Making a Nihilist: The Life and Philosophy of Kaneko Fumiko

Making a Nihilist: The Life and Philosophy of Kaneko Fumiko

Kaneko Fumiko had a rough childhood. Born out 
of wedlock and left without official government registration, Fumi’s opportunities were limited 
for her entire childhood. After being abandoned by her father at a young age, Fumi spent 
some of her formative years in deep poverty, and witnessed the exploitation of the urban poor 
and rural peasantry alike in Japanese society. She seemed to finally catch a break when, 
at age 12, her paternal grandmother brought her to the Japanese colony of Korea to live with 
wealthy relatives, but instead of love and care, all she found in Korea was abuse and exploitation, 
both in her own household and the colonial society as a whole. These experiences shaped Fumi, 
filling her with a sense of resentment both for her own treatment and the rot she saw at 
the core of Taishō Japan. But they also filled her with a thirst for knowledge, a desire to 
reclaim her agency in the one way she knew how, by learning everything she could about the world 
that oppressed her (Kaneko 1991, 104-105). These experiences and studies would shape Fumiko’s 
own unique philosophy, and ultimately bring her to a grave fate in a prison cell. But 
first, Fumiko would need to return to Japan. This is my third video on Kaneko Fumiko; 
you should be up to speed after that intro, but if you’d like to learn more about Fumi’s 
childhood, you can find a link to the other episodes in the description below.
Return to Japan: In 1919, Fumiko boarded a ship back to Japan. 
Although her grandmother was sending her back simply to avoid having to arrange a marriage for 
the 16 year old Fumiko, Fumi was simply relieved to be free of the family that had abused her 
for the previous 4 years. Yet while she would no longer be subject to the constant verbal 
and physical abuse that had once driven her to plan suicide in Korea, what awaited Fumiko in 
Japan wouldn’t be a cakewalk either. She at first returned to her mother’s village. However, Fumiko 
soon became fed up with her mother’s family, who constantly bickered amongst themselves 
and frustrated Fumiko’s intellectual desires. Shortly afterwards, Fumi’s estranged father 
arrived to reconnect with her, and for a time she moved into his household. However, 
Fumi’s life there was made uncomfortable as her father insisted that she participate in daily 
rituals honoring his ancestors, the Saekis. As an unregistered child, she had never been able to use 
the Saeki name, and on top of that, she perceived her father’s beliefs as mere superstition. 
As such, Fumi had a hard time mustering any sincere respect for her ancestors, and loathed to 
bow before them feigning feelings she didn’t hold in her heart. Her relationship with her father 
was further strained by his choice to arrange a marriage between Fumiko and her own uncle, a 
corrupt priest who offered him access to the wealth of his temple; while uncle-niece marriages 
weren’t unheard of in Japan at this time, and Fumi got on well with her uncle, she was deeply 
disturbed by her father’s choice to, in her words, “sell [her], just like an object, to [her] uncle.”
Despite carrying on relationships with multiple other women himself, Fumi’s uncle called 
off this arrangement after learning that Fumiko had exchanged romantic letters with a boy, 
claiming that the possible loss of her virginity invalidated his agreement with her father. Fumi’s 
father reacted violently towards Fumi, and Fumi would describe their relationship from then on 
as being one of “virtual enemies.” After Fumi’s father had another violent outburst in response to 
her criticizing his pridefulness, Fumiko decided she could no longer stand to live with him. And 
so, at age 17, Fumi left her father’s household, and with only 10 yen in her pocket, set 
out to create a life of her own in Tokyo. Tokyo:
When she arrived in Tokyo, Fumiko set out with plans to study English, Mathematics, 
and Classical Chinese, hoping ultimately to pass the entrance examination to study as a doctor. She 
initially moved in with a maternal great uncle, but grew frustrated as he continuously advised her 
to give up on education and focus on cultivating skills to attract a husband, and marrying rich. 
She saw an advertisement calling for desperate students to work as newspaper sellers, and, 
being a desperate student, promptly applied. Through this job she secured enough money to 
pay for school, lodging, and food. The job also exposed her to Christian and Socialist groups, who 
would sometimes gather to give sidewalk sermons or speeches in the same area where Fumi sold papers.
However, the work was hard, with Fumi having to stay on her feet from 4 PM to 
midnight in all weather conditions, calling out to attract customers until her 
throat was hoarse. Since she was up so late, Fumi would regularly end up falling asleep in 
her classes. Moreover, by the end of each shift, she was covered in sweat and grime, but the public 
