Updated May, September, and November 2025

Rabbi Meir Yakov Soloveichik

Abraham Setsuzo Kotsuji

Jundai Yamada

Pictures Given Out at the Shiur

Commentary Article from March 21, 2023

Rabbi Moshe Shatzkes

On Saturday night, I took my granddaughter to Boca Raton Synagogue and we heard a beautiful shiur from Rabbi Meir Yakov Soloveichik.  The topic was:  “The Japanese Abraham and the Japanese Soloveichik:  A Personal Tale of My Family and My Journey to Japan.”  The hero of the story is Setsuzo Kotsuji.  He converted to Judaism in 195 and took the name Abraham.  He wrote an autobiography titled From Tokyo to Jerusalem.  It is out of print and he is a forgotten hero.  A used copy is available on Amazon for $435.01.  Koren plans to republish from Tokyo to Jerusalem with additional notes from Rabbi Meir Yaakov Solovechik and Jundai Yamada.   In late 2025, Koren republished the autobiography under the title Kotsuji’s Gift through Maggid Press with a foreword by Rabbi Meir Yaakov Soloveichik.

Jundai Yamada, a Japanese actor, discovered the story in the early 2000s and was determined to bring the heroism of Setsuzo Kotsuji to the public.   In 2013,  he wrote a book in Japanese about Setsuzo Kotsuji, who helped the Jewish refugees arriving at Vladivostok at the Trans-Siberian Railway under the persecution of Nazi Germany and traveled to the country of desire, Inochi no Visa o Tsunaida Otoko — Setsuzo Kotsuji to Yudaya Nanmin (A Man Who Connected the Visa of Life — Setsuzo Kotsuji and the Jewish Refugees) and debuted as a non-fiction writer.^[   This was translated into English and published in the above Koren book.

Notes from the Lecture:

This past summer, Rabbi Meir Yakov Soloveichik, his wife, and Rabbi Ari Berman, president of Yeshiva University, traveled to Tokyo.  Rabbi Soloveichik wanted a kimono and walked into a kimono store.   They looked at him up and down and said we do not stock kimonos for men over six feet tall.  He ordered one and it was ready for Shabbos.  Friday night he had a Shabbos meal, Japanese style.  Meir Soloveichik wore his Kimono and they sat on the floor at a low Japanese dining table.  

One of the nights he went to a bar with Jundai Yamada.  He is the Japanese actor who brought back the story to the Japanese public.  They drank Japanese whiskey, Suntory.  They went to tour a Suntory whiskey brewery.  My daughter-in-law works for Suntory.    

Jundai Yamada asked Rabbi Soloveichik if Rabbi Soloveichik knew about Hakaras Hatov – gratitude.  The way Jundai Yamada said it, it sounded Japanese.  Rabbi Soloveichik asked him where did you hear these words?   Jundai responded that he had walked into Mir Yeshiva in Jerusalem and asked to see if anyone knew Setsuzo Kotsuji.  He was directed to Rabbi Chaim Shmulevitch’s daughter, Rivka,  married to Rabbi Yitzchok Ezrachi.  Rivka told Jundai Yamada that she was at the conversion meal, which was attended by her father; see top right picture on page 6.  She expressed her gratitude and told Jundai  Yamada that her father had tremendous Hakaras Hatov to Setsuzo Kotsuji. 

Later in the evening Jundia Yamada pulled out a Mezuzah and asked Rabbi Solovechik to discuss what a Mezuzah is and why.  Rabbi Solovecok asked, where did you get the Mezuzah?  It was given to him by Setsuzo Kotsuji’s daughter and was from his apartment in Israel.  The next day they went to visit one of Setsuzo Kotsuji’s daughters in a nursing home one hour outside of Tokyo.  She was elderly and he was not sure how much she understood.  They talked and he told her thank you and that her father saved his grandparents.

The next two pages feature pictures from the lecture.  Rabbi Aaron Rakeffet gave a shiur on May 12, 2025, from which I have expanded information on these pictures.  

https://www.yutorah.org/lectures/lecture.cfm/1135065  Rabbi Rakeffet goes through the entire story in his Shiur.  He mentioned Kotzk.com and some of what I wrote.

The picture at the top of the page features Setsuzo Kotsuji, the hero of the story, second from the left. The Amshinover Rebbe to the right of Setzuzo Kotsuji and Rabbi Shatzkes is to the right of the Amshinover Rebbe.   Rabbi  Moshe Shatzkes was known as the Lomsher Rov and later Rosh Yeshiva at YU (see the end of the blog post about Reb Moshe Shatzkes.) This picture was taken at the meeting with the top Japanese military leadership when they asked the Amshinover Rebbe and Rabbi Moshe Shatzkes, “Why do the Germans hate you so much?”  The Amshinover Rebbe, Rabbi Shimon Sholem Kalish, answered, Because we are Asian, just like you. The person on the far right is Leo Hanin who was head of the Jewish committee who helped from Kobe, Japan.  He later worked with Chiune Sugihara in the Jewish owned store in Japan.   

