Chapter 1

Revolutionary Socialism in Japan, 1898-1921

Socialism took hold in Japan among intellectuals in the decade following the Sino-Japanese War of 1894-95, when industrialization and urbanization began to have noticeable impact on Japanese society.¹ The earliest socialist organizations were social study groups, and of these the most influential was the Society for the Study of Socialism (Shakaishugi Kenkyukai), founded by a handful of Christian intellectuals in Tokyo in October 1898. Its members were pledged to study and discuss the advisability of applying socialism in Japan; they used as sources the works of a variety of European and American socialist thinkers, including Saint-Simon, Fourier, Proudhon, Lassalle, Bebel, Henry George, and Marx. Those who became committed to socialism, some 40 members in all, formed the Socialist Society (Shakaishugi Kyokai) in May 1900. Their socialism, whose basic tenets they hoped to disseminate as widely as possible among the masses, was an amalgam of Christian humanitarianism, social democracy, and pacifism.

Some of these intellectuals looked to the budding labor movement to achieve economic and social reform. Metalworkers, machinists, and railway workers—all part of the modern industrial sector of the economy—had by the turn of the century formed labor unions in order to put their demands before Japan’s capitalists. They had the skills required to establish bargaining power and, for a time, the courage to resort to the use of strikes. In all, some 20,000 workers in the Tokyo-Yokohama area, or about 5 per cent of the modern industrial labor force, were unionized; however, most of the unions were small, having fewer than 500 members. Pioneer social reformers like Takano Fusataro and Katayama Sen became active in the labor movement and sought to expand and strengthen it through the formation of new unions. But they were not revolutionaries. They wanted to reform capitalism and work for the gradual achievement of a socialist society. They found, however, that there were certain serious obstacles to be overcome. Not only were they faced with apathy on the part of the majority of workers, but the state used its full power to suppress their efforts.² The police, who equated unionism with anarchism, constantly broke up labor meetings, and in the spring of 1900 the Diet passed the Public Peace Police Law, Article 17 of which declared organized action on the part of workers to be a disturbance of the public peace. For all practical purposes, the formation of unions and the calling of strikes became illegal. The labor movement temporarily stagnated thereafter, except for spontaneous outbursts by workers that invariably culminated in violence, a significant example being the 1907 riots at the copper mines at Ashio and Besshi. Not until World War I were conditions favorable for a second attempt at establishing a labor movement.

The direct suppression of the labor movement by the state, and indirectly by the capitalists behind the state, stimulated some members of the Socialist Society, for the most part Christians, to look to the formation of a political party in order to achieve some fundamental reforms. Five of the six men who launched the Social Democratic Party (Shakai Minshuto) in May 1901 were Christians—Abe Isoo, Katayama Sen, Kawakami Kiyoshi, Kinoshita Naoe, and Nishikawa Kojiro. The sixth, Kotoku Shusui, was a product of the radical wing of the democratic movement. Their goal was “to break down the gap between the poor and the rich through pure socialism and democracy to realize a victory of pacifism in the whole world.” Their “Platform of Action” to achieve that goal was based on the principle of reform through legal means. They denounced anarchism and violence. “It is only the nihilist and the anarchist who brandishes a sword and throws bornbs. Since our Social Democratic Party absolutely opposes the use of force, we will never imitate the foolishness of the nihilist and anarchist.” The platform called for the establishment of basic rights, especially universal suffrage, repeal of the Public Peace Police Law, abolition of the peerage system, establishment of a system of free education, nationalization of the means of transportation and production, public ownership of land, and disarmament. It concluded with a reiteration of their commitment to legal means and an evolutionary course of action: “The time for achieving our aspirations will come in that future day when our party obtains a majority in the Diet.”³ The government lost no time in moving against the Social Democratic Party. Immediately after the formation of the party was announced publicly, the home minister ordered it to dissolve, prohibited circulation of the newspaper editions carrying the announcement, and charged the editors responsible for them with violating the Press Law.

Clearly the government would not tolerate the formation of a political party that sought to alter the existing political and economic order.

Deprived of the opportunity to establish an effective labor base and prohibited from engaging in politics, Japanese socialists turned once again to the organization of study groups and to the dissemination of ideas. Many of them toured the country, holding meetings and discussions among intellectuals and workers. The Socialist Society, for example, held 182 meetings between April 1902 and the end of 1903. Although the government tolerated socialism as an academic and theoretical movement, it would not countenance an activist one. When the socialists attempted to spread their ideas among the masses, they suffered constant harassment by the state. The police confiscated their publications, and the editors and publishers were often fined or imprisoned. For example, when Kotoku and Sakai Toshihiko, who was one of the first systematic students of Marxism, sought to create opposition to the war with Russia through the weekly Commoners’ News (Heimin Shinbun), the Katsura cabinet frequently prohibited distribution of issues, arrested and jailed the editors, and ultimately forced them to cease publication.⁴ The police also interfered with the conduct of socialist meetings, often dissolving them. The heaviest blowfell in November 1904, when the government ordered the Socialist Society to disband.

REFORMERS AND REVOLUTIONARIES

Government attitudes and actions tended to split Japan’s socialists into two groups by 1906—reformers and revolutionaries. The former were for the most part Christian social democrats like Abe, Kinoshita, and Katayama. They spoke through the monthly New Era (Shin Eigen), which exuded a kind of Tolstoyan humanitarianism and advocated universal suffrage and social reform through parliamentary action. The latter were materialists who derived their ideas from German and French Marxist and anarcho-syndicalist sources. Their number included Kotoku, who had come to scorn Christianity, Nishikawa, who deserted his former Christian friends, Sakai, Yamaguchi Koken, and younger men like Yamakawa Hitoshi, Arahata Kanson, and Osugi Sakae. Nishikawa and Yamaguchi published The Light (Hikari) and Sakai, Studies in Socialism (Shakaishugi Kenkyu), in order to popularize the ideas of class struggle and revolutionary action by class­conscious workers. Earlier, in November 1904, Kotoku and Sakai had published Marx and Engels’ Communist Manifesto in Commoners News, only to have the police immediately ban the issue. While the materialist socialists based their strategy on Marxist principles like the class struggle, they were at the same time attracted to the tactics of anarcho-syndicalism.

The career of Kotoku, who emerged as the theoretical leader of the materialist camp, illustrates the changes in approach first from political liberalism to social democracy and then from social democracy to anarcho-syndicalism. He was born in 1871 in Kochi Prefecture on the island of Shikoku, the birthplace of the democratic movement of the 1870’s and 1880’s. After graduation from middle school, Kotoku went to Tokyo to live with a prominent member of the Liberal Party, and in the capital city got his first taste of the repressive power of the state. He was among 300 political dissenters ordered to leave Tokyo in December 1887, when the government first enforced the Peace Preservation Ordinance. He became a disciple of Nakae Chomin—writer, editor, translator of Rousseau, and a leading champion of popular rights. Under Nakae’s influence, Kotoku became a strong advocate of universal suffrage and the initiative and referendum. He supported himself as a staff writer for Central News (Chuo Shinbun), which he quit when it became the organ of the oligarch Ito Hirobumi in 1899, and for Morning News (Yorozu Choho), where he won his early fame. He became interested in socialism in the 1890’s and, like his colleagues in the Socialist Society, advocated economic and social reform through the achievement of parliamentary democracy. His transformation from evolutionary socialist to “radical anarchist,” according to his own account, was the result of his antiwar struggle against the state and his confinement in prison for five months in 1905.⁵ He was thoroughly converted to anarcho-syndicalism through his reading of Kropotkin and through direct observation of the activities of the Industrial Workers of the World during a visit to the United States from November 1905 to June 1906.