baths would be closed for the night. Although her manager presented himself as “saving” students, 
Fumi would come to realize that he was getting more out of the workers than they were getting 
from him, taking the lion’s share of profit while they did the hard work. She moved on to other 
jobs, working as a street vendor and a maid, but ultimately found that as a worker she was 
exploited regardless of occupation or employer. Fumiko converted to Christianity for a time, 
becoming a die-hard believer during her most difficult times. She attended Church services 
each Sunday, and would wake up early in the morning and clean the toilet for her landlord, 
asking nothing in return in the name of Christian charity. And yet, for all that her friends in the 
Salvation Army told her this faith would pay off, she didn’t have enough money to even buy 
food. Looking back on this period later, Fumiko asked herself if Christian teachings 
were just “something to anaesthetize people’s hearts,” to numb them to the pains of the world. 
A sort of “opiate for the masses,” if you will. Fumiko would later become friends with several 
socialists who attended school with her, including a number of Koreans, who Fumi felt a 
special solidarity with since her time in Korea. Fumi would describe socialism as offering her no 
new information, but providing her with theory to verify what she already knew from experience.
Ideological influences When Fumiko was 18, she would meet two people 
who would significantly impact her life. The first was a fellow student at English 
school, Hatsuyo Niiyama. Hatsuyo was one of only four or five women in Fumi’s class, 
and the two were seated next to each other, when Fumiko overheard Hatsuyo discussing 
the topic of death with another classmate. “”I have a lung ailment, which is why 
I have thought so much about death. I believe that it is not so much death itself 
that people fear as the pain of that instant of passing over to death. The reason I feel this 
way is that people are not afraid of sleep even though the loss of consciousness in sleep is, 
you could say, a kind of temporary death. ” Fumiko disagreed with Hatsuyo’s stance, 
and jumped in to share her own perspective. “Hearing this, I vividly recalled the 
feelings I had experienced the time in Korea that I had determined to die. 
I joined the conversation to say that, based on my own experience, I 
thought Hatsuyo’ s view was mistaken. “I don’t agree with you. I can state from 
my own experience that what people fear in death is the loneliness of having to leave 
this world forever. Though people may not be consciously aware of all the phenomena 
around them under normal circumstances, the thought that that which makes them 
themselves will be lost forever is a terribly lonely thing. In sleep, that which 
is ourselves is not lost, merely forgotten.”” While on reflection Fumi would say she no longer 
believed either of them were fully correct, the discussion is what prompted her to 
grow closer to Hatsuyo, who would go on to introduce Fumiko to some of her greatest 
influences. Hatsuyo shared books by a number of thinkers Fumi would describe as nihilists, with 
Friedrich Nietzsche, Max Stirner, and Mikhail Artsybashev being among the most influential 
on the development of Fumi’s own thinking. As Fumi’s thinking evolved, she began 
looking at her schooling differently; she had been trying so hard in her education 
to get ahead in life, but now began to feel not only that her efforts were futile, but also that 
“getting ahead” wasn’t really all it was chalked up to be. After all, she wrote in her memoir, “Is 
there any more worthless lot than the so-called great people of this world? What is so admirable 
about being looked up to by others? I do not live for others. What I had to achieve was my own 
freedom, my own satisfaction. I had to be myself.” At the same time, despite her 
strong influence from socialists, Fumiko did not consider herself truly among 
their ranks, in part for reasons corresponding to the Anarchist-Bolshevik split that 
was developing in Japan at this time. “Socialism seeks to change society 
for the sake of the oppressed masses, but is what it would accomplish truly for 
their welfare? Socialism would create a social upheaval “for the masses,” and the masses would 
stake their lives in the struggle together with those who had risen up on their behalf. But 
what would the ensuing change mean for them? Power would be in the hands of the 
leaders, and the order of the new society would be based on that power. The 
masses would become slaves all over again to that power. What is revolution, then, but 
the replacing of one power with another?” This thinking, she expressed, was influenced 
by Hatsuyo, who herself rejected ideas about a perfect society, and simply focused 
on living life for herself. However, Fumiko differed from Hatsuyo in one key respect: “I felt that even if one did not 