From the internet: Leo Hanin, born in 1913 in Vilnius, Lithuania, describes his family; his parents’ decision to escape increasing persecution in Europe and move to Harbin, China, where they had a relative, in 1916; the lively Jewish community but not having many relations with the native Chinese; attending a Russian school in Harbin until 1929; moving with his brother to Shanghai around 1934 to attend a British school; getting married in 1936 and moving to Kōbe-shi, Japan to do work for a textile firm; assisting the Joint Distribution Committee in New York to arrange for funds to be sent to Japan to support refugees coming over from Europe; his participation in a Zionist organization and moving to Israel in 1948; staying in Israel for two years and then moving back to Japan; his experiences with helping people adjust to life in Kōbe-shi and immigrate to the United States; and dealing with the rumors that the Jewish leadership of Kōbe-shi stole money donated to them to help refugees.

Picture at bottom Left – Setsuzo Kotsuji after conversion with Talis and Tefillin.

Picture at bottom Right – Setsuzo Kotsuji’s gravesite at Har Hamenuchos.

Top Left – 1940 Hebrew Dikduk book written in Japanese by Setsuzo Kotsuji.

Top Right – At the November 1959 Seudas Mitzvah meal after Setsuzo Kotsuj’s conversion.

To the right of Seitzku  Kotzuji is Rabbi Chaim Shmulevitz, Rosh Yeshiva of Mir Yeshiva in Jerusalem.  

The person sitting on the right of Rabbi Chaim Shmuelevitz is Rabbi Dr. Hugo Mantel. 

Picture at Top Left – 1940 Hebrew Dikduk book written in Japanese by Setsuzo Kotsuji.

Picture at Top Right – At the November 1959 Seudas Mitzvah meal after Setsuzo Kotsuji’s conversion.

To the right of Seitzku Kotzuji is Rabbi Chaim Shmulevitz, Rosh Yeshiva of Mir Yeshiva in Jerusalem.   The person sitting on the right of Rabbi Chaim Shmuelevitz is Rabbi Dr. Hugo Mantel. 

Rabbi Aaron Rakeffet, at minute 34:44 of his lecture on May 11, 2025, on this topic, talked about Rabbi Dr. Hugo Mantel.  Rabbi Rakeffet said, “I will give a nickel to anyone who can tell me who he was.” Rabbi Rakeffet met Rabbi Dr. Hugo Mantel when Rabbi Rakeffet came on Aliyah to Israel. Hugo Mantel lived in Mattersdorf.  Hugo Mantel was a YU Musmach of 1934.  He went on to get a doctorate in Jewish history.  He was an expert in Gemora Sanhedrin. He was a chaplain in the US Army in WWII and wound up in Japan.  Later, he went back to America, taught, and made Aliyah.  He was on the Bar Ilan faculty.  When Professor Avrohom Setsuzo Kotsuji wanted to convert, Rabbi Hugo Mantel, who already knew the Japanese mentality, taught Setsuzo Kotsuji for the conversion.  Hugo Mantel was a very bright guy.  Rabbi Rakeffet met him through Ruby Gross, who lived in Mattersdorf.  They were neighbors and good friends. “I met Professor Hugo Mantel; he was a historic figure.  It is just unbelievable that at the age of 60, Setsuzo Kotsuji went through circumcision at Shaare Tzedek and converted.  The Seudah Mitzvah after the conversion was in Yerushalayim with Rabbi Chaim Shumlevitz attending the Seudah and other people from Mir.”

1948 Press Photo Rabbi Hugo Mantel, Chaplain, Marine Hospital Brighton:  https://www.brightonmarine.org/campus

Bottom Picture – the person with the arrow is Rabbi Soloveichik’s grandfather, Reb Shmuel Warshvshik.  I remember him when his daughter married Rabbi Eliyahu Soloveichik, father of Meir Soloveichik.  The third person from the left in the bottom row is Rabbi Shmuel Doivd Walkin, the father of Rebbitzin Chaya Small.

The names of Rabbinim I believe are listed in the bottom row:

Rabbi Rockove

Rabbi Luski

Rabbi Schmuel Dovid Walkin – father of Rebbetzin Chaya Walkin Small, bottom row, third from the left.

