Professor Kawai researches the issue of nuclear weapons from the perspective of civil society and international law, specializing in international humanitarian law. He holds a Masters Degree in International Politics from Aoyama Gakuin University and a Ph.D. in Multicultural Sociology from Nagasaki University. After working as a senior researcher at the Toda Peace Institute, he assumed his current position in April 2023. Kawai participated in the 2017 conference to negotiate the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons as a member of civil society and served the secretariat for the Japan NGO Network for Nuclear Weapons Abolition.