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Bo Tao, "Cooperative Evangelist: Kagawa Toyohiko and His World, 1888-1960" (U Hawaii Press, 2025)
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Marshall Po
Everybody, this is Marshall Po. I'm the founder and editor of the New Books Network. And if you're listening to this, you know that the NBN is the largest academic podcast network in the world. We reach a worldwide audience of 2 million people. You may have a podcast or you may be thinking about starting a podcast. As you probably know, there are challenges basically of two kinds. One is technical. There are things you have to know in order to get your podcast produced and distributed. And the second is, and this is the biggest problem, you need to get an audience. Building an audience in podcasting is the hardest thing to do today. With this in mind, we at the NBM have started a service called NBN Productions. What we do is help you create a podcast, produce your podcast, distribute your podcast, and we host your podcast. Most importantly, what we do is we distribute your podcast to the NBN audience. We've done this many times with many academic podcasts and we would like to help you. If you would be interested in talking to us about how we can help you with your podcast, please contact us. Just go to the front page of the New Books Network and you will see a link to NBN Productions. Click that, fill out the form and we can talk. Welcome to the New Books Network.
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Shatranjay Mall
Welcome to New Books in Japanese Studies, a podcast channel on the New Books Network. I am one of the hosts of the channel Shatranjay Mall. Today I'm speaking with Dr. Bo Tao about his new book, Cooperative Evangelist Kagawa Toyohiko and His World 1888-1960, which was published by the University of Hawaii Press in 2025. Professor Tao is lecturer in the College for Liberal Arts and Sciences at Chiba University in Chiba, Japan. His research interests include global history, US Japan relations, religion and politics, modern Japanese history, and the history of Christianity. So welcome to the podcast today. Bo. It is great to speak with you today. Our first question is always biographical, so I'd like to ask you about your background. Where did you grow up, and how did you become a historian of modern Japan?
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Dr. Bo Tao
Yeah, thank you so much first of all, for having me shot. Bran J It's a pleasure to be here. So yeah, in terms of my upbringing, I sort of grew up in a few different countries. So I was originally born in Shanghai, China, but I came to Japan, to Osaka, Japan at a young age. And this was because I was raised in an academic family. My father was a professor and my mother also taught in the university. And as you may know, academics tend to move around a lot as a part of their career, going from university to university depending on their teaching posts and stuff like that. So as a result of that, I was brought to the US when I was six and returned to Japan at age 10 and went to the US again at age 15. So kind of going back and forth between Japan and the US and I ended up going to Brown for my undergraduate studies. And although I was not initially planning on becoming a historian, I was actually I entered college as a pre med student. But long story short, I decided that becoming a medical doctor was not for me. And after pursuing a master's degree back in China at Fudan University in Shanghai, I decided to go into history and get a PhD in history in a doctoral program at Yale, which is what I ended up doing. And I graduated from Yale in 2020. And that's, I guess, sort of how I became a historian.
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Shatranjay Mall
Thank you for sharing that. I can imagine that having moved to so many different places and having lived in Japan and China and the U.S. i guess that kind of got you interested in these transnational connections and modern Japan and so on that you are exploring in this book. So now talking about your new book. So it's a richly researched account of the life worlds of Kagawa Toyohiko, a major Christian figure and activist of early to mid 20th century Japan. He was a global religious celebrity of his time, but he has been largely forgotten in popular memory today. So how did you come to write this book and what do you see as its major arguments and contributions? And could you tell us a little bit about this title? How did you come up with this title, like Cooperative Evangelist?
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Dr. Bo Tao
Yeah, thank you for the question. So as is the case with many first time authors, this book is based on my doctoral dissertation. It's a sort of expanded and refined version of the dissertation that I wrote to get my PhD and its main arguments I guess can roughly be divided into three points. So my first goal was just to really show the sort of transnational reach and impact of Kagawa, who is the kind of protagonist of my story and just how much of A well known figure and celebrity. He was, you mentioned correctly, Chat Ranjay, that he is someone who has been largely forgotten in today's world in popular memory. But that was definitely not the case in the early 20th century. And in fact he was almost ubiquitous if you looked at the mainstream sort of media or Protestant journals at the time. And I was able to find so many archives in the US that had materials related to him, whether that was like sort of periodicals that mentioned him or even just the archives of particular people, missionaries, other kind of church related figures who had written letters to him or written about him. And nobody had really been able to use these kind of materials to write about Kagawa in any systematic way up until my project. So I just wanted to use these very interesting primary sources to really put Kagawa on the map, so to speak, of the international Christian movement and really illustrate his significance in the moment when the, I guess Christian internationalism, sort of this kind of movement for trying to unite the world under sort of Christian religious umbrella was arguably at its peak in the 1920s and 1930s. The second point I sort of tried to make is kind of, I guess an intervention in the historiography of modern Japanese history. So in Japan, Christianity had always been a minority religion with less than 1% of the overall population identifying as Christians. And so they kind of has been seeing Christians have been viewed as a sort of minor kind of footnote within either like the religious history or like the social history of Japan. And although there have been works that focus on, on specific Christian figures, Japanese Christian figures over the years, I wanted to show through Kagawa that Christians actually played an important role in modern Japanese society beyond just the sort of religious or spiritual realm. And there have been more and more books or works over the years that talk about this kind of social impact of Christians. But I guess with Kagawa I tried to make the argument that Christians in particular, they worked very closely with the state on certain issues such as social reform and also in the later years wartime mobilization. So I'm kind of trying to insert and show that Christians were very much part of and participated in these kind of moments in Japanese history. And the, I guess the third point, I'll keep this short, but the third kind of argument I try to make is the sort of, I guess reassessment of the portrayal of Kagawa as this kind of saintly figure. And a lot of the literature that has been written about Kagawa over the years has been the norm for him to be portrayed as this kind of idealized, almost Flawless saint like figure. And on the flip side of that portrayal, there have also been some people who tried to, like, poke holes in that narrative and kind of denounce him for betraying his values at certain crucial moments in his life. But my approach is to sort of step back, take a step back from such kind of debates of either trying to praise or denounce Kagawa and just try to show his actions within the broader historical context, which I hope allows readers to see that he was neither a saint Norman nor a sinner, and just a complex figure who had to contend with opposing imperatives, one of which was the sort of imperatives of the Japanese state and empire under which he lived. And the other was the sort of international Christian missionary movement of which he always was also a big part.
