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Title: Anarchist Communism and Leadership Author: John Crump Date: 1996 Language: en Topics: Japanese anarchism, Japan, anarcho-communism, leadership, biography Source: Retrieved on 10th July 2021 from http://libgen.rs/book/index.php?md5=691904D5167204F6C886F948FF3F7A8D Notes: Published in Ian Leary (ed.) Leaders and Leadership in Japan. ISBN 1873410417.
Iwasa Sakutaro (1879â1967) possessed many of the qualities which make
for a successful Japanese politician. First, he was long-lived, being 87
at the time when he died. Second, he enjoyed robust health throughout
his long life and retained his vitality almost to the end. Third, he was
highly educated by the standards of his day, having graduated from Tokyo
Law College (Tokyo Hogakuin â the forerunner of Chuo University) in
1898. Fourth, he came from an affluent background, being the son of a
wealthy farmer. Fifth, he was well-connected; as a young man he lodged
with and was tutored by some of the leading scholars of the time, whose
houses were frequented by powerful members of the Meiji elite, such as
Yamagata Aritomo. (Noguchi 1931: 161) Sixth, he was naturally
gregarious, thriving on human contact and being a skilled
conversationalist. Seventh, as a young man he was ambitious and had a
keen desire to become a politician in order to improve Japanese society.
Eighth, without making any special effort, he inspired respect from
those around him, so much so that from the age of 25 or 26 he was
already known as Iwasa Ro (literally, âthe aged Iwasaâ), a respectful
term which Japanese are inclined to employ when referring to venerable
scholars or elder statesmen. (Museifushugi Undo 10 April 1967: 3)
Finally, he had a breadth of international experience which was unusual
for the time, having spent thirteen years in the USA between 1901 and
1914.
Many Japanese politicians have achieved success with far fewer
attributes than these. For a single individual to have possessed so many
advantages indicates an unusual convergence of good fortune and talent
in the case of the young Iwasa. Yet possession of these advantages was
to bring anything but success for him. As his life unfolded, it became a
long history of setbacks, persecution and frustration, all connected
with the fact that the road which Iwasa chose to walk was the path of
anarchist communism. If one analyses the reasons for Iwasaâs lack of
worldly success, one can see that the roots of this were twofold. On the
one hand, anarchist communism threatened all the foundations on which
the modern Japanese state rested. It rejected the capitalist system of
producing and distributing wealth; it opposed militarization internally
and imperialist expansion externally; and it challenged status and
hierarchy within society, symbolized above all by the existence of the
Emperor. With goals such as these, which subverted the very bases of the
existing system, Iwasa and his comrades brought down on their heads the
unbridled hostility of the state. On the other hand, although being
advantageously placed for launching himself into a career as a political
leader, Iwasa refused to play the game by the rules of conventional
leadership. He made no promises to people, neither sought nor offered
patronage, had no interest in acquiring power and did not pursue
personal advantage.
Despite this, it would be quite wrong to imagine that Iwasa rejected
leadership in any shape or form. As we shall see, he regarded the
anarchist communists as an intellectual vanguard and believed that they
had an exemplary function to fulfil as challengers of authority. What he
was at pains to emphasise, however, was that undertaking such roles held
no promise of either fame or material reward for the anarchist
communists. On the contrary, by questioning the dominant values of
society and challenging the existing power structures, anarchist
communists exposed themselves to ridicule, danger and often thankless
toil. Iwasaâs own life provided ample evidence of this. To take just one
example, even in his sixties and seventies, at a time of life when
conventional politicians would be devoting their energy to wheeling and
dealing in the backrooms of the Diet or in the luxurious surroundings
provided by expensive restaurants and hotels, Iwasa was still walking
the streets, with a signboard slung round his neck, selling unpopular
journals. (Museifushugi Undo 10 April 1967: 3) It was his engaging in
activity such as this, which was so conspicuously at odds with the
conventions of mainstream politics, that enables us to say that Iwasa
was an anarchist communist leader who refused to lead in any sense that
the word is conventionally understood.
Nevertheless, this paper will also take the opportunity to question the
residual form of leadership which Iwasa did attribute to anarchist
communists. Iwasa understood perfectly well that anarchist communism was
an alternative form of society which, by virtue of abolishing the state
and holding wealth communally, would eradicate leadership. In such a
society, decisions would be taken as a community and no one would be
provided with either the power or the wealth to impose their will on
others. Even with this clear perception, however, the question remained
how to get from society as it was presently organized to a society
exhibiting these features. Opposed though they were to existing society,
its practices and its values, Iwasa and his comrades remained products
of it themselves and therefore could not jettison entirely all the
assumptions on which it rested. Particularly for someone of Iwasa s
generation, born only twelve years into the Meiji era, the heroic
exploits of the Meiji Restoration of 1868 had a lingering influence,
despite the fact that he was conscious of the Restorationâs shortcomings
as a revolutionary transformation. Undoubtedly, the Meiji Restoration
was one of the sources from which Iwasaâs selfimage of anarchist
communists as a heroic and self-sacrificing minority derived.