have an ideal vision of society, one could have one’s work to do. Whether it 
was successful or not was not our concern; it was enough that we believed it to be a valid 
work. The accomplishment of that work, I believed, was what our real life was about. Yes. I want to 
carry out a work of my own; for I feel that by so doing our lives are rooted in the here 
and now, not in some far-off ideal goal.” Park Yeol Fumiko’s next important meeting during this period 
would be with Park Yeol, a Korean Individualist Anarchist. She first heard his name when reading a 
short poem he’d published in a socialist magazine: “Oh, what a powerful poem it was! 
Every single phrase gripped me. By the time I finished I was practically in 
raptures. My heart leapt in my breast, and I felt as though my very existence 
had been elevated to new heights.” Upon hearing his name, she insisted on 
learning more about him, and was told he was at that time out of work and drifting 
between staying with different friends, making him hard to get ahold of. 
Nevertheless, Fumi was determined: “Something was stirring within me, about 
to be born. What was at work within this man? What was it that made him so strong? 
I wanted to find out and make it my own. I left Jeong to go back to the shop, and 
on the way it dawned on me. “That’s it! That’s what I’m looking for, the work that 
I want to do! He has it within him. He is what I’m looking for. He has my work.” 
A strange joy set my heart leaping.” Later, Fumi encountered Park in a shop, 
and was able to ask him to come back to meet her. After they’d met several times, and 
had a very cute interaction I have to restrain myself not to excerpt in full here, Fumi very 
straightforwardly asked Park to date her: “Well, uhh … I’ll get right to the 
point. Do you have a wife? Or … well, if not exactly a wife, someone like, 
say, a lover? Because if you do, I want our relationship to 
be just one between comrades. Well … do you? (…) I’ve found what I have 
been looking for in you. I want to work with you.” Park accepted the offer, and he and Fumi 
eventually decided to move in together. The pair founded a group called the Futeisha, 
or “malcontent society,” mostly consisting of Koreans living in Japan, but also including some 
Japanese nihilists like Fumi and Hatsuyo. This organization would serve as a study group and 
a more direct action-oriented body within the larger Kokuyūkai, or “Black Friends Society,” a 
more public-facing Anarchist organization. The members of the Futeisha began developing a vague 
plan for a bomb attack against Prince Hirohito, somewhat similar to the plot that led to the 
High Treason Incident around a decade earlier, which you can learn more about in my video 
on Kanno Sugako. As Fumi would later explain, the people of Japan had been told for 
generations that the Emperor was divine, justifying his authority; the 
goal of this bombing, therefore, would be to shatter this “fantasy,” showing 
the emperor to be as human as anyone else. Due to trust issues and internal squabbles between 
members, these plans never amounted to anything; however, the very fact that a plot had been 
hatched would impact what happened to Fumi next. Imprisonment
In 1923, Tokyo was rocked by the Great Kanto Earthquake. As discussed in my 
video on Ito Noe, this incident would lead to a ton of scapegoating of Koreans, and to a lesser 
extent leftists. In the chaos of this event, Fumi, Park, and other members of the Futei-sha 
found themselves rounded up by the government. In prison, Hatsuyo, struggling with physical ailments 
that would lead to her death two months later, testified that Fumi and Park had planned a bombing 
against the prince. Based on this testimony, the pair were convicted of harming the 
Japanese Royal Family, a capital offense. While in prison, Fumi and Park Yeol officially 
married, and took scandalous wedding photos showing Park slipping a hand into Fumi’s Kimono. 
Considering how little stock Fumi and Park put in institutions, this marriage was likely intended as 
an ironic gesture, having the Japanese government unite them in life before uniting them in death.
During her trial, Fumiko seems to have heavily played up her involvement in the bombing 
plot, likely hoping to ensure she shared her fate with Park. She used the trial as 
an opportunity to voice her philosophy and her reasons for holding it, explaining her life 
experiences and how they’d shaped her viewpoint. At times, Fumiko’s testimony reads as a venting 
of frustrations; whether sincere or playing up her violent tendencies in hopes of securing execution 
alongside Park, Fumi declared that the ultimate goal of her Nihilist philosophy was the negation 
and annihilation of all life, including her own. “I don’t bear a grudge against my father or 
mother, but it is true that much of my life was spent in extreme hardship. I was cursed by 
it everywhere I went, and this made me want to die as I do, annihilating everything, cursing 
nature, cursing society, cursing all that lives.” However, in a later letter to 
