Motoyuki Takabatake

Motoyuki Takabatake (高畠素之, Takabatake Motoyuki, 1886 – 1928) was a Japanese journalist and an activist who joined the small Japanese anarchist movement in his youth. During the Russian Revolution, however, he began to reconsider his support of socialism. While Japanese Marxists saw the state in Soviet-Russia as a temporary and necessary evil needed to construct socialism, Takabatake welcomed the revolution precisely because it would lead to a strong centralized state. This led to a break between him and other Japanese Marxists, with Takabatake becoming one of the first theoreticians of national socialism in Japan. He completed the first Japanese translation of Das Kapital in 1924 and was preparing for the establishment of a national socialist party when he died in 1928.