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Shatranjay Mall
All right, yeah, thank you so much. And I mean, like listening to you, I was kind of very intrigued. And also having read the book, I was sort of very intrigued by the ways in which you're trying to recover this or retrieve this figure who was sort of so well known like a century ago or maybe 70 or 80 years ago, but is like, sort of forgotten today. And as I read the book, I could definitely see these threads that you mention about the ways in which, for example, like, there were efforts to, you know, there were people who were like, presenting him in a hagiographical way, and then there were others who were kind of denouncing him. And you're like taking a step back and just, you know, using your materials to kind of assess him historically. So that was very, very valuable. So before going further into the book, and I think you've already touched upon this point a bit already about how Christianity is a minority religion in Japan, so some of our listeners may be unfamiliar with Japan's historical and contemporary religious landscape. So before diving further into the book, could you tell us briefly about religion in modern Japan?
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Dr. Bo Tao
Yeah, sure, I'd love to. So, as you mentioned, Christianity has always been a minority. And I guess in terms of Japan's overall religious landscape, I should mention that the three sort of major traditions of religions, religious traditions that exist in Japan are Shinto, Buddhism and Christianity. And there are others, of course, but largely speaking, those are the three main groupings. And Shinto is the sort of native Japanese religious tradition that originated in Japan. So that's obviously going to play a major role within the religious landscape. Buddhism, even though it was not originated in Japan, and it was also import from India by way of China and Korea, because it had arrived in Japan at such an early point in its history, over millennium ago, it had the time to be able to sort of settle itself and really blend into the Japanese sort of consciousness and religious sensibilities. So Shinto and Buddhism are kind of the two big religious traditions that is seen as. Nobody really questions that they're a big part of Japan in terms of religion. And compared to those, Christianity is kind of a latecomer. It only first came to Japan in the late 16th century when all these sort of Catholic sort of Counter Reformation missionary societies were sending their emissaries to East Asia, to China and Japan and other places. But it was banned in Japan after a brief period of sort of flourishing. It was banned by the Tokugawa shogunate for roughly 200 years. And even after the ban was lifted in the wake of the Meiji restoration in the 19th century, as I said, it was always seen as this sort of minority, kind of interesting religion in the sense that it was associated with these Western powers, but also kind of seen as always suspect and perhaps a sign that the people who were Christian believers were perhaps not as patriotic as the majority Japanese population. So, yeah, I guess you could say that Christianity occupied this very sort of unstable position or uncertain position within Japanese society. And that plays into some of the dynamics that Kagawa had to deal with, which I talk about in this book. And I should also mention I forgot to answer one of the first questions you asked about the title of my book. So my book's title is Cooperative Evangelist. And the first part, Cooperative, refers to the nature of Kagawa's relationship with the state. So I'm basically trying to reflect the fact that Kagawa maintained a close relationship with the Japanese government, sort of quote unquote cooperative or like collaborative relationship on certain issues that he agreed with. But it also has the other meaning of cooperative sort of economic cooperatives, like co ops for short, which he was a very big proponent of because he saw these kind of economic cooperative associations, such as cooperative stores, cooperative pawn shops, cooperative eateries, many of which he helped to pioneer in Japanese society. He saw these as kind of the practical implementation of the teachings of Jesus Christ. And yeah, I can get into how he went on to make this a huge part of his advocacy later on. But that is the meaning of cooperative in my title.
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Shatranjay Mall
Great, thank you, thank you for that. Thank you for talking about sort of Christianity's unstable and sort of persistent and persistent but marginal place in Japan's history for centuries now, and also for telling us a little more about Kagawa's place within the history of Japanese religion and about the title Cooperative Evangelist. Yeah, he's a very intriguing figure. So before diving further into the chapters of the book, and this is, of course, something that you've already briefly mentioned, so you talked about how you sort of looked through some of these archives related to churches and various Christian organizations, Protestant organizations and so forth. And you kept finding, like, Kagawa's name. So could you tell us a little more about that, about the research for this book? So where did you do your research research? What sorts of archives did you visit and what sources did you use while writing this book?
