Born in Hiraimura, Hyogo Prefecture on 28 December 1896 (although his birth was registered on 5 January 1897), he enrolled in Kyoto University to study with Nishida Kitarō, having been deeply impressed by his book An Inquiry into the Good. From 1922 to 1925, he studied first in Germany with Heinrich Rickert in Heidelberg and Martin Heidegger in Marburg, where he met, among others, Karl Löwith and Hans-Georg Gadamer, and then in Paris, France to work on Pascal. In 1927, he became a professor at Hōsei University in Tokyo. Influenced by Heidegger, he developed a humanistic interpretation of Marx’s thought. In 1930, he was accused of aiding the Communist Party, arrested, and imprisoned for several months. Forced to leave academia, he began working as a journalist and in publishing. From 1938 to 1940, he was a member of the Shōwa Research Association, while devoting himself to the development of what would become his masterpiece, The Logic of Imagination, which remained unfinished. While working on an interpretation of Shinran’s thought, he was arrested again for political reasons in 1945. He died in prison in Tokyo a few days after the end of the war on 26 September 1945.