In addition, Iwasa was well aware of the extent to which the mass of the
people had had their courage and independence sapped by oppression and
insecurity. Understandably perhaps, Iwasa and most of his comrades
reacted to the social order they opposed by concluding, somewhat
paradoxically, that the way to bring about an alternative, leaderless
society was to rely on the (albeit highly unconventional) leading role
of the minority of anarchist communists. Seeing the problem in this way
imposed on the anarchist communists the arduous responsibility of
bringing new ideas to ordinary working men and women and the risky
tactics of galvanizing the masses into rebellion by engaging as a
minority in acts of defiance against the state and confrontation with
the capitalists. Had Iwasa and his comrades rejected this strategy of
assigning a particular leading role to themselves as anarchist
communists, in their eyes the effect would have been to have put back
the prospect of revolution by many years, since it was obvious that most
people were currently socialized into accepting capitalism and lacked
the determination to confront those who exercised power. With the
benefit of hindsight, however, we can see that such a rethinking of the
relationship between anarchist communists and the masses would have had
the advantage of realism, since the revolution which inspired Iwasa
throughout his adult life has remained a remote prospect even several
decades after his death.
Had Iwasa and his fellow anarchist communists realized that the
revolution to which they were committed lay far ahead in an
indeterminate future, it would have had an effect on their perception of
themselves and their self-assigned role. Less of their energy would have
been poured into ephemeral activism, allowing more of their time and
effort to be redirected towards research into the nature of an anarchist
communist society and the means to achieve it. In this regard, it was
incongruous that, despite his talents, Iwasa published only three works
throughout his long life, some of them mere pamphlets and all
essentially collections of articles written for immediate purposes in
agitational journals. These were Workers and the Masses (Rodosha to
Taishu) (1925), Anarchists Answer Like This (Museijitshugisha wa Kaku
Kotau) (1927) and Random Thoughts on Revolution (Kakumei Danso)
(1931).To these can be added the autobiographical essays which were
republished posthumously under the tide One Anarchistâs Recollections
(Ichi Anakisuto no Omoide).
Erasing the distinction between the anarchist communists and the masses
would not have deprived the former of any role at all. As part of the
masses, they would still have been free to put forward their views and
argue for the type of society they wished to achieve. Nevertheless, by
eliminating any special anarchist communist responsibility for the
outcome of events, it would have been brought home that only determined
action by self-organized masses who are intent on freeing themselves can
bring about a free society based on mass self-organization. In other
words, the contradiction implicit in the proposition that achieving a
society without leadership depends on the leading role of a minority of
anarchist communists would have been eliminated and a greater degree of
consistency achieved between the means of struggle employed and the ends
to which that struggle was directed.
Iwasa was born in 1879 in a farming hamlet in Chiba Prefecture. His
father was a land-owning farmer who acted as the headman of a group of
five villages. (Museifii Shimbun 15 March 1956:2) His grandfather had
been headman, too, and had strongly encouraged communal production and
cooperative practices within the area for which he was responsible.
Under Iwasaâs grandfather, the paddy fields were farmed communally and
the hill land was owned in common by the villagers. As a result, the
community had the character of a âhalf-communist villageâ (han kyosan
mura). Iwasa came under the influence of his grandfather during his
childhood and for the rest of his life he perceived anarchist communism
not as an ideal project waiting to be tested, but as a form of social
organization which comes naturally to local communities, providing the
state does not interfere. (Noguchi 1931:161)
Iwasa received a traditional form of primary education and learnt
Chinese characters (kanji) by means of the rote reading of the late Edo
text The Unofficial History ofjapan (Nihon Gaishi) by Rai Sanyo. In
addition to absorbing Chinese characters by reading such books, young
Iwasa was evidently highly receptive to the heroic stories in which they
abounded. At one point in The Unofficial History of Japan, Taira no
Masakado surveys Kyoto from Mount Hiei and expresses his determination
to rule Japan from there. Reading this, Iwasa is said to have pounded
his desk and shouted: âThis is it; this is it! I am going to hold
society [tenka â literally âall under heavenâ] in the palm of my hand.â
As a result, the village children henceforth gave Iwasa the nickname
âMasakadoâ. (Museifu Shimbun 25 September 1955:1) Similarly, Iwasa
further astounded his teacher when, in an essay written at the age of
13, he declared his intention to become one day the ruler ofjapan.
(Museifu Shimbun 25 September 1955:1) Obviously, it would not do to make
too much of these childish flights of fancy, but they do give an
indication of the extent to which Iwasa was inspired by the heroism
which permeated his reading primers.
Nevertheless, Iwasa was far from being putty in the hands of his
teachers. Much of the formal education to which he was exposed struck
him as uninteresting and he therefore dropped out of middle school.
