was a

Japanese Japanese may refer to: * Something from or related to Japan, an island country in East Asia * Japanese language, spoken mainly in Japan * Japanese people, the ethnic group that identifies with Japan through ancestry or culture ** Japanese diaspor ...

academic, historian, author and professor of political science. Yoshino was active as a political thinker in the Taishō period. He is best known for his formulation of the theory of "Minponshugi," or politics of the people. Yoshino was born in Miyagi prefecture in 1878, and entered into Miyagi-Jinjo elementary school (Present Sendai First High school )in 1895. He graduated from

Tokyo Imperial University , abbreviated as or UTokyo, is a public research university located in Bunkyō, Tokyo, Japan. Established in 1877, the university was the first Imperial University and is currently a Top Type university of the Top Global University Project by ...

in 1904. In 1906 he went to China as a private tutor for the son of

Yuan Shikai Yuan Shikai (; 16 September 1859 – 6 June 1916) was a Chinese military and government official who rose to power during the late Qing dynasty and eventually ended the Qing dynasty rule of China in 1912, later becoming the Emperor of China. ...

, the then dominant Chinese politician. He returned in 1909 and took a position teaching political history and theory in the Faculty of Law at Tokyo Imperial University until 1924. In 1910, he went abroad for three years to study in Germany, England and the United States. On his return he began to write articles discussing the problems of implementing democratic government in Japan, such as political corruption and

universal suffrage Universal suffrage (also called universal franchise, general suffrage, and common suffrage of the common man) gives the right to vote to all adult citizens, regardless of wealth, income, gender, social status, race, ethnicity, or political sta ...

. He published his most famous essays in the noted literary magazine '' Chūōkōron''. Arguably his most significant work, "On the Meaning of Constitutional Government," was written in response to the popular belief in the superiority of the

Prussian Prussia, , Old Prussian: ''Prūsa'' or ''Prūsija'' was a German state on the southeast coast of the Baltic Sea. It formed the German Empire under Prussian rule when it united the German states in 1871. It was ''de facto'' dissolved by an ...

pattern. In it, Yoshino argued that democracy was compatible with the concept of the emperor's sovereignty. Yoshino also served as the editor of '' Taiyō'', a well-known literary and general interest magazine. In December 1918, Yoshino joined with others to establish Reimeikai which was a society "to propagate ideas of democracy among the people." This group was formed in order to sponsor public lectures.Marshall, Byron K. (1992).

Notes

References

* de Bary, William Theodore,

Carol Gluck Carol Gluck (born November 12, 1941) is an American academic and Japanologist. She is the George Sansom Professor Emerita of History at Columbia University and served as the president of the Association for Asian Studies in 1996. Career Gluck wa ...

, and Arthur E. Tiedemann (eds.). (2005). ''Sources of Japanese Tradition (Vol. 2): 1600 to 2000.'' New York: Columbia University Press. * Marshall, Byron K. (1992). ''Academic Freedom and the Japanese Imperial University, 1868-1939.'' Berkeley: University of California Press.
OCLC 25130703
* Nussbaum, Louis-Frédéric and Käthe Roth. (2005)
''Japan encyclopedia.''
Cambridge:

Harvard University Press Harvard University Press (HUP) is a publishing house established on January 13, 1913, as a division of Harvard University, and focused on academic publishing. It is a member of the Association of American University Presses. After the reti ...

.
OCLC 58053128

External links

Aozora bunko Aozora Bunko (, literally the "Blue Sky Library", also known as the "Open Air Library") is a Japanese language, Japanese digital library. This online collection encompasses several thousands of works of Japanese-language fiction and non-fiction. ...

1878 births 1933 deaths People from Miyagi Prefecture Japanese writers Japanese social democrats University of Tokyo alumni Academic staff of the University of Tokyo Japanese political scientists {{Japan-writer-stub