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The first Japanese translation of the bible was produced around 1549

[UPDATED: 2-27-2018]

St. Francis Xavier is said to have brought a Japanese translation of sections of The Gospel According to Matthew with him when he arrived in Japan in 1549. The translation was done by a young Japanese man called Yajiro, who is generally reported to have been the first Japanese person to convert to Christianity. He converted while living in Goa, India.

Subsequently, in 1837, Karl Gutzlaff (1803-1851) translated, with the help of several Japanese people, The Gospel and Epistles of John into Japanese. This translation is sometimes cited as the first Protestant translation.

When Japan opened up to the West in the Meiji Era (1868-1912) the American missionaries James. C. Hepburn (1815-1911) and Samuel. R. Brown (1810-1880) worked on a new complete Japanese translation of the Bible, which was published in 1880. Hepburn also compiled an English-Japanese dictionary consisting of twenty thousand words published in 1867.

In comparison, the famous Gutenberg Bible, the first major Western book printed using movable metal type in Europe was published in 1452, and England’s first printed bible was published in 1535.

The first Japanese translation of the bible was produced around 1549 Posted January 3rd, 2018 by Richard Nathan

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Factbook

The first Japanese translation of the bible was produced around 1549

Writing about ‘The Lost’ or ‘Old and New’ or Japan ‘Off-The-Beaten-Track’ in English is an enduring publishing trend that goes back to at least 1878[UPDATED: 6-17-2024]

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