I portrayed a life of Jiuju G. Kasai who dedicated his whole life to the advancement of friendly relations between the United States and Japan. I would like to confirm the fact that he was both the patriot and the internationalist.
He was born on July 14, 1886 at a remote and lonely hamlet, along the River Fujikawa, then one of the rapidest rivers in Japan.
As a schoolboy, he received his moral training by reading Chinese classics which his father commanded. At twelve, he entered Kdfu Middle School whose progressive as well as moralistic atmosphere implanted in him a longing for liberalism and a sense of independence.
When Kasai finished the middle school in 1902, the immigration to the United States was at its height. The ambitious boy went down the Fujikawa, crossed the Pacific, and to Seattle, Washington.
In 1905 he was admitted to Broadway High School in Seattle, and in 1909 to the University of Chicago to study U. S. history and American statesmen and finally in 1913 to Harvard to pursue further studies on the American Constitution. At the high school and the University of Chicago, his excellence in oratory won him prizes of highest distinction in all-campus competitions. His oratorical prize included a trip to Washington D. C. to meet Theodore Roosevelt, who was pleased to give him the “Life and Times of Abraham Lincoln. ” Apparently this book triggered his lifelong, steadfast admiration for Lincoln. He decided to go to Chicago, the heart of the Midwest, Lincoln's country, which was the A CRITICAL BIOGRAPHY JIUJI KASAI: THE PATRIOT AND THE INTERNATIONALIST backbone of the United States. The subject of his prize winning speech at Chicago was “The Mastery of the Pacific”, which called for joint American-Japanese cooperation for peace in the Pacific. This speech should be remem-bered as the prototype of his subsequent counter-anti-Japanese movement speeches and books.
As to his active participation in political life, see Section 7 “A Chronological Record of Kasai's Main Political Activities. ”
In 1929 he was elected to the Tokyo Municipal Assembly, and in 1936, in 1937, and in 1946 to the House of Representatives (the Diet). After he retired from political life he continued to work as a bridge between America and Japan through the Japanese-American Cultural Society, Inc. which he had founded in Tokyo on Linclon's birthday in 1947.
He died on April 10, 1985 at his home in Tokyo at the age of 98 years.