Background
Miki, Kiyoshi was born in 1897 in Hoyogo, Japan.
Miki, Kiyoshi was born in 1897 in Hoyogo, Japan.
Kyoto University; studied in Europe with Rickert and Heidegger. 1922-1925.
19257, Lecturer at Third High School, Kyoto: 1927- Professor, Hosci University, Tokyo. Arrested in 1930 and charged with breaking the Peace Preservation Law, and forced to resign his university position.
One of the founders of philosophical studies in Japan, and a cult writer among young Japanese students of letters, Miki was a typical representative of the group of Japanese philosophers active in the first half of the twentieth century. He typified a pattern which combined two seemingly contradictory strands in Japanese thought of the time: the philosophical heritage of Japan; and Western thought, represented by the Marxism then in vogue. Deeply influenced in his youth by Nishida's Zen no Kenkyu [A Study of the Good], Miki was involved in the Kyoto group of philosophers. His study in Europe and meeting there with other Japanese students like Hani Goro enhanced his interest in Marxism. These two aspects, the Japanese and the Western Marxist, remain the two poles of Miki’s thought until the end of his life. Having started his career as a Marxist humanist, Miki took an active role in the publication of journals such as Shako Kagaku no Hata no Moroni [Under the Flag of Newly Rising Science] and Proletarian Kagaku [Proletarian Science]. However, a change in the direction of his social commitment emerges after his arrest in 1930. Although in 1933 he joined Gakugci Jiyu Domei [The Free League for Liberal Arts] and denounced the then emerging Japanese fascism, his philosophical stance in this period was ambivalent. While he clung to rationalism he did furnish some justification for Japanese expansionism and aggression in terms of his theory of Toa Kyodotai [East Asian Community/Gesellschaft] and Kosoryoki no Ronri [Principle of the Power of Organization], as Heidegger has been represented as doing for the Nazis. This was partly because he was always under close surveillance and considerable pressure from the ruling authorities, but also because he was inclined to believe in and admire a specifically Japanese mentality, epitomized in the Japanese imperial house. Ironically, Miki was sent to the Japanese occupied territories of the Philippines to work for the army as a correspondent officer in 1942. Despite his contribution to the war and the life of the nation, his life in fascist Japan wasdifficult. He was again arrested shortly before the war for allegedly hiding a member of the communist party. He died in jail just after the end of the war and the release of left-wing prisoners. Hani Goro. Japan’s most prominent historian and Miki® comrade, lamented his untimely death as a ’symbolic mistake and the shame of Japan even after the war ended’.