NOTABLE JAPANESE

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXII, Issue 22030, 9 February 1935, Page 13

NOTABLE JAPANESE

CHRISTIAN EVANGELIST VISIT TO AUSTRALIA WORK AS A REFORMER (Received February 8, 5.5 p.m.) TOKIO, Feb. 7 Mr. Toyohiko Kagawa, noted Japanese Christian evangelist and social welfare leader, will sail for Australia on February 18 in response to an invitation to undertake a lecture tour in that country. Mr. Toyohiko Kagawa has been described as " the greatest Christian for 1000 years." He is a scholar, author, social reformer, labour leader, teacher, evangelist and mystic. It is claimed that, judged from any standpoint, he is one of the greatest and most significant men living-to-day. He was born at Kobe in 1888, his father being a political leader of some influence, and secretary to the Privy Council. Both his parents died when he was four years of age, and ho had a harsh and unsympathetic upbringing at the hands of relations. However, he completed a fairly thorough college and university education, during which ho came into contact with Christian missionaries and the Bible.

In the second year of his university course Mr. Kagawa went to the slums and lived in a room 6ft. square, in a district swarming with under-nourished and sickly children. The infantile mortality was 500 in every 1000. He lived and moved in those conditions for many years. First he became an organiser of labour unions. He performed great service in relief work after the disastrous earthquake in 1923, and in 1931 ho was appointed by the Government to the position of director of unemployment relief. The large salary attactied to this position he refused, letting the money go to the poor of the city. It was announced last Mav that there was a possibility that >»ew Zealand might, have a visit early this year from Mr. Kagawa. In a letter to the Foreign Missions secretary of the Presbyterian Church of New Zealand, Miss M. Findlav, of the Canton Mission, mentioned that at a Christian conference in Canton, Mr. Kagawa had been one of the speakers. "He told me," added Miss Findlay, " that he might bo coming to New Zealand in 1935. Someone in Melbourne had been, in communication with him about it." The Foreign Missions Committee instructed its secretary to write to Mr. Kagawa regarding the possibility of a visit.