Incidentally, this year marks the one hundredth year following the establishment of Tenri Seminary. The seminary, which came into existence in the year 1900, is not only the forerunner of the present Tenri Seminary but can also be seen as the source that gave birth to all our later educational and training institutions, such as Tenri Middle School, established in 1908, and other Tenrikyo schools, which were subsequently founded one after another.
On the occasion of the ceremony to open Tenri Seminary, the first Shinbashira stated in his address that this seminary was designed to train and educate Tenrikyo instructors who would be equipped with not only unshakable faith but also academic learning and moral integrity. Thus, the purpose for establishing Tenri Seminary was to train Tenrikyo instructors.
Among the followers in general at the time, however there was the deep-rooted feeling that the path had no need for academic learning. Yet, because Tenrikyo was seeking sectarian independence, the first Shinbashira was under pressure from the government’s religious affairs agency to systematize Tenrikyo’s teachings and to change the way it was conducting its activities. Under the circumstances, the anxieties that the first Shinbashira must have felt when making the decision to establish Tenri Seminary were surely beyond our imagination.
Another factor behind his decision to open this seminary, I believe, was his innate aspiration for academic learning. Yet another factor, I presume, was the need for academic learning that he must have felt strongly in the course of executing the heavy responsibilities that he had taken upon himself by becoming the head of the Nakayama household at the age of 17. Not only did he have to deal with the control by the police and complicated relations with neighbors and with the administrative authorities, but he also needed to lead the followers of the path.
Later, in 1908, because of the circumstances both within and outside Tenrikyo, Tenri Seminary was reorganized in such a way that the secondary-education part of the seminary was transferred to Tenri Middle School and that the Special Course—known as Bekka, the forerunner of Shuyoka, the Spiritual Development Course—was established within the seminary. Over the subsequent 30-plus years until March 1941, the Special Course was to train and nurture a great many Yoboku who contributed to the growth of the path.
I will not go into the rest of the history of Tenri Seminary, but I would suggest that we take this opportunity to reflect on the day of origin of the seminary and thereby take a fresh look at the issue of training and educating human resources required for constructing the Joyous Life World.