The lay leaders of the Russian emigration in Manchuko honored the Shinto goddess Amaterasu on this day in 1944. In 1932, the Japanese Empire occupied Manchuria and founded the secessionist state of Manchukuo. As in German-occupied European countries like France, the Japanese wanted to manipulate the Russian diaspora in China. Amaterasu is the chief goddess in the Japanese Shinto pantheon and the “ancestor” of the Imperial House of Japan. Similarly to the Roman empire, the Japanese occupying authorities did not primarily demand conversion to Shinto, but respect for their empire. The ROCOR hierarchs in Harbin responded to this with an archpastoral epistle, explaining that Orthodox Christian faith prohibits such acts of worship of non-Christian deities. The epistle was signed by Metropolitan Meletii, Bishop Dimitrii and Bishop Iuvenalii, but not by Archbishop Nestor. Apparently, the Japanese did not allow for the circulation of any public statements without their consent. The bishops who issued this epistle were interrogated by Japanese police. After a long discussion with the police chief Kobayashi-San, a compromise was reached: the bishops were not to discuss the issue of worship anymore, but the authorities would not force the Russians to take part in the Amaterasu cult. Archbishop Nestor expressed his solidarity with the rest of the Harbin bishops at this point. Source: Monk Benjamin (Gomarteli), “Letopis’ tserkovnykh sobytii v istorii Pravoslavnoi Tserkvi nachinaia s 1917 goda,”[Timeline of the Church Events in the History of the Orthodox Church beginning with 1917], Historical Studies of the Russian Church Abroad. Image: https://oldworldgods.com/japanese/amaterasu/. | 
