In 1932, Kazuo Kawai arrived at UCLA to take up a position as visiting instructor in geography and history—the two departments divided his services. The hiring made the young Kawai, then just 27 years old, one of only two dozen Nikkei to hold teaching positions at American universities. He was arguably the first from the Nisei generation.
In the succeeding years, Kawai taught courses in Far Eastern History, and also European History. According to Mike Mansfield, the future US Senator and Ambassador to Japan, who was one of Kawai’s students at UCLA, he was an inspiring teacher. In an interview late in his long life, Mansfield stated that Kawai had been “the person who strengthened and revitalized and kept up my interest in the Far East.”
During the succeeding years, Kawai consolidated his academic reputation. First, his essay “Significance of Japanese Industrial and Commercial Growth,” which appeared in a supplement to the Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science in September 1937, examined Japan’s economic development. Another highlight was his historical article “Anglo-German rivalry in the Yangtze region of China, 1895-1902,” which appeared in Pacific Historical Review in 1939. In it, Kawai discussed the rivalry between Germany and England at the turn of the century concerning economic and political concessions in China. He concluded on a negative note: “The efforts of Germans over a period of years to gain a foothold in China’s Yangtze Basin netted them nothing but British resentment.”
He published a chapter titled “Domestic Factors in Japanese Foreign Policy,” in The Renaissance of Asia (1941), an anthology of lectures by prominent University of California faculty members. He produced a number of book reviews for the Pacific Historical Review and other academic journals. (Not all the books he reviewed were scholarly: In a review of John Gunther’s best-selling journalistic report, Inside Asia, Kawai proclaimed, “The book is tremendously informative, albeit unreliable in places; and as an exhibition of journalistic virtuosity, it is nothing less than a spectacular showpiece.”)
His most substantial writing achievement in these years was his Stanford PhD thesis, “The Boxer Protocol Negotiations,” which dealt with the aftermath of the 1900 Boxer rebellion, an anti-foreign uprising in China put down by a multinational military force, and the heavy indemnity payment forced on the Qing government by the Western powers. However, it has not been frequently cited in later works on the subject. Kawai also joined scholarly associations, spoke at conferences, and organized panels.
Kawai’s burgeoning scholarly reputation notwithstanding, he found it difficult and exhausting to balance his writing with teaching and administrative chores. Once at UCLA, he seems to have put off work on his dissertation, originally promised for June 1932. In the end, he did not graduate until 1938. Rather, during his years at UCLA he felt pressure to turn out articles in order to retain his job.
In an article for Shin Sekai’s 1936 New Year’s Issue, titled “A Nisei Professor Teaches UCLA Students,” Kawai remarked that one of his main gripes about his position was the constant grind of research, which left him no time for himself. The problem was aggravated by the derisive attitude of unwitting friends who assumed that as a professor he enjoyed short hours and long vacations.
In fact, beyond teaching and research, he undertook a series of activities within Japanese communities, with the aim of encouraging and enlightening members of the Nisei generation. He addressed community groups such as the Junior Barristers, and he (and his wife) served as advisors and sponsors to Nisei student and other groups.
Perhaps Kawai's most intriguing contribution lay in the articles that he published in the Nisei press during the late 1930s. These articles, in some sense, took off where his 1926 Survey article “Three Roads” left off. They were striking in their analysis of the dilemmas faced by Japanese Americans, caught between two countries where they did not fit in, and on his own complex sense of his identity.
First, in a column he published in the 1937 new year’s edition of Kashu Mainichi, “The Creed of a Temporary American,” he pondered the question of his loyalties. He started with a flat affirmation: “I am technically not an American and never shall be.” This was not only because his Japanese birth made him forever racially ineligible for citizenship, but because his outrage over prejudice against his people made him feel (literally) alienated:
I am inordinately proud of my Japanese nationality and of the achievements of my race… Moreover I am keenly aware that America has often been rather mean and unfair to me and my people. Her prejudice-bound society often forces us to work in fruit-stands and curio shops or as lowly menials no matter how capable we may be of greater tasks. She sometimes closes the doors of her barber shops and restaurants in our faces, and shoos us into a corner of the balcony of her theatres, while other customers of a different color are ushered into better seats. She almost invariably excludes us from the more desirable neighborhoods of their cities and forces us to inhabit ramshackle dwellings on the “wrong side of the tracks.”
On rare occasions her mobs have even thrown bombs at us in attempts to intimidate us. When my life’s work is done, I hope to get away from all this and to return to the land of my childhood where in the shade of the gnarled pines beneath the old rocky crags I can live out my declining years among my own people where the amenities of life are more pleasant.
All the same, he found that America, though certainly no paradise, offered a good life to its citizens, with greater opportunity, tolerance and general goodwill. Indeed, the more he recognized the erosion of personal liberties in totalitarian countries (he did not mention which ones, but Japan was likely among them), the more he came to value and admire America.