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Dr. Bo Tao
Yeah, my sources mostly came from. Well, largely there were two major sort of sites that I did my field work or archival research in. One was the United States, and the other was in Japan. And I would say roughly half of my archives were located in the US and the other substantial cache of documents were located in Japan. But yeah, in the US A lot of the major divinity schools, for example, at major universities, these kind of either theological seminaries or divinese schools that had their own libraries. A lot of them would have books that were written about Tagawa. And in particular, one of the archives that was extremely helpful was the sort of Burke Library archives at the Union Theological Seminary in New York City. And they actually have an entire series of papers called the Kagawa Papers in their archives. And a lot of the materials relate to Kagawa's visit to the United States. He made a major lecture tour in the US in 1936. So a lot of the materials concern the activities, the lectures that he gave, and the sort of publications that came out that 1936 tour. But there is also a bunch of materials sort of before and after that. There are also, for example, papers that I used from my home institution, the Yale Divinini School Library, which was right next to Yale University. And they had some very prominent figures within the international missionary movement, such as John R. Mott, and also Sherwood Eddy, who were prominent figures within the sort of international ymca, World YMCA organization, who also corresponded with Kagawa and went to visit him in Japan in the 1920s. So I used those kind of divinity archives. But another major source in the US Was actually the National Archives, located at the sort of National Archives and Research Administration archives, too, at College Park, Maryland. And about those materials actually related to Kagawa. I can sort of talk about this later in the chapter about the wartime period. But Kagawa actually appeared on multiple Radio Tokyo sort of these kind of shortwave radio broadcasts that were produced and propagated by the Japanese government during the Pacific War. And the US Government was actually making records of what was being said in these kind of radio programs, these kind of propaganda, the programs. And Kagawa's name came up in these programs quite often. So that enabled me to talk about his kind of collaboration with the Japanese wartime state, which is something that nobody had talked about before. And in the us. Oh, sorry. In terms of the archive in Japan, the main archive was located in Tokyo at a place called the Kagawa Archives and Research Resource Center. And that is the place where a lot of Kagawa's personal papers, as well as the papers of his sort of associates are held. And that allowed me to trace his relationship with many of his, like, sort of overseas supporters and people who were, for example, doing fundraising for him or helping to promote his material and distribute his journals and things like that beyond the realm of Japan. So, yeah, my project kind of took on this very transnational dimension because of these kind of materials that I was able to locate in these two countries.
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Shatranjay Mall
Great, thank you. Hopefully there'll be future graduate students who can follow your footsteps as they pursue their research projects. In some of these archives that you mentioned. It's always valuable to hear how historians visited various places as they were working on their PhD dissertations and books. It can be an inspiration for others as well. So now I'd like to turn to the chapters of the book. So in chapter one, you discuss how Kagawa emerged as a significant Christian social reformer in Japan in the early 20th century. Could you tell us a little bit about Kagawa's early life, his social reform efforts, and how he captured public attention in Japan during this period?
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Dr. Bo Tao
Sure. So Kagawa's early life, he sort of grew up in unusual circumstances, and that he was the son of a concubine. So basically not the official, like, first wife of his father, but a concubine that he had met in the city when he. In the city of Kobe, I should say, where he was working. And as a result of that, Kagawa was sort of seen as this kind of estranged member of the family because he was born to a concubine and also because his parents actually both passed away when he was very young. So he had to be taken in by sort of main branch of the Kagawa family who lived away from Kobe and in the more rural prefecture called Tokushima. But because his mother was not officially part of the family, he was kind of not treated as well as the other members of the family. So he kind of endured this real lonely childhood. And I think that loneliness plays into why he became such a devoted believer of Christianity, because this was the period also in which he first encountered Christianity. He wasn't born into a Christian family. His family was actually Buddhist, I believe. But when he was growing up in the rural area of Tokushima, he encountered two Christian missionaries who had come from America as part of the Southern Presbyterian Mission. And they had sort of set up a Bible. Bible school, I guess you could say, to teach young children about the Bible, but also just teaching them about like the English language and things like that. And Kagawa developed a very close bond with these missionary mentors. And he was eventually baptized by these missionaries and he became a Christian. And one of his, I guess, major. One of the major turning points in his life came when he was diagnosed with a very severe case of tuberculosis. And this was later when he was. He had gone to Tokyo to study at the mission school called Meiji Gakuin. And after that he had come to Kobe to study at another sort of Presbyterian mission school at the time called Kobe Theological Seminary, I believe. But he sort of endured this very. A near death experience in which because of his illness, he almost thought he was going to die. But during this time he saw this sort of revelation and experience that allowed him to see God and see his mission in life more clearly. So after he was able to recover from that experience, he decided to devote his life to social service and moved into. Voluntarily moved into the poorest. One of the poorest neighborhoods in the city of Kobe called Shinkawa and the Shinkawa slums. And he begins a sort of slum ministry, I guess you could say, sort of trying to provide care for the impoverished people who live there, but also using this as an opportunity to try to try his hand at street evangelism and things like that. And so his time in the Shinkawa slums is a major talking point. It's one of the things that really made him into star later on because it was this act of very voluntary self sacrifice. All the books that people wrote about Kagawa would always mention this aspect. And he also wrote a book about it, sort of this semi autobiographical novel about a young idealistic Christian student who went on to live among the poor. And this book was called in Japanese, it was called Shisen o Koite. And it was later translated into English under the title, well, initially across the Death Line. But later the title was revised before the dawn, which I believe was published around 1924. But in any case, this Shisen Akoited novel became one of the best selling books of the Taisho era in Japan. So it had a major impact on his public perception. And another way in which his social reform efforts received attention was. And this is an aspect that doesn't get talked about as much in other works is his cooperation with the state, sort of municipal government. And this was because one of the major issues that was confronting Japan in this period, sort of Post World War I, was the rise of social unrest and sort of labor agitation and just all these issues that stem from the rapid industrialization that was taking place across Japan, but especially in urban centers such as Kobe, where there was a large concentration of laborers and industries such as shipbuilding. And he was actually even a part of the labor movement initially in Kobe and led one of the largest pre war industrial strikes that was organized by the shipbuilders, sort of the ship building union in Kobe. But later on, the government of the city of Tokyo, which existed until 1943. The City of Tokyo, the Tokyo sort of administered as this sort of autonomous city. But Kagawa was asked to give advice. He was initially asked actually to become a public servant and serve the city as, like, official head of the social Bureau, as a civil servant. But he declined that offer. And instead he became a sort of commissioned advisor without pay, but on a voluntary basis and just, I guess, provide advice to the Social Bureau of Tokyo City on issues such as, like, housing for the poor and how to better serve these kind of the social needs of the people in Tokyo. So, yeah, that was in the aftermath, of course, of the Great Kanto Earthquake, which took place in 1923, after which Takawa moved from Kobe and relocated his base of operations from Kobe to Tokyo. And so. So if you go to the sort of archives of the Tokyo Metropolitan government archives, there's even a bulletin, a city bulletin that was issued in the late 1920s, in which you can see Kagawa's picture of Kagawa on the front page of the bulletin being introduced as the city's new sort of commissioned advisor. So, yeah, he was actually involved with these kind of. He was an activist, not just as a sort of private citizen, but also working actively in collaboration with the government.