Kotoku explained his new position in speeches and articles after his return to Japan.⁶ He now believed that the abolition of the state, the destruction of capitalism, and the formation of a free society could be achieved only by the direct action of organized workers. He rejected action in the political field, maintaining that efforts to gain universal suffrage and seek reform through the Diet were a waste of time. He insisted that the Diet would forever be the tool of the propertied class: if the promise of democracy ever showed prospects of becoming more than a delusion for deceiving the people, the propertied class would use all the power and influence that come from the possession of wealth to reduce the role of government to the simple function of acting as a policeman. Moreover, as an anarchist, Kotoku regarded the Japanese social democrats as corrupted by political power, since they accepted the premises of the bourgeois state. According to Kotoku, the force necessary to bring about the transformation of society lay in the weapons of labor—direct negotiations with employers and strikes, especially the general strike, which was to be the instrument for compelling the bourgeois state to yield its place on the historical stage to voluntary associations of the wage-earning class. Kotoku recognized that anarcho-syndicalism departed from strict anarchism in its utilization of the labor union as a necessary organizational form, but it was attractive to him, as it was to radical socialists in Europe and the United States, because it appeared to provide a shortcut to socialism. Moreover, it seemed suited to the Japanese scene, where the gradual approach of the social democrats was making little, if any, headway in the face of a repressive regime. Kotoku felt that the spontaneous labor riots of 1906 and 1907 confirmed this judgment.

While Japan’s socialists during this period can be divided into two main camps, there are some dangers in such a classification, especially when characterizing particular individuals. Kotoku and Katayama present no major problems in this respect: Kotoku was impatient with the parliamentarianism of the social democrats and looked to the direct action of anarcho-syndicalism, while Katayama espoused the parliamentary tactics of social democracy and was unequivocal in his condemnation of anarcho-syndicalism as a dangerous doctrine. However, Yamakawa, though strongly influenced by the ideas of Kotoku, upheld political action as a means of developing class consciousness among workers. Tazoe Tetsuji, close to Katayama, made the strongest arguments for a parliamentary policy, criticizing direct action as woefully ineffective. Sakai, hoping to effect a compromise, advocated a combination of direct action and parliamentarianism. Classification also tends to obscure the extent to which individuals in both camps increasingly utilized Marxist ideas to support their arguments. Kotoku and Katayama both believed that the degeneration of the working class was an inevitable result of capitalism, but Kotoku held that the emancipation of the proletariat was contingent upon the destruction of capitalism, while Katayama believed that it could be achieved through reform. Both felt that Marxism provided a theoretical framework for analyzing existing conditions in Japanese society and for determining the general principles of strategy for the socialist movement, but not its tactics. Even Sakai, who had perhaps the deepest knowledge of Marxism among all the early Japanese socialists, could not find in it the basis for revolutionary tactics. Such an insight came only after the Russian Revolution and the popularization of Leninism in Japan.

The Japanese socialists, despite their differences, joined together to take advantage of the improved political atmosphere following the installation of the Saionji cabinet in January 1906, and formed the Japan Socialist Party (Nihon Shakaito). Its announced objective was the achievement of socialism within the limits of the law. Perhaps for this reason, the party was not suppressed by the government, although it actively disseminated socialist ideas. But the party, which had less than 200 members, was soon rent by factionalism based on differences of opinion regarding tactics; against the background of labor unrest, the appeal of the direct action tactics of anarcho-syndicalism grew. Kotoku attacked the social democratic parliamentarians at the February 1907 party convention and called for direct action by organized workers. He and his followers succeeded in getting the phrase “within the limits of the law” deleted from the party constitution, but they were unable to get a majority to endorse direct action as the major, if not sole, tactical weapon. Nevertheless, there was much greater support for Kotoku than there was for Tazoe and his advocacy of a commitment to a parliamentary policy. In the end, a bare majority endorsed the view espoused by Sakai, who still sought to maintain unity through compromise, that the forms of activity, including the movement for universal suffrage, be left up to the party members’ individual discretion.⁷ When the results of the convention were reported in the Commoners’ News, which had been revived as a daily in January 1907, the Saionji cabinet quickly ordered the dissolution of the Socialist Party, denouncing it for fomenting labor unrest. Later, in April 1907, Saionji forced the Commoners’ News to cease publication. Subsequent cabinets maintained the policy of suppression, and the socialists made no further attempts at political organization for more than a decade.

However, the socialists—reformers and revolutionaries alike—continued to attack capitalists, politicians, bureaucrats, and the military, although they did not gain any popular support. When General Katsura, the prime minister who had ordered the Socialist Society to disband in 1904, took office again in January 1908, he was determined to destroy the socialist movement, and to rid Japan of socialists once and for all. He instructed the police to destroy all subversive literature and to arrest anyone who publicly espoused socialism. Sakai, Yamakawa, Arahata, and Osugi were among his first victims. The occation was the “Red Flag Incident” in Tokyo in June 1908, when, after a party to celebrate Yamaguchi’s release from jail, a group of Kotoku’s followers staged a demonstration by waving two flags inscribed with the words “Anarchism” and “Anarchism-Communism.” The police broke up the demonstration and arrested many of the participants. Sakai, Yamakawa, Arahata, and Osugi were among the 14 sentenced to jail; they were given two-year terms.

Katsura’s policy of suppression reached its climax in the summer of 1910 when Kotoku and a group of his followers were arrested and charged with plotting to assassinate the Meiji emperor and his family, as well as the ministers of state. They were quickly tried and convicted of treason, without the right of appeal. Twelve of them, including Kotoku, were executed within three days after their sentencing in January 1911, another 12 were condemned to life imprisonment, and two were sentenced to from eight to ten years in prison. Whether Kotoku was actively involved in the plot or whether he was the victim of a government frame-up has never been resolved. In any event, Sakai, Yamakawa, Arahata, and Osugi escaped death only because they were already in jail.

Katsura came very close to achieving his objective. The high treason case had the effect of discrediting the entire socialist movementand of justifying an intensification of police action. The police made no effort to distinguish between moderates and radicals. For example, Katayama, a bitter critic of the anarcho-syndicalists, was arrested and sentenced to five months in jail for supporting a streetcar strike in Tokyo in 1912, and was continually harassed by the police thereafter. In 1914, he fled to the United States, where he later formed a Japanese socialist group. The socialist movement in Japan appeared to have ground to a halt. Most socialists withdrew from public life. Some, following Katayama’s lead, fled abroad; others retired to their home towns or villages. Several broke under the strain of regular police surveillance and went insane or committed suicide.

