is doing a splendid work for the Japanese. It is built for the Japanese, and is run according to the customs of the country. When we arrived, every room was taken except the room fitted up for foreigners, which had been reserved for us. Before we left, the patients had come in so rapidly that several had to be accommodated in one room. The prospects are most encouraging for a good patronage this summer and fall. The institution is becoming known among the higher classes, and several persons from the royalty have lately been numbered among its patients. Men of wealth have been so well pleased with the good work it is doing that they have interested themselves in bettering the conditions of the institution.16
Evans added his appreciation for the “spiritual interest” that led to winning “patients to accept Christianity and to become believers in the message.”17 Mrs. Tsugiko Kumashiro Kuniya in 1913 shared about a conversion that happened at the sanitarium:
While I was at the Eisei-in, a young woman came for treatments. I was impressed to speak to her of the “blessed hope,” and to pray earnestly that the Spirit would lead her to attend the Bible class that I was holding with the students. She did so and found peace with God. Before her baptism she bore this testimony: “I was fully determined to end my life to get free from the agony of soul that I had suffered. Just then a friend handed me a copoy of the owari No Fukuin (our Japanese paper), in which I saw an advertisement of the Eisei-in, and came to take treatment. I am grateful for the wonderful love of God and for his providence. Now not only is my health restored, but my soul as well. I am now ready to tell this ‘blessed hope to others.’”18
Between 1904 and 1912, they reported 44 baptisms that occurred as a result of the sanitarium.19 Challenges with the “foreign-style sanitarium” led to its closure. The lease on the property expired on May 31, 1909, and missionaries had difficulty learning the language.20 The main sanitarium closed in February 1909 with $750 cash on hand as church leaders pondered using the capital to open a new sanitarium in Tokyo. Ultimately, they opted to confine the Adventist medical missionary work to local treatment rooms with the main focus continuing at Eisei-in Sanitarium.
By the summer of 1909, the Eisei-in Sanitarium still had a debt of $15,000 and needed to purchase more equipment.21 Despite this the Eisei-In continued to do “a splendid work among the Japanese, a work that any foreign managed institution could not hope to do.”22 After the closure of the mission sanitarium, J. N. Herboltzheimer, a trained nurse, focused his work on training nurses at Eisei-In. By early 1913, he relocated to Yokohama to open medical missionary work.23
In 1917, Brother Noma, who had acted as chaplain, became ill. Church leaders called for another worker to take his place. References to this sanitarium appear in church periodicals up through 1927, after which time the sanitarium presumably closed. In the 1920s, church leaders opined that there was no active medical missionary work in Japan. Eventually, the Tokyo Sanitarium was established in 1928. In Kobe, medical work resumed in 1938 by Dr. Elmer H. Olson, who opened a ten-bed hospital, but the project was cut short due to flooding in 1939 and the onset of World War II.24
Sources
“At the Kobe Sanitarium.” ARH, May 22, 1913.
Evans, I. H. “Japan.” ARH, September 16, 1909.
Evans, I. H. “Japan.” ARH, September 15, 1910.
Field, F. W. “The Japan Mission.” ARH, June 1, 1905.
Lockwood, S. A. “A Year’s Service in Japan.” Life and Health, September 1904.
Notes
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See Obit. ARH, July 12, 1934, 21.↩
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Obit. ARH, March 27, 1947, 20.↩
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Dr. Noma later remembered that she converted to Christianity about 1894 and began to observe the seventh-day Sabbath about 1900. When the Lockwoods came to Japan and started to open a sanitarium: “I sacrificed everything to join in the work.” Mrs. Dr. Noma, “Kobe Sanitarium,” Mission Quarterly, Fourth Quarter, 1916, 17-18. She is referred to her by her maiden name and later as Dr. Noma after her marriage. In 1902, she started a ladies’ hospital in Nagasaki, where she had five nurses, all of whom kept the Sabbath.↩
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W. C. Dunscombe, “A New Sanitarium in Japan,” ARH, March 11, 1909, 19. A 1905 report notes that her salary was paid for the first three months. See: F. W. Field, “The Japan Mission,” ARH, June 1, 1905, 5.↩
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S. A. Lockwood, “A Year’s Service in Japan,” Life and Health, September 1904, 531-532.↩
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F. W. Field, “The Japan Mission,” ARH, June 1, 1905, 5.↩
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“At the Kobe Sanitarium,” ARH, May 22, 1913, 20.↩
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1907 SDA Yearbook, 138.↩
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See note under “Findings,” ARH, February 28, 1907, 21.↩
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A 1908 report stated that “The majority of our patients are missionaries from Japan, Korea, and China, and it is hard to estimate the good that the seed sown here will do. From time to time, we have had a large portion of all the missionaries here in Japan at our sanitarium, and many missionaries, from other parts of the Orient.” See W. C. Dunscombe, “The Kobe Sanitarium,” ARH, May 14, 1908, 21.↩
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W. C. Dunscombe, “A New Sanitarium in Japan,” Life & Health, December 1908, 560-561.↩
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Appears in again in the 1908 SDA Yearbook, 175, but as the “Kobe Sanitarium.”↩
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I. H. Evans, “Japan,” ARH, September 16, 1909, 7.↩
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See under “Medical Missionary Notes,” ARH, December 9, 1909, 15.↩
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I. H. Evans, “Japan,” ARH, September 15, 1910, 11.↩
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Ibid.↩
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“At the Kobe Sanitarium,” ARH, May 22, 1913, 21.↩
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Ibid., 20.↩
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I. H. Evans, “The Work in Japan,” ARH, December 31, 1908, 15.↩
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See under “Medical Work,” in F. W. Field, “Report from Japan,” ARH, July 1, 1909, 13.↩
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“Report of the Japan Mission,” General Conference Bulletin, May 23, 1913, 67.↩
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Ibid.↩
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E. H. Krick, “Opens in Kobe, Japan,” ARH, April 13, 1967, 14.↩