was a Japanese Marxist

economist An economist is a professional and practitioner in the social science discipline of economics. The individual may also study, develop, and apply theories and concepts from economics and write about economic policy. Within this field there are ...

of the Taishō and early

Shōwa period Shōwa may refer to: * Hirohito (1901–1989), the 124th Emperor of Japan, known posthumously as Emperor Shōwa * Showa Corporation, a Japanese suspension and shock manufacturer, affiliated with the Honda keiretsu Japanese eras * Jōwa (Heian ...

Biography

Born in Yamaguchi, he graduated from

Tokyo Imperial University , abbreviated as or UTokyo, is a public research university located in Bunkyō, Tokyo, Japan. Established in 1877, the university was the first Imperial University and is currently a Top Type university of the Top Global University Project by ...

. After writing for ''

Yomiuri Shimbun The (lit. ''Reading-selling Newspaper'' or ''Selling by Reading Newspaper'') is a Japanese newspaper published in Tokyo, Osaka, Fukuoka, and other major Japanese cities. It is one of the five major newspapers in Japan; the other four are ...

'', he attained a

professorship Professor (commonly abbreviated as Prof.) is an academic rank at universities and other post-secondary education and research institutions in most countries. Literally, ''professor'' derives from Latin as a "person who professes". Professors ...

economics Economics () is the social science that studies the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services. Economics focuses on the behaviour and interactions of economic agents and how economies work. Microeconomics analyzes ...

Kyoto Imperial University , mottoeng = Freedom of academic culture , established = , type = Public (National) , endowment = ¥ 316 billion (2.4 billion USD) , faculty = 3,480 (Teaching Staff) , administrative_staff = 3,978 (Total Staff) , students = ...

. Increasingly inclined toward

Marxism Marxism is a left-wing to far-left method of socioeconomic analysis that uses a materialist interpretation of historical development, better known as historical materialism, to understand class relations and social conflict and a dialectical ...

, he participated in the March 15 incident of 1928 and was expelled from the university as a

subversive Subversion () refers to a process by which the values and principles of a system in place are contradicted or reversed in an attempt to transform the established social order and its structures of power, authority, hierarchy, and social norms. Sub ...

. The following year, he joined the formation of a political party, Shinrōtō. Kawakami went on to publish a Marxist-oriented economics

journal A journal, from the Old French ''journal'' (meaning "daily"), may refer to: *Bullet journal, a method of personal organization *Diary, a record of what happened over the course of a day or other period *Daybook, also known as a general journal, a ...

, ''Studies of Social Problems''. After joining the outlawed

Japanese Communist Party The is a Left-wing politics, left-wing to Far-left politics, far-left List of political parties in Japan, political party in Japan. With approximately 270,000 members belonging to 18,000 branches, it is one of the largest non-governing Communis ...

, he was arrested in 1933 and sent to

prison A prison, also known as a jail, gaol (dated, standard English, Australian, and historically in Canada), penitentiary (American English and Canadian English), detention center (or detention centre outside the US), correction center, corre ...

. After his release in 1937, he translated ''

Das Kapital ''Das Kapital'', also known as ''Capital: A Critique of Political Economy'' or sometimes simply ''Capital'' (german: Das Kapital. Kritik der politischen Ökonomie, link=no, ; 1867–1883), is a foundational theoretical text in materialist phi ...

'' from

German German(s) may refer to: * Germany (of or related to) ** Germania (historical use) * Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language ** For citizens of Germany, see also German nationality law **Ge ...

Japanese Japanese may refer to: * Something from or related to Japan, an island country in East Asia * Japanese language, spoken mainly in Japan * Japanese people, the ethnic group that identifies with Japan through ancestry or culture ** Japanese diaspor ...

. Kawakami spent the remainder of his life writing

essays An essay is, generally, a piece of writing that gives the author's own argument, but the definition is vague, overlapping with those of a letter, a paper, an article, a pamphlet, and a short story. Essays have been sub-classified as formal a ...

; novels;

poetry Poetry (derived from the Greek ''poiesis'', "making"), also called verse, is a form of literature that uses aesthetic and often rhythmic qualities of language − such as phonaesthetics, sound symbolism, and metre − to evoke meanings i ...

; and his autobiography,''Jijoden'', which was written secretly between 1943 and 1945 and serialized in 1946. It became a best-seller and was "extravagantly praised as being unprecedented in Japanese letters."

References

External links

* Takutoshi Inoue and Kiichiro Yagi,
Two Inquirers on the Divide: Tokuzo Fukuda and Hajime Kawakami
(Faculty of Economics, Kyoto University) 1879 births 1946 deaths Japanese activists Japanese communists Japanese economists Japanese Marxists 19th-century Japanese novelists 20th-century Japanese novelists Academic staff of Kyoto University Marxian economists Marxist writers People from Yamaguchi Prefecture University of Tokyo alumni {{Japan-economist-stub