Lee was born on January 23, 1923, in the rural farming community of
Sanshi Village near the fishing and trading town of Tamsui (now
Tamsui District). He was of
Hakka Chinese descent, with his
ancestral home in
Yongding,
Tingzhou. His grandfather was a village leader in Sanshi and his father, Li Chin-lung, was a policeman who graduated from a Japanese
police academy, owned land, and oversaw an irrigation service while working for the colonial Japanese government. Lee's mother also came from a local landowning family. He had an older brother, Lee Teng-chin (李登欽), who joined the colony's police academy, volunteered for the
Imperial Japanese Navy, and was
killed in action in the Philippines; Teng-chin's body is interned at the controversial
Yasukuni Shrine in Japan. When he was three years old, Lee and his brother were sent by their grandfather, Li Tsai-sheng, to a school which taught Chinese and Japanese; they were required to memorize Confucian and Chinese classics, including the
Three Character Classic. Because his father, working in
Taihoku Prefecture, was often transferred to different
police precincts, Lee became a pupil at four different elementary schools in
Xizhi (Hsi-chih),
Nangang, Sanshi, and Tamsui. In 1929, while attending the Hsi-chih Common School, where most teachers were Japanese, he was selected as the class leader (
head boy) and was considered one of the most outstanding students out of 47 pupils. He learned
Chinese calligraphy and Japanese history before being transferred eventually to the Tamsui Common School, where he graduated in March 1935, ranked second out of 104 students. He sat the entrance examinations and applied to Taipei's top middle schools, but was rejected twice as the schools prioritized Japanese enrollment. He continued studying for the examinations at a
juku and, in 1937, enrolled in the
private Kuo-min Middle School (now
Datong High School) in Taipei in 1938. A classmate, Lin Kai-pi, recalled: "He was very diligent and rarely played with us. Though he was taciturn, he was congenial and honest. He seemed to be blessed with a retentive memory. Fifteen years after our graduation, I could no longer recognize him, but he still called me by my name". armor|260x260px As a child, Lee learned
Zen Buddhism, developed an interest in Western
classical music, and read
Western philosophy—including
transcendentalist works,
Friedrich Nietzsche, and
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe—in Japanese translations. In 1935, the Japanese colonial government reformed educational institutions in accordance with wartime demands of "
Shintoism, state (
kokutai), and indoctrination". As part of these reforms, Tamsui Middle School established a
dojo for Japanese martial arts; Lee trained in calisthenics,
judo,
kendo, and attended weekly military drills. He performed exceptionally and was chosen to carry the school's
hinomaru as the top student of his class. By 1940, the
Kōminka movement and increasing pressure to
Japanize led Lee's father to give the family Japanese names in place of their Chinese names. Teng-chin took the name and Teng-hui
Iwasato Masao (岩里政男). Lee later recalled that, until he was 22 years old, he "always considered himself a Japanese". Lee graduated from Tamsui in 1941, completing his courses in four years as opposed to the usual five. He was admitted to continue his studies at the prestigious (now
National Taiwan Normal University), a Japanese-dominated
higher school established in 1925 to send students for specialized studies at a college or university. Most students were sons of high-ranking Japanese officials or professionals; Taiwanese students that were able to gain admission were considered the best in Taiwan. Lee, one of only four Taiwanese students in his class, decided to study
agricultural economics with the intent to work at the
Southern Manchuria Railway Company after graduation. It normally took three years for a student to complete all the required courses but accelerated curriculum changes during
World War II meant that he completed examinations after only two.Lee was a versatile student who was "an intense, tireless and voracious reader, with wide-ranging interests". Although he wanted to pursue his favorite subject, history, as a history teacher, he chose economics for better career prospects. He studied Japanese culture extensively and read the
Kojiki, revered emperor
Hirohito, and idolized Japanese historian
Motoori Norinaga (author of the
Kojiki-den), and colonial apologist
Nitobe Inazō, whose 1899
Bushido: The Soul of Japan deeply influenced him. He also read
The Pillow Book,
The Tale of Genji, and was especially influenced by
The Tale of the Heike and
shosetsu works by Japanese writer Jirō Abe (1883–1959) and
Hyakuzō Kurata. His favorite autobiographical novelist was
Natsume Sōseki. In addition, he read Japanese translations of
T. E. Lawrence,
The Evolution of Physics, and the treatises of
Immanuel Kant (translated by
Kitaro Nishida). By the time he arrived at Taihoku High School, Lee owned a collection of more than 700 volumes of books published by
Iwanami Shoten. He graduated from Taihoku with honors.
