Sadaki Takahashi - Sadaki Takahashi

A social activist from the Taisho and prewar Showa periods. Born in Oita Prefecture on March 8, 1905. After completing his fourth year at Oita Middle School in 1921 (Taisho 10), he entered the preparatory school for Tokyo University of Commerce (the precursor to Hitotsubashi University) but dropped out after two years. In 1922, he joined the Wednesday Society, led by Yamakawa Hitoshi, and joined the Communist Party when it was founded in July of the same year, avoiding arrest in the First Communist Party Incident in June of the following year. In September of the same year, the Great Kanto Earthquake occurred and he fled to Kansai, where he provided theoretical guidance for the early Horizontal Movement, and in December he organized the National Horizontal Movement Youth League. A precocious theorist, he wrote his masterpiece, A Thousand-Year History of Special Buraku, published in 1924, when he was 19 years old. He visited the Soviet Union in May 1951 and studied at the Lenin Training School, returning to Japan at the end of 1953 (Showa 3) to rebuild the party. He published many instructive articles in the magazine Marxism, but was arrested in the April 16 Incident the following year and sentenced to 15 years in prison. He declared his conversion while in prison in 1933, and was released in June 1935 after his sentence was suspended due to tuberculosis, but he died on November 20th.

[Etsuji Watanabe]

Source: Shogakukan Encyclopedia Nipponica About Encyclopedia Nipponica Information | Legend

大正・昭和戦前期の社会運動家。明治38年3月8日大分県に生まれる。1921年（大正10）大分中学4年修了で東京商科大学（一橋大学の前身）予科に入学するが2年で中退。22年山川均(ひとし)の主宰する水曜会に入り、同年7月創立の共産党にも参加、翌23年6月の第一次共産党事件では検挙を免れた。同年9月の関東大震災で関西に逃れ、初期水平運動の理論的指導にあたり、12月全国水平社青年同盟を組織した。早熟な理論家で、24年に刊行した名著『特殊部落一千年史』は19歳のときの作。26年5月訪ソし、レーニン講習所に学び、党再建のため28年（昭和3）末帰国。『マルクス主義』誌上に多くの指導的論文を発表したが、翌29年の四・一六事件で検挙され、懲役15年の刑を受けた。33年獄中で転向を表明、35年6月結核で執行停止となり、出獄したが、11月20日に死去した。

［渡辺悦次］

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