In Middletown's Indian Hill Cemetery on Vine Street, one gravestone stands out. It is inscribed, "Kantaro Takami From Okayama, Japan, of the class of 1898 in Trinity College, died 30 March 1903, erected by his classmates."

How and why is a Japanese man buried in Middletown's resting place for the city's most prominent citizens?

At the end of the 19th century, universities in New England offered only a few professions. At Trinity College in Hartford, many of the graduates were being prepared for the seminary and careers as Episcopal or Congregationalist ministers.

In 1894, after leaving Okayama, Japan, Kantaro Takami entered Trinity College to prepare himself for the ministry. As a freshman student, he was highly respected among his peers. He was a Christian convert and eager to return to Japan for missionary work after graduation.

Near the middle of his sophomore year, in 1896, he started to behave oddly. His peers considered that he was showing signs of “derangement of the mind” and he was brought to the Connecticut Hospital for the Insane in Middletown, now Connecticut Valley Hospital.

The attached file shows the brief written up in the New York Times, "Kantaro Takami, the Japanese student at Trinity College, class of '98, who attempted suicide about two months ago by cutting his throat, has been pronounced incurably insane at the Connecticut Hospital for the Insane, at Middletown. He became so through overstudy."

While in the hospital, Takami contracted tuberculosis, from which he died in 1903 at the hospital on the hill. The night before he died, he whispered the first words he had spoken in two years… “Good night,” to his nurse.

The funeral service was held at the Berkeley Divinity School on Main Street in Middletown, which occupied all the land on the west side of Main Street, north of the Church of the Holy Trinity to Washington Street.

The service took place in St. Luke’s Chapel in the school and was conducted by Takami’s professor, Sr. Samuel Hart. Dr. John Rinney, dean of the Berkeley Divinity School and six of Takami’s friends and classmates read the lessons at the funeral.

The Church of the Holy Trinity also provided a plot in Indian Hill Cemetery for Takami, where he was interred. His grave is near the top of the hill, close to General Mansfield’s plot. On a nice spring day, I encourage you to go over and pay your respects.

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