Michio Takeyama (1903-1984) was one of many 20th-century intellectuals who in the course of their life wandered from the left to the right, but he is surely among the most interesting. With the book under review here Richard Minear makes available for the first time in English 10 essays Takeyama wrote between 1940 and 1953, augmented by an insightful and sensitive biographical sketch of a man who lived through World War II at home and was deeply influenced by this experience.
Takeyama was educated at Ichiko, one of Japan's foremost high schools that prepared its graduates for public service, and then returned to the same school as a teacher. There he taught German language and literature for 25 years until the dissolution of the school in 1950.
As an adult he studied in Germany and visited many European and Asian countries, giving him an informed perspective on the world and Japan's position in it. Because of his academic specialization in German letters, Takeyama was a keen and interested observer of what happened in Germany in the waning years of the Weimar Republic and after the Nazis came to power.