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Mantetsu Democracy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 April 2013

EMER O'DWYER
EMER O'DWYER*
Affiliation:
Oberlin College, USA Email: [email protected]
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Abstract

The Mantetsu Employees' Association, founded in 1926 by a group of elite university-educated employees of the South Manchuria Railway Company, was an organization of unprecedented scope and vision which provided for the development of a limited form of self-government by the Japanese in the Kwantung Leasehold and Rail Zone during Japan's occupation of northeast China. Its founding principles resembled the ideological tenets of the metropole's movement of Taishō Democracy which had since the post-Russo-Japanese War energized supporters of widened popular access to the job of national governance. This paper traces how the Mantetsu Employees' Association reflected the political zeitgeist of post World War I metropolitan society whilst simultaneously developing in response to heightened Chinese nationalism in the northeast throughout the 1920s. It shows how the Association encompassed a wide range of employee ambitions—from increased involvement in imperial decision-making to labour advocacy on behalf of the Company's lowest-ranking Japanese workers to a critique of colonial policy as dictated by Tokyo's political parties. The paper introduces key Association players and their ideas as a means of questioning the nature of democracy in an imperial setting.

Type
Research Article
Information
Modern Asian Studies , Volume 47 , Issue 6 , November 2013 , pp. 1812 - 1844
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2013 

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References

1 Mantetsu was at its founding, and remains today, the largest company in Japanese history. While its operations centred on the railway that stretched south from Port Arthur (J: Ryojun) north to Changchun, the company by no means limited itself to the rails. Operation of steel mills, iron works, and docks represented an additional source of profit. Mantetsu operated at the heart of the colonial economy, employing thousands of workers—both Japanese and Chinese. In addition to funding Japan's expansion on the continent, the charter of the company stipulated administrative responsibilities for land in the so-called ‘Rail Zone’ that abutted each side of the rails in a narrow strip from north to south, and which included several branch lines. In 1931, the company counted 35,000 employees, a number which jumped to 296,000 in 1942. For more on Mantetsu in English, see Matsusaka, Tak, The Making of Japanese Manchuria (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2001).Google Scholar In Japanese, there is a vast literature. For a comprehensive overview, see Kiyofumi, Katō, Mantetsu zenshi (Tokyo: Kōdansha Sensho Métier, 2006).Google Scholar

2 Liaoning is the name of the region in South Manchuria of which Japan's Kwantung Leasehold formed the southern part.

3 Readers’ club, March 1926 (Dairen): 83.

4 In 1926, Mantetsu operations registered 215 million yen in income, 108 million of which came from rail operations. Total profit amounted to 34.1 million yen. Kyōwa, 6/15/32 (Dairen: Mantetsu Shain-kai): 32.

5 Although Mantetsu was formally classified as an ‘incorporated stock company’ (kabushiki gaisha) and therefore would be expected to allow stockholders a say in naming the board of directors, in fact, assigning individuals to top positions in Mantetsu management was the exclusive privilege of the metropolitan government, which after all held 50 per cent of company stock. In 1934, stockholders in Tokyo unsuccessfully demanded a say in naming the directors.

6 Kyōwa, November 1927, p. 69.

7 Readers’ club, March 1926, p. 80.

8 As of early 1924, Mantetsu employed some 500 female workers, roughly one-third of whom were nurses and the remaining two-thirds assigned to clerical jobs. Whilst the odds suggest that both anonymous writers were male employees (Mantetsu's total Japanese workforce by March 1926 counted 21,200 workers), by 1924, female employees were becoming increasingly organized in their demands for better working conditions.

9 Readers’ club, March 1926, p. 77.

10 Samon, Kinbara, Taishō demokurashī: Kindai Nihon no kiseki (4) [Taishō Democracy: The Trajectory of Modern Japan] (Tokyo: Yoshikawa Kōbunkan), p. 9.Google Scholar

11 The word used by metropolitan critics was ‘ken-nō’ (権 能) which may, depending on the context, mean power (as in elected authority) or the power to vote.

