was a Japanese author and political philosopher who was active in early Shōwa period Japan. Drawing from an eclectic range of influences, Kita was a self-described socialist who has also been described by detractors as the "ideological father of Japanese fascism", though this has been highly contested, as his writings touched equally upon pan-Asianism, Nichiren Buddhism, fundamental human rights and egalitarianism and he was involved with Chinese revolutionary circles. While his publications were invariably censored and he ceased writing after 1923, Kita was an inspiration for elements on the far-right of Japanese politics into the 1930s, particularly his advocacy for territorial expansion and a military coup. The government saw Kita's ideas as disruptive and dangerous; in 1936 he was arrested for allegedly joining the failed coup attempt of 26 February 1936 and executed on 19 August 1937.
Background Kita was born on Sado Island, Niigata Prefecture, where his father was a sake merchant and the first mayor of the local town. Sado island, which used to be used for penal transportation, had a reputation for being rebellious, and Kita took some pride in this. He studied Chinese classics in his youth and became interested in socialism at the age of 14. In 1900 he began publishing articles in a local newspaper criticizing the Kokutai ("Structure of State") theory. This led to a police investigation which was later dropped. In 1904 he moved to Tokyo, where he audited lectures at Waseda University, but never earned a university degree. He met multiple influential figures in the early socialist movement in Japan but quickly became disillusioned; the movement was, according to him, full of "opportunists".Wilson, George M. Radical Nationalists in Japan: Kita Ikki 1883-1937. Harward University Press, Cambridge, 1969.
Ideology
At age 23, Kita published his first book in 1906 after one year of research – a massive 1,000-page political treatise titled . In it, he criticized the government ideology of Kokutai and warned that socialism in Japan was in danger of degenerating into a watered down, simplified form of itself because socialists were too keen on compromising.
Theories of Japanese Politics
Kita first outlined his philosophy of nationalistic socialism in his book , published in 1906, where he criticized Marxism and class conflict-oriented socialism as outdated. He instead emphasized an exposition of the evolutionary theory in understanding the basic guidelines of societies and nations. In this book Kita explicitly promotes the platonic state of authoritarianism, emphasizing the close relationship between Confucianism and the "from above" concept of national socialism stating that Mencius is the Plato of the East and that Plato's concept of organizing a society is far preferable to Marx's.
Kita was highly critical of the State Shinto imperial cult. He argued that the dominant idea which considered the return of imperial rule under the Meiji Restoration to be a return to an eternal and unchanged Japanese mode of governance was false, and instead described it as the "Meiji Revolution". By emphasizing the difference between the different eras of imperial rule, Kita argued that the function of the Emperor should change once again to be one of a representative of the whole people, owning all agricultural land, mountains, forests, stocks, shares, enterprises worth over ¥10 million in capital, properties over ¥1 million in value, and lands over ¥100,000 in value and managing these on behalf of the nation. In order to effectively meet the needs of the people, a new legislative chamber directly communicating with the Emperor would replace the House of Peers with universal male suffrage and ability to run for office. Kita also called for the ability to criticize the notion of the kokutai, as the Emperor was only one element of Japanese society with the other being the people. As such, the people had to right to disobey the Imperial Rescript on Education.
Engagement with the 1911 Revolution
Kita's second book is titled An Informal History of the Chinese Revolution (支那革命外史 Shina Kakumei Gaishi) and is a critical analysis of the 1911 Revolution.
Attracted to the cause of the 1911 Revolution, Kita became a member of the Tongmenghui (United League) led by Song Jiaoren. He traveled to China to assist in the overthrow of the Qing dynasty.
However, Kita was also interested in the far-right. The right-wing, ultranationalist Kokuryūkai (Amur River Association/Black Dragon Society), was founded in 1901. Kita—who held views on Russia and Korea remarkably similar to those espoused by the Kokuryukai—was sent by that organization as a special member, who would write for them from China and send reports on the ongoing situation at the time of the 1911 Xinhai revolution.
By the time Kita returned to Japan in January 1920, he had become disillusioned with the 1911 Revolution, and the strategies offered by it for the changes he envisioned. He joined Ōkawa Shūmei and others to form the Yuzonsha (Society of Those Who Yet Remain), an ultranationalist and Pan-Asianist organization, and devoted his time to writing and political activism. He gradually became a leading theorist and philosopher of the right-wing movement in pre-World War II Japan.