Rabbi AD Gelbfish – father in law of Rabbi Dovid Zucker, Rosh Kollel Lakewood Kollel, Chicago

Rabbi Peretz Yogel – Rav Peretz Yogel was the son of the legendary Rav Shabsai Yogel, the Rosh Yeshiva of Slonim (one of the prized talmidim of the Netziv of Volozyn), and he served alongside his father in Slonim after being fashioned and molded for many years (later 1920’s-early 1930’s) in the Mirer Yeshiva in Poland.  In 1932, he received exceptionally laudatory semichos from the Roshei Yeshiva and Rabbanim of the Mir, and that year became the son-in-law of Rav Elya Perelman, the son of the “Minsker Gadol.” He then assumed the Rabbinic position of his father-in-law in a town near Poland. In those years leading up to the war, he was also extremely active in klal work—arousing the admiration of none of than the gadol hador, Rav Chaim Ozer Grodzensky. 

He was fortunate to escape with the Mirer yeshiva to Shanghai and made his way to Canada in 1943. In 1945, he took the helm of Brooklyn Torah Academy, a fledgling new yeshiva, simultaneously serving as the Rov of Anshei Slonim in Crown Heights.  Rav Peretz was the Rosh Yeshiva, the bochein, and the maggid shiur for the highest shiur—in which capacity he shaped hundreds of talmidim who remember him fondly and venerably.

The Brooklyn Torah Academy was a feeder high school to Yeshiva University.  It was the Brooklyn equivalent to the Manhattan Torah Academy (MTA).  In the 1970s, the Brooklyn Torah Academy closed and merged into MTA.  

Towards the end of his life, he would daven at the Gerer shtiebel in Flatbush. Upon his passing in 1987, he was mourned by a large gamut of the olam hayeshivos in America and in Eretz Yisroel. 

Rabbi Boruch Sorotzkin – son of Rabbi Zalman Sorotzkin.  ttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baruch_Sorotzkin

Rabbi Zalman Sorotzkin was the Zionist Rosh Yeshiva.  At the 1937 Agudah Kenssa Gedolah, he read the Psak from the leadership of Agudah, known as the Moetzes, supporting the founding of a State in Palestine.  He took heat for this.  His family basically settled in Israel after WWII

Rabbi Shmuel Shchedrovitzky

Rabbi SD Marogolis

Rabbi Yakov Neiman – Rabbi Neiman after the war ended up living in Chicago.  He became a Rov in Chicago at the Adas.  When I grew up, the Adas was the largest Orthodox shul in Albany Park.  On Simchas Torah, the Adas was the most popular place to go.  After all the Shuls finished, people ended up at the Adas.  He was also the eighth-grade Rebbe at Arie Crown and I had him in 1966 – 1967.  He merited living to 100.  Rebbitzen Chaya Small told me that in Shanghai, her family lived on the first floor and the Neimans lived on the second floor.  The two families shared one chicken for Shabbos.  When the families made it to the US, they landed in San Francisco and took a train cross-country to end up in New York.   Several families got off in Chicago to become Rabbis and teachers.  Rabbi Neiman and his family got off in Chicago, where he became a successful Rabbi, teacher, and businessman.

Rabbi Shimon Romm – Born in Vysock, Rabbi Romm—orphaned from his father while yet an infant, nonetheless became known as an illui while still a young boy.  From Vysock he traveled to Slonim to learn under Rabbis Shabsai Yogel and Fain zt’l. There he met another illui, a young boy named Samuel Belkin, who was also bereft of his father, and, for a time, they literally shared a bed and a pair of shoes. After Slonim, Rabbi Romm studied under Rabbi Horowitz ztl, founder of the Navardok Mussar movement, and then under Rabbi Aharon Kotler zt’l in Kletzk. Subsequently, he attended the yeshiva in Mir, where he received semikhah from Rabbi Kamai zt’l and where he established a close friendship with the famed mashgiach, Rabbi Yeruchem Lebowitz zt’l.  His reputation at Mir led to a shidduch with Kala Eisenbod, the daughter of the Rabbi of Vasilishik.

Rabbi Romm traveled with the Mir Yeshiva during its remarkable journey to Shanghai but left the yeshiva and was able to go to Israel in 1942. He lived there until 1948, when he was invited to teach at Yeshiva University.  At Yeshiva University, Rabbi Romm taught shiurim at the highest level until his passing. During this time, he also served as the rabbi of Congregation Noda B’Yehuda in Washington Heights, NY, and was a leading Torah adornment for Mizrachi.

Renowned for his sweeping knowledge of Torah and no less recognized for his great ethical character, Rabbi Romm represented to his students the ideal of a Rebbe. To others he was known as an orator par excellence and gomel chesed. An acquaintance, talmid, and friend of many of the century’s leading talmidei chachamin, he incorporated within him the wisdom and ideology of each of the g’dolei Yisrael with whom he learned into a comprehensive whole.  Source – YU Torah online.

Article in Commentary Magazine:

The Japanese Abraham

An extraordinary autobiography by a Japanese Jew is out of print today, but his story deserves to be remembered. 