12 Kyōwa, 9/1/31, p. 1.

13 The definitive guide to self-government in Japanese concessions in China remains Peattie, Mark, ‘Japanese Treaty Port Settlements in China, 1895–1937’, in Duus, Peter, Myers, Ramon H. and Peattie, Mark, eds, Japan's Informal Empire in China, 1895–1937 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989)Google Scholar. Barbara Brooks describes the function of the consul vis-à-vis China's expatriate communities in Japan's Imperial Diplomacy: Consuls, Treaty Ports, and War in China, 1895–1938 (Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 2000). Japanese local self-governance in Shanghai (in which Japan never maintained a concession, but was rather a member of the city's International Settlement) has been treated by Fogel, Joshua, ‘“Shanghai-Japan”: The Japanese Residents’ Association of Shanghai’, Journal of Asian Studies 59, 4 (2000): 927–950CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Henriot, Christian ‘“Little Japan” in Shanghai: An Insulated Community’, in Bickers, Robert and Henriot, Christian (eds), New Frontiers: Imperialism's New Communities in East Asia, 1842–1953 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2000).Google Scholar The case of Tianjin is covered in Dryburgh, Marjorie, ‘Japan in Tianjin: Settlers, State and the Tensions of Empire before 1937’, Japanese Studies 27, 1 (2007): 19–34.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Settler politics in Korea is the subject of Delissen, Alain, ‘Denied and Besieged: The Japanese Community of Korea, 1876–1945’, in Bickers, Robert and Henriot, Christian, New Frontiers: Imperialism's New Communities in East Asia, 1842–1953 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2000)Google Scholar; and Uchida, Jun, Brokers of Empire: Japanese Settler Colonialism in Korea, 1876–1945. (Cambridge: Harvard, 2011)Google Scholar.

14 Another reform in 1930 created elected local councils with decision-making powers, but here too the might of the Korea Government-General precluded significant input from settlers on matters of governance.

15 Jun Uchida, Brokers of Empire,’ passim.

16 Dairen (C: Dalian), home to the MEA headquarters, was the largest city in the Kwantung Leasehold and home to the highest concentration of Japanese settlers. Throughout the pre-conquest period, the percentage of Japanese in Dairen vis-à-vis the colonial other (Chinese, Korean, or Manchu) consistently hovered around 35 per cent.

17 By 1937, the MEA counted 28 chapters (rengōkai) and 380 branches (bunkai) where voting took place.

18 Kyōwa, 8/15/37, p. 24.

19 No records of the meetings or roster of members exist. Kikuchi Kan, however, described the gatherings in his informal history, Mantetsu gai-shi (1941) in Kikuchi Hiroshi zenshū Gunji Katsuyoshi, ed. Vol. 20 (Tokyo: Bungei Shunjū, 1993): 564.

20 Kyōwa, May 1927, p. 2.

21 Kyōwa, 1/15/33, p. 5.

22 Kyōwa, May 1927, p. 3.

23 See Kyōwa, April 1928, pp. 180–184 for the text of the original Bylaws, which were amended at least twice between 1928 and 1937.

24 Excerpted in Kyōwa, 9/8/28, no. 6 weekly, p. 7.

25 Ibid.

26 The metropole's Railway Bureau was home to a variety of informal workers’ associations in the immediate post-World War I years. An association of blue-collar workers (gengyōin-kai) was established in 1919, followed a year later by an association of locomotive engineers and train personnel (Nihon kikan-sha jōmuin-kai). Both were short-lived. In May 1920, the Railway Bureau established a factory council for workers to discuss issues of concern in a monitored environment. Kaizō, July 1931 (Tokyo): 88. So-called ‘salaryman unions’ had been commonplace in Japan since 1921 when workers in Osaka apparel stores first organized under the name ‘Shinsei-kai’. In 1925, a resolution by the Japan Federation of Labour to recognize salaryman unions passed unanimously, leading to the rapid formation of ten such unions between June 1925 and December 1926 that together boasted over 3,000 members. Shakai kenkyū, February 1928 (Dairen): 31–3. With the unemployment rate for salaried employees and intellectuals hovering at 31.5 per cent in 1925, the reason for the broad appeal is evident. Kindai seikatsu, October 1929 (Tokyo): 79. See also Seiichi, Kotori, ‘Hōkyū seikatsu-sha no kaikyū tenkai to handō undō’, Chūō kōron, November 1926 (Tokyo): 39–53Google Scholar.