Yet, despite all kinds of difficulties, a small number of socialists continued to be active and managed to keep the movement alive. Osugi, Arahata, and Sakai, after completing their prison terms, lay low for a while, but soon resumed publication of journals in order to spread socialist ideas. Yamakawa rejoined them in 1916. These four men played key roles in the development of revolutionary socialism in Japan. All four were at first devoted to the cause of anarcho-syndicalism and were instrumental in its gaining a prominent position in the revival of the labor and socialist movements that got under way near the end of World War I. Of the four, three—Sakai, Yamakawa, and Arahata—were converted to Marxism-Leninism (or communism), popularized its tenets, and were leaders in the Japanese Communist Party established in 1922. Osugi was the only one of the four to resist the communist tide; he adhered to anarcho-syndicalism until his brutal murder by the military police in 1923.

SAKAI, YAMAKAWA, ARAHATA, OSUGI

Sakai was born in Fukuoka Prefecture in 1870, the son of a minor samurai. After graduating from local middle school, he entered First Higher Middle School at Tokyo. His reputation among his classmates rested more on his social feats as a playboy and drinker than on his scholarship; however, his inclination to debauchery was later overcome by a happy marriage. He dropped out of school in 1889 and accepted a position teaching English at an Osaka primary school. He soon discovered that the life of a teacher was not suitable for him, and shifted to the profession of journalism. He worked for Business News (Jitsugyo Shinbun) in Tokyo, Fukuoka News (Fukuoka Shinbun) in Kyushu, and, after 1899, Morning News in Tokyo. At Morning News he made friends with Kotoku. Like Kotoku, Sakai’s early political orientation was toward the Liberal Party, but he was soon attracted by ideas of social reform and by socialism, especially Marxism. Also like Kotoku, he was an ardent pacifist, and with him he left Morning News in October 1903, when, after conflict between Japan and Russia appeared likely, the paper became highly nationalistic and no longer tolerated expressions of pacifism. Sakai joined with Kotoku in 1903 to found the Commoners’ Society (Heiminsha), and on November 15, 1903, they began publishing the weekly Commoners’ News, which was dedicated to convincing the Japanese people of the horrors and folly of war. The new publication quickly became the center of the socialist movement, as Abe, Katayama, Kinoshita, Nishikawa, and others gave their support to it. However, the police continually interfered with the enterprise, banning issues and arresting the editors. Sakai, for example, was charged with violating the Press Law in March 1904, and was sentenced to three months in jail. Commoners’ News was ordered to cease publication. On appeal, the court reduced Sakai’s sentence to two months and lifted the ban on Commoners’ News. But police pressure ultimately took its toll: the paper closed down with the sixty fourth issue in January 1905. Sakai became active in the Socialist Party, serving as its secretary and helping to put out the daily Commoners’ News from January 1907 to April 1907, when, following its support of the riots at the Ashio copper mines, a Tokyo court ordered it to stop publication.

Sakai, like most socialists of his generation, could not overcome certain traditional characteristics. He took great pride in his knowledge of Marxism, which was greater than that of his comrades, and affected a professorial manner. He has been characterized by some as a sensei, or teacher, type. His family background and training in Confucian philosophy made him particularly conscious of the virtue of loyalty, and he tended to relate to people in the master-disciple (sensei-deshi) manner. Yet this stance was tempered by his warm personality; he was quick to make friends, and he kept them. He won their admiration because of his strong will and constancy. Moreover, they were attracted by his practical outlook. Although he was Marxist in orientation, he was not overly dogmatic, and tended to adjust his thinking to changing circumstances. Takabatake Motoyuki, the first Japanese socialist to publicize Lenin’s ideas, and Arahata were particularly close to him. He was strong physically, enjoyed excellent health, and was active as a publicist and political leader until his death in 1933.

Yamakawa was born in Kurashiki in Okayama Prefecture in 1880. After attending local schools, he entered Doshisha University in 1895. He studied there for two years, was converted to Christianity, and then went to Tokyo, where, in 1897, he helped found the magazine Gospel to Youth (Seinen no Fukuin). However, he did not remain a Christian for long; he renounced his faith when Doshisha University submitted to the regulations of the Ministry of Education concerning the divinity of the emperor. His criticism of the imperial system soon got him into trouble with the authorities; the provocation was a derogatory piece that he wrote in 1900 on the marriage of the crown prince, the future Taisho emperor. He was tried and convicted of lèse majesté, sentenced to three and a half years in jail, and fined 120 yen. After serving his term, he returned to his home in Okayama and found employment as a clerk in a drug and medical supply store. He went to Osaka in the fall of 1906 and joined the Osaka Gommoners, News (Osaka Heimin Shinbun). In 1907 he moved to Tokyo, where he assisted in the publication of the daily Commoners’ News, and founded the Worker (Rodosha) in 1908. He was arrested and sentenced to jail for short terms in 1907 and 1908.

Yamakawa, like Sakai, tended to assume the role of teacher, and ultimately came to look upon himself as a detached social critic. He also shared Sakai’s realistic, practical outlook. His intellectual strength was in his knowledge of economics, which he studied while in jail. He did not, however, have Sakai’s warmth. He was more self-assured and reserved, and has been described by some as a cool, even chilly man. He tended to be a strong moralist, which often did not endear him to his more easygoing friends. His prose, reflecting his personality, was larded with irony and cynicism. Although he suffered from poor health throughout most of his life, he lived to be seventy-eight, and was active as a publicist until his death in 1958.

Arahata was born in 1887, the son of the proprietor of a teahouse in the Tanmachi pleasure district of Yokohama. After completing primary school, he left home because he found his father’s occupation distasteful. He worked for a time in a foreign trading firm, then at the Yokosuka Naval Dockyard, and finally in a bookstore. His interest in socialism was stimulated by Commoners’ News, and in 1905 he volunteered to distribute socialist literature throughout the countryside. For him, socialism was comparable to a new religion, and, like many young men attracted to it, he was influenced by its air of martyrdom. He traveled through the rural areas in the manner of a missionary seeking converts and expecting persecution. Later in 1905 he took a job as a reporter on a small local newspaper published at Tanabe, where he continued to spread socialist ideas. At Tanabe he married Kanno Sugako, whom he later lost to Kotoku. He returned to Tokyo in 1906 and joined the group around Kotoku and Sakai. Arahata was a passionate, highly emotional man. He was deeply upset by his wife’s affair with Kotoku, and attempted first to kill them both, and then to commit suicide. His second marriage, in 1910, was to a Yoshiwara prostitute. In contrast to Sakai and Yamakawa, he was at his best with ordinary people rather than with intellectuals. In 1929, after he was arrested in a mass roundup of suspected communists and released on bail, he again attempted suicide. He had prepared a note saying that he preferred death to persecution by the authorities. However, despite his avowed preference, he lived to the age of seventy-nine.

Osugi was born in 1885, the eldest son of an army major. He was educated at a military school in Nagoya, where he earned the reputation of being a bright but boisterous youngster. He was expelled from school because of his criticism of some of the officer-teachers, but continued his education at the Tokyo School of Foreign Languages, majoring in French. Having developed an interest in social problems, he joined the staff of the weekly Commoners’ News. To many Japanese, he was the most colorful and dynamic radical in the socialist movement. He not only believed in anarchism, worshiping Max Stirner, Bergson, and Kropotkin, but convinced of the importance of developing one’s individuality, tried to live completely free from the inhibiting values and customs of society. Like Stirner, Osugi regarded anarchism as a natural way of life. To him, civilization was a series of impediments and obstructions preventing man from realizing himself, and he would limit social action to voluntary association based on the principle of mutual aid. Osugi was hardworking, passionate, and loved adventure. He was an advocate of free love, and during one period maintained sexual relationships with three women, one of them Ito Naoe, who was murdered with him in 1923.