Eventually, he progressed to Tokyo Law College, but only to conclude
that the lessons there, too, were uninspiring and that there was little
point in continuing. Only his motherâs tears, who feared that the
familyâs reputation would not survive her son dropping out for a second
time, persuaded Iwasa to press on to graduation in 1898. (Museifu
Shimbun 25 September 1955: 1) Like many other young intellectuals of
this period, Iwasa was exposed to Christian ideas and for a time took
lodgings in the house of a Christian convert. However, he did not
himself become a Christian, on the grounds that âJesus was a person.
Buddha and Confucius were persons. And I am a person tooâ. (Museifu
Shimbun 25 September 1955: 1) What these various episodes indicate are
Iwasaâs independent spirit and his own perennial reluctance to follow
leaders, either secular or divine.
As was mentioned previously, Iwasa was fired with political ambition at
this stage of his life and realized that, in order to make an impact on
society, he would need to acquire knowledge and equip himself with
learning. He therefore decided to prepare himself for enrolment in Tokyo
Imperial University and took up further studies under Yamai Kanroku, who
was a disciple ofYasui Sokken,a major Confiician scholar during the
final yean of Tokugawa power (the Bakumatsu period). (Museifu Shimbun 25
September 1955:1) With the same overall purpose in mind, Iwasa lodged in
the houses of a number of politicians and scholars, but the experience
proved to be disillusioning. Such houses were frequented by âthe great
and the goodâ of Meiji society and, observed at close quarters, Iwasa
saw litde to admire or emulate in their behaviour. (Noguchi 1931:161)
One strong influence acting on Iwasa at this stage of his life was a
book he read at about the time he graduated in 1898. Known in Japanese
translation as The Secret Fraternity (Himitsu Kessha), this was a study
of late nineteenth-century anarchism written by a French priest whose
name was rendered âRigiyoruâ in katakana syllabary. It is said that it
was via this book that Iwasa first came to know about anarchism and that
it was influential in finally dissuading him from following a
conventional career in the law or in politics. (Museifushugi Undo 10
April 1967:1)
Iwasa left Japan for the USA in 1901 and remained there until 1914. It
was during his extended stay in America that he became an anarchist
communist and, as with many others, it was the impact of the
Russo-Japanese War (1904â5) that particularly radicalized his political
views. The Japanese government had refused to allow the famous novelist
Jack London into Japan as a war correspondent on the grounds that he was
an âanarchistâ and Iwasa shared the platform with London at a public
meeting held in San Francisco to protest against this. (Museifu Shimbun
25 September 1955: 1) Following the war, the most famous socialist in
Japan, Kotoku Shusui, arrived in the USA in December 1905 and spent the
next six months in California. During his time in America Kotokuâs ideas
also moved in an
anarchist communist direction, which drew Kotoku and Iwasa together,
although Iwasa was never reticent about criticizing as âstupidâ the
ideas of even celebrities like Kotoku when the occasion demanded it.
(Iwasa 1982:145) Iwasa became a member of the Social Revolutionary Party
(Shakai Kakumei To) which Kotoku organized in California in June 1906
shortly before his return to Japan. The Social Revolutionary Partyâs
programme stated:
Our party seeks to destroy the present economic and industrial
competitive system and, by placing all land and capital under the common
ownership of the whole people, to eradicate all vestiges of poverty.
Our party seeks to overhaul the current class system, which depends on
superstition and convention, and to secure equal freedom and rights for
all people.
Our party seeks to eliminate national bias and racial prejudice and to
realise genuine world peace for all people everywhere.
Our party recognises that, in order to attain the objectives given
above, it is necessary to unite and cooperate with comrades throughout
the world and to bring about a great social revolution. (Hikari 20 July
1906:7)
The name adopted by the Social Revolutionary Party indicates the
influence of the terrorist-inclined Russian Social Revolutionaries (SRs)
on those who formed it and this impression was strengthened when the
journal Revolution (Kakumei) was issued in the Partyâs name from
December 1906. Iwasa was one of the key people involved in writing and
producing Revolution.Taking its lead from the SRs, Revolution advocated
violent social revolution, declaring that:
The sole means is the bomb. The means whereby the revolution can be
funded too is the bomb. The means to destroy the bourgeois class is the
bomb. (Suzuki 1964:467)
The handful of Japanese revolutionaries in California lacked the
resources to sustain either the Social Revolutionary Party or the
journal Revolution for long,but they created a major incident when they
marked the Meiji Emperorâs birthday on 3 November 1907 by issuing an
âOpen Letter to Mutsuhito the Emperor of Japan from
Anarchists-Terroristsâ. With bravado that verged on the reckless, the
âOpen Letterâproclaimed:
Mutsuhito, poor Mutsuhito! Your life is almost at an end. The bombs are
all around you and are on the point of exploding. It is goodbye for you.