the judge who oversaw her case, Fumiko discussed a change in her thinking;
“Formerly I said ‘I negate life’. [but] a negation of life does not originate in philosophy, 
for life alone is the origin of all things…. Yes. My negation of all life was completely 
meaningless. Negation is not created from negation. The stronger the affirmation, 
the stronger the negation created. That is, the stronger the affirmation of life, the stronger 
the creation of life-negation together with rebellion. Therefore I affirm life. I affirm it 
strongly. And since I affirm life, I resolutely rebel against all power that coerces life…. Thus 
you officials might ask, ‘Then why did you pretend you were trying to destroy your own life?’ I would 
answer: ‘Living is not synonymous with merely having movement. It is moving in accordance with 
one’s own will…. One could say that with deeds one begins to really live. Accordingly, when 
one moves by means of one’s own will and this leads to the destruction of one’s body, this is 
not a negation of life. It is an affirmation.’” Ultimately, Fumiko rejected all forms of 
authority – authority wielded by family, by capitalists, by the state, and by other 
ideological and religious constructs, each serving to oppress people and deny them 
the ability to live as they saw fit. To Fumiko, each of these authorities rested on deception, 
false concepts used to create some higher-minded justification for simple oppression. 
The response Fumi favored, therefore, was to reject these deceptions, embracing 
the ego and rebelling against all authority; ““Do what I am motivated to do now”; this is the 
only maxim of my action. (…) When a person wakes up to ego, the state falls. Quite so, I deny 
all the orders from outside such as state or government but the inner order from my own.”
Death Although Fumiko was initially sentenced to death 
by Japan’s supreme court, this sentence was later commuted to life in prison. However, Fumi did 
not accept this fate; when presented with her imperial pardon, Fumi reacted with rage, tearing 
the document to pieces and proclaiming, “You toy with people’s lives, killing or allowing to live 
as it suits you. What is this special pardon? Am I to be disposed of according to your whims?” In 
July of 1926, Fumiko committed suicide by hanging, rejecting the pardon in the firmest possible way. 
At one point in her trial, she had told the judge that, while she knew she could secure her freedom 
by claiming to be reformed and asking forgiveness, ‘Instead of going down on my knees before power, 
I’d rather die and remain true to myself!’ In this final act of defiance, Fumiko claimed her 
freedom in accordance with a poem she’d previously written; “One’s limbs may not be free and yet— if 
one has but the will to die, death is freedom.” Conclusion
Park Yeol, whose sentence had also been commuted to life in prison, was freed in 1945 following the 
Japanese defeat in WWII, and returned to Korea, where Fumi’s remains had previously been 
relocated. Fumiko and Park’s story would be featured in the 2017 Korean film “Anarchist 
from Colony,” which I’d recommend checking out, it’s pretty good. On November 17th, 2018, the 
Republic of Korea awarded Fumi the posthumous “Order of Merit for National Foundation” for her 
opposition to the Japanese Empire, making her one of only two Japanese people to earn this award. 
Considering her ideological beliefs, I don’t think she’d particularly appreciate getting a medal from 
a state, but it was nice of them to recognize her. Kaneko Fumiko lived a difficult life, but this 
life molded her into a remarkable woman. In her final months, Fumiko expressed a variety of 
emotions, including plenty of rage and resentment, but also hope, love, and optimism. For all the 
suffering she faced, by the end of her life Fumiko felt truly free, in a way that affirmed 
her life; she found an understanding of purpose that didn’t hinge on great social change, but 
on being herself, and acting as she saw fit, rebelling against authority to affirm her own 
desires. If there’s one thing I think we can take from the life and philosophy of Kaneko Fumiko, 
it’s her affirmation of life, her affirmation of sincerity, and the power of truthfulness in the 
face of the deceptions that justify oppression. When I started writing about Kaneko Fumiko, 
I didn’t expect to end up with three videos on her life, but I was so gripped by her 
memoir that I struggled to trim it down into a single short video. Ultimately, even 
here I had to leave out a lot of details; I’d highly recommend checking out the memoir 
if you can, as well as my other sources, listed below. If you enjoyed the 
video, please consider liking, subscribing, and commenting down below to 
help me out in the algorithm. If you can, I’d also appreciate if you’d share this video 
around, as that’s the best way to get new eyes on my channel. Thanks for watching everybody, 
I’ve been Soma, and I’ll see you next time.

