Miki Kiyoshi

Miki Kiyoshi (born Jan. 5, 1897, Hyōgo prefecture, Japan—died Sept. 26, 1945, Tokyo) was a Marxist philosopher who helped establish the theoretical basis for the noncommunist democratic-socialist movement popular among workers and intellectuals in Japan after World War II.

After graduating from Kyōto Imperial University, Miki studied in Germany and then returned to Japan, where in 1927 he became a professor of philosophy at Hosei University in Tokyo. In 1928 he launched the influential review Shinkō kagaku no hata no moto ni (“Under the Flag of the Rising Science”) to promote Marxist socialism, and over the next several years he wrote a series of books, all designed to show Marxism as the inevitably prevailing philosophy. He also began to gain a tremendous following.

Miki’s liberal attempts at synthesizing democracy and socialism, however, brought his expulsion (1930) from the communist circle of the Proletariat Science Institute. Ironically, the same year, he was arrested by the government as a communist supporter and held for six months. Returning to the university, he opposed the increasing power of the military, but in 1942 he was drafted by the army press to work in the Philippines for a year. By the end of his tour of duty, his opposition to the government had grown more muted; nevertheless, this did not prevent his being arrested again in 1945 for having sheltered a communist. He died in Toyotama Prison 40 days after the war ended.