Bo Tao
Bo Tao (Ph.D. in history, Yale 2019) is an assistant professor at Chiba University. His research focuses on state-religion relations in modern Japan and transpacific encounters. He is currently writing a book on Kagawa based on his dissertation, “Imperial Pacifism: Kagawa Toyohiko and Christianity in the Asia-Pacific War.”
Updated September 2023
Stories from This Author
The Readmission: Toyohiko Kagawa’s 1950 US Tour
Sept. 14, 2023 • Bo Tao , Greg Robinson
Some time ago, we did a column for Discover Nikkei on the Japanese evangelist and social reformer Toyohiko Kagawa. During his lifetime, Kagawa was renowned as a prolific writer—he authored some 150 books—and apostle of Christian socialism. Because of the spiritual dimension he brought to his leadership of movements for social and economic justice in the pre-World War II period, his American missionary associates often referred to him as the “Gandhi of Japan”—though when Kagawa actually met Mahatma Gandhi in …
Laying Down the Law of Love: The 1936 American Tour of Toyohiko Kagawa
March 12, 2021 • Greg Robinson , Bo Tao
It was the middle of December 1935. The Nippon Yusen liner Asama Maru had just concluded a fourteen-day voyage. After leaving Yokohama and stopping at a port of call in Honolulu, it arrived in San Francisco. As Asama Maru sailed into San Francisco Bay, its 800 passengers looked on, no doubt thinking of the ventures and reunions that lay ahead. Among the crowd on deck was a 47 year-old Japanese man whose entry into the United States was unexpectedly halted. …
