Cuban essayist and professor Emilio Ichikawa dies from COVID-19 in Miami

October 17, 2021

The Cuban essayist and professor Emilio Ichikawa Morín passed away on the morning of October 11, 2021 in Miami, at the age of 59, from complications derived from COVID-19, after remaining hospitalized for several weeks in intensive care.

Ichikawa was born in the city of Bauta, in the current province of Artemisa. Son of a Japanese immigrant and a Cuban mother, Ichikawa graduated with a degree in Philosophy from La Universidad de La Habana in 1985. At that educational institution he worked in the Sociology department of the Faculty of Philosophy and History, where he was a professor until 1996.

He later pursued studies in Political Philosophy in Spain and returned to Cuba, where he worked as a literary specialist at the Biblioteca Nacional "José Martí" until his definitive departure from the country.

In 2000, Ichikawa requested political asylum in Miami, after traveling to New York to fulfill academic commitments with American universities.

In 2002, he began doctoral studies at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, which he did not complete. Subsequently he settled in Miami, where he created a personal blog of news, political analysis and various texts.

His presence was also regular as a panelist in radio and television spaces in Miami, and he maintained a weekly column in the newspaper El Nuevo Herald for several years.

The renowned Cuban historian Rafael Rojas considered Ichikawa to be "one of the Cuban essayists with the greatest philosophical culture."

The cartoonist Alen Lauzán, originally from Bauta and exiled in Chile, remembered his fellow townsman from the years when they met and shared time together in Cuba.

"I think that many of us from Bauta owe Ichikawa the ability to think about Cuba in a different way, dimension; I say he is the Félix Varela of peasants with paintbrushes. He had a philosophy as firm as his feet and of course he put them in like the tricky irons in the little valley," Lauzán opined.

Among his works produced in Cuba are the titles El pensamiento agónico (1986) and La escritura y el límite (1998), as well as the text selection Estudios de Filosofía una saga de la cultura cubana (1999), a compilation made with the deceased intellectual Fernando Martínez Heredia.

During his time in exile are the essay volumes La heroicidad revolucionaria (2001), Contra El Sacrificio: Del Camarada Al Buen Vecino (2002), Antes del veredicto: La demasiada humanidad del Padre Varela (2020), and the philosophical poem Everglades (2009).

The magazine El Caimán Barbudo has been, up to now, the only official publication from the Island that has made mention of Ichikawa's death. Upon sending condolences to family and friends through their social networks, they recalled that the academic was a contributor to the magazine during the 90s.

About Ichikawa, his colleague Jorge Ferrer wrote this Tuesday on his Facebook profile that he was "a very intelligent man and owner of an exceptional philosophical culture to whom Cuba, that strip of land, turned out to be as narrow as it appears on maps."

"I witnessed the complex negotiation that he maintained with his demons over the years: his struggles with exile, especially his own, but also that of everyone. He was always generous, abundant, when it came to thinking. I don't know what else one can ask of a philosopher," Ferrer added.

He is survived by a sister in Miami and a son in Cuba.