March 21, 2024

There’s a bestselling book by the psychologist Robert Cialdini titled Pre-Suasion: A Revolutionary Way to Influence and Persuade. In one point in this largely non-Jewish book, we are shown a photograph from 1941 of two rabbis from Eastern Europe who found themselves in front of the Japanese foreign ministry in Tokyo. They were two of the leaders from a group of thousands of yeshiva students who had been given transit visas by the Japanese consul in Kovno, Lithuania. His name was Chiune Sugihara. The visas allowed the students to flee across Europe and Asia and land in Kobe, Japan. Two of them were my maternal grandparents, Rabbi Shmuel Dovid and Nachama Warshavchik.

Germany was, of course, then allied with Japan. Cialdini writes, “The Nazis had sent Josef Meisinger, a colonel in the Gestapo known as ‘the Butcher of Warsaw’ for ordering the execution of 16,000 Poles, to Tokyo. Upon his arrival in April 1941, Meisinger began pressing for a policy of brutality toward the Jews under Japan’s rule—a policy he stated he would gladly help design and enact. Uncertain at first of how to respond and wanting to hear all sides, high-ranking members of Japan’s military government called upon the Jewish refugee community to send two leaders to a meeting that would influence their future significantly.”

Two rabbis came down from Kobe to Tokyo, and, in what must have seemed a surreal moment, met with the Japanese generals. The rabbis received an utterly unanswerable question: Tell us, why do the Nazis hate you so much? One of the rabbis was frozen, terrified, but the second, Shimon Kalisch, known as the Amshinover Rebbe, remained calm. Cialdini writes:

Rabbi Kalisch’s knowledge of human nature had equipped him to deliver the most impressive persuasive communication I have encountered in over thirty years of studying the process: “Because,” he said calmly, “we are Asian, like you.”

The older rabbi’s response had a powerful effect on the Japanese officers. After a silence, they conferred among themselves and announced a recess. When they returned, the most senior military official rose and granted the reassurance the rabbis had hoped to bring home to their community: “Go back to your people. Tell them we will provide for their safety and peace. You have nothing to fear while in Japanese territory.” And so it was.

Rabbi Solovecihik added during his lecture that Setsuzo Kotsuji boss was

tried for war crimes after the war.  It is an interesting dichotomy.  

The photograph featured in Cialdini’s book is (at least in my Kindle version) incomplete, cut off; in the original, there is a Japanese gentleman standing to one side of Rabbi Kalisch. This man’s name is Setsuzo Kotsuji, and his tale is told in his extraordinary 1962 autobiography, From Tokyo To Jerusalem, which is entirely out of print. Kotsuji’s obscurity is an enormous shame, because the book is much more than a memoir. It is, in a certain sense, a religious classic, the story of a man raised in the religion of his ancestors who turned to the Jewish faith while still retaining a deep respect for his own Japanese past. These elements merged together to form one of the great heroic personalities of the 20th century.

Kotsuji was truly an Asian Jew: From Tokyo to Jerusalem is not published under the name Setsuzo Kotsuji, but rather Abraham Kotsuji, the name he would ultimately adopt in converting to Judaism. This is apt, as one of the mesmerizing themes of the book is how his own life mirrors that of Abraham, and how his heroism allows for the Abrahamic journeys of so many others to come to fruition. Discovering Kotsuji’s story has given me a better understanding of my own Abrahamic familial identity.

Setsuzo Kotsuji was born in Kyoto in 1899 to a family that was bound up with the Shinto faith and with the Kamo Shinto shrine of Kyoto, where for many generations his own family had served as priests. “I was raised,” he tells us, “in that ancient religion of Shinto, a religion existing already at the dawn of the history of Japan.” He adds that the “Kotsuji family, according to tradition, dates back to 678 A.D., when the Kamo shrine in the Kamo section of Kyoto was dedicated.” By his generation, the Kotsujis were no longer priests, but his father did dedicate himself, and then train his son Setsuzo, to perform for the family one of the major rites of Shinto, the “lighting of the sacred fire.”

Writing about himself in third person, he describes one of the earliest and elemental memories of his life:

The first of these images is symbolic and prophetic. The baby Setschan is perhaps four. He sees two flickering lights—whether they are oil lamps or candles he cannot tell. He hears a voice reciting words unintelligible to his small mind, but it’s recognizable as the voice of his father. The image is a pair of oil lamps, wavering on the Shinto altar, and the voice is the short prayer of evening. The image will haunt Setschan for the rest of his life. He needs merely recall it to invoke a mood of solemnity, of awe, a deep religious feeling which neither teacher nor preacher could ever have taught him.