Kaneko Fumiko was a Japanese Nihilist operating in 1920s Japan. Today she is often considered an Individualist Anarchist or an Anarcho-Nihilist, though in her own lifetime she just used the term Nihilist. This is the third and final part of a series detailing her life. Happy Women’s History Month!

Full Playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLY4SS3GtZxpgeyAeQrlG4e0Iu2YM_WXCJ

No generative AI was used in the creation of this video.

Sources:
Hwang, Dongyoun. Anarchism in Korea Independence, transnationalism, and the question of National Development, 1919-1984. Albany: SUNY Press, 2017. (This was a VERY minor source for this video, I think the only information I got from this source that wasn’t also in my others was the tiny bit about Park Yeol’s life after Fumiko’s death; it’s only first on the list because I’m citing these alphabetically lol)

Kaneko, Fumiko, and Jean Inglis. The Prison Memoirs of a Japanese Woman. London, UK: Routledge, 2016. (One of my main sources)

Matt. “Park Yeol, Kaneko Fumiko, and Korean Anarchism.” Gusts Of Popular Feeling, February 1, 2007. https://populargusts.blogspot.com/2007/02/park-yeol-kaneko-fumiko-and-korean.html. (Not a major source for information used in this video, but I got some images along with their context from here)

Raddeker, Helene Bowen. Treacherous Women of Imperial Japan: Patriarchal Fictions, Patricidal Fantasies. Routledge, 2016. (My other main source)

Res, Max. “Because I Wanted To.” The Anarchist Library, January 1, 2020. https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/max-res-kaneko-fumiko-because-i-wanted-to.

Watanabe, Kazuki. “Fumiko Kaneko (1903–1926).” The Anarchist Library, July 1, 2021. https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/kazuki-watanabe-fumiko-kaneko-1903-1926.

Link to an article about the award Fumi received in 2018:
https://jp.yna.co.kr/view/AJP20181115004400882

And also let me throw in this link about how apparently the most famous photo of Kaneko Fumiko is actually a completely different woman of the same name: https://sinkousya.exblog.jp/18157081/

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