Background
YUKITOKI TAKIGAWA was born in the city of Okayama in 1891.
YUKITOKI TAKIGAWA was born in the city of Okayama in 1891.
In 1915 he graduated from Kyoto Imperial University.
After serving as a judge in the Kyoto District Court, he became an assistant professor in the law department of Kyoto Imperial University in 1918. In 1924 he advanced to the rank of full professor, lecturing on criminal law and emphasizing a liberal approach to the subject.
The government, however, claimed that his writings and lectures were communist in outlook and banned the sale of his work on criminal law, Keiho kogi, published in 1926, and a similar work, Keiho dokuhon, published in 1932. Following these moves, Hatoyama Ichiro, the minister of education at the time, began to press the president of Kyoto University, Konishi Sh’genao, to relieve Takigawa of his teaching position. A meeting of the faculty of the law department rejected the government’s request on the grounds that it represented an invasion of academic freedom and autonomy. When in 1933, the government nevertheless dismissed Takigawa, the members of the faculty committee of the law department submitted their resignations en masse as a gesture of protest, and the student body demonstrated their support of the faculty. The government thereupon accepted the resignations of Sasaki Soichi, Suekawa Hiroshi, and a few other professors, while rejecting the others, thus succeeding in disrupting the unity of the faculty and bringing about a split of opinion. The incident, which caused much comment at the time, was known as the Kyoto University affair or the Takigawa affair. After leaving his position at Kyoto University, Takigawa opened a private law practice and also became a professor of Ritsumeikan University in Kyoto.
After the war, he returned to his post at Kyoto University in 1946 and later served as head of the law department and president of the university. In 1953 he was made a member of the Japan Academy. In addition to the works already mentioned, he wrote Ilanzaigaku josetsu and other works.