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Title: Anarchism in Japan Author: Hélène Bowen Raddeker Date: 2009 Language: en Topics: Japanese anarchism, Japan, history Source: Raddeker, Hélène Bowen. “Anarchism, Japan.” In The International Encyclopedia of Revolution and Protest: 1500 to the Present, edited by Immanuel Ness, 133–135. Vol. 1. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009.
Japan has unique traditions of what may be termed “anarchism” rooted in
the cultural distinctiveness of the society. Some early
twentieth-century anarchists pointed to the horizontal features of
village communalism in Japan’s Tokugawa era (1600–1867), while others
claim AndĹŤ ShĹŤeki, an eighteenth-century doctor, as an anarchist
forbear. For AndĹŤ, all traditional thought in Japan was mere ideology,
an excuse to rob the people. Though he was himself a samurai, AndĹŤ saw
the samurai ruling class as parasites living off the proverbial sweat of
peasant labor and felt that all should engage in “direct cultivation,”
coupled with what we might call mutual aid. He contested the antimony of
high and low in traditional thinking that had informed “unnatural” and
oppressive social relations, including hierarchical relationships
between the sexes.
It was fitting, then, that in 1908 the early socialist paper Nihon
Heimin Shimbun (Japan Commoners’ News) described Andō as a Japanese
“anarchist.” This followed what historians refer to as the beginning of
Japan’s anarchist movement – setting up of a “direct action” faction in
1907 after a speech given to the Commoners’ Society by Kōtoku Shūsui
(1871–1911). The speech was concerned with “The Change in [his] Thought”
– to anarchist communism. While visiting comrades in the United States,
KĹŤtoku had written to leading theorist Peter Kropotkin, who willingly
gave him permission to translate some of his works into Japanese.
In prewar Japan the anarchist movement went in cycles. It was
predominantly anarchocommunist at first, then increasingly syndicalist
through the teens to the mid-twenties. Under the leadership of Hatta
Shūzō (1886–1934) and Iwasa Sakutarō (1879–1967), there was then a swing
back to “pure” anarchism (anarchocommunism) which, unlike syndicalism,
was seen to be unadulterated by Marxism. The pure anarchists were
suspicious of the leading revolutionary role accorded the industrial
proletariat by Marxists and syndicalists and saw the practice of “class
struggle” in labor unions as essentially capitalist.
Membership figures for the anarchist and Bolshevik labor federations
throw doubt on the common assumption of historians that anarchism’s
influence on radical movements was eclipsed by that of Marxism-Leninism
in the mid-1920s. The anarchists opposed what they saw to be
authoritarian centralism in both social democratic and Bolshevik
organization and demanded local union autonomy. Hence, an “ana-boru”
split came to a head in 1925, at which time the Bolshevik labor council
(Hyōgikai) had 12,500 members in 32 unions compared to the anarchists’
25 in 1926, though one anarchist source gives a figure of 29 anarchist
unions by 1928. In 1928, when there was a split in the anarchist
federation and 3,000 anarchosyndicalists withdrew, the now
anarchocommunist federation claimed 16,300 members.
The anarchist wing of the peasant and arts movements was led by the
Nōmin Jichi Kai (Peasants’ Self-Governing League), which claimed 243
branches and 6,300 members in 1927. In addition, 26 anarchist authors
established their own “Literary Front” after being removed from the
Marxist-Leninist “proletarian” literary federation in 1926. Amongst the
women associated with it was the anarchocommunist Takamure Itsue
(1894–1964). Two magazines were produced by anarchist women between 1928
and 1931, Nyonin Geijutsu (Women’s Arts) and Fujin Sensen (Women’s
Front), to which some Marxists also contributed.
Of course, not all Japanese anarchists identified with only one stream
of anarchist thought. By the 1920s some were expressing sympathy for
“nihilism” or “egoism,” which was partly indebted to individualistic
anarchism. Nietzsche was popular; Max Stirner’s The Ego and Its Own had
also been translated into Japanese. The latter’s influence can be seen
in the writings of the leading anarchosyndicalist ĹŚsugi Sakae
(1885–1923). Also a fan of Stirner was Itō Noe (1895–1923), a former
Bluestocking editor and anarcha-feminist publicist who by then was
Ōsugi’s partner. Kaneko Fumiko (1903–26) was another woman who embraced
“self-assertion” (egoism) and the “ideology of negation.”
