Background
Toyohiko Kagawa was born in 1888 Kobe. His father had been engaged in shipping, but he lost both parents at an early age and moved to Tokushima Prefecture in Shikoku.
Toyohiko Kagawa was born in 1888 Kobe. His father had been engaged in shipping, but he lost both parents at an early age and moved to Tokushima Prefecture in Shikoku.
In 1905 he entered the preparatory course for the theology school of Meiji Gakuin and the following year published a work entitled Sekai heiwa-ron ("World Peace”) in the Tokushima Mainichi Shimbun. In 1907 he began roadside preaching of Christianity in Toyohashi in Aichi Prefecture. He transferred to Kobe Theological School and in 1909 devoted his efforts to preaching and helping the poor in the Fukiai Shinkawa section of Kobe. He graduated from Kobe Theological School in 1911, married in 1913, and in 1914 went to America, where he studied biology and theology at Princeton and Princeton Theology School. He returned to Japan in 1917 and took up life in the Kobe slums once more, arranging through the cooperation of doctors to operate a traveling clinic free of charge.
In 1919 he joined Suzuki Bunji in forming the Kansai Workers’ League of the Yuaikai, the labor organization formed by Suzuki and others in 1912, serving as its chief director. In 1921 he led a strike by the workers of the Mitsui and Kawasaki shipbuilding yards, but became the object of criticism when it ended in failure. He decided to redirect his activities to the movement to organize farm cooperatives and set off to the Tohoku region, where he preached and worked to better the lives of the farmers. In 1922 he joined Sugiyama Motojiro in the formation of the Japan Farmers’ Union, the first nationwide association of farmers to be created in Japan. In 1926 he also became chairman of the central executive committee of the newly established Rodo Nominto (Labor Farmer Party), but resigned at the end of the same year.
In 1927 he formed an association for the purpose of preaching Christianity in rural areas, utilizing music and visual aids to spread his message and developing other unique methods of proselytizing.
Over the years, he held various public offices such as part-time employee in the Social Bureau of the Home Ministry and in the Tokyo City Social Bureau, member of the Central Employment Agency, and advisor to the Welfare Ministry (1946).
In 1945, immediately after the conclusion of the Pacific War, he became a member of the short-lived Higashikuni-no-miya cabinet and called upon the people of Japan to participate in a general movement of repentance for the events that had passed. In 1946 he became a member of the Upper House of the Diet and participated in the formation of the Japan Socialist Party. For a time he was mentioned among the leaders of the Occupation forces as a possible candidate for prime minister, but when it was found that he had made anti-American broadcasts during the war, his name was quickly dropped. Both before and after the war, he made frequent lecture tours abroad and was particularly well known in the United States, where he was regarded as comparable in stature and importance to Gandhi. In the postwar period he became an enthusiastic supporter of the World Federation movement and in 1955 was a candidate for a Nobel Peace Prize.
In 1920 he had published a novel entitled Shisen o koete (“Beyond the Line of Death’’), cast in the form of the reminiscences and personal experiences of a young man of eighteen who is dying of illness. It proved to be a best seller, and the royalties aided Kagawa greatly in his social and religious undertakings.
While still a student in Tokushima Middle School, he was baptized a Christian.