COMMUNIST IDEOLOGY TAKES HOLD

Osugi and Arahata were the first among the socialists to resume the dissemination of socialist ideas. They joined in October 1912 to publish Modern Thought (Kindai Shiso), a theoretical journal that was anarcho-syndicalist in orientation. It focused on a single theme—the role of labor unions in reforming society through direct action. They also organized the Syndicalist Study Group in July 1913. However, as before, they found the going difficult because of constant repression by the authorities. The police regularly banned issues of Modern Thought, until Osugi and Arahata were forced to halt publication in September 1914. But they did not desist from activity. They immediately began publishing the monthly Commoners’ News, in which they shifted from basically theoretical concerns to criticism of Japanese society and its institutions. They were even less successful in this enterprise. The police banned all of the six issues that were printed through March 1915, and they were again forced to stop publication. (In the meantime, they had changed the name of the Syndicalist Study Group to the Society for the Support of the Common People.) Discouraged but persistent, they revived Modern Thought in October 1915, but were able to turn out only four issues. They finally abandoned their joint effort in January 1916.

Sakai, meanwhile, began publishing New Society (Shin Shakai) in September 1915. He described his effort in the first issue as “the raising of a small flag on the tip of a worn-out fountain pen.” Stating that he did not expect that a large uprising would result from the “battle cry” he was sounding, Sakai likened himself and his colleagues to a group of fugitives, loyal to a wretched but ambitious army, who had entrenched themselves in a mountain cave and had there devised a plan for holding out. “We have no plans to descend the mountain in the near future to attempt a counterattack on the enemy’s front,” he announced, “but in concert with like tribes of fugitives far and near… we are determined to wait our opportunity patiently.”⁸ The first issue also included a commentary by Sakai on the materialist view of history and an article by Takabatake on the various schools of socialism. (With the help of Takabatake, Sakai formed a socialist study group in 1915.) At first, New Society had a very limited circulation, but it soon gained a considerable audience, particularly among intellectuals. It would be incorrect, however, to create the impression that revolutionary socialism had become a major force. Revolutionary socialists remained few in number, and their effective influence did not radiate much beyond the small groups associated with the publication and distribution of their journals. New Society did not escape police interference, but it managed to survive because it stuck to discussions of theory without direct application to Japan.

Yamakawa, who had left Tokyo after his release from jail, returned in 1916 to resume an active role in the socialist movement; in the following year he and Sakai reorganized New Society. Arahata also joined the staff. The basic orientation of the journal was anarcho-syndicalist, although by 1916 Sakai was showing signs of reverting to Marxian socialism. However, he had not reached the point of thinking seriously about the strategy and tactics of revolution in Japan. He did make an effort to propagate socialist ideas when he ran for the Diet in the April 1917 general election, with Takabatake as his campaign manager. The limited appeal of socialism was manifested in the fact that he won only 25 votes.

The Russian Revolution marked the beginning of the decline of anarcho-syndicalism in Japan, although this was not at all clear at the time. Japan’s revolutionary socialists initially explained Lenin’s triumph as a victory for anarchism. Yamakawa wrote to this effect in New Society, and in order to criticize Marxism, he joined with Arahata in April 1918 to form the Labor Union Study Group (Rodo Kumiai Kenkyukai) and to publish Blue Uniform (Aofuku), banned by the police in July. However, in 1919, they, together with Sakai, became champions of communism, although they could not completely divorce themselves from their anarcho-syndicalist backgrounds. As they studied developments in Russia in order to grasp “the realities of socialism,” they came to believe that communism, which had proven successful as the foundation of the Russian Revolution, would provide more practical guidelines for achieving the socialist transformation of Japanese society than would anarcho-syndicalism. As yet, however, they were hardly conscious of the theoretical contributions of Lenin. The first article in Japan on Lenin’s theories was “The Political Movement and the Economic Movement” by Takabatake, which appeared in the February 1918 issue of New Society. Takabatake made an important contribution to the Japanese understanding of Marxism by preparing a complete translation of Capital, which he began in 1919 and completed in 1924.

From 1919 on, Sakai, Yamakawa, and Arahata endeavored to spread Marxist, or bolshevist, ideas, especially among university students and, to a much lesser extent, among Japan’s new labor leaders.⁹ Because of the success of the Russian Revolution and the consolidation of Soviet power, their audiences became steadily larger and more receptive. They continued to publish New Society, and declared their conversion to bolshevism in the May 1919 issue. Later, in February 1920, they changed the name of the journal to New Social Review (Shin Shakai Hyoron) and began writing on the problems of Japanese society. They also published the more theoretical Studies in Socialism from April 1919 on. Arahata, who based himself in Osaka after the spring of 1920, took over the editing of Japan Labor News (Nihon Rodo Shinbun), a monthly to which Sakai and Yamakawa contributed articles. These journals included articles on the Soviet Union and on the emerging international communist movement. For example, the July 1920 issue of New Social Review contained a report on the establishment of the Third International, based on material provided by Katayama’s socialist group in the United States. The issue of Studies in Socialism for the same month had a long article on the Soviet Union explaining the consolidation of the dictatorship of the proletariat. Sakai, Yamakawa, and Arahata also formed study groups—Sakai, the Friday Society; Yamakawa, the Wednesday Society; and Arahata, the Labor and Liberty Society. They were also active as lecturers among student and labor groups, although they had to contend regularly with police interference. By 1920, all three were clearly committed to communism.

Sakai, Yamakawa, and Arahata were assisted in their efforts by Katayama, who had been converted to communism in the United States. Katayama had entered communist circles in New York in 1916, and, through contact with the Dutch socialist, S. J. Rutgers, had met Trotsky, Bukharin, and other Russian revolutionaries. Under their influence, he gave up his belief that socialism could be achieved in Japan under the existing political system, and called for revolution. The success of the Russian Revolution strengthened his commitment to communism; he saw in it the means to “liberate the oppressed masses of Japan.” While his understanding of communism was always very elementary, he made up for his weakness in theoretical matters with his dedication. Pledging himself to work for the formation of communist parties in America and Japan and to support the objectives of the international communist movement, Katayama organized the communist-oriented League of Japanese Socialists in America. This group was composed largely of students and rootless immigrants and drifters, some of whom later became active in the socialist and revolutionary movements in Japan. Katayama remained active in the American communist movement in New York until 1921, when he traveled to Mexico on Comintern business,¹⁰ but he kept in close touch with his old socialist comrades-in-arms in Japan, sending them information about communism in exchange for news of events at home. In May 1919, he dispatched Kondo Eizo, a member of his New York group, to Japan to establish direct contact with Sakai and Yamakawa, as well as with Osugi and his followers.¹¹

