1879 to today
A history of Lodge Star in the East
Most of the lodge’s early papers were lost in the 1923 earthquake, and more went missing in the war. What follows is pieced together from the charter, newspaper reports, surviving minutes and the research of the lodge’s own historians.
A meeting of Master Masons
Freemasons living in Yokohama agree to form a new lodge under the Grand Lodge of Scotland. Their petition is supported by the sister Scottish lodge in Kobe, Lodge Hiogo and Osaka No. 498, and by the English lodges in Yokohama.
Charter granted in Edinburgh
The Grand Lodge of Scotland grants a Charter of Constitution and Erection to Edward Fischer and his fellow petitioners to hold a lodge “at Yokohama under the name, style, and title of Star in the East”. Its number on the Roll is 640.
Consecration
The lodge is inaugurated at the Masonic Hall, Yokohama. Edward Fischer is installed as the first Right Worshipful Master, and Star in the East becomes the sixth lodge to be founded in Japan. The Japan Weekly Mail reported more than sixty brethren present. The first initiation follows on 14 October.
The Gentleman’s Agreement
After the 1894 treaty between Britain and Japan, the foreign lodges negotiate a verbal agreement with the Japanese government: they may meet without police supervision, and in return they will not admit Japanese citizens. The agreement stands until 1941 and shapes Japanese Freemasonry for half a century.
The Mark degree
The lodge begins working the Mark degree, which the Grand Lodge of Scotland treats as part of Craft Freemasonry.
The Great Kanto Earthquake
The Masonic Hall collapses and burns, taking almost all of the lodge’s early records with it. When members return in early 1925 they meet in an office of the American Trading Company, with no electric light or heating, in overcoats, sitting on benches and packing cases.
The Bluff Temple
A ferroconcrete temple at No. 3 Yamate-chō on the Bluff is dedicated by the English lodges. After a dispute over its ownership, Star in the East leaves in December 1932, meets in the banquet room of the Oriental Palace near the South Pier, and returns in 1937.
War
A meeting is set for 9 December 1941. War breaks out on the 8th and the charter is confiscated. Bro. Michael Apcar, Treasurer and Past Master, is arrested and held for more than fourteen months; he divulges nothing about the Craft.
A lodge meeting at sea
Repatriated members, led by the Master, Bro. Joseph McSparran, open an emergency meeting in a cabin of the exchange ship MS Gripsholm. The Secretary, Venezuelan Consul-General Dr Carlos Rodríguez-Jiménez, has carried the minute book out of Japan under diplomatic seal.
First lodge in Japan to resume
The charter is recovered among Masonic records after the war. With help from senior officers at GHQ, the lodge regains the Bluff Temple, which had been confiscated and left to decay, and holds its first post-war meeting. Applications follow quickly: 56 in 1946 and 90 in 1947.
The Grand Lodge of Japan
Dr Rodríguez-Jiménez, the lodge’s wartime Secretary, becomes the first Grand Master of the newly formed Grand Lodge of Japan.
Into the District
The lodge joins the Scottish District of Hong Kong and South China, later renamed the District Grand Lodge of the Far East.
The YIS Temple
The Bluff Temple is sold in 1981. After some years without a permanent home, the lodge moves into a temple beneath a new gymnasium built for Yokohama International School, whose cornerstone was laid on 28 September 1985.
Midorigaoka
The school needs the space back, and after two meetings in a banquet room in Yamashita-chō the lodge takes possession of a purpose-built temple in Honmoku Midorigaoka, a short walk from Yamate Station and the Yokohama Country and Athletic Club.
150 years
The lodge will mark the 150th anniversary of its consecration.
The lodge in numbers
A Roll of Members reconstructed with the help of the Grand Lodge of Scotland, compiled in 2012, lists 1,081 names. Of those, 758 were initiated in this lodge and 293 joined from other lodges. Men have been initiated as young as 18 and as old as 70; the average age has been 36.
The Roll reads like a history of Yokohama. Merchants are the largest civilian group, then engineers, a reminder of the city’s place in maritime trade. After 1945 came a wave of American servicemen: the Roll lists 170 members of the US Army, 27 of the US Navy and 5 of the US Air Force.
Through all of it, one thing has not changed. The brethren have met on the second Tuesday of the month, with July and August excepted, for well over a century.
Sources
The Charter of Lodge No. 640 (Grand Lodge of Scotland, 1879); Japan Weekly Mail, 20 September 1879; A Brief History of the District Grand Lodge of the Far East (Hong Kong, 1961); D. T. MacPherson, A Brief History of Freemasonry in Japan; the lodge’s bye-laws (1971); and the lodge history and document archive published at star.skirret.com and skirret.com, which holds transcriptions of the charter, the Gripsholm minutes and the lodge’s bye-laws.
Curious about Freemasonry in Yokohama?
Freemasons do not recruit. Every member of this lodge asked to join. If you are thinking about it, write to the Secretary and we will arrange an informal meeting.