Education in Japan and World War II With the
Pacific War escalating, Lee left Taiwan to attend college in Japan and took the highly competitive Japanese college entrance exam in the summer of 1943. Despite having to score significantly higher than most Japanese students to be considered, Lee was admitted to
Kyoto Imperial University and was awarded a scholarship, a great honor for a Taiwanese student. He sailed to Japan and enrolled in the university's Faculty of Agriculture, which was considered the leading department of its field in the country at the time. He was especially interested in
Karl Marx,
Marxian economics, and admired Marxist economist
Hajime Kawakami, whose philosophy influenced much of the faculty at Kyoto, and
Thomas Carlyle. He took multiple courses in German (his preferred foreign language) and English, but continued to rely on Japanese translations for reading Carlyle, Goethe, and
Faustian literature. He was a student at Kyoto Imperial University for 14 months between 1943 and 1944 before the war and
mass mobilization in Japan interrupted his studies. Lee left Kyoto to volunteer for service in the
Imperial Japanese Army as one of 36 Taiwanese volunteers from the
Kansai region. In December 1944, he was sent back to Taiwan to be stationed at an anti-aircraft unit in
Kaohsiung. He then was ordered to return to Japan in January 1945 to train at an anti-aircraft military academy in
Chiba Prefecture. While sailing back to Japan, he stayed briefly in Japanese-occupied
Qingdao—his first time setting foot in mainland China. Once in Japan, he studied radar operation and trained alongside
kamikaze pilots as a member of the academy's eleventh class, graduating in April 1945 with the rank of
second lieutenant. He was stationed at
Nagoya and witnessed
the city's bombing. According to biographer Shih-shan Tsai: "instead of shooting down enemy aircraft, all he could and did do was to bring the wounded to the hospital, help children and the elderly evacuate to the country from Nagoya, drill civilian volunteers in fighting with bamboo spears, and dig pillboxes along Ise Bay to prepare for an American invasion". When the
Surrender of Japan was announced, Lee was discharged from Nagoya and traveled to Tokyo, where he met with other Taiwanese students. Beginning in October 1945, when prominent Japanese
Communists Maruyama Masao,
Hisao Ōtsuka, and Fukutake Tadashi were released from prison and reformed the
Japanese Communist Party, Lee and other Taiwanese students began a renewed interest in Communist literature. Lee read multiple Japanese translations of Marx's
Das Kapital and went to
Tokyo Station to welcome Communist leader
Sanzō Nosaka's return from China and Russia. He re-enrolled at Kyoto University and graduated in 1946.
Return to Taiwan In the spring of 1946, Lee left Japan, returning to Taiwan in March on an American
liberty ship. With the
Retrocession of Taiwan transferring governance of the island to the
Republic of China, the
Ministry of Education allowed all Taiwanese students previously enrolled in the
Imperial Universities to enroll at
National Taiwan University (NTU; previously Taihoku Imperial University), which Lee did, joining the university's Department of Agricultural Economics as one of its only two students. He had two professors, one of whom was
Hsu Ching-chung, who later served as
vice premier. At the same time, he developed an interest in Chinese literature, particularly the works of
Hu Shih,
Guo Moruo, and
Lu Xun. His worldview was also influenced by reading
Fyodor Dostoevsky's
The Idiot. He continued an interest in Marxism, joining a Marxist study club at NTU and writing his undergraduate thesis, "A Study of the Problems of Taiwan’s Agricultural Labor," by applying Marxist
class struggle and
surplus labour theories. He briefly joined the
Chinese Communist Party (CCP) twice—once in September 1946 and again in either October or November 1947—but withdrew his membership both times. Following the recommendation of communist youth leader , Lee joined the , a secret communist group, in October 1947, but withdrew six months later in June 1948. Members of both the New Democracy Association and the Marxist study club were later arrested in May 1950. Lee's close association with Taiwanese communist groups as a student became the subject of scrutiny later in life. In 1969, he was arrested by KMT secret police but was released after a series of investigations and interrogations. Years later, in 2002, Lee recalled the reason for joining communist groups as being "out of a young man's naive vision for his country". == Economist and professor (1949–1971) ==