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영어

“Seisho no kenkyu” was a long-running monthly magazine that Uchimura Kanzo founded in September 1900, and would continue to publish until his death some thirty years later. Previous to this, through his activities in the English column of “Yorozu” and in the pages of “Tokyo dokuritsu zasshi”, Uchimura had already exhibited his fervour for social reform. In particular, “Tokyo dokuritsu zasshi” went on for two years, and various theories have been put forward to explain its sudden demise. But with no fixed explanation, the truth behind its demise has been regarded as one of the great riddles of Uchimura’s life. And most of the major previous research dealing with Uchimura’s biography has recognized this as a gap in his biography, and one gets the impression that an approach other than one based on the biographical has been stymied from the first. Perhaps for this reason, one gets the feeling that in the existing research, even Uchimura’s true intentions in abandoning publication of this magazine have been suppressed. Thus, the present paper has attempted to approach Uchimura’s true intentions hidden behind the scenes during the period from the cessation of “Tokyo dokuritsu zasshi” until the founding of “Seisho no kenkyu”. As a result, it has revealed that while on the surface the cessation of publication of “Tokyo dokuritsu zasshi” was due to discord among its reporters, in fact there were more basic reasons, such as limits to the social reform he had been engaged in until that time due to its secularization, etc. Thereafter, Uchimura would found “Seisho no kenkyu” and once more put his efforts into the fundamental improvement of society. The fundamental improvement of society was the very “improvement of the heart” of the person, which stood upon a Christian outlook on life and upon the Bible.