27 Readers’ club, February 1927, pp. 45–49.

28 Beginning in 1913 with his appointment as interior minister in Prime Minister Yamamoto Gonnohyōe's cabinet, Hara Kei made a concerted effort to extend Seiyūkai influence in Manchuria as part of his larger goal of overturning clique politics (hanbatsu seiji) and moving towards a party cabinet. Katō Kiyofumi makes the argument in ‘Hara Kei to Mantetsu’, in Hideo, Kobayashi, ed. Kindai Nihon to Mantetsu. (Tokyo: Yoshikawa kōbunkan): 32–63Google Scholar.

29 Gordon, Andrew, Labor and Imperial Democracy in Prewar Japan. (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California, 1991)Google Scholar: Introduction and passim.

30 Kyōwa 6/15/32, p. 59.

31 The scandals were the Manshū-Maru Incident in which one of Mantetsu's subsidiary companies purchased a monstrously over-valued 8,500-ton steamship from shipbuilding magnate Uchida Nobuya who then donated the profits to Seiyūkai campaign funds. The second incident, the Tōren Coal Mine Incident, was of a similar nature but distinguished itself by implication of Mantetsu's vice-president Nakanishi Seiichi. Commenting on the latter incident, Kenseikai representative Hayami Seiji denounced Mantetsu before the 44th Imperial Diet as ‘a ghoulish stomping ground of ne'er-do-wells scheming under cover of night’. Takeuchi Ayayoshi, ‘Mantetsu ōkoku-ron’ Kaizō (March 1930): 105.

32 Kyōwa, October 1927, p. 22.

33 There were of course a number of employee-led organizations prior to the establishment of the MEA, though membership tended to be limited to employees with managerial responsibilities. One such group was the Kyōmeikai (共 鳴 會), begun in October 1919, which provided a setting for likeminded ‘gentlemen employees' (yūshi shain) to gather socially and discuss current events. Kyōwa, 6/15/37, p. 20.

34 Only a handful of the minutes survive and are collected in Itō, Ogiwara, and Fujii, ed. ‘Jūyaku kaigi jikō’ in Gendai shiryō 32: Mantetsu shiryō (2) (Tokyo: Misuzu Shobo, 1966).

35 Suleski, Ronald, ‘The Rise and Fall of the Fengtien Dollar, 1917–1928: Currency Reform in Warlord China’, Modern Asian Studies 13, 4 (1979): 643–660.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

36 Minoru, Fukuda, ed. Manshū Hōten Nihonjin shi: Dōran no tairiku ni ikita hitobito (Tokyo: Kenkōsha, 1983): 107.Google Scholar Chinese passengers too were robbed during various heists, prompting an angry letter to the editors in the 26 June 1923 issue of the Chinese newspaper, Tung-pao, which condemned Mantetsu for failing to guarantee security. Peattie, Mark, ‘Japanese Attitudes Toward Colonialism’ in The Japanese Colonial Empire 1895–1945, Myers, Ramon H. and Peattie, Mark R., eds, 80–127. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989): 127.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

37 March 1923 marked the original expiration date of Russia's lease with the Qing for control over the two areas.

38 Fukuda, Manshū Hōten Nihonjin shi, p. 124.

39 Itō, Ogiwara, and Fujii, ed. ‘Jūyaku kaigi jikō’, p. 558.

40 Chongmin, SuMantetsu-shi, trans. Mutsuo, Yamashita, Masahiro, Wada, and Yong, Wang. (Tokyo: Ashi Shobō, 1999): 115Google Scholar.