(Suzuki 1964: Supplement)
In view of the subsequent execution in 1911 ofKotoku Shusui and others
who were involved in the High Treason Incident {Taigyaku Jikeri), there
were perhaps good reasons why Iwasa steadfasdy denied over the years any
involvement in the production of the 1907 âOpen Letterâ, but it was
nevertheless widely believed that he was one of those responsible for
its publication. (Crump 1983: 210) What Iwasa never made any attempt to
hide was his support for Kotoku and the others implicated in the High
Treason Incident. This was clearly expressed in another âOpen Letterâ,
this time unambiguously signed by Iwasa and which he addressed âTo the
Japanese Emperor and Senior Statesmenâ in November 1910. (Iwasa
1982:174â9) When news of the execution ofKotoku and his comrades in
January 1911 reached Iwasa in the USA, it had a traumatic effect. The
shock of losing such a respected comrade was so severe for a sensitive
man like Iwasa (who was then 31) that he immediately became impotent.
(Suzuki 1964: 534â5)
What eventually induced Iwasa to take the considerable risk of returning
to Japan was a message received from his younger brother, telling him
that his mother was ill. He arrived back at the family home in June 1914
and for the next five years was placed under house arrest. The hamlet
where Iwasa had grown up and to which he now returned was a tiny rural
community comprised of only about 50 farmhouses, but three police
substations were erected to house the officers who were assigned to keep
him under constant surveillance. (Museifu Shimbun 15 February 1956: 2)
With characteristic wit, Iwasa referred to the police buildings as âdog
kennelsâ (âdogsâ was widely used anarchist slang for the police) and he
needed all his reserves of fortitude and humour to survive the years of
isolation that now ensued. Iwasa was not formally prohibited from
receiving visitors, but it required great courage for anyone to call on
him. Not only were any visitors likely to bring upon themselves intense
surveillance (with its attendant consequences, such as loss of jobs) but
they also ran the risk of gratuitous violence from the police. Many
years later, Yamada Seiichi recalled calling on Iwasa in the latter half
of the Taisho period (1912â26) and being beaten up by the âspecial
policeâ (tokko) simply because the mood took them to do so;
Without any reason I was surrounded by several âspecial policeâ and
knocked about like the ball in a game of volleyball. It was that sort of
era. (Museifushugi Undo 10 April 1967:2)
After Iwasa died, it was said about him that âthe road which Iwasa Ro
[the aged Iwasa] walked, extending through the Meiji [1868â1912],Taisho
[1912â26] and pre-war and post-war Showa [1926â89] eras, was the history
of the Japanese anarchist movement itselfâ (Museifushugi Undo 10 April
1967:2) That this was so is illustrated by the way in which Iwasaâs
personal circumstances fluctuated in harmony with the ups and downs of
the anarchist movement as a whole. In 1919 Iwasa was able to shake off
the restrictions of house arrest and head for Tokyo. This reflected the
anarchist movementâs emergence from its âwinter periodâ, during which it
had forcibly been kept dormant by the state ever since the High Treason
Incident. An upsurge in rank-and-file militancy, brought about by the
economic conditions following the First World War, created a situation
beyond the stateâs ability to control and those like Iwasa were quick to
seize the opportunities that presented.
From 1919 Iwasa threw himself into the burgeoning movement and life
became a whirl of attending meetings, writing articles, distributing
journals and, least conspicuous but probably most important of all,
spreading the word through chats with individuals or informal
discussions. This last form of activity was something at which Iwasa
excelled. In 1931 Noguchi Yoshiaki published a volume of biographical
sketches of all the prominent militants in the proletarian movement. The
entry on Iwasa included a passage which read:
His special feature could be said to lie in the fact that, together with
being a founder of anarchism in Japan, he excels in the underground
movement. What I mean by that is that he has the knack of informal
conversation. He has travelled the country on one journey after another,
having talks with comrades [in one place after another]. He gathers
comrades around him by the attractiveness of his personality and the
skill of his conversation. (Noguchi 1931:162)
Iwasa joined the Labour Movement (Rodo Undo) group, which from October
1919 published the journal of the same name. This was a group which
included Osugi Sakae, Ito Noe, Mochizuki Kei, Wada Kyutaro, Mizunuma
Tatsuo and Kondo Kenji, all of whom played important roles in the
development of Japanese anarchism and several of whom paid with their
lives for their prominence in the movement. What distinguished Iwasa
from other anarchists like Osugi was that, while they were deeply
influenced by syndicalism, his vision of a new society and the means to
achieve it were rooted in the theoretical principles of anarchist
communism as defined by Kropotkin. It was this feature of Iwasaâs
thought that caused the term âpure anarchistâ to be applied to him from
an early stage. As Noguchi also wrote about him:
It is said that he was the sole pure anarchist in Japan. In other words,
there was none of the deficiencies of the type found in Osugi or Kotoku.
(Noguchi 1931:161)
In September 1920 an attempt was made to form an umbrella organization
which would encompass all shades of opinion claiming allegiance to
socialism. This was the Japanese Socialist League (Nihon Shakaishugi
Domei). It published the journal Socialism (Shakaishugi) and Iwasa was
named as its editor. However, both attempts by the Socialist League to
hold major conferences (attended by several thousand participants) in
December 1920 and May 1921 were disrupted by the police and Iwasa was
given a six months prison sentence when the organisation was banned and
its journal prohibited. At this juncture Iwasa was even more popular
than Osugi among the anarchists, although the latterâs martyrdom in 1923
subsequendy elevated his status to a prime position.
