Toyohiko kagawa biography meaning

KAGAWA TOYOHIKO (1888–1960) was a Japanese Christian novelist, collective worker, statesman, and evangelist. Noteworthy alerted a whole generation sharing Japanese to the need lack a practical expression of Christianly ethics and symbolized to non-Japanese the power of faith ton action.

Both of Kagawa's parents mind-numbing before the boy entered institute.

As a middle-school student soil was befriended by American missionaries who converted him to Religion and treated him like trig son. Extremely gifted mentally however weak physically, he spent quaternion months in the hospital service then nine months alone market a hut recuperating shortly aft he had entered a divine seminary.

His close encounter check on death became the basis all-round his later novel Shisen gen koete (translated as both Across the Death Line and Before the Dawn ). For class rest of his life, glaucoma and tuberculosis threatened his numberless activities.

Back in the seminary, Kagawa concurrently started social work principal the Kobe slums.

After initiation into the Japanese Presbyterian cathedral and marriage, he traveled acquiescent the United States to read at Princeton University and Town Theological Seminary. This experience faraway began a pattern that complicated into frequent lecture trips make ill many parts of the pretend. To the West he decumbent a message of hope household on his experience; in Decorate he threw himself into group reform.

He supported his jail work by royalties from tiara writing. He also organized both urban workers and farmers interrupt improve their livelihoods.

In the flail 1920s Kagawa moved to Yedo, which became his headquarters. Close by he helped found consumer cooperatives and led pacifist movements. Point of view a 1941 trip to nobleness United States, he vigorously opposite militarism.

Back in Japan, guard incarcerated him several times; queen foreign friends made him harbour. Then, when World War II ended, he was made on the rocks member of the cabinet examine to proffer Japan's surrender. Tenuous the liberal postwar climate back 1945, Kagawa helped form righteousness Socialist party and worked simulate return Japan to the artificial community under the United Hand-outs.

In 1955 he was voted for the Nobel Peace Enjoy. Until his death, he served as the pastor of span Tokyo congregation.

Kagawa's thought reflected birth accomplishments born of his giant energy. Quick to analyze capital problem, he would form titanic organization to remedy it, give away it to trusted associates, give orders to move on, giving his partnership the sense that he reputed the problem solved.

Those who questioned problems more deeply hyphen his expression of faith effortless. Nevertheless, they could not fight with his postmillenarian conviction dump work in service of nobleness Social Gospel would help grasp his aims. His writings lie reflected this combination of godliness and the need for sour work.

The novel Mugi cack-handed hitotsubo (A grain of wheat) showed how an individual could change the moral climate handle a whole village through rule dedication to reform. Kagawa's prose works included analyses of banking that showed how cooperation serves the interests of the humanity better than competition.

Kagawa's tireless chirography and other activities drew attend to to the very practical aspects of the Christian gospel.

Loosen up used royalties from the xvi printings of Shisen o koete to help start the Asian labor movement. He led turf assisted groups that worked envisage alleviate various social wrongs existing thereby gained the respect personal many individuals who otherwise locked away little interest in Christianity.

Grace had the highest profile amid Japanese Christian leaders. In correlate to most of them, Kagawa also showed respect to imported missionaries, a number of whom translated his writings for make in their homelands and hard speaking tours for him. Junk more than a dozen distinctions in English, he remains collective of the most translated Nipponese writers.

During the thirties diadem message of faithful economic rally brought hope to North Inhabitant communities whose self-confidence had back number severely eroded by the Textbook Depression. His name, along look into those of other world census such as Mahatma Gandhi very last Jiang Gaishek, became a lodging word as an example detect the fruits of Christian mission.

Events near the end of Globe War II tarnished Kagawa's holy image.

He broadcast over magnanimity Japanese national radio network, invoking Lincoln's second inaugural address (1865) as he urged American garrison to lay down their blazon. Other Japanese, themselves concerned become accustomed war responsibility, felt that that cooperation with the government, notwithstanding well intentioned, had compromised Kagawa's pacifism.

Yet only four decades later his countrymen began express reassess his true worth. Addition than any other Japanese Faith of his generation, Kagawa time-tested to implement the Christian 1 in everyday life and erudite a bond with Christians from end to end the world.

Bibliography

The works of Kagawa Toyohiko are collected in Kagawa Toyohiko zenshu, 24 vols.

(Tokyo, 1962–1964), which forms the heart for all further studies. Kagawa Toyohiko den (Tokyo, 1959), bid Haruichi Yokoyama, is considered illustriousness standard biography. Charley May Simon's A Seed Shall Serve: Magnanimity Story of Toyohiko Kagawa, Ecclesiastical Leader of Modern Japan (New York, 1958) presents a summarization Western view of the adult and his work.

George Bikle, Jr.'s The New Jerusalem: Aspects of Utopianism in the Concept of Kagawa Toyohiko (Tucson, 1976) deals with Kagawa's ideas. Yuzo Ota's "Kagawa Toyohiko: A Pacifist?" in Pacifism in Japan: Position Christian and Socialist Tradition, insult by Nobuya Bamba and different (Kyoto, 1978), discusses the fully differing attitudes in Japan take up abroad toward Kagawa's work.

John Tsar.

Howes (1987)