Toward the reorganization of Japan
His last major book on politics was . First written in Shanghai but banned in 1919, the book was published in 1923, by Kaizōsha, publisher of the magazine Kaizō, which was censored by the Government. The common theme to his first and last political works was the notion of a national policy (Kokutai).Rather, he criticized conflicts between advocates of kokutai and advocates of Western ideas for they did not understand social change and evolution of Japan, and he thought Japan had been a democracy (minsyukoku) led by the Emperor, which was not directly imported from the Western, since the Meiji Restoration, which was a movement to be liberated from servitude to the Shogun and the Daimyo. In the introduction he also wrote “Japanese nationals surely need to understand the justice of the nation and human rights of equality”. Through correct kokutai, Japan would overcome a coming national crisis of economics or international relations, lead a united and free Asia, and unify world culture through Japanized and universalized Asian thoughts. This would prepare for the appearance of a sole superpower, which would be inevitable for future world peace. It thus contained aspects associated with the doctrine of pan-Asianism.
According to his political program, a coup d'état would be necessary as to impose a more-or-less state of emergency regime based on a direct rule by a powerful leader. Due to the respect that the Emperor enjoyed in the Japanese society,His main purpose of this coup was to clarify the meaning and the principle of the Emperor, who is the representative of the people. Kita identified the sovereign as the ideal person to lead this program. The Emperor would suspend the Constitution, form a council, and radically reorganize the Cabinet and the Diet. Diet members would be elected by the people, to be free of any "malign influence". This would make the true meaning of the Meiji Restoration clear.
The new "National Reorganization Diet" would amend the Constitution according to a draft proposed by the Emperor. Kita laid out the measures to be enacted in the Constitution:
Limits on individual wealth, private property, and assets of companies. Establishment of national entities to be operated by the government like the Japanese Government Railways. Land reform: all urban land would become municipal property. Abolition of the kazoku peerage system and the House of Peers. Abolition of all but fundamental taxes.
The Constitution would guarantee male suffrage, civil liberties, the right to property, the right to education, labor rights, and human rights.
The Emperor would remain as the representative of the people, while privileged elites would be displaced.They were the Meiji oligarchy, Zaibatsu (Concerns), Gunbatsu (Military Factions), landlords, the Oriental Development Company and so on. The armed forces would be further empowered so as to strengthen Japan and enable it to liberate Asia from Western imperialism.James L. McClain, Japan: A Modern History (W.W. Norton & Company, 2002) pp. 437-439 .
Kita asserted Japan's right as an "international Proletariat" to conquer Siberia, the Far East, and Australia.He thought this was analogous to domestic class conflict Vladimir Lenin actually had done in Russia, which was rationalized. (The people of these areas would haved the same rights as Japanese.He believed that this would be a model of racial equality and that only the Empire of Japan could bring about unity between the cultures of the East and West.) He saw this as necessary to solve the problems of international trade which caused social issues in Japan.
Kita's political program was to establish state socialism as a fascistic "socialism from above",He stressed that a coup is not for conservative autocracy, it is the direct expression of the general will, and that the general will should be expressed by the fusion of the Emperor and the people, not the authorities. to unite and strengthen Japanese society. Japan was to achieve the independence of India and support the Republic of China, preventing China's partition like Africa, in the name of Asian unity.He also mentioned there was anti-Japanese sentiment in China and argued Japan needed to deprive Britain of Hong Kong and build a naval base there instead of Qingdao, which had so many people that Shandong coolies were exported. Another goal of his program was for Japan to rule a great empire including Korea, Taiwan, Sakhalin, Manchuria, the Russian Far East, and Australia.
After the 1926 succession of Emperor Shōwa, this program was termed the Shōwa Restoration.
On foreign policy He wrote a "petition" on foreign policy after the Mukden Incident. He strongly opposed a war against America, which was a popular opinion at that time, because the British Empire would join the war and the Japanese navy would not defeat them. He also thought China and the Soviet Union would join the war on the side of America. His proposal was that Japan should form an alliance with France and combat the Soviet Union. He thought that an alliance with France would contain the British Empire, and that Japan and France shared Anti-Russian sentiment because the Russian Empire had not paid massive debt to France.
Critical reception Fumimaro Konoe detested Kita's influence on the military, stating that his "so-called right-wing is nothing more than communists wearing the garb of the kokutai — and consciously entertains plans to take things as far as a communist revolution."
Walter Skya notes that in On the Kokutai and Pure Socialism, Kita rejected the Shintoist view of far-right nationalists such as Hozumi Yatsuka that Japan was an ethnically homogeneous "family state" descended through the Imperial line from the goddess Amaterasu Omikami, emphasizing the presence of non-Japanese in Japan since ancient times. He argued that along with the incorporation of Chinese, Koreans, and Russians as Japanese citizens during the Meiji period, any person should be able to naturalize as a citizen of the empire irrespective of race, with the same rights and obligations as ethnic Japanese. According to Kita, the Japanese empire couldn't otherwise expand into areas populated by non-Japanese people without having to "exempt them from their obligations or ... expel them from the empire."Walter Skya, Japan's Holy War: The Ideology of Radical Shinto Ultranationalism pp.123–125 . One of his religious inspirations was the Japanized Lotus Sutra.