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Shatranjay Mall
Thank you. I mean, as I was reading this chapter, I was also very struck by a lot of what you said about the ways in which he had, like, this unique biography. But we can position him within, like, broader social. Within the broader sort of public sphere of Japan at that time and within the social movements that were emerging in Japan in the post World War I period and so on. So in chapter two, you turn to discussing Kagawa's rise as a global Christian pacifist. In the interwar years until the eve of World War II. So during these years, and this is something you also write in the description of the book, that Kagawa was frequently compared to other well known figures of the age, such as Gandhi and Schweitzer. So how did Kagawa, who you've already, you just mentioned about how he became such a big figure or at least a pretty prominent figure in Japan. So how did he become a global religious celebrity and respected pacifist? And sort of, this is kind of connected with my interest specifically. Could you also briefly discuss Kagawa's meeting with Gandhi in India in 1939? So he was like frequently compared with Gandhi through these years, but then he actually meets the Mahatma. So could you tell us a little bit about that?
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Dr. Bo Tao
Yeah, no, Kagawa was the Gandhi of Japan. That was how he was described in a lot of the Western press at the time, either as like the quote unquote, Gandhi of Japan or the St. Francis of Japan. But yeah, the comparisons with Gandhi and Schweitzer, they actually originate from this book that was written in 1939 called the Three Trumpets Sound, I believe, Kagawa, Gandhi and Schweizer. And this was written by this American sort of church leader minister who was the pastor of the Mount Hollywood Congregational Church, this kind of very progressive, socially active Protestant church in Los Angeles. And Kagawa had developed a personal relationship with this figure. His name is Alan Hunter and some of his papers are located at the USC University of Southern California archives, which I visited a few years ago. But it was through these kind of figures, I guess I should call them supporters. There was a group, in fact, of American missionary church supporters who basically made up Kagawa's, I guess you could call it like a publicity machine because they were the ones who played an instrumental role in sort of coordinating Kagawa's overseas activities, whether that was in terms of organizing his overseas tours, setting up the dates and his schedule. Kagawa made a tour of the US Multiple times, even just in the pre war period. There were at least three separate occasions. One was in 1924-25, the second was in 1935-36, and the third was in 1941, just before the attack on Pearl harbor, that he visited the US and made public appearances at multiple locations. But yeah, in short, he was able to become this global Christian pacifist who was highly regarded by many within this kind of network of Christians and sometimes even sort of moving beyond that into the mainstream press because of the work of these American missionary supporters. His missionary associates who were able to publicize his work, translate his writings from Japanese into English, and really help disseminate his ideas through these journals and publications. There was even this sort of bespoke calendar that was developed in his name by one of the associates who was an American missionary family who had come to Japan early on and sort of volunteered to work full time as Kagawa's English language secretary. Slash, sort of support staff, I guess you could say, in Tokyo. And this family was called the Toppings. And one, the sort of mother of the family who was known as Mother Topping because she was very, I guess, caring for others. And she used to run this, like, kindergarten up in, I believe, Morioka and northeastern Japan. But after her retirement, she went to work for Kagawa. She developed this thing called the Kagawa Calendar, which was this monthly calendar that you could flip through the months and each month would feature either a picture of Kagawa and his work in Japan, or a quote from one of his books, or just some kind of inspiring motivational words that were taken from one of his public statements. But in any case, there was a very large demand for these kind of goods associated with Kagawa, like the Kagawa Calendar. I believe at one point they had to print over 20,000 or 30,000 copies of it. Just because there is so many people across the world. Because these kind of missionary networks, you know, they had people going to all corners of the world on these missions. And there were like, people not just in Japan, but also in China and India, Australia, all over, who were plugged into this kind of network and saw these kind of advertisements. And they really. The people who sympathize with them, they could like subscribe to these journals or get a subscription to the calendar. So you get like one issue every year and you, like, use it every day. So these, yeah, these sort of instruments really helped him develop a global audience. And in terms of Kagawa's meeting with Gandhi that you mentioned in 1939, that was actually sort of an outgrowth of this international missionary conference. So this was a thing that was being attempted at the time within the sort of global Christian movement. This thing, some authors have called it the movement for Christian internationalism. But basically an ecumen and making the effort to try to unite the different Christian churches around the world under this broad umbrella of ecumenical sort of. Yeah, like cross cultural, border crossing type of faith movement. And they held conferences in different locations over the years. And this year happened to be the major conference was held at Madras in sort of southern India. And a part which I believe is now called Chennai, but there's a Madras Christian college