July 1957: Establishment of “a spiritual axis, extending from the Antipodes to the northern islands of the Pacific Ocean”

...The emergence of a new Regional Spiritual Assembly in the North Pacific Area [1], with its seat fixed in the capital city of a country which by reason of its innate capacity and the spiritual receptivity it has acquired, in consequence of the severe and prolonged ordeal its entire population has providentially experienced, is destined to have a preponderating share in awakening the peoples and races inhabiting the entire Pacific area, to the Message of Bahá'u'lláh, and to act as the Vanguard of His hosts in their future spiritual conquest of the main body of the yellow race on the Chinese mainland -- the emergence of such an assembly may be said to have, at long last established a spiritual axis, extending from the Antipodes to the northern islands of the Pacific Ocean -- an axis whose northern and southern poles will act as powerful magnets, endowed with exceptional spiritual potency, and towards which younger and less experienced communities will tend for some time to gravitate. 

- Shoghi Effendi  (From a message dated 19 July 1957 to the National Spiritual Assembly of Australia; ‘Letters from the Guardian to Australia and New Zealand’)

[1] National Spiritual Assembly of North East Asia, with its seat in Tokyo, Japan.]