Background
Ikki Kita was born on 3 April 1883in Sado in Niigata Prefecture; his original given name was Terujiro.
北 一輝
Ikki Kita was born on 3 April 1883in Sado in Niigata Prefecture; his original given name was Terujiro.
He attended Waseda University as an auditor, where he took an interest in evolutionary and socialist thought.
He became friendly with Kotoku Shusui, Sakai Toshihiko, and other socialist thinkers associated with the Heiminsha. He also became a member of the Chinese revolutionary group known as the League of Common Alliance and was friendly with Sung Chiao-jen and others of its leaders. When the Chinese Revolution broke out in 1911, he went to China and attempted to take part in it, but met with failure. Following the assassination of Sung Chiao-jen, he was ordered out of the country because of his attempts to make public the true facts of Sung’s death.
In 1916 he went to China a second time, but after experiencing the May Fourth Movement of 1919 and other expressions of antiJapanese sentiment, he returned home. Believing that Japan would in time go through a revolution of its own, he thereafter concentrated his attention upon the encouragement of national reforms within Japan. His experiences in China had taught him the importance of military power in carrying out a revolution, and therefore, after his return to Japan in 1919, he cultivated connections with the military.
He maintained relations with the zaibatsu, receiving financial contributions from Ikeda Shigeaki, Kuhara Fusanosuke, and other leaders in the business world. He also took part in muckraking activities in connection with various political and financial scandals of the time. The ideas set forth in his Plan for the Reconstruction of Japan fitted well with the thinking of many persons in the early Showa era and in particular exercised a profound influence upon many of the younger officers of the army. Eventually they formed the ideological background for the February 26 incident of 1936, an abortive attempt at a coup d’etat by a group of such officers that resulted in the assassination or injury of a number of prominent officials. Kita was arrested as a behind-the-sccne backer of the affair and the following year was executed.
A work that he had written in Shanghai entitled Nihon kaizo hoan taiko (“An Outline Plan for the Recon-struction of Japan”) and that set forth the steps to be taken to put into effect his principles of Asian nationalism, began to attract attention and in time became the virtual Bible of those young army officers who advocated the carrying out of a “Showa Restoration.”
After returning from China, he wrote an account of the revolution based upon his own experiences, which he published in 1915 under the title S'kina kakumei gaishi (“Unofficial History of the Chinese Revolution”). In the preface to this work, he outlined the basic principles of his own concept of Asian nationalism.
(After returning from China, he wrote an account of the re...)
In 1906 he published at his own expense a work entitled Kokutai oyobi junsei shakai shugi (“National Polity and Pure Socialism”), but the book was banned by the government.
In 1920 he joined the Yuzonsha, a right-wing society founded by Okawa Shumei and others and became one of the leading theorists of the fascist movement.