there. And Kagawa was invited to that conference as a delegate for Japan. But following the conference, since he was already in India, he went around the country to visit various sites and peoples, and he ended up being able to speak with Mahatma Gandhi in 1939. And a lot of people at the time were perhaps really excited to hear that these two figures who had been really celebrated as these kind of saints from the east, one from Japan, one from India, these two great minds coming together and talking about the issues of their day. But what actually ended up happening was this unexpected disagreement over their views toward Japan's war with China, which had broken out a few years earlier in 1937. And Gandhi specifically asked Kagawa what he would do in light of this war that his country was waging against China. And Kagawa sort of hesitated to speak out or say anything. And in response, Gandhi said that if it were him, he would speak up against the war in China, even if it meant that he would, you know, either be killed or otherwise silenced by the government. So, like, sort of speaking out, regardless of the consequences. But Kagawa was sort of very reluctant to do this. And even though he sort of confided in some other people after this meeting with Gandhi that he was very conflicted. Christians in Japan were very conflicted about this war. Even though they weren't speaking out about it publicly inside, they felt that they were very miserable and didn't know what to do. But in any case, I guess this sort of showed their different stances toward authority. And I guess it should be mentioned that Gandhi's position with regard to the British Empire was sort of different from Kagawa's relationship with the Japanese Empire, and that Kagawa was dealing with his own government, the empire of Japan, which is where he grew up and where he received this education that was very steeped in, you know, cultivating respect and honor for the emperor. So he was very sympathetic to. Yeah, he was very, I guess you could say, agreeable to the policies of the imperial government, even though he might not like. He might have been opposed to war as a principle. But this was different in the case of Gandhi, where Gandhi, as an Indian Hindu, he was trying to rid India of the sort of British colonial empire where it came to India as these kind of invaders who had set up their sphere of influence and eventually took India as their sort of colony overseas colony. So it made sense for Gandhi to be very resistant and outspoken in his opposition to the British Empire in a way that was perhaps more difficult for Kagawa to do in opposition to the Japanese empire.
- [46:10]
Shatranjay Mall
So you talk about in the book about Kagawa as sort of this contradictory figure in many ways that it's certain. Like as you mentioned, he was kind of, there was this image that was created about him as this global Christian pacifist. But then at the same time he's kind of, I guess you can call him a supporter of Japanese imperialism even though he had doubts and questions about it. And that I think comes across a lot in this contentious encounter with Gandhi and sort of the difference, their different positionalities, as you were just telling us, I think sort of explains this gap between the both of them. So that's actually a good point to transition to talking about your next chapter. So in chapter three, you bring attention to a little known aspect of Kaga Kagawa's life, his role in advancing Japanese settler colonialism in Asia. So what form did Kagawa's compromises with the Japanese imperial state take during these years? And what does that reveal about the position of Japanese Christians and other religious groups at the peak of Japanese imperialism? Yeah, I mean, I'd be curious to hear more about, you know, how you deal with this in the book.
- [47:34]
Dr. Bo Tao
This is pro linebacker TJ Watt and I'm back with YPB by Abercrombie for another activewear drop. My second co design collection has new shorts and tanks that keep up with all my in season workouts. And their new restore collection is a game changer off the field too because even pro athletes like me need rest days. Shop YPB by Abercrombie in the app, online and in stores because your personal best is greater than anything. Yeah, so that's also a great question about sort of. Sort of, yeah, Japanese settler colonialism, especially with regard to the Japanese state's efforts to really colonize Manchuria, which they where they had set up this puppet state called Manchukuo following the Manchurian incident. But yeah, Kagawa and I guess this also goes back to the position of Japanese Christians, of them being sort of in this as a minority, this uncertain position, and always having to assert their loyalty or contributions to the imperial state. So I think that's one of the reasons why Kagawa decided to lead and really spearhead this project of sending Christian settlers to the Manchurian frontier to set up a kind of Christian settlement as part of this broader project of settler colonialism on the Asian continent. And it should be said, I guess, that it wasn't only Christians, there were actually other groups such as just like Certain local prefectural or like city level groups that were settling in Manchuria, but also religious groups, certain, like Buddhists, and also new religions, such as the Tenrikyo religion that developed in western Japan. They had already sent their own settlement, sort of these pioneer settlement teams to Manchuria. So I think there is also a sense of competition within the Japanese Christians that they had, because these other groups were already there, that they also had to do something in order to show that they were willing participants in this project of colonial expansion on the Chinese mainland. And I think that also just reveals again, the position that they found themselves in and which they were constantly trying to fend for themselves, to argue for their existence within Japan at the time.
