According to the records of the America-Japan Society, Kentaro Kaneko founded that organization in Tokyo, on March 1917, and became its first president. In 1938, during a time of increasingly strident anti-American rhetoric from the Japanese government and press, he established the , a political association calling for a "Japanese-American Alliance", together with future Prime Minister Takeo Miki. He was one of the few senior statesmen in Japan to speak out strongly against war with the United States as late as 1941.