Photographs collected by John C. Calhoun Newton during his tenure as a Methodist missionary in Japan. They include images of a stupa at the Toji temple ground, a bell at the Chion-in temple, and scroll paintings depicting the Buddha, Seisho-ko (General Kato Kiyomasa), Shinto gods based on Buddhist deities, Buddhist disciples, and part of a text containing Buddha's last instructions. The original envelopes for the photograph cards, including name and address of print shop owner Okazaki Kazutada of Kyoto, are also available with the collection.
John Caldwell Calhoun Newton (1848-1923) was a Methodist minister and missionary to Japan. He was born in South Carolina and educated at Kentucky Wesleyan College, Kentucky Military Institute, and Johns Hopkins University. After working as a minister in Kentucky and Virginia, he made his first trip to Japan in 1888-1897. There, he served as a faculty member and then dean of the theological school at the Kwansei Gakuin Union Mission College and Seminary in Kobe. He returned to Japan in 1903 and served as President of the Mission College from 1913-1923.
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Photo lot 84-6, John Caldwell Calhoun Newton photograph collection relating to Japanese Buddhism, National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution
Donated by John Caldwell Calhoun Newton to the United States National Museum in 1894 (accession 28096). Transferred to the National Anthropological Archives by Chang-su Houchins of the Department of Anthropology, 1984.
Additional photographs donated by Newton in 1894 can be found in the National Anthropological Archives in Photo Lot 97.
The William R. Perkins Library at Duke University holds Newton's papers from 1870-1931.
Inventory available in repository.