Brij Tankha
UNIVERSITY OF DELHI
ISBN 978-1-901903-99-7 - 352pp. - Case
May 2006 - £55.00
This important new study of Kita Ikki, one of Japan’s influential pre-war ideologues, focuses on his three principal works – ‘The National Polity and Pure Socialism’, ‘The Unofficial History of the Chinese Revolution’ and ‘The Fundamental Principles for the Reorganization of Japan’. Executed in 1937 for his involvement (as the ‘intellectual inspiration’), in the abortive coup d’etat (February 13 Incident) the previous year, Kita Ikki had sought to understand and define the position of modern Japan in the context of Western domination, the basis for social and political transformation, the meaning of the 1911 revolution in China together with the necessity of reorientating Japanese foreign policy to forge bonds with China, and the basis of a Japanese empire to counter Western colonial domination. The Appendix contains the first complete English translation of ‘The Fundamental Principles for the Reorganization of Japan’, providing the reader with the opportunity to hear the voice of an early twentieth-century Japanese intellectual confronting the challenge of imperialism. The author is Reader in Modern Japanese History, University of Delhi.
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