The Origins of the Kagawa Fund
By David J. Thompson
In 1988, I was a participant in the California activities celebrating the 100th anniversary of the birth of Toyohiko Kagawa. Kagawa was a Japanese Christian leader who in the 1930’s spoke stirringly about the social gospel and the role of cooperatives. From 1914 to 1916 Kagawa studied at the Princeton Theological Seminary.
Kagawa had visited the United States on a number of occasions and was a speaker who addressed millions of people on his tours. I attended a dinner in Berkeley where, in the presence of all four of Kagawa's children, this unique individual from Japan was praised for his lifelong impact on so many in the room. Many of the attendees that night talked of his enthusiasm for the development of cooperatives in the USA. Robert Schildgen's Book Toyohiko Kagawa, Apostle of Love and Social Justice is a marvelous recounting of Kagawa' commitment to cooperatives.
The Japanese Consumer Cooperative Union (JCCU) took the lead in honoring the anniversary of Kagawa as their founder. It occurred to me that the great generation of co-op leaders and activists who had stirred cooperative development and growth in California and elsewhere in the 1930's would be the only ones to remember Kagawa. I became determined to find a way to keep Kagawa's memory alive for future co-op generations.
In studying the historical roots of California's cooperatives, I was struck by how many of the Japanese-American cooperative leaders had been impacted by post-war racism and their imprisonment in internment camps during World War II. California's Associated Cooperatives had set up a co-op in each of the internment camps. With over 10,000 daily users in the internment camp, the Manzanar Co-op in California was the second largest consumer cooperative in the USA in 1944. A book about the camp, illustrated with photos from Ansel Adams, shows many images of Manzanar Cooperative Enterprises.
Before the war, in an era of housing discrimination, and immediately after the war, it was the student co-ops in California that had been the first to open their doors to Japanese-American students. In Davis during the 1980's, US cooperators had co-hosted over 200 Japanese cooperators from the JCCU returning from participating in the massive international Anti-Nuclear demonstration at the United Nations. Many of the delegation visiting Davis were from the Kyoto region and from the university cooperatives. We visited the new student housing co-ops then being built and agreed to name one the Kagawa Co-op and one Rainbow Co-op, after the international flag of cooperation. The visit was the beginning of the idea that the Kyoto co-ops and the Davis co-ops should work together on a joint student housing project to strengthen friendship between our cooperatives and countries. Mr. Ohya, Mr. Kurimoto of JCCU, and Mr. Inoue of the Kyoto co-ops had encouraged the visit to Davis.
The impact in America of Toyohiko Kagawa, the co-op role for California's Japanese American cooperators, and the anti-nuclear delegation visit suggested that student cooperatives would be the right vessel for honoring Mr. Kagawa.
As Director of International Relations for the NCBA, I initiated discussions with the JCCU about their making a contribution to NCBA through the Cooperative Development Foundation (CDF) to establish a permanent Kagawa Fund. I then met annually with JCCU leaders during the meetings of the International Cooperative Alliance. By the time of the ICA meeting in Budapest in 2003, the groundwork had been laid for action.
Mr. Isao Takamura, a disciple of Kagawa and President of JCCU, announced to me that JCCU had agreed to establish the Kagawa Fund and they would make a contribution of $50,000. Present were Masao Ohya, Vice President of International Relations for the JCCU, and Akira Kurimoto, Director of International Relations for the JCCU. Mr. Ohya had been sent to the USA by Mr. Kagawa in 1959 to work at the Palo Alto Co-op. JCCU agreed to my suggestion that the Kagawa Fund be established to specifically foster student cooperative development. It was felt that Mr. Kagawa would be honored that his life work was being commemorated by creating student cooperatives in the USA.
The Kagawa Fund keeps his memory alive in the nation where Toyohiko Kagawa had great impact.
Updated in 2013.
David Thompson, President, Twin Pines Cooperative Foundation.