Activism
In 1909 Kagawa moved into a Kobe slum with the intention of acting as a missionary, social worker, and sociologist. In 1914 he went to the United States to study ways of combating the sources of poverty.[3] In 1916 he published Researches in the Psychology of the Poor based on this experience in which he recorded many aspects of slum society that were previously unknown to middle-class Japanese. Among these were the practices of illicit prostitution (i.e., outside of Japan's legal prostitution regime), informal marriages (which often overlapped with the previous category), and the practice of accepting money to care for children and then killing them.
Kagawa was arrested in Japan in 1921 and again in 1922 for his part in labour activism during strikes. While in prison he wrote the novels Crossing the Deathline and Shooting at the Sun. The former was a semi-autobiographical depiction of his time among Kobe's destitute. After his release, Kagawa helped organize relief work in Tokyo following the 1923 Great Kantō earthquake and assisted in bringing about universal adult male suffrage in 1925.
He organized the Japanese Federation of Labour as well as the National Anti-War League in 1928. Throughout this period, he continued to evangelize to Japan's poor, advocate women's suffrage and call for a peaceful foreign policy. Between 1926 and 1934 he focused his evangelical work through the Kingdom of God Movement.
Arthur Miller writes about hearing Kagawa give an evangelical lecture in Hill Auditorium at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, in 1935, and describes him as "a merchant of the sublime."[4]
Like most Japanese at the time, Kagawa fervently opposed the Italian invasion of Ethiopia. In May 1936, during a visit to the United States, Kagawa participated in an assembly held in St. Louis where he addressed 100,000 people, mostly black, with a speech against Italian imperialism.[5]
In 1940, Kagawa made an apology to the Republic of China for Japan's occupation of China, and was arrested again for this act. After his release, he went back to the United States in a futile attempt to prevent war between that nation and Japan. He then returned to Japan to continue his attempts to win women's suffrage. After Japan's surrender, Kagawa was an adviser to the transitional Japanese government.
Along with Albert Einstein, Kagawa was one of the sponsors of the Peoples' World Convention (PWC), also known as Peoples' World Constituent Assembly (PWCA), which took place in 1950-51 at Palais Electoral, Geneva, Switzerland.[6][7] He was also one of the signatories of the agreement to convene a convention for drafting a world constitution.[8][9] As a result, for the first time in human history, a World Constituent Assembly convened to draft and adopt the Constitution for the Federation of Earth.[10]
During his life, Kagawa wrote over 150 books. He was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1947 and 1948, and for the Nobel Peace Prize in 1954 and 1955.[11]
