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The Romance of Revolution in Japanese Anarchism and Communism during the Taishō Period

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 November 2008

Stephen S. Large
Stephen S. Large
Affiliation:
University of Adelaide
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Extract

Much can be learned about the character of a political movement by examining the personal relations between its principal members as well as their political writings, speeches, and ‘formal’ activities in the movement. This is all the more the case if the movement is politically radical, for radical politics often generate a radical subculture which has as its chief function the moulding of an ideal revolutionary personality which will serve the movement in all of its vicissitudes and be a model for the type of citizen the movement wishes to create in society.

Type
Articles
Information
Modern Asian Studies , Volume 11 , Issue 3 , July 1977 , pp. 441 - 467
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1977

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References

1 Ōsugi was born in 1885, the son of an army officer in Kagawa Prefecture. For a full biographical study on Ōsugi, see Masamichi, Ōzawa, Ōsugi Sakae kenkyū (Studies on Ōsugi Sakae) (Tokyo: Dōseisha, 1968).Google Scholar A good short study in English is Simcock, Bradford, ‘The Anarcho-Syndicalist Thought and Action of Ōsugi Sakae’, Papers on Japan (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1970).Google Scholar

2 The best study of Watanabe is Nobuyuki, Tsunekawa, Nihon Kyōsantō to Watanabe Masanosuke (Watanabe Masanosuke and the Japanese Communist Party) (Tokyo: San'ichi Shobō, 1971).Google Scholar

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6 A synopsis of this essay, which appeared in Katei zasshi (Family Magazine) in December 1906 is presented in Ōzawa, Ōsugi Sakae kenkyū pp. 191–2.Google Scholar

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9 The present account of Noe is based on Waka Moritarō and Yamamoto Fujie, Nihon no josei shi (A History of Women in Japan) (Tokyo: Shūeisha, 1973), Vol. 4, pp. 357–60.Google Scholar For information on Seitō, cf. Shea, George T., Leftwing Literature in Japan: A Brief History of the Proletarian Literary Movement (Tokyo: Hōsei University Press, 1964), pp. 233, 0–3.Google Scholar

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11 Goldman, Emma, Anarchism and Other Essays (Port Washington, New York: Kennikat Press, 1910, reissued, 1969), p. 228.Google Scholar

12 Ōsugi's relationship with Ichiko is discussed in Waka and Yamamoto, Nihon no josei shi, p. 377.Google Scholar

13 Ibid., p. 378.

14 The three principles are analysed in Ōzawa, Ōsugi Sakae kenkyū, pp. 192–3.Google Scholar

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33 Ōsugi's impact on Watanabe is discussed in Setsu, Tanno, Tanno Setsu: kakumei undō ni ikiru (Tanno Setsu: Living in the Revolutionary Movement) (Tokyo: Keisō Shobō, 1970), pp. 51–2.Google Scholar Also see Tsunekawa, , Nihon Kyōsantō to Watanabe Masanosuke, pp. 68–70.Google Scholar For more general studies of Ōsugi's influence in the labour movement, cf. Ryūji, Komatsu, Nihon anakizumu undō shi (The History of Japanese Anarchism) (Tokyo: Aoki Shinsho, 1972),Google Scholar and Shintarō, Hagiwara, Nihon anakizumu rōdō undō shi (The History of the Japanese Anarchist Labour Movement) (Tokyo: Gendai Shisōsha, 1969).Google Scholar

34 Large, , ‘Revolutionary Worker’, p. 372.Google Scholar

35 Two good sources on the debate in the labour movement are, Gojūnen, SōdōmeiIinkai, Shi Kankō (eds), Sōdōmei gojūnen shi (The Fifty Year History of the Sōdōmei) (Tokyo: Sōdōmei, 1965), I, 376–673,Google Scholar and Watanabe Tōru, ‘1918-nen yori 22-nen niitaru rōdō undō no shisō no sui-i: sandikarizumu e keishi no katei’ (The Change in Labour Thought from 1918 to 1922: The Tilt Toward Syndicalism), in Kiyoshi, Inoue (ed.), Taishōki no seiji to shakai (Politics and Society in the Taishō Era) (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1969), pp. 205–50.Google Scholar

36 The full text of Yamakawa's article is available in Tanaka, Taishō shakai undō shi, II, 537–40.Google Scholar

37 Large, , ‘Revolutionary Worker’, p. 374.Google Scholar For information on the history of the Japanese Communist Party, cf. Beckmann, George and Genji, Okubo, The Japanese Communist Party, 1922–1945 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1969),Google Scholar and Scalapino, Robert, The Japanese Communist Movement, 1920–1966 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1967), ch. I.Google Scholar

38 Tanno, , Tanno Setsu, p. 60.Google Scholar

39 Ibid., p. 55.

40 Ibid., pp. 47–8 for discussion of the meaning of ‘the spirit of Nankatsu’.

41 Ibid., pp. 87–123 for material on Tanno's early life. Also, cf. Tsunekawa, Nihon Kyōsantō to Watanabe Masanosuke, pp. 101–15.Google Scholar Note that Tsunekawa knew Watanabe and Tanno personally.