Osugi did not follow the path of his former colleagues and become a convert to Marxism, but instead became the leading champion of anarcho-syndicalism. In defending his ideas against the challenge of bolshevism, he formulated strategy and tactics that were much clearer than anything put forward by his revolutionary opponents. He clung to the belief that direct action by free, independent labor unions was the only effective way to destroy capitalism and achieve socialism. In his view, the workers would have to liberate themselves from the exploitation of capitalism; they could not trust the intellectuals to lead them, because the intellectuals would not be willing to risk action. The basic tactic should be for labor unions to seize control of industries. As an anarchist, Osugi rejected the idea of reform: what he wanted was a total reconstruction of the human condition that would necessarily involve the eradication of social, economic, and political features of Japanese life that most Japanese had come to regard as permanent. At times, however, he grudgingly conceded that there were some immediate benefits to be derived from reforms that improved working conditions. Osugi rejected all forms of centralized power, whether of the state or of a national labor federation; to him, centralized power was the enemy of freedom and progress. The local autonomous union, based on the workshop or factory group, was the instrument through which to effect social change. But he could not ignore the need for some kind of coordination. Therefore, he advocated that labor unions be linked together through a system of free federation, each unit retaining its full rights, including the right to withdraw. He argued that free federation would make possible a full assault on capitalism, while protecting the worker from the evils of centralized, authoritarian power. The tactics of that assault would include slowdowns, strikes—especially the general strike—sabotage, violence, and, ultimately, mass revolution, in which all workers would participate. Osugi rejected the idea of political action by the labor movement. He was adamant in his view that the Diet could never be wrested from the hands of the capitalists, even with the establishment of universal suffrage, and maintained that the path of parliamentarianism led only to disillusionment and defeat. He even opposed efforts to obtain legislation recognizing labor unions and establishing collective bargaining, on the ground that such legislation would lead to moderation and reformism. He insisted the only path was that of direct action and revolution.

Osugi sought to spread his ideas through a steady stream of publications and lectures. He published the monthly Cultural Review (Bunmei Hyoron) from December 1917 to March 1918 and Labor News (Rodo Shinbun) from April 1918 until it was banned by the government in July. In October 1919, he and his followers founded the monthly Labor Movement (Rodo Undo) “to advance the concept of a labor movement as an independent, autonomously operated movement run by the workers themselves.” Osugi was, of course, in constant trouble with the police, and was kept under close surveillance by them. He gave lectures and held discussions in the Tokyo-Yokohama area under the most difficult conditions: the meetings were usually broken up or banned. In October 1918, he was arrested with Arahata for insisting upon the right of workers to form autonomous unions and to strike, remaining in jail until February 1919. He was arrested again in December 1919, and sentenced to three months in jail for violation of the Press Law. In June 1920, he was forced to suspend publication of Labor Movement.

THE DEMOCRACY MOVEMENT

The reemergence of the revolutionary left in 1916 coincided with a number of significant political and economic changes in Japanese society. New forces that challenged traditional values and modes of behavior emerged in the form of popular movements demanding that government be made responsible to the people through universal suffrage, and that capitalism be checked by recognition of labor’s right to organize, bargain, and strike. In addition, Japan’s narrow nationalism faced the challenge of a new spirit of internationalism fostered by the triumph of the Allies in World War I and the establishment of the League of Nations.

Politically, Japan was no longer dominated by the small group of civil and military bureaucrats, or genro, that had been the dominant force on the political scene since the inauguration of the cabinet system in 1885. (With the exception of the short-lived Okuma-Itagaki cabinet of 1898, the genro had monopolized the office of prime minister, and they or their subordinates had served as ministers of state.) The overturning of the Katsura regime in 1913 through the uncompromising opposition of the majority party in the Diet heralded the beginning of responsible cabinet government, and the appointment of Hara Takashi, president of the Seiyukai Party and majority leader in the lower house of the Diet, as prime minister in 1918 indicated a recognition of the power of political parties. Hara personified the new type of political leader that was coming to the fore as the influence of the genro began to wane, and as its ranks were depleted through death and advancing age. His accession to power did not, however, symbolize the victory of democracy in Japan, since he brought to office something of the genro’s notion of stewardship. That he was not a democrat was clear from his opposition to universal suffrage.

The democracy movement, which centered on the demand for universal suffrage, was essentially confined to the academic world until the formation of the Terauchi cabinet in October 1916. That cabinet, with its army general-prime minister, appeared to represent a complete rejection of the principles of party politics and representative government, and criticism of it spread beyond the cloistered confines of university classrooms and discussion groups. The influential newspaper Osaka Asahi, for example, continually attacked Terauchi and his cabinet, denouncing them as “undemocratic,” and demanding a “truly constitutional government based on democratic principles.”¹² The Rice Riots of 1918 transformed this criticism of the regime into a popular movement, based on a demand for universal suffrage. These riots were caused by the inflation that accompanied Japan’s remarkable industrial expansion during World War I. Despite government efforts to stem rising prices, the price of rice had doubled from 1917 to 1918, and in August 1918, the wives of some fishermen raided the rice shops in Toyama Prefecture. Rice riots soon spread to all parts of Japan, and the government was forced to call out troops to quell them in 40 towns and cities. In the process, more than 100 demonstrators were killed. Although order was quickly restored, the unrest forced Terauchi’s resignation in September 1918. Hara was his successor.

The intellectual leader of the democracy movement was Yoshino Sakuzo, professor of law at Tokyo Imperial University.¹³ Yoshino called for a government based on the interests of the people—a government based on parties and universal suffrage, free from the influence of outside forces. He advocated the reform of the upper house of the Diet by the addition of elected members, the abolition of the Privy Council, the end of direct contact between the throne and the military, and the closing of civil positions to military officers. Yoshino saw no conflict between party government and imperial sovereignty because he believed both furthered the welfare of the people; he did not advocate popular sovereignty. In arguing for democratic reform, he pointed out that democracy had triumphed over the forces of militarism and conservatism in World War I, and that Japan must move toward democracy if she were to take her rightful place in the world.

With the strong support of university students and labor, the democracy movement reached its peak in 1919 and 1920 with mass demonstrations in Tokyo, Kyoto, Nagoya, and Kobe. The climax came in February 1920, when 75,000 people rallied in Tokyo. However, Hara did not yield to this pressure. He had accepted an extension of the suffrage in 1919 by a reduction of the poll tax to three yen, which had increased the number of voters from one to three million, but he refused to endorse universal suffrage. When the opposition parties, the Kenseikai and the Kokuminto, introduced a universal suffrage bill in February 1920, he dissolved the Diet and called for new elections later that month. He and his party, the Seiyukai, won a smashing victory at the polls, which ended the drive for universal suffrage, at least for the time being.