What this means is that even as Kotsuji would ultimately embrace a different faith, the experience of Shinto as a child, and his reverence for the past, would continue to guide him on his journey. The same can be said, he tells us, for the moral code he encountered in his community and his family: Bushido. This is “the way of the samurai,” and Kotsuji insists it is misunderstood as relating merely to military matters, for it is actually a code of honor and chivalry. Bushido is far more than a code of war,” he writes. “It is difficult not to love and respect the man who adheres to the genuine Bushido code.”

This, then, is the early life of Setsuzo Kotsuji. But suddenly an Abrahamic element introduced itself. Though Abraham was called by God at the age of 75, the rabbinic tradition describes how his own religious journey to monotheism began through his own questioning as a child. The same can be said for Kotsuji. He happened to come upon a Bible in a bookstore and started to read. He was, he tells us in his memoir, confused by its description of a single God creating the world, but then, he writes, one passage in particular suddenly moved him.

“In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.” What God? I asked myself. What does the combination “Lord God” mean in the second chapter?… I skipped a few pages, turning at random, and stopped without plan or design at Chapter 12. There my eyes fell upon the words, “Now the Lord said unto Abram. Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and from thy father’s house, unto the land I will shew thee. And will make of thee a great nation, and I will bless thee. I will bless those that bless thee, and curse him that curseth thee; and in thee shall all families of the earth be blessed.”

At that moment something great and deep took hold of my empty mind. I knew almost nothing about Israel and her destiny, nothing of the history of the Jewish people. Yet the pages of the book I read to that point seemed to culminate in this great call…. I did not understand it exactly, and I was not sure precisely what was meant by the blessing. Yet the notion of Abraham breaking away from his home to go on a journey from which he could not return, as the chosen instrument of the Lord, inspired me and moved me deeply.

Thus did Setsuzo Kotsuji discover the beginnings of the Jewish people, when Abram is asked in Mesopotamia to journey to a faraway land, to a holy land. While this Bible he had discovered contained both Jewish and Christian scripture, he was drawn particularly to the texts of the Old Testament, because “there was something familiar about it to my young Japanese mind.”

One of the most striking aspects of Kotsuji’s memoir is the fact that he was particularly inspired by the section of the Hebrew book that many modern Jews, let alone non-Jews, find irrelevant. That is Leviticus, which describes the ritual to be performed in the Tabernacle, and ultimately the Temple in Jerusalem. The rituals involve an altar, incense, and the kindling of the oil lamps in the temple candelabra. It is therefore not surprising, given his own past, that the book struck him. “Leviticus,” he writes, “reminded me of Shinto,” adding that in Shinto, “there is a distinction made between holy and unclean, equivalent to the Hebraic kodesh and tame. It is not an exaggeration to say that the religion is a kind of Hebrew Shinto.”

In discovering this Hebrew faith, he knew he wished to embrace it. Weeping, he told his mother that he could not participate in Shinto rituals because he found what he called “the Shinto of Israel.” While his mother had never heard of “Israel,” her response was striking. “Well,” she said, “whatever the name and whatever the religion, I have faith in your good nature. You cannot grow up to be a bad man.” His father responded likewise. His mother told him: “Your father admits that you are doing well these days. He thinks it may be due to the book you are so eagerly reading. He says that if this is so, it must be an excellent book, and the religion in it is good. And if God is only One, he would have it only that way. You may go ahead with your new faith, only remember your ancestors, and be proud of your great heritage.”

This, in turn, had an impact on Setsuzo for the rest of his life: “My parting from the Shinto ritual was a grave loss for both her and my father; yet out of love for me they found the goodness to make it a peaceful one, one which did not rupture our relationship. Their intelligent attitude left me forever with a good feeling about Shinto.”

Kostsuji originally embraced Christianity, the only biblically based faith he found in Japan. In 1916, he went to Kyoto, where he studied in an American Presbyterian college for seven years. There he learned English, Latin, German, and Greek—but not the language of the people with whom he had been for so long fascinated. He then journeyed to Hokkaido, the northernmost of the four islands of Japan, and met and married a woman of the Christian community there, Mineko Iwane.

As a Christian, Kotsuji embraced the role of a minister of the Gospel in Gifu, a town in central Japan, but his ultimate dreams led him to America, where he felt he could find someone qualified to teach him Hebrew. And here another amazing parallel to the original Abraham emerges. The original covenantal Abraham, as we know, had a covenantal partner, Sarah; and Kotsuji’s own wife Mineko sought to support his journey with her one source of wealth: exquisite kimonos that her father had given her through the years. He describes the conversation with his wife:

I will sell my kimonos.

No, I said, I can’t allow you to give up anything  so important to you.

Did Abraham’s wife carry many kimonos with her when she followed her husband from Ur? she demanded.

No, I admitted.

Then I will follow the example of Sarah, she said.

Thus, just as Abram in Genesis went with Sarai his wife far away from his father’s home in Mesopotamia to the other end of the known earth, Setsuzo and Mineko went far away from the land of their forefathers.

