In 1877, a young Uchimura Kanzo was admitted to the Sapporo Agricultural College. William S. Clark the Massachusetts chemist and botanist had recently swept into the institution and embarked on his personal quest to bring the university round to his way of thinking, including Christianity and the place hummed with the shock of it. Largely as a result of Clark’s effect, the whole first year of students were baptised by Clark immediately prior to Uchimura’s arrival. Although he was independent by nature, by June 1878, he too was ready to embrace baptism. From the earliest days of his christianity Uchimura was a non-conformist and founded his own breakaway Christian group with a handful of other students rather than compromise his principles. He graduated in 1881 with a history of making his mark in the religious world already in place. <br><br>As a lover of his country, he struggled to reconcile his faith with his patriotism. His attachment to his land and his people was profound but his attempts to win Christianity a foothold in Japan were frustrating. This collection of essays is designed to take five historical figures from Japanese history and make them beloved to English speaking Christian audience he writes for. For almost any reader 'Representative Men of Japan' succeeds in that task with his touching, humble love for his people. <br><br>‘With all the cooling of my youthful love for my country ,I cannot yet be blind to many ?ne qualities of her people; and she is still the land, the only land, to whom I give “my prayers, my hopes, my service free.” That I may still help to make the good qualities of my countrymen known to the outside world, the qualities other than blind loyalty and bloody patriotism usually attributed to us is the aim of this, I presume, my last attempt in a foreign language’