Kaneko and her Korean partner Pak YĹŤl (d. 1974) were the defendants in
the second of two infamous high treason cases involving prewar
anarchists. Arrested after the great KantĹŤ earthquake of 1923, the two
were later found guilty in 1926 of conspiring to import bombs to use on
the imperial family. Originally sentenced to die, both their sentences
were later commuted to life imprisonment. It seems that Kaneko
exaggerated her own guilt in order to receive the same sentence as Pak;
and she got her way. Nevertheless, her testimonies leave little doubt
that she took her own life in her cell just a few months later. Pak was
released from prison at the close of the war.
The year 1923 was a pivotal one for prewar anarchism. ĹŚsugi and ItĹŤ were
among several radical activists murdered by police amidst the chaos
following an earthquake. After Ōsugi’s death his syndicalist followers
were left in disarray as some turned to revenge-motivated political
violence. Legal or extralegal repression was a regular feature among
Japanese radicals even in response to activities such as publishing,
public meetings, or demonstrations. Meiji repression had culminated in a
similar high treason trial that resulted in the execution of 12
anarchists and Marxists in January 1911 and life imprisonment for 12
more. Yet, the one woman amongst the first 12, Kanno Suga (1881–1911),
was amongst those who testified that only a handful of the total 28
charged (including herself) had had any involvement with a “conspiracy”
to rise in a rebellion that would include an attempt on the Meiji
emperor’s life. Japanese authorities were determined to rid themselves
of anarchist theorist KĹŤtoku, who had apparently lost interest in the
group’s plans before his arrest, and as many other “anarchists” as
possible.
Anarchists would suffer mounting repression after 1925 when a revised
and more stringent “peace preservation” law was passed designed to
combat the “twin evils” of bolshevism and anarchism. Activism became
near impossible after the Manchurian Incident of 1931. While the
Japanese Communist Party (JCP) was severely weakened by a flood of
recantations in 1932, it disbanded in 1935. Anarchists continued to
resist the rising militarism for a few more years, while syndicalists
and “pure” anarchists reunited and even participated in a short-lived
“anti-fascist” front in 1933 with social democrats and Marxists.
However, in 1935 at least 700 anarchists were rounded up after a “public
order” law against anarchism was promulgated in 1936. The last group to
survive, though not beyond 1938, was the anarchosyndicalist Tokyo
Printers’ Union.
After the Fifteen Years’ War (1931–45), in 1946, an anarchist federation
was reestablished but was weakened once again by splits and finally
disbanded in 1968. Anarchists were represented in various postwar
struggles including the production control movement during the Allied
Occupation, vehement opposition in 1960 to the US–Japan Security Treaty,
the treaty with South Korea five years later, the militant student
movement of the 1960s (Zengakuren), the fight of peasants and supporters
to halt the construction of a new airport at Narita (1968), and anti-war
agitation during both the Korean and Vietnamese wars. However, the new
left in Japan was dominated by the socialist and communist parties and
affiliated youth groups, and anarchists never regained the strong
foothold they had secured in prewar social movements, especially in the
industrial and peasant unions.
Some stalwarts, such as prewar anarchist leaders Ishikawa SanshirĹŤ (a
Christian anarchist: 1876–1956) and Iwasa Sakutarō, were influential
again after the war. Another who survived Japanese militarism and the
attendant repression of any dissent was the anarchocommunist ĹŤshima
EizaburĹŤ, who was long an inspiration to younger comrades while also
providing an invaluable service to researchers of Japanese anarchism
after 1970. Amongst the many works reproduced by his publishing house in
Tokyo, Kokushoku Sensensha (Black Battle Front), are weighty volumes of
original trial documents, including the Kaneko–Pak treason trial.
SEE ALSO: Anarchism ; Japan, Community Labor Union Movement ; Japan,
Labor Protest, 1945–present ; Japan, Pacifist Movement, 1945–present ;
Japan, Post-World War II Protest Movements ; Japan, Resistance to
Construction of Narita Airport ; Japanese Communist Party ; Kropotkin,
Peter (1842–1921) ; Ōsugi Sakae (1885–1923) ; Zenroren Labor Federation
Anonymous (n.d.) Anarchism in Japan. Anarchy Magazine (London), 2^(nd)
ser., 1 (5): 2–30.
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Patriarchal Fictions, Patricidal Fantasies. London and New York:
Routledge.
Bowen Raddeker, H. (2001) Anarcho-Feminist Discourse in Prewar Japan:
Itō Noe’s Autobiographical Social Criticism. Anarchist Studies (UK) 9:
97–125.
Bowen Raddeker, H. (2002) Resistance to Difference: Sexual Equality and
its Law-ful and Out-Law (Anarchist) Advocates in Imperial Japan.
Intersections (e-journal, Murdoch University, Western Australia) 7
(March): 1–11.
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Library.
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Kokushoku, S. (1977) Kaneko Fumiko, Pak Yōl Saiban Kiroku (… Trial
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