41 Tachibana Shiraki, ‘Shina rōdō undō to Minami-Manshū’ Manmō, December 1926 (Dairen): 9.

42 Ibid.

43 Dalian-shi zhi ban gong shi, Dalian shi zhi: Da shi ji, song shen gao (Dalian: Dalian-shi shi zhi ban gong shi, 2001): 32Google Scholar.

44 Nakazawa Hironori, ‘Manshū ni okeru rōdōsha undō no sūsei’ Manmō (January 1927): 29.

45 Su, Mantetsu-shi, p. 118.

46 The Longkou Bank's declaration of bankruptcy initiated a panic that spread like wildfire. Numerous banks and companies throughout the Leasehold and Rail Zone declared bankruptcy in quick succession, forcing the Dairen stock exchange to mandate a temporary suspension of trading. Asobu, Yanagisawa, ‘Zai ‘Manshū’ Nihonjin Shōkōgyō-sha no suitai katei: 1921-nen Dairen Shōkōgyō-kaigisho kai-in bunseki’ Mita Gakkai Zasshi 92, 1 (1999): 66Google Scholar.

47 Throughout the prewar period, the Kwantung Government relied for much of its operating revenue on profits from opium sales. Though after 1914 opium-selling licenses were held by Chinese merchants, substantial revenue from trafficking continued to fill both Kwantung coffers as well as the personal bank accounts of prominent, well-respected members of Dairen's Japanese financial community. See Gōichi, Yamada, Manshūkoku no ahen senbai: Waga Manmō no tokushu ken-eki no kenkyū (Tokyo: Kyūko shoin, 2002): 20.Google Scholar The Peking Treaty of 1905, negotiated between Japan and the Qing following the conclusion of Japan's peace with Russia, allowed for the creation of Japanese post offices on Chinese soil. Revenue from these post offices amounted to a second major source of revenue for the Kwantung Government—a curiosity explained by the fact that opium smuggling outside the leasehold into the Manchurian interior relied on parcel service. Yamada, Manshūkoku no ahen senbai, pp. 476–480.

48 Shintenchi, January 1929 (Dairen): 33.

49 Hiroyuki, Shiode, ‘Nation or Colony? The Political Belonging of the Japanese in Karafuto’ Social Science Japan Journal 12, 1 (2009): 101–119.Google Scholar

50 Takeshi, Komagome, Shokuminchi teikoku Nihon no bunka tōgō (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1996): 209–215.Google Scholar

51 In 1912, Mantetsu's salaried Japanese employees numbered 4,239. This number jumped to 6,698 in 1922. The real area of growth however was in the expansion of the unskilled and semi-skilled workforce. In 1912, there were 7,666 Japanese yō-in (傭 員) a designation that included Japanese workers engaged in a variety of blue-collar trades within the company. By 1922, there were 12,041 yō-in. In 1921, a further designation was added (ko-in 雇 員) to accommodate the growing work force; by 1922, 2,684 Japanese workers fitted within the new designation. During the same period (1912–1922), Mantetsu's Chinese employees increased in number from 8,570 to 14,614, all of whom occupied the ranks of yō-in. Manshū kaihatsu yonjū nen-shi quoted in Katsumasa, Harada, Mantetsu (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1981): 81Google Scholar.

52 Kyōwa, 5/1/30, p. 1.

53 Ibid., p. 5.

54 Following Japan's defeat in 1945, Matsumoto would be appointed Chairman of the Constitutional Problems Investigation Committee and charged with presenting ideas for constitutional revision to the Supreme Commander of the Allied Force (SCAP).

55 Henry Smith describes the founding, membership, and activities of the Shinjinkai in Japan's First Student Radicals (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1972).

