Count Kaneko Kentarō (金子 堅太郎, February 4, 1853 – May 16, 1942) was a statesman, diplomat, and legal scholar in Meiji period Japan.

[1] During the Russo-Japanese War, he engaged in promotion activities in the United States and contributed to Japan's victory.

He also developed a wide circle of contacts in America, including lawyers, scientists, journalists, and industrialists.

While at Harvard, Kaneko and Komura visited the home of Alexander Graham Bell and spoke on an experimental telephone with a fellow Japanese student, Izawa Shunji.

In 1891, Kaneko was elected to the prestigious Institute of International Law, traveling to its general meeting in Geneva the next year as part of his campaigning to revise the unequal treaties Japan had signed during its forced "opening" in the late 1850s.

[1] In 1900, Kaneko was appointed as Minister of Justice under the fourth Itō administration and was made baron (danshaku) in the kazoku peerage system in 1907.

When Kaneko met Roosevelt, the president asked for a book that would help explain the character of the Japanese people—what motivates them, their culture and spiritual education in Japan.

According to the records of the America-Japan Society, Kaneko Kentaro founded that organization in Tokyo, in 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 Japan-America Alliance Association (日米同志会, Nichibei Dōshikai), a political association calling for a "Japanese-American Alliance", together with future Prime Minister Takeo Miki.