Kagawa Toyohiko, 1888–1960: An Early Exemplar of an ‘Epistemology of the South’

This chapter introduces Kagawa Toyohiko’s nature and child-centered religious education curriculum for pre-schoolers, which he designed in response to the Ministry of Education’s ‘top-down’ program of moral indoctrination. While well versed in Western theology, philosophy, and science, Kagawa also drew positively on local religious and philosophical traditions in fashioning a personalist vision for Japan’s future that critically embraced the insights of science and religion.