Abstract
This paper analyzes Uchimura Kanzo's Bible study from the perspective of his specialty as an intellectual and of his calling in the Meiji era. It argues that his conscious activities based on the Bible aimed to contribute to the establishment of modern universal values in the world and aimed consequently to serve gradual changes in Japanese society. The author aims to reconstitute Uchimura's activities based fully on the Bible as the social developments of his specialty, with the best characteristics of his intellectual realism. The first part emphasizes that Uchimura received, from words of the Bible, a vision to the universality beyond the story of one race or one nation: "being personal, therefore being universal." The second part clarifies that Uchimura had a diagnosis that the Bible would greatly contribute to realize and generalize ethical values such as independence, liberty, justice, and peace. The third part deals with the process of undertaking Bible study as his own specialty, and examines the specific details of his proposal that Bible study as a social work would lead to a fundamental national reform from generation to generation.
