[Guido Fridolin]. Dutch-American missionary and official under the Japanese government, born at Zeist, Holland, on the 1st of February 1830; received his education at the Moravian Academy of his native place, and in America, at the Theological Seminary at Auburn, NY, after having been engaged as a mechanical engineer in Wisconsin from 1852 to 1856. On leaving Auburn in 1859 he went to Japan as a missionary of the Dutch Reformed Church. In Japan the government secured his services in educational work in 1863, and in 1869 he became superintendent of the foreign department in the University of Tokyo. From 1873 until 1879, when he resumed his missionary labors, he was engaged in translations for the government; in 1891 he was appointed teacher of theology in the Meiji Gakuin. All the while he was engaged in missionary work, in translating the Old Testament, and in work connected with the New Testament Revision Committee. His translations for the Japanese government included The Code Napoleon; Two Thousand Legal Maxims; Bluntschli’s Staatsrecht; the constitutions of several foreign countries, etc. He also published, in 1883, a History of Protestant Missions in Japan. He received the third class decoration of the Rising Sun in 1877.