56 Chōsen oyobi Manshū, 3/1/17 (Keijō): 64.

57 Itō quoted in Tetsuo, Imura, ed. Mantetsu chōsabu: Kankei-sha no shōgen (Tokyo: Ajia Keizai Kenkyūjo, 1996): 644.Google Scholar

58 Young, Louise, Japan's Total Empire: Manchuria and the Culture of Wartime Imperialism (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998): 273.Google Scholar

59 Ibid., pp. 269–270.

60 The masthead pronounced the ‘building of a new society’, ‘creation of new culture’, and ‘propagation of liberal thought’ as the magazine's foundational goals.

61 Nomenclature linking ‘the [Japanese] people’ (kokumin) to their empire (teikoku) or colony (shokuminchi) gained currency in the colonial presses in the early Taishō years. Examples include ‘shokumin-teki kokumin’ (Tairiku, January 1914, p. 9) and ‘teikoku kokumin’ (Tairiku, November 1914, pp. 16–18.)

62 Six years after the start of publication, the circulation of Readers’ club in 1920 numbered 8,000, a figure equal to just over one-third of Mantetsu's Japanese workforce at the time. Hirano Ken'ichirō, ‘Shintenchi kaidai: Chūgoku zasshi kaidai I’ Ajia keizai shiryō geppō (March 1972): 28.

63 Rejection of the principle of ‘extending the metropole’ (naichi enchō-shugi), was a hallmark of the MEA's activism and generally included a disavowal of anything (from colonial policy-making to tatami-based interior design) that uncritically adopted metropolitan models unsuited for the Manchurian environment.

64 The exceedingly high rate of enrollment in the early MEA casts doubt on the voluntary nature of membership. Management's interest in forestalling the possibility that the MEA would become centred on class identity may explain such a high percentage of enrollment, especially given the (albeit nominal) fees associated with membership.

65 Kyōwa, 7/15/37, p. 6.

66 The Mantetsu directorate was allegedly deeply involved in deciding who filled the seats of the group's first executive secretariat.

67 Kyōwa, 7/15/37, p. 6.

68 Ibid., p. 7.

69 In 1926, the departments were: general affairs, accounting, research, editorial, mutual aid services, operations, public affairs, recreation, youth corps, and women's affairs.

70 Concerned that a surfeit of discontent would give way to worker radicalism, Mantetsu management ordered the Social Section to conduct a six-month survey of three levels of Japanese employees in Dairen: skilled labourers from the Shahekou locomotive factory; unskilled labourers whose workplaces included Mantetsu's trains, boats, and wharves; and white-collar office staff. The results of the survey revealed what many suspected: Mantetsu's lowest-ranking workers were barely earning a subsistence wage. While most semi-skilled Japanese workers earned between 70 and 100 yen per month, an exhaustive study of living expenses by the survey-takers determined that a family of four in Dairen required a monthly salary of at least 130 yen to live comfortably. Mantetsu Shomu-bu, Shakai-ka, Dairen zaikin Mantetsu hojin shain seikei-hi chōsa (Dairen: Mantetsu, 1925): 11–12Google Scholar; 79.

71 See, for example, Shinji, Okumura, ‘Kojin ware yori shakai ware e’, Readers’ club June 1925, (Dairen): 15–21Google Scholar.

72 Kyōwa, 8/15/37, p. 25.

73 Shintenchi, November 1927, pp. 1–3.

74 Readers’ club, February 1926, p. 1.

75 Tsutomu, Hirayama, ‘Mantetsu shain-kai no setsuritsu to katsudō’ Mita gakkai zasshi 93, 2 (Tokyo: Keio University, 2000): 114Google Scholar, chart 5.