After Osugi was murdered by the military police in the chaos
accompanying the Great Kanto Earthquake, Iwasaâs âpure anarchismâ
gradually became the dominant current within the Japanese anarchist
movement. âPure anarchismâ was not a term regularly employed by Iwasa
and his comrades. They believed that their ideas represented authentic
anarchism and hence that it was sufficient to refer to their doctrine
simply as âanarchismâ or, when they wanted to be more specific,
âanarchist communismâ. They were anarchists because they opposed state
power and communists because they believed that the form of social
organization which comes naturally to humans is one based on communal
solidarity and mutual aid. Thus, echoing Kropotkin, they argued that
âAnarchy leads to Communism, and Communism to Anarchyâ. (Kropotkin
1972:61) It was their anarchist syndicalist opponents who sneeringly
dubbed this doctrine âpure anarchismâ, in an effort to ridicule what
they regarded as the holier-than-thou attitude of, if not Iwasa, at
least many of his young supporters. What caused the name to stick was
that it certainly conveyed the intention of Iwasa and others to
eliminate from anarchism extraneous elements, such as syndicalism.
The theories of âpure anarchismâ were mainly formulated by two people â
Iwasa and Hatta Shuzo, with Hatta playing the more important role in
this respect. Not only did Hatta write more profusely than Iwasa, but he
was also a more systematic and innovative thinker, whose writings ranged
over a wide area of economic, sociological and philosophical
investigation. Indeed, Hatta was widely regarded among the âpure
anarchistsâ as âthe greatest theoretician of anarchist communism in
Japanâ. (Hatta 1981: 309) Nevertheless, despite being somewhat
overshadowed by Hatta as a writer, Iwasa did make original contributions
to the theories ofâpure anarchismâ. Iwasaâs role in this regard will be
exemplified by reference to his âlabour union mountain bandit theoryâ.
Before examining this, however, it is worth stressing that Iwasaâs
popularity within the anarchist movement and the high regard in which he
was held did not derive from a reputation for bookish learning. Even on
paper, Iwasa adopted an unadorned and chatty style of writing, but it
was above all through the spoken word, and in his everyday dealings with
his comrades, that he built up support for his ideas and came to exert
influence on theoretical questions. Although it was natural that Iwasaâs
negative evaluation of labour unions should have provoked criticism from
anarchist syndicalists, given their entirely different assessment of the
efficacy of union organisation, such was Iwasaâs rapport with rank and
file workers that many responded positively to his denunciation of the
very movement which was supposed to represent their interests. As his
fellow anarchist, Kawamoto Kenji, commented:
Bearing in mind the situation of workers, who usually have no
opportunity to read books and are not endowed with knowledge, Iwasa Rd
adopted the frame of mind of the workers and explained anarchism in a
friendly fashion so that it was easily understood and could be simply
grasped. Yet what stood out about his approach was that at its core was
a superlative and well thought out theory of anarchism. (Museifiishugi
Undo 10 April 1967:2)
In his âlabour union mountain bandit theoryâ, Iwasa distinguished
between the âlabour movementâand the âmass workersâ movementâ. By
âlabour movementâ Iwasa meant the union movement of a minority of urban,
male workers who occupied a relatively advantageous position within the
working class. According to Iwasa, what characterized this movement was
its incorporation into capitalism as a labour aristocracy and its
reformist concern with maintaining its privileges relative to the rest
of the working class. The analogy of a gang of mountain bandits was
introduced to convey the relationship which, Iwasa argued, existed
between the capitalists and this âlabour movementâ. Just as squabbles
might occur between a bandit chief and his henchmen, with the latter
harbouring the ambition to lead the gang themselves,so the âlabour
movementâwas likely to clash with the capitalist class. Yet, to continue
with the analogy, just as whoever might seize the leadership of a gang
of mountain bandits would have no influence on their pillaging
relationship with the surrounding villages, so whichever side emerged
victorious from the class struggle between the capitalists and the
âlabour movementâ would leave the basically exploitative nature of
society unaffected. By way of contrast, Iwasa insisted that the âmass
workersâ movementâ encompassed the vast majority of working men and
women, both in the towns and in the countryside. It did not depend on
union organization, since, whether âorganizedâ or not, what defined the
working masses as a âmovementâ were their common experiences of
exploitation and oppression. Likewise, since the working masses had no
privileges to maintain within capitalism, the logic of their
disadvantaged position would lead them to seek revolutionary solutions
to their problems. (Crump 1993: III ff)
Iwasa s âlabour union mountain bandit theoryâ lent itself well to âpure
anarchistâ criticism of syndicalism. The importance which anarchist
syndicalists attached to the union form of organization, their
essentially urbanized and industrial vision of an alternative society,
and their ambition to take over the capitalist means of production and
maintain them so that they could be used for different purposes, were
all cited as evidence that (like the Bolsheviks) they intended to
substitute themselves for the capitalists but not fundamentally to
eradicate capitalism. It was maintained that syndicalism would leave
intact capitalismâs division of labour, its privileging of production
relative to consumption, its centralization of power and its advantaging
of the towns over the countryside. Such theoretical arguments lay behind
the rising tension between âpure anarchistsâand anarchist syndicalists
which was such a marked feature of Japanese anarchism in the latter half
of the 1920s.
