Historical Developments

KRTS was founded in 1947, a year after the founding of the Reformed Church in Japan (RCJ). However, the roots of both go back before the Second World War, which ended in 1945. The founding twelve congregations of the RCJ, before the war, had been part of the Christian Church in Japan. The Southern Presbyterian (PCUS) Mission to Japan owned and operated Kobe Central Theological Seminary until the war forced its president, William McIlwaine to leave Japan and entrust the seminary management to Minoru Okada, a professor of New Testament and systematic theology, who had once been a student of J. Gresham Machen. 

Faced with strong pressures to join in emperor worship, Professor Okada instead closed the doors of the seminary in 1942. However, he rescued part of its library and continued to operate a Bible institute along with Professor H. Haruna during the remaining years of the war. Soon after the war ended, these men helped to found first the RCJ and then KRTS. When William McIlwaine returned to teach Old Testament, and G. Tanaka (also a former Central Seminary professor) was added to teach church history, the founding faculty was complete, with Professor Okada serving as president. The Southern Presbyterian Mission cooperated with the new seminary, providing a campus and teaching staff to supplement the Japanese professors.

According to its charter, KRTS is irrevocably committed to the historic Reformed faith manifested in the Westminster Standards of Faith. That commitment continues to be maintained by the current faculty. Full-time faculty members’ work is supplemented by several other lecturers (around 12 in total), drawn from the ministers of the surrounding RCJ Western Presbytery.  

Ministry Vision and Current Operation

The primary mission of KRTS is to train ministerial candidates of the RCJ to serve its churches. However, some of its more than two hundred graduates are now pastors in sister Reformed churches, such as the RPCNA (Japan Presbytery), the Korean Presbyterian Church in Japan, and in various other evangelical denominations. Additionally, many students from Korea etc. have come to KRTS over the decades. 

The KRTS curriculum is similar to that of many US or European seminaries, with Old and New Testament studies based on Hebrew and Greek, Systematics, Church history, Apologetics, Practical Theology (including Missiology, Homiletics, Pastoral Theology and Care), as well as an intensive program of training students in preaching and teaching. 

Practical training includes not only formal instruction and evaluation by faculty members, but also numerous less formal opportunities to speak before the seminary community, formal assignments to RCJ congregations for ministry under a pastor, and internships during the second, third and fourth (two month long) summer periods, of the four-year program. There is also a two-year curriculum that mainly focuses on the training of lay preachers and draws many students / lay people from surrounding RCJ congregations as well as other church denominations. 

School days begin before daybreak with a prayer meeting (led by students) and later includes a break for a formal chapel service mid-morning (students, faculty, and nearby RCJ pastors take turns preaching). Since KRTS is considered a ministry of the church, the faculty maintains a concern for the students’ training that goes much deeper than the academic content of the course work. By the time a student graduates from KRTS, he/she has had many more opportunities to speak publicly and to lead services than students have at most Reformed seminaries in America or elsewhere in the West. 

Normally new seminary candidates are members of the RCJ, some might be from other – mostly evangelical – denominations, and yet others might come from Korean churches. The impact of Covid-19 and its concomitant travel restrictions has severely impacted the KRTS student corps too. We currently (2025) have a total of twelve full-time students. Part-time students push the total student body up to around twenty. Our students range in age from recent college or university graduates to retirees. 

While most of the students entering the seminary usually come from the RCJ, switches to the Reformed faith are not uncommon. Given the dearth of ministerial candidates in most denominations in Japan today and the numerous vacant congregations in the RCJ, we are delighted not only to see women and men embrace a biblically sound faith, but also to play a part in filling the vital need for additional pastors from a Reformed background. Please join us in praying that the Lord of the harvest would abundantly supply faithful laborers for furthering God’s kingdom in Japan.