Kawakami Hajime

Infobox Writer
name = Kawakami Hajime


imagesize = 128px
caption = Kawakami Hajime
pseudonym =
birthdate = October 20, 1879
birthplace = Yamaguchi Prefecture
deathdate = January 30, 1946
deathplace =
occupation = Writer, Economist
nationality = Japanese
period =
genre =
subject = Marxism
movement =
notableworks =
influences = Karl Marx
influenced =

Kawakami Hajime ( _ja. 河上肇), October 20, 1879 - January 30, 1946, was a Japanese Marxist economist of the Taishō and early Shōwa periods.

Born in Yamaguchi, he graduated from Tokyo University. After writing for "Yomiuri shimbun", he earned an economics professorship in Kyoto Imperial University. Increasingly inclined toward Marxism, in 1928, he took part in the March 15 incident, 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)

External links

* Takutoshi Inoue and Kiichiro Yagi, " [http://www.econ.kyoto-u.ac.jp/~yagi/FUkkawiy.html Two Inquirers on the Divide: Tokuzo Fukuda and Hajime Kawakami] " (Faculty of Economics, Kyoto University)