MIKI KIYOSHI

(1897–1945)

Miki Kiyoshi was a philosopher who graduated from Kyoto University and studied under Nishida Kitaro (1870–1945) as a member of the Kyoto School. After finishing college, he studied abroad in Germany, focusing on the works of Martin Heidegger and Blaise Pascal, among others. He became a Marxist in 1925 and was one of the first to advocate combining Marxism and existentialism. Due to some unfortunate misunderstanding, he was widely ostracized from formal academia owing to perceived connections with the Communist Party. In 1937, he headed up a think tank called the Showa kenkyu kai (Showa Research Association) that collapsed at the end of the war. Miki was imprisoned for illegally helping a friend run from the government, and he died while in prison.