Yoshio Shiga was born in
Hagi, Yamaguchi, on 1 January 1901. His father was one of the first steamship captains in Japan. He was highly interested in the
French Revolution in high school and became engaged with socialism after the
Rice riots of 1918. After entering a
college-preparatory school in 1919, he started to read Marxist literature. He attended
Tokyo Imperial University from 1922 to 1925. After graduating from college Shiga joined
Sanzō Nosaka's Industrial Labor Research Institute and enlisted into the army for one year. He was the editor of the magazine
Marxism until his arrest in March 1928, remained in prison until 1945. Shiga died in 1989. ==Popular culture==