was a Japanese professor and economist who studied Marxism and was active in Japanese communism. He was the editor and publisher of multiple magazines and journals and his academic work includes translations of the works of Edwin R. A. Seligman, Irving Fisher, Nicolaas Pierson, and Das Kapital.
Born to a retainer for the Kikkawa clan and municipal official, Kawakami was raised and educated in Iwakuni and Yamaguchi. He graduated from Tokyo Imperial University in 1902 and became a professor at the university. Kawakami left the university to join Itō Shōshin's Garden of Selflessness after being inspired by Arnold Toynbee and Leo Tolstoy. He lived with the sect for two months before returning to Tokyo.
Kawakami received a job at the Kyoto Imperial University in 1908 and became a professor in 1915. He studied in Europe shortly before and during the outbreak of World War I and wrote Tale of Poverty in response to the wealth inequality he witnessed. He started studying Marxism in 1919 and reorganised his lecture around the writings of Karl Marx in 1927.
Ikuo Oyama and the Labour-Farmer Party were supported by Kawakami during the 1928 Japanese general election, but the party was suppressed after the March 15 incident and Kawakami was fired from the university. Kawakami was arrested for his political activities multiple times. He was a candidate of the New Labour-Farmer Party in the 1930 Japanese general election. He joined the Japanese Communist Party in 1932 and was the editor of Shimbun Akahata. The police arrested Kawakami in 1933, and he was sentenced to prison for five years. He was released in 1937 and spent the remainder of his life writing poetry and his autobiography.
Early life and education Hajime Kawakami was born in Nishikimi, on 20 October 1879, to Sunao Kawakami and Tazu Matasaburō. The 30-year-old Sunao and 16-year-old Tazu, who were distant relatives, divorced after nine months. Hajime was born four months after his parents divorced. Sunao, who remarried before Hajime's birth, took Hajime from Tazu.
Sunao was raised in poverty as his father Sai'ichirō died when he was five and Sunao was not eligible for his father's stipend until he reached the age of 20. Sunao became a retainer for the Kikkawa clan and fought against the Tokugawa shogunate during the Meiji Restoration. After the restoration he was made village chief of Nishikimi. Sunao served as village chief until 1889, when Nishikimi and Iwakuni were merged together and he was elected to lead the new town. He retired from this position in 1905, and worked as a steward for the Kikkawa family for twenty years.
Kawakami was raised by his stepmother, grandmother, and wet nurse. His wet nurse was dismissed after his grandmother discovered she had difficulties breastfeeding and had asthma. Tazu came back into Hajime's household when he was two years old. However, he was raised by Tazu's mother-in-law Iwa while Tazu raised Nobusuke, his half-brother. Epilepsy was present in other members of the Kawakami family and Hajime later believed that tantrums he had as a child were instead epileptic attacks.
At age 4 Kawakami started his education in Nishikimi. This was one year earlier than normal and might have been due to his father also serving as head of the school. He was not promoted to the next grade after his first year and required private tutoring. He was educated at the Iwakuni School from age 8 to 13. Kawakami and his friend published a weekly magazine titled Kaihō. He graduated from the Iwakuni School in 1893 and left home to study at the Yamaguchi Middle and High School in Yamaguchi.
During Kawakami's last year at high school he transferred from the literature department to law despite opposition from school officials and his German language teacher. In September 1898, Kawakami was admitted to the political science department of the law faculty of Tokyo Imperial University. This was the first time that he travelled outside of his home province and for the next ten years he was in Tokyo, four for education and six after graduation. His uncle Kin'ichi, who was a graduate of the university's first senior class in 1879 and director of The Sumitomo Bank, paid for Kawakami's tuition. Kawakami was critical of his economic professors as according to him their teaching was simply standing at lectures and reading translated notes of Gustav von Schönberg. He graduated 6th in his class in 1902.
Career Tokyo Imperial University After graduating from college Kawakami attempted to meet Kinoshita Naoe and gain a job at The Mainichi, but his uncle refused to allow him to meet Naoe. , one of his university teachers, helped Kawakami become employed teaching agricultural economics in the faculty of agriculture.
Biographers of Kawakami and Kawakami himself dismiss his early writings on economics, when he was influenced by the German school of nationalist economics, as unoriginal. The 1905 translation of Edwin R. A. Seligman's Economic Interpretation of History by Kawakami was praised by academics, including Sakuzō Yoshino, and it brought attention to the concept of economic determinism. Kawakami was the editor of the (National Academic Society) magazine. He published his first book, (Fundamental Principles of Political Economics), at his own expense in 1905.
Garden of Selflessness During Kawakami's studies he discovered the life of Arnold Toynbee, an economics professor who quit his job to teach the poor in a slum district. Leo Tolstoy's My Religion made Kawakami feel "as though I had been struck by electricity". Several days after reading My Religion Kawakami read the religious tract Selfless Love by Itō Shōshin, the founder of the communal sect Garden of Selflessness (Muga En). He met with Itō three days later on 4 December 1905. Itō had trained for the priesthood of Pure Land Buddhism, but he suffered a religious crisis that caused him to leave Pure Land Buddhism and form the Garden of Selflessness, which combined Buddhism, Christianity, and Tolstoy's humanism, in Sugamo in 1905. Kawakami met with Itō twice and was convinced to abandon economics for teaching philosophy.