The call for democracy was the stimulus for the rise of Japan’s first student movement; the concerns of their professors became the battle cry of a new generation of students.¹⁴ Yoshino and Fukuda Tokuzo, professor of economics at the Tokyo School of Commerce, formed the Dawn Society (Reimeikai) in December 1918, inviting faculty members at their own institutions and at Waseda University to join the struggle against “despotism and militarism.” Yoshino called upon all professors and students “to become attuned to the new movement in world culture today—the movement for the emancipation of mankind—and to endeavor to promote it.” He asked them also to take part “in the movement for national reform of present-day Japan.” Some law students at Tokyo Imperial University, already members of the Universal Suffrage Study Society (Futsusenkyo Kenkyukai), which met at Yoshino’s home, responded to his call in the same month. They formed the New Men Society (Shinjinkai) and dedicated themselves to work for the national reconstruction of modern Japan. Among its founders were Yoshino’s son-in-law Akamatsu Katsumaro, Aso Hisashi, and Miyazaki Ryusuke; all later became active in the labor movement. At Waseda University, two professors sponsored the formation of the People’s League (Minjinkai) in February 1919 to help “build a new, more rational society in Japan.” These student groups and similar organizations at other universities were active in the democracy movement and campaigned vigorously for universal suffrage, often participating in rallies and demonstrations. For example, some 3,000 students from Tokyo Imperial, Waseda, Chuo, Nihon, and Meiji universities gathered at Hibiya Park in Tokyo on February 11, 1919, the thirtieth anniversary of the promulgation of the Meiji Constitution, and marched on the Diet, calling for universal suffrage.

The interests of these student groups were not confined to the political objectives of the democracy movement, however. From the beginning, their members were also concerned with economic and social problems. The breadth of their interests can be gauged from the pictures that appeared on the cover of Democracy, the journal of the New Men Society, published between March and December, 1919: Rousseau, Tolstoy, Marx, Kropotkin, Lincoln, Lazarus Zamenof (the creator of Esperanto), and Rosa Luxemburg. Motivated by strong humanitarian feelings and a sense of justice, they wanted a thorough reform of Japanese society for the benefit of all the people. They developed a sense of mission that exuded the energy and enthusiasm of youth. They were influenced by various schools of left-wing thought—social democracy, anarcho-syndicalism, and communism—but with the defeat of the universal suffrage bill in 1920, they became increasingly radical. This trend is apparent in Democracy, which underwent several reorganizations in 1920-21, becoming Pioneer (Senku) for six issues, Comrade (Doho) for eight, and People (Narod) for five. The journal reflected a growing emphasis on anarcho-syndicalism and revolutionary Marxism.¹⁵ At Waseda University, because of clashes of personality, the People’s League split into two groups in November 1919: the Builders’ League (Kensetsusha Domei) and the Society of Enlightened People (Gyominkai), one of whose leaders was Takatsu Seido, who was later to be on the executive committee of the first Japanese Communist Party. Both groups became increasingly interested in socialism and organized themselves to spread its tenets not only among students but among workers and peasants as well. At Kyoto Imperial University, the Labor-Student Society had been established in July 1918; it looked to Professor Kawakami Hajime for leadership and was oriented toward Marxism. Some members of the student groups came under the influence of Sakai and Yamakawa and were later active in the illegal Japanese communist movement, e.g., Nosaka Sanzo, Sano Manabu, Koiwai Kiyoshi, and Kazahaya Yasoji. The majority of them, however, were later associated with the legal left.

THE LABOR MOVEMENT

The accelerated pace of industrialization during World War I and the continuing urbanization provided conditions conducive to the development of a labor movement in Japan. From 1914 to 1919 the labor force in modern factories increased from 850,000 workers in 17.000 plants to approximately 1,800,000 in 44,000. The proportion of men in these totals also rose, reflecting a growing investment in heavy industry: male workers constituted one-third of the total in 1914 and one-half in 1919. In addition to the factory workers, about 450,000 men were employed in Japan’s mines. Labor unions were formed throughout Japan; there were well over 100 by 1920. Their growth was stimulated largely by the wartime inflation. The price index of basic commodities rose by over 100 per cent from 1914 to 1919, but wages did not increase as rapidly, despite huge industrial profits. Labor disputes became common. There were 50 disputes and strikes in 1914 involving 8,000 workers, and 497 in 1919, involving 63,000. Like the Rice Riots of 1918, these disturbances were symptomatic of a deep and widespread unrest within the urban population.¹⁶

The second attempt to form a labor movement in Japan began in 1912, when Suzuki Bunji founded the Friendly Society, or Yuaikai, as a welfare organization for labor. Within a few years, Yuaikai evolved into a labor union federation dedicated to the principle of harmony between labor and capital based on equality, justice, and mutual respect. Suzuki, who remained as leader, was a Christian humanist who rejected the ideas of class struggle and revolution, and worked to achieve social reform by legal means. Yuaikai therefore emphasized cooperation and moderation in its efforts to improve the economic position of the working class. The organization grew slowly at first, but after 1914, with the expansion of Japan’s factory labor force, its membership increased rapidly; by 1917, it comprised 32 branches with 27.000 members. Yuaikai became a heterogeneous, national organization representing various regional unions that were themselves made up of locals. These locals were primarily of two kinds—those grouping workers in the same general field and those linking workers from the same geographic area. Federations of locals were formed in Tokyo, Osaka, Kobe, and other cities, and these in turn were organized into regional units, i.e., Kansai and Kanto. By this time, Yuaikai began to play a more active role in seeking to improve the position of the workers, and Suzuki and the other leaders were increasingly involved in disputes over wages and working conditions. The organization also began to develop a political orientation, and by 1916 was openly advocating repeal of Article 17 of the Public Peace Police Law, institution of universal suffrage, and passage of a law guaranteeing labor’s right to form unions. The leaders of Yuaikai even went so far as to discuss the possibility of forming a labor party, but they did not act on the idea.

New and different kinds of labor leaders began to emerge in 1919 and 1920. Some of them were budding revolutionary Marxists, like Nosaka Sanzo and Watanabe Masanosuke. Nosaka had studied political economy at Keio University in Tokyo, where he became interested in socialism. He was a member of the New Men Society, and together with two of that society’s founders, Akamatsu and Miyazaki, was a leader of Yuaikai’s Labor-Student Society. After graduation from Keio in 1917, he formally joined Yuaikai, working in editorial and research capacities. Watanabe was a young factory worker who became associated with the New Men Society, and, with its help, organized the National (or “New Men”) Celluloid Workers Union in Tokyo in 1919. Another new labor leader, Mizunuma Tatsuo, was typical of the anarcho-syndicalists in the labor movement. He argued for direct action by the workers, and fought against Marxist intellectuals because, he claimed, they inhibited pure labor leadership, supported centralized power, and refused to accept any system of autonomous unions. The communism of men like Nosaka and Watanabe represented the wave of the future, but Mizunuma’s anarcho-syndicalism prevailed temporarily. Nishio Suehiro and Matsuoka Komakichi represented still another type of labor leader—those who had risen through the ranks of labor and were suspicious of all intellectuals and their emphasis on theory. Such leaders rejected the total approach of both the Christian humanists and the revolutionary socialists, Marxists and anarcho-syndicalists alike, and instead stressed immediate economic objectives. They were not concerned with political issues.

The old Yuaikai leadership, with its emphasis on Christian humanism, also underwent change, with new men like Kagawa Toyohiko coming into prominence. Kagawa, who emerged as the foremost labor leader in the Kansai region from 1919 to 1921, was a socialist who was attracted to the movement through his work as a Christian settlement worker in Kobe. He was dedicated to the principle of parliamentary democracy and looked to the achievement of socialism not by violence but by legal means. He rejected the concept of class struggle and opposed the establishment of a dictatorship of the proletariat because he believed it deprived men of all their freedom. Though basically a social democrat, Kagawa was constantly involved in labor disputes and strikes. In 1921 he used the profits from a book he wrote about life in the slums to help finance a Kawasaki Shipyard strike. Shortly thereafter, he became active in the emerging peasant movement, based on the discontent of impoverished tenant farmers.

