Hajime Kawakami

Hajime Kawakami (河上 肇, Kawakami Hajime; 20 October 1879 – 30 January 1946) 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.