He concluded on a patriotic note of sorts:
And knowing that I do not legally owe America anything, I shall nevertheless voluntarily endeavor not to be a parasite who enjoys her gifts while contributing nothing in return. Rather shall I volunteer to participate in the protecting and the upbuilding of the American nation so that when I take leave of her, as I eventually shall, I may leave America greater and better in some degree by my having sojourned on her shores, at least to as great a degree as my life may have been enriched and made happier by her bounties. Such is my creed as a good—though temporary—American. Could America ask for more from her own citizens?
In two further essays, “College Grads Advised to Gird Themselves for the Realities of Life,” which appeared in the Christmas 1936 issue of Rafu Shimpo, and “Some Notes on Summer Undergraduates,” which was published in Nichi Bei in June 1937, Kawai reflected on the meaning of a college education. Completing a college education, he admitted, was not an automatic road to a good job. The community already had more doctors, lawyers and professionals than it could easily absorb. Too many brilliant Nisei completed their education, only to find that the only jobs open to them were at fruit stands.
What is more, education did not prove that one was actually smart, or even that the graduate was a good person—there were college men in prison. Not all Nisei were cut out to attend college. What a college education did offer the student was the ability to think critically, to be skeptical about the news they heard and learn to search for information. It also gave the student an opportunity to appreciate things of the mind and spirit, learn good taste, and be more sophisticated, such that they could live a good life whatever their level of income.
In the 1938 new year’s issue of Shin Sekai (New World Sun) he published an article titled “Nisei Urged to Strive for American Realization of Japanese as Human Beings.” In it, Kawai linked his cosmopolitan goals for Nisei’s individual social development with the good of the Japanese as a race:
Being good and active citizens of the American community is the first step in demonstrating that people of the Japanese race are as human and understanding as anyone else. Achieving success in business or in any line of work so as to win a respected place in the community is one way in which every Nisei can help to have the Japanese regarded favorably in the eyes of the American public.
The Nisei had to learn to mix with the general public so as to present the Japanese cause in its best light, not so much via direct political propaganda, but by serving as cultural ambassadors and persuading other Americans that Japanese were not inherently evil and barbaric. “In this situation the Nisei remain as the sole hope for a proper interpretation of Japan to America. They should understand American psychology, for they are Americans themselves in culture and social background although not in race. They also should understand Japan, because they are Japanese in race although not in culture or in political allegiance.”
Finally the Nisei must strive to produce at least a few talented writers and artists from among their number. He praised Lin Yutang’s “My Country and My People” and Pearl Buck’s “The Good Earth” as examples of creative works which had helped shift public opinion in favour of China. “There is need for writers and lecturers and movie directors and every kind of capable holder of opinion who will do for Japan what Lin Yutang, Pearl Buck, and others have done for China.”
In the same year’s new year’s issue of Rafu Shimpo, Kawai produced a short article, “ Every Nisei Ought to Belong to the JACL.” In it he endorsed the Japanese American Citizens League and recommended that all Nisei become members. “Although we of the Japanese race have the reputation of being a cooperative people, actually our community is gravely weakened by too many organizations with limited objectives pulling in different directions. In these times when intolerance and prejudice threaten the rights of minorities even in democratic America, we must learn to cooperate more efficiently to protect our common interests.” The JACL, he concluded, was that only Nisei group “able to serve as the lowest common denominator through which the weight of all elements can be added together to pull toward a common goal.
In April 1941, Kawai spoke to an intercollegiate audience of Associated Japanese Student clubs, with 40 Nisei students from UCLA, USC, and Redlands in attendance. His talk was titled: “Don’t Repeat My Mistakes.” Building on his previous article, “Some Notes on Summer Undergraduates,” Kawai declared that a college education was more than mere book learning: it was part of the student’s personality and social development. Many Nisei, he stated, lacked the home background of Americans, and needed to learn social graces such as correct dress, use of proper language, and ability to mix with (white) Americans.
He cited his own mistakes as a 17-year-old freshman on the Vernon Ave. campus, urging his listeners to avoid them. The best way to improve social skills, he said, was through making contacts with individuals. Significantly, Kawai warned the student club members against hanging out together with other Nisei in large numbers, because it was too conspicuous and aroused resentment.
Even more, he advised them to keep a distance from Japanese communities after graduation: “He concluded with a warning against wasting a college education by returning to the narrow confines of the Japanese community to lose all advantages of four years at the university.” Whereas previously he had urged Nisei to adopt cosmopolitan attitudes and mix more with non-Japanese so as to better represent the Japanese race, here he went so far as to propose that the Nisei could best serve the community by abandoning it.
© 2025 Greg Robinson
