Michi Kawai
1877-1953 20th century
The work you begin small, with no guarantee, because no one else will begin it.
Who was Michi Kawai?
The daughter of a Shinto priest from Ise, sent at ten to a Presbyterian boarding school in Sapporo, she became in 1904 the first Japanese woman to graduate from Bryn Mawr. First Japanese national secretary of the YWCA of Japan from 1912 to 1926, in 1929 she founded Keisen Jogaku-en with nine pupils in a rented Tokyo house, a school where the lessons were Bible, languages and gardening. She spent the war years holding open, between her country and America, a door everything was pushing shut.
In their own words
In a small measure I could understand how saints and prophets felt when the call came to them while they were tilling the soil or shepherding the sheep. God uses the weakest and the humblest as His witnesses and co-workers.
Christian living is not only taught in chapel and Bible class, but in every part of daily school life. Window-cleaning is a practical lesson on the meaning of the transparency of the pure soul which sees God. Gardening is a good occasion for understanding His laws in nature.
I sat one day in the boathouse, watching the girls swimming and boating, and my heart was lifted up in prayer to God that he would use me for the girls of my country, to bring them together for mutual helpfulness.
'This is a gesture of American goodwill to Japan at this critical moment,' said my soul to me, 'therefore accept the honor, not for yourself, but for your country, and pledge yourself to stand for the cause of peace and friendship in this hour of tribulation.'