In 1926 two nationwide anarchist federations were formed which each had
several thousand members and were thus larger than any previous
organizations the anarchists had set up. The Black Youth League
(Kokushoku Seinen Renmei, or Kokuren for short) was founded in January
1926 as a group of young militants in the Kanto area, but it soon
expanded into a nationwide federation with members in all age groups.
Four months later, the All-Japan Libertarian Federation of Labour Unions
(Zenkoku Rodo Kumiai Jiyii Rengdkai, or Zenkoku Jiren for short) held
its founding conference on 24 May 1926. Starting with 8,400 members, it
reached a peak membership of 16,300 in 1931. (Crump 1993: 69 ff) Within
the space of two years, the anarchist syndicalists were driven out of
Kokuren and Zenkoku Jiren by the âpure anarchistâ majority in these
federations, the final split occurring at the latter organizationâs
reconvened second conference on 17â18 March 1928. Iwasa was absent from
this conference and hence played no direct part in the split between
âpure anarchistsâ and anarchist syndicalists. This was because in 1927
he had been invited by some Chinese anarchists to take part in their
activities in Fukien and Shanghai. Responding to this invitation, Iwasa
was away from Japan for two years, during which he participated in the
armed struggle prosecuted by the anarchists in Fukien and taught at the
Labour University in Shanghai. (Museifushugi Undo 10 April 1967:1)
Since Iwasa did not return to Japan until November 1929, he was not
directly involved in the confrontations between âpure anarchistsâ and
anarchist syndicalists which led to their organizational separation over
the next six years, but his influence was nevertheless felt due to the
âlabour union mountain bandit theoryâ. After the anarchist syndicalists
withdrew from its ranks in March 1928, Zenkoku Jiren remained a
federation of labour unions, but its activity was in marked contrast to
that castigated by Iwasa as typical of the âlabour movementâ. Zenkoku
Jiren continually sought to direct the attention of the workers beyond
immediate struggles over wages and working conditions to the ultimate
battle to establish a new society. Similarly, although Zenkoku Jirenâs
members were mostly industrial workers in the big cities, its aim was to
dissolve both existing industries and urban centres in order to replace
them with a network of autonomous communes, each of which would be a
balanced amalgam of fields, factories and workshops, as Kropotkin had
put it. (Kropotkin 1974)
From 1931 anarchism in Japan was increasingly put on the defensive as,
following the Manchurian Incident in September of that year,
militarization and repression intensified. As the state s vice closed on
the anarchist movement, particularly some of the younger activists were
inclined to grasp at illusionary solutions to the dilemma which faced
them. One such illusion was the belief that Bolshevik organizational
methods would provide a defence against the stateâs intention to crush
the anarchists. This was the line of thought that lay behind the
ill-fated attempt by Aizawa Hisao and others to launch the Anarchist
Communist Party of Japan (Nihon Museifu Kyosanto) in 1934. (Crump 1993:
180 ff) Iwasa was scornful of the idea that Bolshevik methods could be
made to serve anarchist ends, denouncing such illusions as âcomplete
rubbishâ. (Crump 1993: 183) In this respect his assessment proved
correct, since the Anarchist Communist Partyâs conspiratorial methods
led to the destruction of the entire anarchist movement in 1935â6 as the
state unleashed a wave of terror.
Although Iwasa was perceptive with regard to the contradictions inherent
in anarchists resorting to Bolshevik organizational methods, this was a
difficult time for all anarchists and he did not avoid committing
mistakes of his own. In February 1937 an essay entitled Outline of the
Theory of the State (Kokka Ron Taiko) was published over his name. In
this essay Iwasa appeared to be offering an olive branch to the
advocates of nationalism and statism. For example, at one point he posed
the rhetorical question: âisnât it only our unique Great Japanese Empire
which is a naturally generated state and the others which are all
artificially constructed states, no matter whether they are monarchical
or democratic?â (Iwasa 1974: 337) Some anarchists, such as Oshima
Eizaburo, denied that Iwasa was the author of Outline of the Theory of
the State, arguing that it was a forgery perpetrated by the âspecial
policeâ and rightists. (Iwasa 1982:180; Iwasa 1984: 44) However, a more
likely explanation is that the reason Iwasa wrote Outline of the Theory
of the State was that he was trying to create some ideological space
within which anarchism could survive, despite the prevailing climate of
hysterical nationalism. If this was his intention, he did not succeed.