In 1927, they sailed for San Francisco, where he first learned of Judaism existing in communal form. “To me, this simple fact was a stirring piece of news,” he writes. “It was confirmation that the religion of the Old Testament was alive, was immediate, and was practiced in some measure at least as it had been thousands of years before.” He then went on to Auburn Theological Seminary in New York. Hebrew was not part of the required curriculum, so he had to take that as an addition, or as he put it, “I resolved to study my Hebrew from eight at night until two in the morning.”

He finished all Auburn had to offer in a year and a half, and then chose to study with a Semitics scholar at the Pacific School of Religion in Berkeley. He learned to drive and bought an old Oldsmobile for forty bucks. It could barely move, and driving with his wife through Gallup, New Mexico—known in American musical lore as one of the places you can stop if you want to “get your kicks on Route 66”—with only 16 cents left to their name, the car died on the main street. And then, as with Abraham, a miracle occurred:

Despair in my heart, I looked around and saw that I had been vouchsafed a miracle. The car had given up the ghost directly in front of a Japanese restaurant. During the several days we spent in Gallup, waiting for money to come from a friend in Berkeley, the townspeople received us cordially and took good care of us. If they still live, my gratitude goes out to Mr. Yoshimi and Mr. Hayashi, of Gallup.

Thus were they saved by two Japanese Americans living in Gallup, and another biblical parallel was made manifest. For if there is any element that appears in the biblical tale of Abraham’s family, it is that angels, literal angels or human messengers of the Divine, present themselves at various moments to help figures on their journey.

In Berkeley, Kotsuji finished his thesis on Semitics. He and his wife returned to Japan in 1931 and taught Old Testament and Semitic languages at Ayoma Gakuin University in Tokyo. Soon, however, he was struck with typhoid, which led him to lose his job. In 1934, he founded his own institute in Tokyo, the Institute of Biblical Research. In 1937, he published what was the first Hebrew grammar in Japanese and set the stage for his becoming the greatest Hebrew authority in Japan—or in a certain sense, the only Hebrew authority in Japan.

Then, at the end of the 1930s, he was offered a job by a man by the name of Yosuke Matsuoka, who was the head of the South Manchuria Railway. Knowing that there was a substantial Jewish presence in Manchuria, Matsuoka felt he needed a guide to Jewish issues. Of course, Kotsuji didn’t know any Jews at the time, but in Manchuria he actually found himself among a vibrant Jewish community. Soon after, however, he lost his job, when Yosuke Matsuoka became the foreign minister of wartime Japan; because Matsuoka had hired him, he writes, he was bound by tradition to depart as well. Again, we might have thought this would have been a professional setback for Kotsuji, but the fact that he had gotten to know the future foreign minister of Japan would prove providential.

Kotsuji moved to Kamakura, a town in Tokyo Bay. It was then that he heard of the arrival of the Jews in Kobe: Jews who, having received the visas from Sugihara in Kovno in the beginning of the 1940s, suddenly found themselves on an Abrahamic journey of their own. They, too, had been called to leave their home and to make their way across the ends of the earth to a place Providence had prepared. Jews who had never been anywhere in their lives boarded the trans-Siberian railway, crossed Europe and Asia to Vladivostok, and then for three days took a ferry across the Sea of Japan.

We have to imagine what it was for these Jewish rabbinical students and rabbis to discover Japan, how different from Poland it was. And perhaps one difference stood out above all: In Japan, trains left and arrived on schedule. The ferry arrived at the coastal city of Tsuruga on Friday afternoon, with the Sabbath only several hours away. As Marvin Tokayer describes in his book The Fugu Plan, the Amshinover Rebbe refused to board. Tokayer tells us of one of the Jews who had come to greet him: “Rebbe,” he said, “you needn’t worry about not being safely in Kobe by 5:23. Japanese trains are extremely punctual. We will arrive at 4:15, in plenty of time.” Tokayer adds, “The old man had no experience with Japanese trains, but he had had a great deal of experience with Polish trains.” They never went anywhere on time.

As the train began pulling out at exactly the time for which departure had been called, the Rebbe changed his mind: 

With more hope in his heart than confidence, he stepped aboard the train as it inched forward. As if suddenly released from an invisible force, the refugees raced for the train, jumping through the doors, scrambling through the windows, clinging to the railings as it slowly gathered momentum. By the time the final car had passed the end of the platform, even the slowest had managed to get aboard. The engineer shook his head in amazement at the customs of these strange foreigners and accelerated to normal departure speed.

Thus did these Jews arrive in Kobe. But they faced a terrible problem. Sugihara’s visas were transit visas, officially given for those traveling to Curaçao (in the Eastern Caribbean, off the coast of Venezuela) as an ultimate destination. But these transit visas would expire after 10 days. Of course, they had nowhere to go. Thus it was that in desperation these Jews, arriving in Japan, turned to a Japanese person who had had experience with Jews.