The increasingly revolutionary orientation of Yuaikai became clear at its seventh convention, which opened on August 31, 1919. The idea of harmony between capital and labor began to give way to that of class struggle. The revolutionary socialists, especially the anarcho-syndicalists, criticized Yuaikai chairman Suzuki for being old-fashioned, and called for his removal. Though the moderates maintained their control, they were forced to establish a council of directors, selected by the convention, to share power with Suzuki. The anarcho-syndicalists and revolutionary Marxists attacked the concept of social reform, emphasizing the need for violent action. The platform approved by the convention reflected, in part, their growing influence. It attacked the evils of capitalism, demanded the liberation of wage slaves, and advocated the establishment of “a social system in which workers can receive the full benefits of culture, the guarantee of a livelihood, and a controlling power over their own environment, for the sake of the full development of their personalities and the humanization of society”¹⁷ The platform also proposed specific economic and political reforms including not only the eight-hour day and forty-eight-hour week, abolition of child and contract labor, a minimum wage system, equal pay for equal work, social insurance, accident compensation, and arbitration of labor disputes, but also universal suffrage, repeal of Article 17 of the Public Peace Police Law, and democratization of the educational system. Despite the objections of the anarcho-syndicalists, the moderates and the revolutionary Marxists persuaded the convention to approve of a centralized organization based on the principle of industrial unionism in place of the existing loose federation of heterogeneous local branches.

The economic boom of the war period gave way to depression in 1920. Business failures and unemployment mounted rapidly, with the result that labor was increasingly on the defensive: far from demanding higher wages and better working conditions, most unions struggled against wage cuts and discharges. The number of labor disputes decreased markedly, falling to only 280 in 1920; in most cases, these were unsuccessful. Paradoxically, the position taken by Yuaikai became more radical. Its organ, Labor (Rodo), emphasized the idea of class struggle and called for revolution against the capitalist system. With Hara’s defeat of the universal suffrage bill, the cries of the anarcho-syndicalists grew even louder and more influential than before. Yuaikai’s convention in October 1920 split over the issue of universal suffrage. Leaders like Suzuki and Kagawa refused to give up the idea of achieving social change through the Diet, but the anarcho-syndicalists argued that labor should have nothing to do with politics, and instead should rely on direct action to secure its objectives.

Anarcho-syndicalist strength probably reached its peak at this time. Its ideas were more and more popular among the masses of workers; compared to the theories of the revolutionary Marxists, they were romantic and easy to grasp. The anarcho-syndicalist base was in the Tokyo printing unions and among newspaper workers, especially the Printers Union Fraternal Society, or Shinyukai, and the True Progress Society, or Seishinkai. They also had support in the Tokyo Steel Workers Union and in the Kyoto unions of Yuaikai.

Despite their differences, the labor leaders sought to maintain as much unity as possible in the face of the deteriorating economic situation. In 1920, 15 unions, including Yuaikai and Shinyukai, and a number of socialist organizations planned a celebration of May Day for the first time in several decades. Some 5,000 workers gathered in Ueno Park and shouted approval of resolutions for the abolition of Article 17 of the Public Peace Police Law, the prevention of unemployment in time of depression, and the establishment of a minimum wage law. In their exuberance, many of them clashed with the police after the meeting was over, and the inevitable arrests were made. Heartened by this demonstration of labor solidarity, representatives of seven unions—Yuaikai, three moderate socialist unions, Shinyukai, Seishinkai, and the Marxist-oriented Enlightenment Society (Keimeikai), an embryonic teachers’ union—agreed to the formation of a Labor Union League (Rodo Kumiai Domei). They felt that they shared enough concerns to act cooperatively, especially in combating the effects of the depression. However, their ideological differences were far too great to permit united action for long. The moderates worried about the growing radical tendency of the labor movement. They warned that clashing with the police was not the road to socialism and that direct action would only lead to disaster. Moreover, the formation of the league did not halt the attacks of the anarcho-syndicalists, who continued to criticize the penchant of Yuaikai intellectuals for compromise, citing as an example a “humiliating settlement” made by union leader Aso Hisashi in a March 1921 dispute at the Ashio Copper Mine, when Aso halted the rioting of the workers and negotiated with management. The league floundered and finally collapsed after the moderates walked out of the 1921 May Day celebration in protest against the anarcho-syndicalists’ attempts to turn the mass meeting into a violent street demonstration.¹⁸ A similar effort to effect labor union cooperation in the Kansai area also failed.

THE SOCIALIST LEAGUE

Against this background of discord within the labor movement, the veteran socialists once again looked to the formation of a political organization, hoping to combine socialist ideas and the mass support of labor within the framework of a political party. Earlier, Sakai and Yamakawa had kept up a running barrage of criticism of Yuaikai in their journals. They attacked the theory of harmonization as hopelessly backward, and branded the organization as the tool of capitalism and government. However, they had to admit that Yuaikai was the only labor organization in Japan with some strength and promise, and as it began moving to the left, they became more hopeful about its possibilities. Katayama had attacked Yuaikai from New York, contributing anonymous pieces to the International Socialist Review and sending letters to friends in Japan that were published in New Society. He charged that Yuaikai had no workingmen among its leaders, that it deliberately excluded socialists, and that it supported a program proclaiming the interests of capital and labor to be identical.

Sakai, Yamakawa, and Arahata were prime movers in persuading a variety of socialists and labor leaders to join together to work for social revolution. They helped form the August League (Hachigatsu Domei) of 1920, which included Osugi, Aso, and Akamatsu, among others. This small group laid the groundwork for the establishment of a more broadly-based organization, the Socialist League (Shakaishugi Domei). The Socialist League had a membership of some 1,000 by October, representing various schools of socialist thought, from the most moderate to the most radical, but the bolshevists tended to play the leading roles and set the tone. The Socialist League’s official organ was Socialism (Shakaishugi), which was dominated by Sakai, Yamakawa, and Arahata. The new journal, established in September 1920, was in reality only a continuation of their New Social Review.

A statement issued by the league summarized its principles:

We will destroy the present capitalistic system. We will destroy systems, organizations, customs, thoughts, arts, and other bourgeois culture that go with the capitalistic system. In order to create a truly human life, we are resolved to realize a society without wealth and poverty, a society in which all people work and all people receive security of food, clothing, and housing. We are resolved to realize a society of liberty, a society of equality, a society of peace, a society of justice, and a society of friendship throughout the world and mankind…

We believe that our main power in this class conflict lies in… the worker class, and we will struggle for their awakening, unification, and training.