76 Shūmei kenshōkai, Ōkawa ed., Ōkawa Shūmei nikki, 1903–1949 (Tokyo: Iwasaki Gakujutsu Shuppansha): 116–118.Google Scholar

77 During a visit to Tokyo in early summer 1931, Shinozaki Yoshirō, a prominent member of Dairen's financial community, was astonished at the following outburst by a politician who demanded of him: ‘What in heaven's name is so important about Manchuria?! Leaving aside rail revenue, Fushun coal, and Anshan iron, what achievements are there to speak of??! Emigration is a disaster, Russia's no longer a threat, and we have ample food supplies here in Japan . . .’. On the same visit, Shinozaki made a stop at Waseda University, there to discover that the words ‘empire’ (teikoku) and ‘war’ (sensō) were used with scorn by students. Shintenchi, July 1931, pp. 50–51.

78 Kyōwa, 8/4/28 no. 1 weekly, p. 9.

79 In May 1931, Tanikawa Hiroshi, a reporter at the Dairen shinbun, branded the MEA a ‘fascistic organization’ (fashisuto dantai), citing both the group's mobilization of lower-level workers to support aggressive imperialism in extra-company affairs, and domination by monopoly capital of all internal matters. Kyōwa, 6/15/31, p. 15.

80 Kyōwa, May 1927, 12–3. These figures reflect worker totals at Fushun as of September 1925. Additionally, 700 Japanese were employed at the colliery in white-collar administrative positions. Kōjirō, Sada ed. Minami Manshū Tetsudō Kabushiki-gaisha nijūnen ryakushi. [8](Dairen: Manshū Nichi Nichi Shinbun, 1927): overleaf between pp. 44–45Google Scholar.

81 Per MEA bylaws, Council delegates were allotted to branches proportionally based on branch membership. In 1928, a branch's first ten members entitled the branch to one delegate. Thereafter, an additional delegate was allotted for membership of up to 45 members, a third for membership up to 80, and a fourth for membership to 150. Membership of 151 members or more was entitled to an additional delegate for every 100 members.

82 Occasionally, special Council sessions (rinji hyōgiinkai) were called to address a particularly pressing order of business. Beginning in 1933, regular Council meetings in Dairen were held twice yearly.

83 In May 1928, Secretary General Ishikawa instructed local branch leaders to warn their constituents against provocation of Mantetsu's 24,000 Chinese employees given the threat of instability following recent violence in Shanghai. Kyōwa, June 1928, p. 122.

84 Kyōwa, 9/22/28 no. 12 weekly, p. 8.

85 Ibid.

86 Kyōwa, 8/4/28 no. 1 weekly, p. 4.

87 Kyōwa, 11/1/28 no. 20 weekly, p. 1.

88 Kyōwa, 1/29 weekly, p. 3.

89 Kyōwa, 3/15/32, p. 19.

90 Ibid.

91 Kyōwa, 9/1/32, p. 1 and 9/15/32, p. 25. By early 1935, a total of 40 employees had been enshrined at Yasukuni. See names in Ibid., 4/15/35, p. 27.

92 Kyōwa, 7/15/34, p. 18.

93 Use of the phrase tozama is a direct allusion to the “outside daimyo” (tozama daimyo) of the Tokugawa period (1603–1868). These were the lords whose allegiance to Tokugawa Ieyasu (1543–1616) dated to the post-Sekigahara settlement and consequently was viewed as less secure than that of the fudai daimyo who were long-time Tokugawa allies. Kawara En, ‘Ōkura Kinmochi no tai-Man kokusaku-ron’ Rekishi kenkyū (786): 43, note 14.

94 Kyōwa, 4/15/33, p. 1.

95 Hōjō Shūichi ed., Sogō Shinji to tairiku (Hōjō Shūichi jimusho, 1971): 115.

96 The other was Kohiyama Naoto who was appointed to Mantetsu's top spot in July 1943.

97 George Orwell, ‘Politics and the English Language’ Payments Book, 11 December 1945. Reprinted in Davison, Peter, ed. Orwell and Politics (London: Penguin Books, 2001): 403.Google Scholar

98 George Orwell, ‘Extract from London Letter, 15 April 1941’ Partisan Review, July–August. Reprinted in Davison, ed. Orwell and Politics, p. 141.