Toyohiko Kagawa of Japan

Abstract Toyohiko Kagawa (1888–1960) was a Japanese Christian socialist and pacifist who rose to prominence through his work with impoverished slum-dwellers, industrial workers, and peasants. While scholars note lapses in his pacifism, Kagawa criticized his nation’s 1931 invasion of Manchuria and was briefly imprisoned several times for criticizing Japanese militarism. He spent much of World War II under police surveillance, but also made statements used by his government to justify its war effort. After World War II Kagawa defended Japan’s new antiwar constitution, and he helped lead his nation’s powerful anti-nuclear weapons and world federalist movements, even while often embracing Cold War policies. Kagawa’s global significance stems largely from his widely read books and his travels abroad, as he convinced many Americans and Europeans that economic cooperatives were the Christian alternative to both capitalism and communism and that only they could provide the economic basis to eliminate wars’ causes.