42 Tanno, , Tanno Setsu, pp. 13–14.Google Scholar

43 Tsunekawa, , Nihon Kyōsantō to Watanabe Masanosuke, pp. 58–62.Google Scholar

44 Large, , ‘Revolutionary Worker’, p. 377.Google Scholar

45 For an interesting discussion of the Kameido Incident in which the communists, and other radicals, were victimized, cf. Tsunekawa, Nihon Kyosantō to Watanabe Masanosuke, pp. 127–9.Google Scholar

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48 Setsu, Tanno, ‘Dōshi to shite tsuma to shite no kotoba’ (The Words of a Wife and Comrade), in Masanosuke, Watanabe, Sayoku rōdō kumiai no sochiki to seisaku (The Organization and Policy of Left-Wing Labour Unions) (Tokyo: Kibōsha, 1931), p. 13. Note, this work was a collection of Watanabe's writings on the labour movement and was published posthumously, with Tanno the likely editor.Google Scholar

49 Large, , ‘Revolutionary Worker’, pp. 382–6.Google Scholar

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51 Two good, contrasting, accounts of events leading to the 1925 Labour split are Sōdōmei gojūnen shi, pp. 673–880, and Zentarō, Taniguchi, Nihon rōdō kumiai Hyōgikai shi (The History of the Council of Japanese Labour Unions) (Tokyo: Takakiri Shoin, 1949), I, 45–88.Google Scholar The latter is the communist version.

52 Large, ‘Revolutionary Worker’, pp. 383–4. After 1927, Watanabe was unofficially characterized as the Party's ‘secretary-general’, cf. Yoshio, Shiga, Nihon kakumei undō shi no hitobito (People in the History of Japanese Revolutionary Movements) (Tokyo: 1948), p. 202.Google Scholar

53 Tanno's biography includes much data on the fujinbu dispute in the Hyōgikai. In particular, cf. pp. 144–50. Another excellent source on this is Taniguchi, Nihon rōdō kumiai Hyōgikai shi, pp. 164–216.Google Scholar Taniguchi states that many Hyōgikai opponents of the fujinbu proposal were politically immature and that they greeted it with derision (p. 214).

54 Watanabe fully supported the fujinbu proposal in his writings. For example, see his article, ‘Rōdō kumiai no fujinbu wa naze ni hitsuyō ka’ (Why is a Women's Department in Labour Unions Necessary?), written in 1926 and reproduced in Sayoku, pp. 111–22.Google Scholar

55 Cf. Taniguchi, , regarding the establishment of the central fujinbu in the Hyōgikai in 1927, pp. 214–16.Google Scholar

56 The Party's trials and tribulations in 1928 are discussed in Beckmann and Okubo, Japanese Communist Party, ch. 6, ‘Suppression of the Party, 1928’, pp. 138–63.Google Scholar

57 Cf. Tsunekawa, , Nihon Kyōsantō to Watanabe Masanosuke, pp. 338–53, for an account of how Party members, especially Watanabe, were forced underground in 1928.Google Scholar

58 Ibid., pp. 350–63 for the circumstances surrounding Watanabe's death.

59 Tanno, , Tanno Setsu, pp. 177–243 for her account of her prison term. After she was released, she resumed her nursing career and founded a private health-care clinic in 1946.Google Scholar

60 The subsequent prewar history of the Party is traced in Beckmann and Okubo, Japanese Communist Party, chs 7–9.Google Scholar

61 Tanno, , Tanno Setsu, p. 180.Google Scholar

62 Watanabe's emergence as a hero in communist history is analysed in Tsunekawa, Nihon Kyōsantō to Watanabe Masanosuke, pp. 361–3. In 1967, Watanabe's collected works were published by the Party: Watanabe Masanosuke chosakushū, in Tokyo.Google Scholar

63 Scalapino develops these themes in his account, esp. pp. 43–7.

64 Harootunian, Harry, Toward Restoration (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1970), p. 410.Google Scholar

65 The romantic ethos surrounding the terrorists of the 1930s is portrayed by Wilson, George, ‘Restoration and Shōwa Politics’, in Wilson, (ed.), Crisis Politics in Prewar Japan (Tokyo: Sophia University Press, 1970), pp. 71–8.Google Scholar For an alternative view, cf. Shillony, Ben-Ami, ‘Myth and Reality in Japan of the 1930's’, in Beasley, W. J., (ed.), Modern Japan: Aspects of History, Literature and Society (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1975), pp. 81–8.Google Scholar

66 Lifton, Robert Jay, ‘Youth and History: Individual Change in Postwar Japan’, in Erikson, Erik (ed.), Youth: Change and Challenge (New York: Basic Books, 1963), p. 218.Google Scholar

67 Ibid., p. 227.

68 Ibid., p. 232.

69 Ibid., p. 233.

70 Ibid.

71 Ibid., p. 237. Lifton defines ‘totalism’ as ‘psychological extremism’. ‘Totalism of the new’ occurs when young people create a ‘closed ideological system (usually derived from Marxism) in which there are combined elements of idealism, scientism, a moral imperative for bold (sometimes violent) action, and a degree of martyrdom’.

72 Ibid., p. 233.

73 Losche, Peter, ‘Stages in the Evolution of the German Labour Movement’, in Sturmthal, Adolf and Scoville, James (eds), The International Labour Movement in Transition (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1973), p. 110.Google Scholar

74 Notehelfer, Fred, Kōtoku Shūsui: Portrait of a Japanese Radical (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1971), is a good source on Meiji anarchism.Google Scholar Also see Kublin, Hyman, Asian Revolutionary: The Life of Sen Katayama (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1964).Google Scholar

75 The history of Japanese labour in early Taishō period is discussed in Large, Stephen S., The Rise of Labour in Japan: The Yūaikai, 1912–1919 (Tokyo: Sophia University Press, 1972),Google Scholar and in his article, ‘The Japanese Labour Movement, 1912–1919: Suzuki Bunji and the Yūaikai’, Journal of Asian Studies, XXIX, 3 (05 1970), 559–79.Google Scholar

76 Arima, , Failure of Freedom, p. 64.Google Scholar

77 Hunt, Richard, German Social Democracy, 1918–1933 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1964), pp. 241–60.Google Scholar