We also hope and believe that the salaried class, the small enterpreneurs… who, while superficially or formally the middle class, are basically workers, will come to participate in our movement generally as the proletarian class.¹⁹

The Socialist League found the going difficult because the police harassed it constantly, dissolving six preparatory meetings between August and November, and disrupting its inaugural convention of 200 members in Tokyo on December 9. When the league’s sponsors tried to hold another public meeting the following day, the police again intervened, this time arresting 53 participants. Thereafter, since the league had no organizational structure, its member groups simply continued their propaganda and “educational” activities much as they had before. The leading organs of the revolutionaries continued to be Studies in Socialism and Socialism, under the direction of Sakai and Yamakawa, Arahata’s Japan Labor News, and Osugi’s Labor Movement. However, there was little unity in the efforts of the bolshevists and the anarcho-syndicalists; in fact, there was increasing conflict between them. Nevertheless, despite this growing hostility, the sponsors of the Socialist League attempted to hold a second public convention on May 9, 1921. Some 3,000 persons attended, but the police banned the meeting. On May 28, the government, acting under the authority of the Public Peace Police Law, ordered the organization to disband.

Short-lived as it was, the Socialist League was significant for several reasons. First, it played an important role in the popularization of radical thought. Even after its dissolution, its members continued to work actively in their small groups, and their efforts, extending throughout the entire country, helped to make clearer the distinctions among the various schools of left-wing thought. Second, the league brought together the older bolshevists and a new generation of young socialists, largely university students and recent graduates. Third, it increased the contact between the left-wing intellectuals, young and old, and the labor leaders, with the result that the left-wing movement began to be transformed from a movement based primarily on isolated intellectual groups into one with some popular support.

The failure of the league was in part due to a fundamental weakness that would continue to plague the Japanese left wing and hamper its efforts to resist those in authority. That weakness was a lack of unity. Even if the attitude of the authorities had been different, the league was probably doomed to failure because of the disparity of ideological and personality groupings within it. None of these groups could properly be called an organization, and except for the anarcho-syndicalists, none had worked out action programs. The social democrats, while advocating the strategy of reform through legal means to achieve specific objectives, had no political weapons to use in their struggle against the existing order. The revolutionary Marxists talked in terms of class struggle and revolution, as did the anarcho-syndicalists, but they had no strategy and tactics to achieve Marxist goals. They lacked a clear understanding of Leninism, especially as it was developing in the international communist movement. Moreover, some of them, like Yamakawa, were still influenced by their anarcho-syndicalist background; this was especially apparent in their refusal to consider universal suffrage and utilization of the Diet as effective means for achieving social change. The repressive power of the state, of course, prevented these groups from developing organizational cohesion and therefore worked against the formulation of strategy and tactics.

THE COMINTERN LOOKS EASTWARD

Despite the Soviet leaders’ early preoccupation with “imminent revolution in Europe,” they had turned their attention to Asia as well. They convened the First Congress of Communist Organizations of the East in Moscow in November 1918. The scope of the congress was limited, however, because most of the 40-odd “Eastern” delegates came only from central Asia. Japanese socialists were invited to attend, but no Japanese representative was able to make the long and difficult journey. However, a Dutch delegate, S. J. Rutgers, read a “message from Japan,” voicing opposition to the Japanese intervention in Siberia earlier in the year. Rutgers, who had befriended Katayama and brought him into the communist network in New York, had visited with Sakai and other Japanese socialists in Tokyo on his way to Russia. It may have been due to his efforts that the congress included a section on Japanese affairs in a resolution calling for the establishment of a Department of International Propaganda.

In December, Lenin and his colleagues decided to organize the Third International, and issued invitations to 39 communist and other left-wing political parties and organizations throughout the world to attend the first congress in March 1919. They designated Katayama as the representative of the socialist groups in Tokyo and Yokohama, but he was unable to attend.²⁰ The Soviet leaders convened a Second Congress of Communist Organizations of the East at Moscow in November 1919, at which Lenin advised the delegates “to adapt communist theory and practice to conditions where the bulk of the people are peasants.” He called on them “to fight not against capital, but against medieval remnants,” urging them to ally themselves with the bourgeoisie against their common enemies—the feudal exploiters and the Western imperialists. Again, no Japanese delegates attended, although a written report was forwarded from Japan, presumably by Yamakawa, and was published in the congress proceedings.²¹

When the frontal attack against capitalism in Europe failed, the Comintern leaders focused more attention on Asia. They reasoned that nationalist and communist movements there would sap the strength of European capitalism and eventually lead to its destruction. In his theory of imperialism, Lenin contended that the surplus profits derived from the exploitation of colonies and backward areas enabled the European capitalists to maintain their “industrial wage slaves” above the starvation level, and thereby helped to postpone the inevitable revolution. If these profits were taken away, and the colonies freed, the workers at home would rise in revolt. (This strategy was aimed particularly at Great Britain, which had greater interests in Asia than any other power.) Thus, the initial Comintern approach to Asia, and especially to China, was to seek allies who, by fighting imperialism, would advance the proletarian revolution in Europe, as well as relieve capitalist pressure on the Soviet Union.

The basic strategy for Asia was determined at the Second Congress of the Comintern in August 1920, which approved Lenin’s “Theses on the National and Colonial Question.” According to Lenin,

The Communist International should form temporary understandings, even alliances, with the bourgeois democracy of the colonies and backward countries, but not merge with it, unconditionally preserving the independence of the proletarian movement, even in its most embryonic form… We, as communists, must and will support bourgeois emancipation in colonial countries only when, in those areas, these movements are really revolutionary, when their representatives will not hinder us in educating and organizing the peasantry and the large masses of the exploited in the revolutionary spirit.²²

Lenin made a clear distinction between the revolutionary nationalist movements, which would fight imperialism to the end, and bourgeois nationalist movements, which, he warned, would try to compromise with imperialism.

Lenin also emphasized that the anti-imperialist struggle was only part of the process of the ultimate communization of Asia:

The revolution in the colonies is not going to be a communist revolution, in its first stages. But if, from the outset, the leadership is in the hands of a communist vanguard, the revolutionary masses will not be led astray, but may go ahead through successive periods of development of revolutionary experience… In the first stages, the revolution in the colonies must be carried on with a program that will include many petty bourgeois reform clauses, such as the division of land, etc. But from this it does not follow that the leadership of the revolution will have to be surrendered to the bourgeois democrats. On the contrary, the proletarian parties must carry on vigorous and systematic propaganda for the soviet idea and organize the peasants’ and workers’ soviets as soon as possible.

The policy advocated by Lenin was clearly geared to colonies and exploited areas like China. Lenin did not take a position on Japan until November 1920, when he spoke to a meeting of key secretaries of the Moscow branch of the Russian Communist Party. On that occasion he stated that war between the United States and Japan was inevitable, and that the stronger capitalism of the United States would deprive the weaker capitalism of Japan of all its plunder.²³ But he made no effort to analyze Japanese society or to develop strategy and tactics of revolution for it.

From 1920 on, the Comintern expanded its efforts to stimulate establishment of communist parties in Asia, and to shape their strategy and tactics in accordance with Moscow orthodoxy. During the Congress of the Peoples of the East, which was hastily convened at Baku in September 1920, the Comintern leaders urged the representatives of the eastern nations to rise and unite with the revolutionary workers of the West in “a holy war under the red banner of the Communist International.”⁰ Earlier that year, in April, Gregory Voitinsky, I. K. Mamev, and Yang Ming-chai had arrived in China as representatives of the Far Eastern secretariat of the Comintern’s executive committee. Comintern agents were now in a position to make direct contact with revolutionary socialists in Japan.