MIYAZAKI: 13th Sept. '04 --  In the relatively small (certainly by Japanese standards) city of Miyazaki, with some 250,000 inhabitants, the Salesian educational presence is a vibrant one.  Hyuga Gakuin (Salesian School) is one of about 14 private schools in the city, but perhaps the only one of those to be really booming at the moment, both in terms of its student numbers and its overall recognition in the community.

Hyuga Gakuin has approximately 1000 students from junior high through to senior high school level.  It has around 95 staff, 24 of whom are Catholics and many of whom are Past Pupils of the school which next year celebrates its 60th anniversary.  Through the consistent efforts of the seven member Salesian community, (the oldest being the still very active Fr. Frank Drohan in his eighties), the school's understanding and implementation of the Preventive System by staff is one of its success stories - and one of the clearest indications of the Cimatti heritage.  An interesting sideline to this is that the Italian word 'assistenza' has in fact been left untranslated in Japanese - its syllabic form fits nicely enough on the Japanese tongue!  One could wonder how it might be translated, however.

 

Don Cimatti and eight other Salesians arrived in Japan in February 1926 and in Miyazaki on 16th February precisely.  The area was a poor one with some 300 Catholics. A year later Cimatti had been appointed parish priest of Miyazaki, and Superior of the Mission.  We know that eventually (1935) he was appointed Prefect Apostolic of what became the new Prefecture Apostolic of Miyazaki and Oita entrusted to the Salesians by Pius XI as an independent mission area from 1928.

 

Today, the Cimatti Memorial Hall at the school, but perhaps equally the vibrant school band and the clearly evident Salesian educational principles are a fitting memory to those early beginnings - and a credit to Fr. Suzuki and his hard-working community.