Ikki Kita (3 April 1883 – 19 August 1937) was a Japanese author, intellectual and political philosopher who was active in early Shōwa period Japan.
Biography[]
Kita was as born Kita Terujirō on Sado Island, Niigata Prefecture, where his father was a sake merchant and the first mayor of the local town. At age 23, Kita published his first book in 1906 after one year of research – a massive 1,000-page political treatise titled The Theory of Japan's National Polity and Pure Socialism (国体論及び純正社会主義). 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. Drawing from an eclectic range of influences, Kita was a self-described socialist who has also been described by some 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 in 1937.