Kagawa Toyohiko

Toyohiko Kagawa

Toyohiko and his wife Haru (l.)

At Princeton Theological Seminary

Kagawa Toyohiko ( Japanese 賀 川 豊 彦 ; born July 10, 1888 in Kobe , Japan , † April 23, 1960 ) was a Japanese Christian reformer, pacifist , author and union activist. For a long time, Kagawa was concerned with ways of introducing Christian principles into social and economic systems. His calling to help the poor led him to live with them. He founded schools, hospitals and churches.

Childhood and youth

Kagawa's parents, a philanthropic businessman and a concubine , died in childhood. So he came to a school where he was taught by the two American missionaries Drs. Harry W. Myers and Charles A. Logan, who also took him into their homes. This is how Kagawa learned English and became a Christian after attending a Bible class and being rejected by his remaining family as a result. He attended Tokyo Presbyterian College and later matriculated at Kobe Theological Seminary. During his studies, he struggled with the great role that seminarians placed on technical aspects of doctrines . Rather, he believed that the deed represented the truth of Christian doctrines, as the parable of the Good Samaritan suggests.

activist

In 1909 Kagawa came to the Shinkawa slum of Kobe to work there as a missionary, social worker and sociologist. In 1914 he moved to the USA to study what ways there are to eradicate poverty. In 1915 he published the work Himmin Shinri no Kenkyū ( 貧民 心理 の 研究 , "Investigations into the psyche of the poor", English Researches in the Psychology of the Poor ), which was based on his experience and recorded many aspects of the social structure of slums, which Until then, the Japanese of the middle class were largely unknown, such as phenomena of a parallel legal system, such as prostitution outside of the prostitution that was then legal by the state, informal marriages from a state perspective, etc.

Damage from the great Kantō earthquake, 1923

In 1921 and 1922, Kagawa was imprisoned in Japan for participating in union strikes . During his stay in prison he wrote his novels Shisen o koete ( 死 線 を 越 え て , German rebellion and sacrifice, 1929) and Taiyō o iru mono ( 太陽 を 射 る も の , English Shooting at the Sun ). The former is a semi-autobiographical consideration of his time among Kobe's poor. After his release, Kagawa got involved in the organization of a charity in Tokyo after the great Kanto earthquake in 1923 and took part in the campaign for the introduction of universal adult suffrage for men in 1925.

In America, 1935

He organized parts of the Japanese trade union movement in the form of the Yūaikai ( 友愛 会 , later up to the split Nippon Rōdō Sōdōmei , English Japanese Federation of Labor ) from Suzuki Bunji in Kansai as well as the Zenkoku Hisen Dōmei ( 全国非 戦 同盟 , English National Anti- War League ) of 1928. During this period he also continued his evangelism among the poor of Japan and advocated women's suffrage and a peaceful foreign policy. In 1926 he participated in the founding of the Workers 'and Peasants' Party ( Rōdō-Nōmin-tō , English), which split again in the same year. Between 1926 and 1934 he worked in evangelism through the Kami no Kuni UNDO ( 神の国運動 , "Motion land of God '" English. Kingdom of God Movement together ).

In 1940, Kagawa publicly apologized to China for the Japanese occupation in China and was imprisoned again for it. After his release he returned to the USA despite the hopelessness to prevent a war between the two nations. To continue his commitment to women's suffrage in Japan, he returned there. After Japan's surrender in World War II , he received an imperial mandate for the mansion during the Japanese interim government under Prince Higashikuni . In 1945 he participated in the founding of the Socialist Party of Japan (SPJ).

Kagawa wrote over 150 books and was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1947 and 1948 , and for the Nobel Peace Prize in 1954 and 1955 . Kagawa was posthumously awarded the second highest honor in Japan, the Order of the Sacred Treasure . In the same year, on April 23, the day of his death, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America commemorated him as a social renewer.

Brotherhood economy

Kagawa's economic theory, as presented in his book Brotherhood Economics , defended the view that the Christian Church, the trade union and peace movements should work together in a powerful union of convenience to offer a realistic alternative to capitalism , state socialism and fascism .

3D agriculture

In the 1930s he pointed out that erosion problems could be avoided by having Japan's highland farmers plant fodder trees for animal fodder, and convinced many to do so.

So he became a pioneer of modern forest horticulture and the inspiration for the pioneer of the permaculture principle Robert Hart .

Saint

Evangelical

The Evangelical Church in Germany plans a day of remembrance in the Evangelical Name Calendar for Kagawa as the Church's teacher on April 24th .

Kagawa's Memorial Day for the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America is April 23 .

(For the remembrance of the Evangelical Lutheran saints, see Confessio Augustana , Article 21.)

Anglican

Kagawa is honored by the Anglican Episcopal Church of the United States of America as a saint with a memorial day on April 23 and referred to in this context as a "Prophetic Witness" ("prophetic witness").

Well-known quotes

• In 1946 at the Tokyo Imperial Palace in front of Emperor Hirohito : “Everyone who will be great among you should be the servant of all. The sovereignty of a ruler, Your Majesty, is in the hearts of the people. Only by serving others can a man or a nation be pleasing to God. "
• “The only power of communism is to diagnose some of the diseases of a troubled society. He has no cure. It only creates an infantile paralysis of the social order. "
• “I read in a book that a man named Christ went to do good. It was very disturbing to me that I was so content with simply going over it. "

Works

• Rebellion and sacrifice. The struggle for life of a modern Japanese . D. Gundert, Stuttgart 1928 (Original title: Shisen o koete . Translated by Wilhelm Gundert ).
• A piece of pomegranate . East Asia Mission, Berlin 1933 (Original title: Zakuro no Kataware . Translated by Karl Weidinger).
• A grain of wheat . Basler Missionsbuchhandlung / Evangelische Missionsbuchhandlung, Basel / Stuttgart 1954 (Original title: Hitotsubu 　no 　mugi . Translated by Egon Hessel).

literature

• Kagawa Toyohiko . 2005. Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved December 15, 2005 from Encyclopædia Britannica Online.
• BookRags Biography on Kagawa Toyohiko . BookRags. Retrieved December 15, 2005 on the World Wide Web.
• Toyohiko Kagawa, Japanese Original . 2001. Christian History Institute. Retrieved December 15, 2005.
• Richard H. Drummond: A History of Christianity in Japan . Eerdmans, Grand Rapids 1971. (Drummond dedicates a section of his history to Kagawa's work and influence.)
• Unconquerable Kagawa . 1951. Reader's Digest. Pp. 29-31.
• Gerhard Rosenkranz: Flaming heart in God's hand . Basler Missionsbuchhandlung, Basel. Evangelischer Missionsverlag, Stuttgart 1954.
• William Axling: Kagawa . Quaker publishing house, Bad Pyrmont 1939.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ William Axling: Kagawa . Harper and Brothers Publishers, New York and London 1946, Chapter 3, pp. 28-41.
2. ↑ Archive link ( Memento of the original from March 4, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
3. ^ Nobel Peace Prize Nomination Database
4. ^ Kagawa Toyohiko: Brotherhood Economics . Harper & Brothers, New York and London 1936.
5. ↑ Kagawa Toyohiko in the Ecumenical Lexicon of Saints
6. ↑ Kabelitz, Norb. "Cross" fertilization. ( Memento of the original from April 17, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Crossings Community. 

Web links

Commons : Kagawa Toyohiko  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

• Newspaper article about Kagawa Toyohiko in the 20th century press kit of the ZBW - Leibniz Information Center for Economics .

Japanese name: As is common in Japan, the family name comes before the first name in this article . Thus, Kagawa is the family name, Toyohiko the first name.