From 1936 organized anarchist activity became impossible. After a failed
attempt to make a living by opening a cafe (yakitoriya) in Tokyo in
1935, Iwasa returned to his native village and eked out an existence by
growing his own food during the years of the Second World War. (Yomiuri
Shimbun 29 December 1935: 7)
Iwasa was already an old man of 66 when the war ended, but he
nevertheless threw himself into the efforts to relaunch the anarchist
movement. The Japanese Anarchist Federation (Nihon Anakisuto Rertmei)
was formed in May 1946 and Iwasa was elected chairman of its National
Committee. Throughout all the trials and tribulations brought about by
his political beliefs, Iwasa was always deeply conscious of what he
regarded as âthe honour of being an anarchist communistâ, (Kakumei Shiso
16 June 1951) but he neither sought nor received either honour or
rewards for occupying one of the âtopâ posts in the Japanese Anarchist
Federation. He was well known for advising others âyou mustnât go about
thinking of yourselves as important [erai]â and, in that respect, he led
by example. (Museifiishugi Undo 10 April 1967:3) The job of chairing the
National Committee was unpaid and arduous, involving endless
organizational work and much travelling across the length and breadth
ofjapan. On these journeys Iwasa thought nothing of regularly hanging
placards round his neck to advertise anarchist journals, for as he
explained: âSince Iâm an old person and canât be as active as I might, I
want to be of some use to the movement by selling newspapers with a
signboard slung round my body. (Museifiishugi Undo 10 April 1967: 3) His
lack of affectation was also revealed by the fact that, when he was not
away on propaganda trips, he lived with his wife, Fumie, in a converted
country temple (yamadera) growing potatoes and pumpkins for food.
(Museifiishugi Undo 10 April 1967:1)
Despite the best efforts of Iwasa and his comrades, the anarchist
movement was unable to attain the sizeable proportions it had achieved
in pre-war days. This had less to do with any deficiencies on the part
of the anarchists than it had with the altered circumstances in which
they now operated. In the early postwar years Japanese society was
politically polarized between the Left and the Right, with the
anarchists targeted from both sides. They were discriminated against on
account of the policy of âanticommunismâ which both the American
Occupation authorities and the Japanese government pursued (not a few
anarchists were victims of the âred purgeâ, for example) (Hagiwara 1969:
192) while in the unions and elsewhere anarchists were frequendy
obstructed and all but silenced by the control exercised by Communist
Party and other officials. In addition, first land reform and then rapid
economic growth changed Japanese society in ways that were
disadvantageous to anarchism. In pre-war days the âpure anarchistsâ in
particular had seen the tenant farmers as the core of any potential
movement for achieving anarchist communism. However, post-war land
reform eliminated both landlords and tenants as significant social
groups and created instead a politically conservative class of
land-owning, small farmers who were incorporated into the networks
supporting the Liberal Democratic Party and its forerunners. Similarly,
high economic growth uprooted people from their long-established village
communities and deposited them as factory-fodder and office-fodder in
anomic, urban conglomerations where only the crass pursuit of
consumerism offered any compensation for the vanished solidarity and
mutual aid on which rural life had depended.
The expectations triggered by the end of the war had induced anarchists
of all persuasions to sink their differences and from 1946 to cooperate
under the umbrella of the Japanese Anarchist Federation. However, as
changing social conditions brought difficulties and frustration, so the
old tensions between anarchist syndicalists and âpure anarchistsâ
resurfaced. In May 1950 an Anarcho-Syndicalist Group (Anaruko
Sanjikarisuto Guriipu) was formed and in June 1951 the Japanese
Anarchist Club (Nihon Anakisuto Kurabu) was organised. The latter was
essentially anarchist communist in its orientation and at its centre
were Iwasa Sakutaro and other veterans of the pre-war âpure
anarchistâwing of the movement. From September 1951 the Japanese
Anarchist Club started to publish the journal Anarchist Club (Anakisuto
Kurabu) and, passing through various changes of name to first Anarchist
News (Museifu Shimbun) and later Anarchist Movement (Museifushugi Undo),
this continued to be published until March 1980, long after Iwasa had
died in February 1967. For as long as it existed, the Japanese Anarchist
Club and its journal adhered to the theory and practice of anarchist
communism which was grounded in Kropotkinâs writings of the 1880s and
1890s, had first been introduced to Japan by Kotoku in the 1900s, and
which had been adapted and refined to meet Japanese conditions by Hatta,
Iwasa and others in the 1920s and 1930s. That this doctrine has survived
into the 1980s and 1990s, in a period when each successive phase of
capitalism has taken Japan further away from everything that anarchist
communists regard as important, is testimony in part to the lasting
influence of Iwasaâs intellectual and, above all, moral stature.
When Iwasa died in 1967 his comrades tried, individually and
collectively, to summarize the essence of the man and his thought. In a
commemorative issue of Anarchist Movement, his comrades eulogised Iwasa
as someone who had âspent his whole life as a warrior fighting
humankindâs battle without endâ and Oshima Eizaburo spoke for many when
he declared âa giant has fallenâ. (Museifushugi Undo 10 April 1967:4â5)
Yet, at the same time that they recognized Iwasaâs heroic proportions,
none of them overlooked the childlike simplicity, honesty and integrity
which had characterized him and which had worked to make him a figure of
affection rather than of awe. Thus, while Yamaga Taiji remembered the
âComrade Iwasa Sakutaro whom all of us who called ourselves anarchists
held in esteem as high as the mountains and the starsâ, Mochizuki Kei
recalled that âIwasa had a gentle personality which inspired love and
affection from everybodyâ. (Museifushugi Undo 10 April 1967: 1, 4) Even
political opponents, such as Yamakawa Kikue, recollected Iwasa as an
âeternal youthâ, on account of his ready laugh and general disposition,
while others who had met him only once or twice still called to mind a
man who epitomized âthe very model of what an anarchist should beâ.
