Toyohiko Kagawa

Consumer co-operatives in Japan. Kagawa, a Christian social reformer who lived in a Kobe slum, helped found consumer co-operatives in Kobe and Osaka in the early 1920s so working families could buy rice and daily goods at fair prices. These grew into Co-op Kobe, one of the world's largest consumer co-operatives, and he became a leading figure in Japan's wider co-operative movement.