- [50:47]
Shatranjay Mall
Thank you. So, circling back to something you talked about earlier. So Kagawa, as you mentioned, he had these Christian internationalist supporters in the United States. So he was a known and respected figure in the United States. So could you tell us what you discuss about this in chapter four, about Kagawa's activities following the start of the Asia Pacific War between Japan and the United states states in December 1941. So how did Kagawa and his American supporters respond to the start of hostilities between their respective countries? If I'm remembering correctly, you mentioned that Kagawa had visited the U.S. i think, in 1941. So could you tell us about how he kind of responded to the increase in hostilities between the US and Japan at this time?
- [51:36]
Dr. Bo Tao
Yeah. Thank you. So 1941 visit was actually Kagawa went to the US not just by himself, but as part of a group, group of around 10 Japanese Christian leaders who were sent to America ostensibly in this sort of mission of peace. But it was actually this, in order to attend this meeting of Japanese and American church leaders that took place in Riverside, California. And following that sort of conference, Kagawa stayed over in the US by himself in order to try to work broker a kind of peace between the US and Japan. As you mentioned, the tensions between these two countries were fairly high at the time. And there were these kind of official diplomatic negotiations taking place in order to try to come to this settlement without engaging in war between Japan and the US over their sort of interests in Asia, in East Asia and Southeast Asia. Because Japan had previously invaded parts of French Indochina, there were always concerns about sort of the Japanese presence in that area. So Kagawa, one thing he did was reach out to President Franklin Roosevelt. He wrote the President a personal letter trying to convince him to meet with the Japanese Prime Minister at the time, Prime Minister Konoe. And even though that sort of did not come to fruition. This shows that he was really trying to work for peace at this moment. But following the outbreak of war after the attack on Pearl Harbor, Kagawa sort of turn to become a much more outspoken supporter of the Japanese efforts, the Japanese war efforts in opposition to the US and this is when he goes on those programs, radio programs put out by Radio Tokyo that I mentioned earlier. So he becomes really like a propagandist for the Japanese government. And this is something that he was criticized for after the war for sort of abandoning his stance of pacifism and actively supporting the war effort. But if you look at his American supporters during this time, after the war had broken out, it's really interesting because his supporters still continue to see him as this symbol of peace and sort of used him in various ways. For example, one minister of a church in New York, he gave this sermon in the form of like a letter that was addressed to Kagawa. And in the letter he spoke about how, you know, Kagawa is this symbol of peace and reconciliation and that he should, we should look up to him and try to, like, not give in to all this war historic hysteria that was breaking out at the time in the US and really like see Japan as this kind of villains, that Americans should look up to Kagawa in this time of war and the crisis to find a more peaceful relationship and solution to their conflict. So it was this very contrasting response between Kagawa in Japan on the one hand, and his American supporters in the US on the other hand.
- [56:24]
Shatranjay Mall
Absolutely. I mean, this theme of contradictions or this theme of contrast sort of comes up so much in your book and in your account of Kagawa that, you know, Kagawa the internationalist, Kagawa the nationalist. Kagawa is sort of a symbol of peace versus Kagawa, maybe not so much a symbol for peace and maybe actually collaborating in various ways with Japan's war effort and so on. So that was really fascinating for me to read as well. And I think that that theme sort of continues now in the last two chapters of your book. So in chapter five, you turn your attention to the post war period following Japan's defeat. So during the American occupation, ideas of religion were reformulated in Japan. And this was also a period when there was this brief but notable Christian boom in post war Japan. I think General Douglas MacArthur also played a role in that. So could you tell us about how Kagawa sort of adjusted to this post war landscape? What role did he play in this Christian boom? And also, why ultimately did Christianity's popularity attenuate after this short lived boom.
- [57:39]
Dr. Bo Tao
Yeah, so the Christian boom in post war Japan, it was very remarkable in the sense that you had this religion that a lot of people didn't want to be associated with during the wartime period because it was seen as the enemy's religion. But right after Japan's surrender, defeat and sort of the entry of the Allied occupation forces which were led by the US there was like an almost 180 degree turn, this almost complete reversal of that, where Christianity was suddenly seen as this very popular thing to study and read about. The Imperial household actually started even actively inviting Christian ministers such as Kagawa and also this other prominent woman Christian leader called Uemura Tamaki, to come to the Imperial household and give lectures to the Emperor. And the Emperor also invited an American sort of Quaker educator, a woman named Elizabeth, fighting from America, to come serve as like the personal tutor of his son, Crown Prince Akihito, who would later become the Emperor, the Showa or sorry, the Heisei Emperor, following the death of the Showa Emperor Hirohito. And yeah, as you might imagine, Kagawa, because of his status as this very prominent and public Christian figure, He reached out to General Douglas MacArthur, who had a major sort of power in this transitional period during the period of Allied occupation in Japan. He tried to sort of tell him that Japanese people were very friendly and also asked for him to kind of protect the Emperor from being removed or otherwise sort of dethroned in the wake of the war, because he was the one who was able to tell all the Japanese people and the Japanese troops to lay down their arms peacefully after the surrender. So, and he also, MacArthur was also aware of these kind of Kagawa's activities, because Kagawa, he led this movement to try to make Japan, I guess it's kind of this evangelistic campaign in order to try to increase the number of Christians in Japan. Called the movement, or the English title for the movement was called the Japan for Christ movement. But this movement, actually it happened very closely aligned with MacArthur's personal interests because MacArthur was also under. He believed that Japan, one of the ways in which his major task, as we all know, was to try to demilitarize Japan and make it more like democratic sort of peaceful state. And one of the ways in which he saw that happening was to really inject the influence of Christianity, sort of use it as this religious underpinning for his view of a newly democratic Japan. So he acknowledged Kagawa's role as this evangelist in post war Japan and how much good work he was doing for this cause. But you know, as you can probably tell, all of this Christian popularity in post war Japan, it was also very closely tied with the fact that it was under Allied occupation. And this Christian boom was very short lived that in 1952, after the Allied forces left Japan and Japan regained its sovereignty, there is suddenly no more need to sort of try to learn Christianity. Because the main reason that people were trying to learn it and trying to send their kids to these Christian mission schools was because of the occupation. And once they were gone, that major motivation was also gone. So that sort of was the major reason that this Christian boom ended so quickly as well.