Kotsuji tells us that “the Kobe Jewish committee had heard of me through my work in Manchuria…was it possible, they asked, for me to intervene.” To represent foreigners in Japan was at this point dangerous. But in perhaps the most important passage in his memoir, one that reveals profoundly who this remarkable man was, Kotsuji tells us his two sources of inspiration in deciding to take action. First, the Bushido, the samurai moral code his parents had taught him; and second, the Hebrew Bible: “There is a Bushido saying which goes ‘it is cowardice not to do, seeing one ought’; running way from the trouble went against the grain of my youthful samurai trained notions of honor. Further supporting me were words of the Old Testament: ‘the grass withereth, but the word of God shall stand forever.’”

We must pause to ponder the passage, to marvel at the merging of two different cultures and traditions in this act of heroism, the small boy merging with the profound moral adult.

Kotsuji went to the foreign ministry and met everyone, but in vain. Then he met his former boss, the foreign minister, Yosuke Matsuoka, and said, “Now I have come to the minister himself, to tell him of my sorrow.” Matsuoka asked to meet for lunch, far away from the foreign ministry. During this meeting, he advised Kotsuji that if he really wanted to extend the Jewish visitors’ visas, he should seek instead the approval of local authorities in Kobe, the police there. Thus, for a period of several months, Kotsuji became the most unusual of commuters, traveling from the Tokyo suburbs every 10 days, wining and dining the local officials. In so doing, he became an intimate of the Eastern European Jews who had arrived there. As he tells us, “I traveled from Kamakura to Kobe—a trip of twelve hours—once or twice a week….The police became most cooperative. They allowed the refugees to open a Talmud Torah [a Jewish school] and were as helpful as they dared to be.”

Thus did Kotsuji help ensure the well-being of my grandparents and so many others, until, later in the year, when they were moved by Japan to occupied Shanghai. Throughout, he tended to their needs, including when the lay leaders of the Jewish community were telephoned in Tokyo and asked to send some of their most prominent figures to meet with the department of military affairs. Incredibly, Kotsuji then chose to publish a book in Japan during the war, a book responding to Nazi calumnies against the Jews. He titled his book The True Character of the Jewish People—which led to much hardship and great risk to his life during the war.

At the end of the 1950s, he chose to convert to Judaism, journeying to Jerusalem to do so:

Some of my Jewish friends questioned my decision. Why adopt a religion which is so likely to bring troubles and sorrow? My response was that I would come to Judaism with joy and pride. From my suffering for the Jewish cause, my attachment to Judaism had grown and grown, and with it had grown my affection for the Jewish people. My unshaken belief in One God lived together in my heart with the love of his people. It seemed only natural for me to become one of them.

Kotsuji was circumcised when he was almost 60, taking the Jewish name of Abraham. As documented by David Mandelbaum in his book From Lublin to Shanghai, after his conversion, Kotsuji was welcomed as a Jew by one of the most famous rabbis in Israel, whom he had first met in Kobe, Chaim Shmuelevitz. Then Kotsuji delivered a speech in Hebrew, the Hebrew he loved, citing Ruth: “My people shall be your people, and your God my God.”

When he passed away 50 years ago, Kotsuji was buried on a mountain in Jerusalem, known as Har HaMenuchot. On another mountain in Jerusalem lies the grave of my grandfather, who after the war went from Shanghai to America and then Israel. Both of them—Kotsuji and my grandfather—had made journeys of faith around the world, journeys from their original home, just like the original Abraham. And just like the original Abraham, both their journeys ended in the Holy Land. And the intersection of these Abrahamic journeys had a direct effect on my own life.

Here we have a man raised to honor his ancestral heritage but who cherished the scripture of Israel; a man who knew Japanese and Hebrew; a man who loved Abraham’s journey and suddenly found Jews on a miraculous journey of their own; a man inspired to act by the combination of samurai sayings and Semitic scripture; a man who paved his own unique path and suddenly was providentially positioned to help thousands of others in one precise moment.

Do I not owe Kotsuji the gratitude, as a descendant of those Jews, to include him in the picture that is my own life, my own sense of self? If Kotsuji is cut out of the picture of Cialdini’s book, if he is largely unknown, does that not make me all the more obligated to include him in the picture that is my own family history?

The story of Kotsuji, interestingly, has been recently more publicized in Japan than in America, thanks to the gifted Japanese actor Jundai Yamada, who recently wrote a book about him. And in 2022, a member of the Israeli Knesset traveled to Japan to bestow a letter of recognition upon Kotsuji’s then 91-year-old daughter.