Under the pen name Zenzan Bansuirō, Kawakami wrote a series of articles for Yomiuri titled (Critique of socialism). The 36th installment of this was a public letter in which he revealed his true name and announced that he would proselytize the "truth of selfless love" rather than write. In December 1905, Kawakami resigned from his post to teach to the poor. He gave up his apartment and sold all of his books except for Tōson Shimazaki's Young Greens. He lived with the Garden of Selflessness for two months and built a house near the main hall.
Itō mentored Kawakami, but Kawakami soon came to disagree with him. Itō's idea of selfless love called for people to accept the world as it was which was in contrast to Kawakami's desire to reform society. On 6 February 1906, he left the sect and returned to Tokyo.
Kyoto Imperial University and Marxism An unemployed Kawakami became a journalist in 1907, and took over the magazine (New Magazine of Japanese Economics) from Matsuzaki. A faculty member at Kyoto Imperial University became ill and Kawakami accepted an offer to replace him in 1908. He became a lecturer at the university in 1908, and then an assistant professor in 1909. Gail Lee Bernstein wrote that Kawakmai's time in Kyoto was the most tranquil time of his life. He translated books by Irving Fisher and Nicolaas Pierson during his first year in Kyoto.
The Ministry of Education awarded Kawakami a scholarship to study abroad in 1913, and he returned two years later. He sought to study German idealism in Germany. He could not bring his family with him as the grant was too small. Sailing from Kobe for two months he arrived in Brussels in January 1914, and then spent two months in Paris. Kawakami became more nationalist during his time in Paris and noted that the city flourished due to its tourism, but this caused the decadence of the city. During his time in Paris he was able to meet with Shimazaki several times. Kawakami was in Berlin for two months before being forced to leave on 15 August 1914, due to the outbreak of World War I. He arrived in London on 18 August and remained there for two months for returning to Japan. He was promoted to professor in March 1915, and was elected as a Kyoto Imperial University councillor in May 1919.
After returning to Japan Kawakami started work on a series of articles in Asahi that would become (Tale of Poverty). He was critical of wealth inequality in the west; Japanese economists viewed poverty as a sign of underdevelopment. Ōuchi Hyōei stated that Kawakami's work told his generation of the existence of poverty in Japan. The book was a bestseller and was reprinted 30 times by 1919.
Kushida Tamizo, a pupil of Kawakami, criticised his theory of poverty as laid out in Tale of Poverty. Kawakami wrote that the wealthy purchasing luxury goods help caused poverty, but Tamizo believed it was due to the exploitation of the workers by capitalists and that individual morality could not solve poverty. Tamizo's criticism caused Kawakami to reconsider his beliefs.
Kawakami started studying Marxism in 1919. His tenure at the university meant that he was able to study Marxism unlike other Japanese figures, such as Hitoshi Yamakawa and Sakai Toshihiko, who were censored. Material from Das Kapital was added to his course in 1919, but he did not reorganise his lecture around Karl Marx's writing until 1927.
In January 1919, Kawakami started publishing his own journal, (Research of Social Problems), and devoted the first ten issues to historical materialism, class warfare, and the labor theory of value. The circulation of Research of Social Problems rose to 20,000 by middle of the year. Kawakami faced censorship, such as his article on the Russian Revolution of 1905 being censored after its publication in April 1921. Research of Social Problems ended publication in 1926.
Economics was within the law department of Kyoto Imperial University until it was given its own department in 1919. Kawakami was the chair of the faculty of economics until he resigned due to health reasons in 1924. The Peace Preservation Law resulted in more students being arrested at Kyoto Imperial University than any other university and Kawakami's house was searched, but he was not arrested.
Suppression and prison Ikuo Oyama, a colleague that Kawakami wrote articles and journals with, ran as a Labour-Farmer Party candidate in the 1928 Japanese general election. Kawakami helped campaign for Oyama during the election. Oyama lost, but , one of Kawakami's students, was elected to the National Diet. After the election the Labour-Farmer Party was suppressed and left-wingers were suppressed across Japan's universities. Kawakami was fired from the university during the March 15 incident for campaigning for Oyama.
In December 1928, Kawakami attended a reorganisation of the Labour-Farmer Party in Tokyo, but he and other attendees were arrested. He was in a jail for half a day before being released. In February 1929, Kawakami was arrested at a meeting of the All-Nation Farmers' Union, but a group of people from the All-Nation Farmers' Union led by Diet member Yamamoto Senji successfully demanded Kawakami's release. Senji was murdered by right-wingers on 5 March 1929, and Kawakami gave the funeral oration.
The New Labour-Farmer Party () was established in November 1929, with Oyama as Central Committee chair and Kawakami as editor and financier of the party's newspapers. The party participated in the 1930 election and Kawakami moved to Tokyo one month before the election to aid the party's campaign and also ran as the party's candidate in Kyoto's 5th Ward. Kawakami lost, but Oyama was elected. However, Kawakami became disillusioned with the party as he knew that Oyama was not a communist.