- [63:14]
Shatranjay Mall
So in chapter five, you talked about Kagawa as this Christian evangelist and Christian activist, and that was one aspect of his post war life. But in chapter six, you analyze Kagawa as a post war internationalist. So following the end of the US occupation, Kagawa turned once again, together with his interests in Christianity, he turned to his lifelong interest in the global cooperatives movement. In an increasingly tense world order shaped by the Cold War and the Cold War between the Soviet Union and the United States States in particular, Kagawa became a major participant in the World Federalist movement that emerged in the global public sphere during these years. So could you tell us more about Kagawa's activities in the World Federalist movement and his role as a post war internationalist? What did it mean to be a Japanese Christian internationalist in a fraught world marked by international tensions?
- [64:15]
Dr. Bo Tao
Yeah, absolutely. So I think the major difference that you have to take into account in this post war period and the sort of pre war period is the fact that under the post war sort of cold war era, there was no longer a sort of sense of trying to create this international or like transnational sense of Christian brotherhood across multiple nations. Because what the Cold Board did, it basically turned everyone from an internationalist mindset toward a more nationalist mindset. So everything was suddenly everything had to be sort of contributing to the national project, the nation. And basically everything, of course, was organized along the sort of fault line between the east and west, between the US and the Soviet Union. And so a lot of the sort of people who were major advocates of Kagawa, well, you know, some of them were passing away just because of their old age and whatnot. But even some of his pre war allies or the people who would have been his allies in the post war period, they were much more concerned in this period with, you know, advancing the cause of America as a Christian nation. And sort of, they weren't as interested in pursuing these lines of dialogue across national borders. So that was a major difference that I think Kagawa had to deal with. So his activities, even though he was still traveling around the world and giving lectures in the US And Europe and other places, his activities were much more constrained by these kind of Cold War divides. In that, I think his role came to be much more as a Christian from Japan as opposed to in the pre war period. He was really seen as this Christian who was from Japan, but was symbolic of somebody who could become like a world Christian or like a multicultural vision of Christianity. This drive for Christian internationalism just didn't exist in the same way that it did in this Cold War era. So what he eventually ended up being becoming a big participant in is this movement called the World Federalist Movement, which a lot of people may not have heard of, but it was basically grew out of sort of concerns after the formation of the United nations in the wake of World War II. Even though that was sort of supposed to be this major international framework that was tasked with helping to prevent future wars, a lot of people saw that as inadequate because a lot of its decision making was sort of dominated by the sort of Security Council, the five nations of the Security Council. And so the World Federalist Movement tried to create this world government which was able to have its own kind of standing army and court of justice that would enable it to adjudicate these kind of conflicts between countries without war, but also having a much more powerful sort of presence. That wasn't sort of possible within just the UN framework. And it didn't, obviously it wasn't able to achieve its goal of creating this World Federation. I think some people are still involved in it today, just trying to realize this vision. And I think with recent events such as, like the war in human Ukraine that has been taking place for a few years now, we are seeing some of its arguments come to the fore in that the advocates of world federalism might argue that if we did have this kind of world Federation, we wouldn't have the war that we see today between Ukraine and Russia.
- [69:29]
Shatranjay Mall
Thank you. It's really intriguing having read your book, but also listening to you speak about the ways in which sort of Christian internationalism sort of sort of weakened as a movement and, you know, people retreated into the world of nationalism. I can imagine that anti Communism was also part of this story. And the kind of the shift that we are seeing, that these very idealistic views of the world, or almost you could call them utopian views, sort of are in this movement, the World Federalist Movement. But that's also, it's a pretty, I guess, Marginville movement, these, these very idealistic views. And I guess as you were mentioning that, I guess there is some value to those ideas, but unfortunately they've never come to fruition. So in chapter six, but also in the conclusion, you address how Kagawa has become a largely forgotten figure following his death, beyond a few symbolic memorials and stray references to him. So why has he been largely forgotten? Why has he been eclipsed in public memory, not only in his home country, but also around the world? And sort of circling back maybe to some the arguments that you mention about that you want to bring out through this book, why do you think we as historians should pay attention to him as a historical subject and rescue him from obscurity?
