Early Years
Kawai was born in Fukuyama, Hiroshima Prefecture, and he graduated from Tokyo Imperial University in 1915. He passed the diplomatic service examination in 1918 and was appointed vice-consul to Tsinan, China in 1919. He was promoted in 1921 and served as Secretary to the Japanese Embassy in Washington, D.C. and then Secretary to the Department of Commerce in 1921. He became the Japanese Consul to Vancouver in 1925 and Tsingtao in 1928. He became Chief of the Foreign Department of the Kwantung Leased Territory in 1930 and Secretary to the Japanese Advisor to the Lytton Commission of the League of Nations.
He was appointed Consul-General to Canton in 1934 and Shanghai in 1938. Kawai was an ardent expansionist and in 1938 published The Goal of Japanese Expansion, which was published in Japanese, English and Russian, and the following year translated into Spanish. In 1938 he also published 支那事変と帝国外交 (The China Incident and Imperial Diplomacy), which was only available in Japanese.
In 1938 he was promoted to Director of the Information Bureau and official spokesman for the Foreign Ministry in Tokyo. In 1939 he served briefly as Japanese Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary to Europe and the United States before returning to Japan. Sir Robert Craigie, British Ambassador to Japan, later noted that "during his term of office as official 'spokesman' ... he displayed on several occasions open hostility to our attitude as regards Japanese actions in China and he was unpopular amongst the foreign newspaper correspondents owing to his somewhat rough manner and indifferent command of English". After leading a strike at the Foreign Ministry in 1940, he was sacked as an official spokesman but was appointed roving ambassador to Nazi-occupied Europe. It was during this appointment he became a pacifist.
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