(Museifushugi Undo 10 April 1967:2â3)
Clearly, the Iwasa Sakutaro who has been described in this article was
far removed from the conventional type of political leader. Although the
article started by listing various qualities which Iwasa possessed that
make for a successful Japanese politician, he refused to use those
attributes for achieving political success. In that sense, Iwasa
rejected leadership and this squared with his egalitarian and communal
vision of what an anarchist communist society should be. Yet, as was
made clear earlier, in another sense Iwasa was not opposed to
leadership, since he believed that it was a minority of anarchist
communists who would supply the intellectual spark and courageous
audacity for the revolution. According to Iwasa, this minority was to be
intimately connected with the mass of the people. Indeed, the minority
would arise out of the masses, would enjoy no power or privileges
separate from the masses and, far from being famous, would be composed
of essentially âanonymous people (imumei no hitobito) who, in this
sense, too, would be indistinguishable from the masses. Nevertheless,
having laid down all these provisos and qualifications, Iwasa still
insisted that the role of the minority of anarchist communists was
crucial:
Whatever the period, whatever the world of that time, these people
equipped with initiatives and proposals are a minority. Furthermore,
this minority are anonymous people (mumei no hitobito)! In the era of
revolution which is coming, they will certainly be a minority and they
will equally be anonymous. (Iwasa 1982:137)
Why, in Iwasaâs estimation, was this minority of anarchist communists so
important? Essentially, the answer was that he believed they would think
through, refine, and articulate in more systematic and therefore
attractive form, the inchoate aspirations of the masses, who were
assumed to be incapable of doing so themselves. Iwasa wrote:
If this minority of anonymous people can make their ideas, in other
words their initiatives and plans, coincide with the hopes and demands
of the masses, and if without any sinister designs they are inspired by
great ideals, the masses will not desert them. (Iwasa 1982:138)
To this he added, in a passage which conveyed both his basic assumptions
and the influences acting on him:
The people with initiatives and plans are the wind. The masses are just
like the grass. The grass will bend with the wind. (Iwasa 1982:138)
The parallel here with Confuciusâ teaching in the Analects is striking.
Confucius is reported as having said:
In administering your government, what need is there for you to kill?
Just desire the good yourself and the common people will be good. The
virtue of the gentleman is like wind; the virtue of the small person is
like grass. Let the wind blow over the grass and it is sure to bend.
(Confucius 1979: xii, 19)
Out of this Confucian prescription for good government, Iwasa excised
government itself and its attendant implications, such as a naturally
hierarchical social order. What he retained was the basic division
between a minority of âgendemenâ (in his case, the anarchist communist
revolutionaries) and the majority of âsmall personsâ (in his case, the
masses of working men and women) at least for the duration of the
revolutionary process which was expected to bring about anarchist
communism. The drawbacks of this approach were twofold. First, it relied
on the revolutionary minority not harbouring âany sinister designsâ.
That Iwasa himself was free of such self-serving ambitions seems obvious
enough from the foregoing account, but the same cannot be said of
numerous other revolutionaries who, at different times and places, have
appointed themselves to lead the masses to the promised land. Requiring
the masses to trust the good intentions of their leaden is a strategy
fraught with peril, as history has repeatedly shown. Second, as was
mentioned earlier, there is a fundamental contradiction in relying on
leaders (even anarchist communist leaders) to achieve the leaderless
condition of anarchist communism. For that reason, Iwasa should have
recognized that Confucianism is not adaptable for anarchist communist
purposes. To stick to the Confucian metaphor, for anarchist communism to
come about, it would take more than the wind to bend the grass. Wind and
grass would have to become one; the masses would have to be anarchist
communists. In Iwasaâs day, this no doubt seemed virtually as improbable
as it would have been 2,500 years earlier in the time of Confucius
himself, since society remained composed very largely of ignorant
peasants, with little education, a narrow range of experience and poorly
developed conceptual powers. In the light of this, the post-war
development of capitalism in Japan has brought mixed blessings. While it
has destroyed so many of the rural communities which seemed in Iwasaâs
day to offer themselves for conversion into the communes favoured by
anarchist communists, it has created a highly educated and accomplished
population who are demonstrably far removed from the condition described
by Confucius: âthe common people can be made to follow a path but not to
understand itâ. (Confucius 1979: viii, 9) Capitalist development has
undermined the need for leadership and this should be particularly
apparent to those, like anarchist communists, who wish to transcend
capitalism.
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