Miki Kiyoshi, a Japanese philosopher of history and leading intellectual in the stormy years before World War II, was born in Isseimura, Hyogo prefecture. He was a student of Nishida Kitarō and of Hatano Seiichi at Kyoto University. He developed an early interest in the philosophy of history and studied in Germany (1922–1924) under Heinrich Rickert and Martin Heidegger, absorbing also some socialist ideas. In 1927 he accepted a chair of philosophy at Hōsei University, Tokyo, but he had been rejected as a teacher by his alma mater for dubious reasons—he had a love affair with a widow, in his day a more than sufficient reason to be excluded from a state university. Feeling resentment, and moved by the social climate of the time, he became Japan's first spokesman for philosophical Marxism. His essays on historical materialism (1927–1930) created a stir in academic circles and...