Kotoku Shusui

This 1971 text was the first Western study of Kōtoku Shūsui (1871–1911) - Japan's leading left-wing thinker at the turn of the century - whose career and ideas had a decisive influence on subsequent radical movements in Japan and also in China. Kōtoku was a bitter opponent of aggressive Japanese nationalism and militarism, foreseeing as early as 1906 that its ultimate consequence would be conflict with the United States. He was executed in 1911 on charges of 'high treason' in a plot to take the life of the Meiji Emperor. Professor Notehelfer presents a personal as well as political biography. Drawing on Kōtoku's extensive diaries and correspondence, he examines the psychological conflict Kōtoku suffered between traditional and Western ideas. The book therefore has the wider theme of illustrating the pressures and difficulties faced by a traditional society in a period of rapid social change.