But we in America need to remember Kotsuji again, especially in the difficult time facing the Jewish people, when the anti-Semitism that Kotsuji stood against is rearing its ugly head around the world. We also know that Kotsuji would have seen, in the J resiliency and unity now reflected in the Holy Land, in Israel, and around the world, what he called in his book the “true character of the Jewish people.” Thanks to his book, I will remember Abraham Kotsuji, a beacon of moral clarity in a dark time, illustrating how, then as now, we Jews remember who stood against anti-Semitism, who stood with us at difficult moments.

It is reported that when Setsuzo Kotsuji passed away he recognized the complexity of his story by leaving this final statement to his family: “Perhaps in a hundred years, someone will understand me.” It is now 50 years since his death. Let us seek to understand, and commemorate Kotsuji’s life with gratitude and reverence.

This essay was originally published in Commentary.

Reb Moshe Shatzkes:

In his September 15, 2025 Shiur, Rabbi Aaron Rakeffet, in which he started talking about Rabbi Israel Salanter and the Mussar movement, he mentioned Rabbi Moshe Shatzkes. Rabbi Israel Salanter had three main students. 1 –  Rabbi Yitzchak Blazer, who became the chief rabbi of St. Petersburg and published Salanter’s writings; and 2 – Rabbi Naftali Amsterdam, who served as the chief rabbi of Helsinki. 3 – Rabbi Simcha Zissel Ziv (Broide), who led yeshivas in Kelm and Grobin and promoted the study of Musar.

Reb Yitzchok – known as Reb Itzile Blazer was married and had no children. He was 50. His wife advised him to give her a divorce, referred to with the Rabbinic aphorism as a “divorce of love” and marry a younger person and have children. He gave her a divorce, after which she moved to Israel and lived in Tel Aviv until she was almost 100 years old. They used to ask her, how did you merit a long life. She answered because my husband blessed me with a long life when he gave me the divorce. Reb Itzelie Bazer went on to marry a widow with four small children. They had four children together. Within a few years, the man who initially had no children became the father of eight children. The one of the eight children who was the most famous was Reb Moshe Shatzkes. Known as the Lomza Tov. Rabbi Rakeffet knew him and said he was the great one among great ones. He made it to America in 1941 and was appointed Rosh Yeshiva at Yeshiva University. When Reb Aaron Lictenstein came from Chaim Berlin to YU, his first Rebbe was Reb Moshe Shatzkes. The Rov used to say about Reb Moshe Shatzkes that he knew every Shach and Taz in Yoreh Deah. He died in 1958. His son, Avrohom Aaron Shatzkes was also a Rosh Yeshiva at YU and died in 1983.

From YU’s website:

Rabbi Shatkes was born in Vilna. His father, Rabbi Avrohom Aharon Shatzkes zt”l, was known as the Illui from Mizetal. The younger Rabbi Shatkes studied under the guidance of his stepfather, Rabbi Yitzchok Blazer zt”l (known as Rav Itzele Peterburger). He studied at the yeshivotin Slobodka and Telshe and went on to receive semikhah from Rabbi Raphael Shapira zt”l of Volozhin, Rabbi Eliezer Gordon zt”l of Telshe, and Rabbi Elazar Rabinowitz zt”l of Minsk.

He served as rabbi of Lipnashek and Ivia, both in the Vilna district. In 1931, Rabbi Shatzkes was chosen to become rav and Av Beit Din of Lomza. Forced to flee when the Russians captured Lomza in 1940, he came to Vilna where he was appointed rosh yeshiva of the yeshiva in Grodna, succeeding Rabbi Shimon Shkop zt”l.

In 1941, he reached America by way of Japan and was appointed a rosh yeshiva at Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary, where he taught hundreds of students until his death. In 1910, he published a pamphlet entitled Anaf Pri, containing his chiddushim on the Pri Yitzchok of Rabbi Yitzchok Blazer.

HaRav Hagaon R. Avraham Aharon Shatzkes zt”l 1915-1983

Rabbi Shatzkes was born in Evia, Vilna. His father was Rabbi Moshe Shatzkes zt”l. The younger Rabbi Shatkes studied at the yeshiva in Grodna with Rabbi Shimon Shkop zt”l, and then at the yeshiva in Mir. He received semikhah from Rabbi Tavil Meltzer zt”l, Rabbi Chanoch Henoch Agus zt”l of Vilna, author of the Marcheshet, and Rabbi Eliezer Yehuda Finkel zt”l, rosh yeshiva of Mir. In 1941, he came to America and was accepted as rabbi of Kehillat Chochmat Adam-Anshei Lomza in New York. In 1944, Rabbi Shatzkes was appointed a rosh yeshiva at Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary, where he taught for 40 years. His writings were published in various Torah journals. He left a sefer entitled Tifferet Aharon, which is still in manuscript form.