The Role of Humanitarian Assistance ot the Orthodox Missions in the 19th–early 20th Centuries Based on the Example of the Russian Ecclesiastical Mission in Japan

The article is devoted to the topic of charitable assistance by the Russian Orthodox Church and Russia as a whole to the Russian Ecclesiastical Mission in Japan. Based on the official and private correspondence of Equal-to-the-Apostles Nicholas of Japan and his diaries, an attempt is made to identify the main periods in which charitable support for the Mission’s activities was most significant. It is shown that such assistance was necessary at the initial stage of the Mission’s activities, during the construction of the Resurrection Cathedral in Tokyo, during and after the Russo- Japanese War of 1904–1905. In each of these periods, on the basis of the Mission’s receipts and expenditures, reports on donations, official reports, petitions, private letters and diaries of its chief, the amount of donations and their composition are considered, and expense items are analyzed.