FIRST COMPLETE JAPANESE TRANSLATION OF MARX'S DAS KAPITAL

MARX, KARL.

Marukusu shihonron. [i.e. Japanese "Das Kapital"]. 5 vols.

Tokyo, Kaizosha, 1927-1928.

Small4to. 5 volumes all in publisher's original full red cloth with gilt lettering to spine, all five volumes house the original slipcases. Free end-papers browned and only very light sporadic brownspots throughout. A very fine and clean copy.

Rare first complete Japanese translation of Marx's 'Das Kapital'. In response to the Russian October Revolution young Marxists produced in rapid succession partial translations of Marx's works and secondary accounts of the same. Japanese translations of Marx's works were comparatively late compared to those in Europe. Japanse translations, however, did exercise a great influence in Asia and especially in China where several of the early translations were made from the Japanese.

"Similarly, Takabatake Motoyuki, the first to produce a complete Japanese translation of the three volumes of 'Capital', created a system of Marxist national socialism. Asserting the "Marxism was originally statism", Takabatake cited Thomas Hobbes and other western state theorists to support the notion that the state preceded class society and would not wither away after a proletarian revolution. To guard against external threats and to organize economic activity at home - against the possibility of proletarian imperialism on the part of Soviet Russia, for eksample - a socialist Japan would require a powerful state" (Hoston, Marxism and the Crisis of Development in Prewar Japan).

Order-nr.: 56714