Toyohiko Kagawa and the Shinkawa Slums

In December 1909, a twenty-one-year-old Japanese seminary student named Toyohiko Kagawa walked into the Shinkawa slums of Kobe — a six-block stretch of open sewers, gambling dens, and desperate poverty — and refused to leave. He rented a tiny room, barely six feet square, and began sharing it with anyone who knocked. Kagawa had been raised in wealth. His family expected a respectable career.…