Motoyuki Takabatake

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Motoyuki Takabatake
Portrait of Motoyuki Takabatake
Born(1886-01-04)January 4, 1886
DiedDecember 23, 1928(1928-12-23) (aged 42)
Nationality Japanese
Other namesMotoyuki Takahata
Known forFirst Japanese translation of Das Kapital
MovementJapanese Marxism

Motoyuki Takabatake (Japanese: 高畠素之, Hepburn: Takabatake Motoyuki, 1886 – 1928) was a Japanese journalist and political activist who completed the first full Japanese translation of Karl Marx's Das Kapital.

In his youth he became a member of the small Japanese anarchist movement. During the Russian Revolution however, he began to lean in support of state socialism. Where prominent Marxists saw the state in Soviet Russia as a temporary and necessary evil needed to construct communist society, Takabatake welcomed the revolution precisely because it would lead to a strong centralized state. This led to tensions between him and other Japanese Marxists, with Takabatake becoming one of the first theoreticians of socialist nationalism in Japan. He completed the first Japanese translation of Das Kapital in 1924, though by 1926 he had left Marxism entirely, establishing the fascist Kenkokukai organization, and had prepared to establish a National Socialist Party before his abrupt death in 1928.[1][2]

References[edit]

  1. ^ "Takabatake, Motoyuki | Portraits of Modern Japanese Historical Figures".
  2. ^ Hoston, Germaine A. (1984). "Marxism and National Socialism in Taishō Japan: The Thought of Takabatake Motoyuki". The Journal of Asian Studies. 44 (1). jstor.org: 43–64. doi:10.2307/2056746. JSTOR 2056746.