Yoshio Shiga

was a member of the Japanese Communist Party.

Biography Yoshio Shiga was born in Hagi, Yamaguchi, on 1 January 1901. His father was one of the first steamship captains in Japan. He was highly interested in the French Revolution in high school and became engaged with socialism after the Rice riots of 1918. After entering a college-preparatory school in 1919, he started to read Marxist literature. He attended Tokyo Imperial University from 1922 to 1925.

After graduating from college Shiga joined Sanzō Nosaka's Industrial Labor Research Institute and enlisted into the army for one year. He was the editor of the magazine Marxism until his arrest in March 1928, remained in prison until 1945. Shiga died in 1989.

Popular culture Yoshio Shiga appears in the docu-drama "Nihon no Ichiban Nagai Natsu" (“Japan’s Longest Summer”). Shiga is played by Soichiro Tahara.

Works Appeal to the People Eighteen Years in Prison (Gokuchu juhachi-nen) by Kyuichi Tokuda and Yoshio Shiga. Published by the Japanese Communist Party Party in 1948.