Unique Marxist in Pre-WWII Japan
Before WWII, the communist party was outlawed in Japan. But there were many leftists activists,
though mots of them were arrested by the police and socialist movements were totally suppressed in the then Japanese society having been put under rule of military eventually.
One of unique supporters of the communist movement was Hajime Kawakami.
Hajime Kawakami (1879 – 1946) was a Japanese Marxist economist of the Taishō and early Shōwa periods.Kawakami was notable for his writing about poverty based on his observation of social conditions of the UK and other industrialized counties.
Born in Yamaguchi, he graduated from Tokyo Imperial University. After writing for Yomiuri shimbun, he earned an economics professorship at Kyoto Imperial University. Increasingly inclined toward Marxism, he participated in the March 15 incident of 1928, and was expelled from the university as a subversive. The following year, he joined the formation of a political party Shinrōtō. Kawakami went on to publish a Marxist-oriented economics journal, Studies of Social Problems. After joining the then-outlawed Communist Party of Japan, he was arrested in 1933 and sent to prison. Following his release in 1937, he translated Das Kapital from German into Japanese. Kawakami spent the remainder of his life writing essays, novels, poetry, and the autobiography Jijoden. Jijoden 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." (Embracing Defeat, John W. Dower, p 191)
A sojourn in Europe from 1913 to 1915 on a Ministry of Education scholarship only strengthened Kawakami's attachment to Japanese customs. But this period also sowed the seeds for his conversion to Marxism just a few years later. Seeing first-hand the widespread poverty in advanced capitalist nations exposed the fundamental contradictions of capitalism. Whereas many had believed that poverty in Japan was an outcome of underdevelopment, Kawakami could see that the development of capitalism can actually aggravate the poverty of workers.Kawakami was highly impressed by Christianity as much as by Marxism. When he was a student of the Imperial University of Tokyo, he happened to attend a meeting of those who supported victims of a large-scale environmental pollution caused by a mining company. Then young Kawakami, so moved by a plight of the victims, donated not only money in his pocket but also his jacket and other belongings at the site of the meeting. When he returned to his rooming house, he further sent almost all his clothes by mail service to the anti-pollution group. Though he did not give his name, anti-pollution campaign leaders later found the young man who too generously donated so much was a student of credit but not a mad man.
In 1917, Kawakami began a series of articles in the Osaka Asahi newspaper that explored the question of poverty. The articles created a sensation at the time, due in part to Kawakami's accomplished writing style, and were later published in a book entitled Tale of Poverty (Bimbō monogatari). In addressing the question of poverty, however, his view remained a moralistic one. He suggested that poverty stems from "economic individualism" and that this could be overcome through the rich abstaining from the consumption of luxury goods, along with the government playing a more interventionist role through nationalization of industry and wealth redistribution.
Kawakami's Tale of Poverty was criticized by intellectuals who were coming under the influence of Marx, particularly his own former pupil, the economist Tamizō Kushida (1885-1934). For Kushida, the source of poverty should be located in the exploitation of workers rather than the consumption of luxury items by the bourgeoisie. Instead of appealing to the morality of the ruling class, as Kawakami suggested, Kushida emphasized the need to raise workers' class consciousness.
http://www.marxists.org/subject/japan/kawakami/biography.htm
He also experienced a drastic spiritual experience that opened his religious eyes. One night when he was writing a paper about economics with his friend, he suddenly felt a shock in his brain. Then he felt a spirit of the universe flowed into his brain while all the creatures were sinking below. He understood what complete happiness was. Though this spiritual experience did not change his career and behaviors, he thought that this incident taught him the essence of the universe.
After this experience, however, Kawakami was employed by The Yomiuri Shimbun Newspaper, and subsequently he became a lector and a professor of the Imperial Kyoto University in 1915. But he resigned the post in the University in 1928 to avoid friction with the authorities, since his study was focused on Marxism.
Kawakami was so compassionate with poor people that he supported leftist and socialist movements by donating money to activists. As he became popular, even some swindlers came to his home to receive donation. But finally, top leaders of the outlawed Japanese Communist Party came to him, receiving money and talking about matters of concern or just killing time. But among them, there was a spy of the police. This spy trapped communists into a bold bank robbery to take money for funds of their underground activities. Eventually, most of active Japanese Communist Party members, total hundreds or more, were arrested. As this spy also sometimes visited Kawakami's house, Kawakami was subsequently arrested in Tokyo in 1933. He was judged and put into a prison.
This incident was so tragic for Kawakami. The Empire of Japan was at the time gradually put under control of militarists. The Imperial Government regarded the Soviet Union as one of the most dangerous enemies. So, there was no way for an economist, such as Kawakami, who supported Marxism, to live and act freely in the then Japanese society. To avoid a heavy sentence, Kawakami promised prosecutors and judges that he would never be involved in leftist movements but would continue his study on economics privately. He could be finally released from a prison four years later in 1937 when the Imperial military got into all-out combat against China.
In 1945, the Empire of Japan fell with its militarism as it lost the war against the U.S. Freedom of speech came to prevail in Japan as the Japanese people accepted the American-style democracy. But Hajime Kawakami died in 1946.
It is unknown whether he should have become a leader of leftist movements or Christian movements if he had lived longer after WWII.
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Luk 4:20 And he closed the book, and he gave it again to the minister, and sat down. And the eyes of all them that were in the synagogue were fastened on him.
Luk 4:21 And he began to say unto them, This day is this scripture fulfilled in your ears.