Ikki Kita

was a Japanese author, intellectual 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".

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.#tag:ref|As analysed by, for example, Hal Draper, who contrasts this current to its opposite, "socialism from above";

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. 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, 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. The armed forces would be further empowered so as to strengthen Japan and enable it to liberate Asia from Western imperialism.

Kita asserted Japan's right as an "international Proletariat" to conquer Siberia, the Far East, and Australia. (The people of these areas would haved the same rights as Japanese. ) He saw this as necessary to solve the problems of international trade which caused social issues in Japan. 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. 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." One of his religious inspirations was the Japanized Lotus Sutra.

His younger brother Reikichi Kita, political philosopher who studied for five years in the US and Europe and was a member of the House of Representatives, later wrote that Kita had been familiar with Kiichiro Hiranuma, then Chief of the Supreme Court of Justice, and in his paper in 1922 he had fiercely condemned Adolph Joffe, then Soviet Russian diplomat to Japan.

This eclectic blend of imperialism, socialism and spiritual principles is one of the reasons why Kita's ideas have been difficult to understand in the specific historical circumstances of Japan between the two world wars. Some have argued that this is also one of the reasons why it is hard for the historians to agree on Kita's political stance, though Nik Howard takes the view that Kita's ideas were actually consistent ideologically throughout his career, with relatively small shifts in response to the changing reality he faced at any given time. However, Morishima also stated that those who followed Kita's ideas in the 1936 coup were the ones who had "spurred Japan into war with America".

Esperanto proposal In 1919 Kita advocated that the Empire of Japan should adopt Esperanto. He foresaw that 100 years after its adoption the language would be the only tongue spoken in Japan proper and the vast territory conquered by it according to the natural selection theory, making Japanese the Sanskrit or Latin equivalent of the Empire. He thought that the writing system of Japanese is too complicated to impose on other peoples, that romanization would not work and that English, which was taught in the Japanese education system at that time, was not mastered by Japanese at all. He also asserted that English is poison to Japanese minds as opium destroyed Chinese people, that the only reason it did not destroy Japanese yet was that German had more influence than English and that English should be excluded from the country. Kita was inspired by several Chinese anarchists he befriended who had called for the substitution of Chinese for Esperanto at the beginning of the twentieth century.

Arrest and execution

Kita's Outline Plan, his last book, exerted a major influence on a part of the Japanese military—especially in the Imperial Japanese Army factions who participated in the failed coup of 1936. After the coup attempt, Kita was arrested by the Kempeitai for complicity, tried by a closed military court, and executed.