How Marxism became popular among the Japanese intellectuals and masses before World War II - A historical study on the publication of Marxist literature

2014 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 24530213
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C)
• Allocation Type: Multi-year Fund
• Section: 一般
• Research Field: Economic doctrine/Economic thought
• Research Institution: Tohoku University
• Principal Investigator: KUBO Seijiro 東北大学, 経済学研究科(研究院), 博士研究員 (80400216)
• Project Period (FY): 2012-04-01 – 2015-03-31
• Keywords: マルクス主義普及史 / マルクス経済学 / 資本論 / 共産党宣言 / 大正昭和 / 発禁 / 出版史

Outline of Final Research Achievements

The author studied how Marxism became popular among the Japanese intellectuals and masses, chiefly by tracing the publication history of socialistic literature. As the results, (1) I revised a reference list of over 1,800 Marxist materials and discovered some more from the scenes of academic and social movements, (2) revealed the effectiveness of the censorship by examining “Shuppan Keisatsu Hou”(reports on publication control －secret materials of the Department of the Interior Affairs), and (3) gave some consideration on the characteristics of spreading of and censoring on Marxist literature in the prewar era, as well as the issues for the future research.

Free Research Field

社会思想史