- [71:00]
Dr. Bo Tao
Yeah, so there are certain sort of reminders of Kagawa's influence that you can see even today, not just in Japan, I guess in Japan he is probably today most well known as the founder of the modern cooperative, sort of consumer cooperatives, the co op stores that you see across many of the Japanese university campuses, but also the. For the Seiko, the co op stores that are in a lot of the major urban centers in Japan. They all sort of stem from the movement that he helped to originate back in the 1920s. But even in the US you can see symbols of how people viewed him. One of the major examples that I talk about in this aspect is his. A statue. There's actually a statue of Kagawa in the national, excuse me, the Washington national cathedral in Washington D.C. which is this major venue that hosts a lot of major events even related to the American state. Like a lot of the presidential funerals, for example, the memorial services of fallen president deceased presidents take place within the National Cathedral. And inside it there's like a big statue of people like Abraham Lincoln and also Martin Luther King. But there's a lot of people may not know this, but there's also this smaller statue of Kagawa in one of the sort of. Of out hanging alcoves within one of the corridors. But if you look closely, you can see that under his statue there's this base on which his name is inscribed as Kagawa alongside two figures of a Japanese farmer and laborer. And there's this whole backstory about how this statue came to be, which if you're interested, you can read about in the final chapter. And I also wrote about it in an article for the journal Church History. But yeah, at the same time, as you said, he has largely been eclipsed in public memory. And I think one of the reasons for this is just the fact that he was involved in so many different fields of activity. He was not just a writer and a minister, but he also was involved in all these social movements, the labor movement and cooperative movement that I mentioned, but also the farmers movement in Japan. He wrote about not just religion, but also sort of like science and geology. He had these very diverse set of interests that sort of makes him perhaps hard to define in a clear cut way. So some people see him as this praiseworthy figure, while others point to his sort of wartime activities. And even though he was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in the post war period, some people say that he ultimately didn't receive the prize because of his acts of wartime collaboration during World War II. But yeah, I guess in terms of his legacy and why we should pay attention to him today, maybe one of his major legacies is the sort of social concerns. And really his message that speaks to not just the economic inequalities that he saw as a major problem during his time, but also that we see in today's world. And his sort of view for how to make this better was again based on cooperatives. Going back to again the title of my book, Cooperative Evangelist, that he advocated this view of cooperative world in which he saw basically communism and the sort of prevailing ideologies of his day as being on the one side Soviet style Communism and on the other side capitalism, which was really being put to the test during the Great Depression, and how this unchecked drive for economic profit has drove the economy, basically collapsed the economy and made everybody much more struggle, much more economically. So as an alternative to that, because he saw these kind of prevailing models as tending to concentrate power in the hands of just a few people, he wanted to propose this alternative cooperative economy, where decision making was much more distributed and more people would have say in how cooperatives or these large organizations were being run and more people would be able to receive the dividends of their, their activities and profits. And he was able to write a book about this called Brotherhood Economics, which was published based on a series of lectures that he gave during his 1936 lecture tour at the Rochester Colgate Divinity School in Upstate New York. And this book was a major hit. I think the book was translated after it was published in the US first. It was translated into about 17 different languages and published in 25 different countries. So it certainly resonated with the people who were living in America during this Depression era America at the time. And I think his messages for how we should deal with this issue of economic inequality and increasing inequality and poverty is a message that still speaks us to. Speaks to us today.
- [78:15]
Shatranjay Mall
Thank you. Thank you, Beau, for taking so much time to talk with me today about your excellent book. I really enjoyed talking to you about it. And as you just mentioned, I mean, we are sort of living in times that maybe have parallels or echoes with the times that Kagawa lived in, whether it's sort of the issue of poverty or inequality or war and peace and so on. So maybe turning back to thinking about Kagawa and learning about him through your book might serve us well today. So before we end, could you tell us what you are working on right now and what's next for you?
- [78:55]
Dr. Bo Tao
So my current research is still a sort of extension, I guess you could say, of my PhD project. Just because Kagawa, he had so many interests and his life touches upon so many different strands of modern Japanese history and society. And also. So, yeah, like one thing that I've been trying to do is just to really kind of reconstruct and look at the different connections that Kagawa was able to establish through the international missionary network that was so instrumental to his rise and his renown as a religious figure. Another potential area of research I'm considering is the sort of post war cooperation between Japan and the US in the area of sort of English language instruction and education. And this is also because Kagawa, he was involved, he and one of his associates, I believe was involved in the founding of this kind of English language instruction school in postwar Japan, which I think was also sort of influenced by the occupation called the Nichibe Kaiwa Da Kun. And you can see how Kagawa was also involved in this. For example, he wrote the foreword for this book called New Words and Essential Abbreviations, this kind of short primer on English language terminology and slang that was used by the occupation forces. And I still haven't really figured out how he was asked to write the preface to this book, but he was definitely involved in some sort of way. And I'm trying to right now figure out if there's any sort of interesting connections between his sort of religious, social activities and his kind of interest in Nichibe Kaiwa US Japan language communication instruction.
- [81:23]
Shatranjay Mall
Thank you both. Those are really fascinating projects. So I really look forward to seeing how your projects turn out and reading your works in the future. And I would encourage our listeners to follow up with your work in the future, not only to purchase this book, but also sort of keep up with your future work as well. So thank you again. So this was an episode of New Books in Japanese Studies in which we interviewed Dr. Bo Tao about his new book, Cooperative Evangelist Kagawa Toyohiko and His World, 1888-1960. So thank you again, Bo. Thank you for your time.
- [82:08]
Dr. Bo Tao
Thank you, Chevanchi. This was great. Foreign. Have come and gone once again. But if you've forgotten to get that special someone in your life a gift. Well, Mint Mobile is extending their holiday offer of half off unlimited wireless. So here's the idea. You get it now, you call it an early present for next year. What do you have to lose? Give it a try@mintmobile.com Switch limited time.
- [82:42]
Shatranjay Mall
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- [82:51]
Dr. Bo Tao
See terms.