Toyohiko kagawa biography of donald
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The Readmission: Toyohiko Kagawa’s US Tour
Some time ago, we did a column for Discover Nikkei on the Japanese evangelist and social reformer Toyohiko Kagawa. During his lifetime, Kagawa was renowned as a prolific writer—he authored some books—and apostle of Christian socialism. Because of the spiritual dimension he brought to his leadership of movements for social and economic justice in the pre-World War II period, his American missionär associates often referred to him as the “Gandhi of Japan”—though when Kagawa actually met Mahatma Gandhi in India in , the two clashed over Kagawa’s reluctance to publicly criticize Japanese imperial policies in Asia.
Toyohiko Kagawa, ca.
Our first column focused on Kagawa’s tour of the United States, during which he was initially denied entry because of his trachoma (which caused his partial blindness), and especially the connections he made with Japanese American communities during his stay. F
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chapter one
By Robert Schildgen
ON CHRISTMAS EVE IN , a brilliant year-old student packed some books and clothes into a bamboo box, put it on a hand cart and trudged off to one of Japan&#;s most notorious slums, the Shinkawa district in the city of Kobe.
The slender young man checked into a run-down, stucco-covered house with two dark little rooms and a common toilet, a water hydrant
and a kitchen in the back shared among a few dozen impoverished neighbors, including ragpickers, pimps, prostitutes,
rickshaw pullers and the chronically ill or unemployed.
Among his first roommates were an alcoholic suffering from malnutrition and acute dermatitis, a syphilitic, and a
murderer released from prison. The place had been unoccupied for some time because the previous tenant had been
murdered, and it was feared that his ghost was lurking about the gloomy premises. As if one evil spirit weren&#;t enough for the
cramped quarters, the young student had to hold the hand of the murderer to
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Laying Down the Law of Love: The American Tour of Toyohiko Kagawa
It was the middle of December The Nippon Yusen liner Asama Maru had just concluded a fourteen-day voyage. After leaving Yokohama and stopping at a port of call in Honolulu, it arrived in San Francisco. As Asama Maru sailed into San Francisco Bay, its passengers looked on, no doubt thinking of the ventures and reunions that lay ahead. Among the crowd on deck was a 47 year-old Japanese man whose entry into the United States was unexpectedly halted. He was discovered to have trachoma—an infection of the eye that, if untreated, leads to inflammation and blindness—and was summarily taken off the boat by the Public Health Service and sent to Angel Island for isolation.
Toyohiko Kagawa
Though the passenger may not have appreciated the historical irony of his destination, the Angel Island immigration station had been the main gateway and official detention center for countless Japanese entering the United