  The joint optimization of representation learning and clustering in the
embedding space has experienced a breakthrough in recent years. In spite of the
advance, clustering with representation learning has been limited to flat-level
categories, which often involves cohesive clustering with a focus on instance
relations. To overcome the limitations of flat clustering, we introduce
hierarchically-clustered representation learning (HCRL), which simultaneously
optimizes representation learning and hierarchical clustering in the embedding
space. Compared with a few prior works, HCRL firstly attempts to consider a
generation of deep embeddings from every component of the hierarchy, not just
leaf components. In addition to obtaining hierarchically clustered embeddings,
we can reconstruct data by the various abstraction levels, infer the intrinsic
hierarchical structure, and learn the level-proportion features. We conducted
evaluations with image and text domains, and our quantitative analyses showed
competent likelihoods and the best accuracies compared with the baselines.
