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Title: The Chain Factory Author: ĹŚsugi Sakae Date: 1913 Language: en Topics: Japan, fiction Notes: * éŽ–ĺ·Ąĺ ´ * ĺ¤§ćť‰ć „ Originally published in Kindai shisĹŤ (Modern Thought), vol. 1, no. 12 (Sept. 1913): 2-5. Translated by Adam Goodwin. The translator wishes to thank Jesse Cohn for his helpful suggestions and research to improve this translation.
Late one night I awoke with a start and found myself in a strange place.
As far as I could see there were countless people busily working away at
something. They are fashioning chains.
The fellow beside me wrapped a rather long length of chain around
himself and passed one end of it to the chap beside him. The second
fellow lengthened the chain further, wrapped it around himself and, once
again, passed it to another chap sitting diagonally from him. While this
is happening,^([1]) the first chap takes the end of another chain from
the fellow beside him, and, as before, lengthens it and wraps it once
around himself, and then passes the end to the chap sitting diagonally
from him. This goes on and on, with everyone doing the same thing, and
at a dizzying pace.
All of them have chains wrapped around their midsections ten to twenty
times, and at first glance it seems that they are completely
immobilized, but their hands and feet are free enough to forge the chain
and wrap it around their bodies. They work so intently. There isn't a
sign of bother on any of their faces. They actually look happy as they
work.
But all is not what it seems. Ten places from me a chap shouted
something as he tossed away the end of a chain. But then, another
fellow, who was standing near, but also with chains wrapped around his
body, gruffly approached him and clubbed him three or four times with
the large truncheon he was carrying. Everyone near the clubbed chap
cried out in glee. The clubbed chap, crying, picks up the end of the
chain, fashions a small link and joins it, forges another link, and
joins that one. And after a while, the tears on his face had all dried
away.
In places there are slightly more refined men -- standing, once again,
with chains wrapped around their midsections -- talking incessantly in
shrill voices, like what one would hear from a phonograph. They speak at
length with difficult words and complicated reasoning, saying something
to the effect of 'the chains protect us; the chains are a sacred object
that frees us.' Everyone listens intently.
And in the middle of this expansive factory are a group splendid-looking
fellows—perhaps the family that owns this factory—lounging on sofas,
smoking what seem to be cigars. Their smoke rings sometimes gently waft
past the faces of the workers, making them choke uncomfortably.
As I dwelt upon how strange this place was, I felt my own joints begin
to ache. I look down to find my own body wrapped ten to twenty times in
chains. I busily attend to linking the chains. I was also, as is to be
expected, another worker at this factory.
I cursed myself; I grew saddened, and then angry. I remembered the words
of Hegel: “The real is the rational, and the rational is the real.”
Wilhelm I and his loyal subjects interpreted these words as granting
philosophy's sanction to all the political realities of the day,
including the despotic government, the police state, the arbitrary
courts and the suppression of free speech.
Not just the political realities, but everything. For the dim-witted
Prussian people, all of those realities were, without a doubt, necessary
and just.
As I cast the chains and bind myself with them, their reality is
unavoidable; it is just, and it is my own fate.
I must cease the casting of my own chains. I must cease the binding of
my body. I must break the chains that bind me. I must also create a new
self, a new reality, a new sense of justice, a new fate.
The chains that bound my mind were rather much easier to break than I
had believed. Yet the chains around my feet and hands dig tenaciously
into my flesh, and, with time, down to my bones; even the slightest
touch left me in agony. Yet as I endured, the chains relented somewhat.
And as time passed, that pain was accompanied by a slight sense of
satisfaction. I even began to tolerate the three to four truncheon blows
from the fellow on watch. I eventually got to the point that I gladly
accepted the taunting and abuse from the lounging men.
However, there were many chains that, try as I might, I could not break
alone. Everyone's chain is cleverly linked with mine. There is nothing I
can do. If I at all grew idle, the chains that I had taken great pains
to loosen subtly worked their way around my body again. Before I knew
it, I found my hands mending the links of my own chain.
The master of the factory holds the keys to our bellies, and by wielding
them, he moves our feet and hands. I had always thought that it was my
own mind that controlled my feet and hands; how mistaken I was. As far
as I look, no one controls their feet and hands with their own mind.
Everyone is under the complete control of the master holding the keys to
our bellies. It sounds so foolish, but the fact is there is nothing we
can do.
I then thought I would try to get back the key to my belly from the man
holding it. But it was an impossible task to snatch it away from him by
myself. It turns out that he holds my key in such a clever way that it
is interlocked with everyone else's keys, and I cannot possibly snatch
my own key away from him without the others'.
He is also surrounded by many guards. They all have chains wrapped
around their torsos, as they stand holding their spears and bows. They
are a frightening bunch and I dare not approach them.
I had lost almost all hope. Then I shifted my gaze to the fellows around
me.
There are so many who do not realize that they are bound by chains.
There are many more still who, were they to realize it, would only be
grateful for their chains. There are also many who, while not grateful,
have resigned themselves to working industriously to forge their chains.
And there are the many who, seeing the chain-making as ridiculous,
frequently find openings in the watch of the guards to rest their bodies
while harbouring selfish delusions in their heads and passionately
spouting nonsense about actually being free and not bound by chains at
all. It is more foolish than I can bear to watch.
I then suddenly cast my gaze about. I found others around me that seemed
to be aligned with me.
They are few, and they are scattered all around. But they all desire the
key to their bellies in the clutches of the master. And like me, they
seem to be aware of being unable to take back their keys alone, so they
whisper frequently to their neighbours to forge alliances.
“They are few; we are many. They are outnumbered. If we act together, we
can take back our keys in one fell swoop.”
“However, since we make pronouncements about justice and peace, we must
not permit violence. We must proceed through peaceful means. There is a
simple way to do this.”
“Once a year, we send a representative to the master to decide every
aspect of our lives. All of those chaps in that meeting are
representatives of the master, and if we muster up our own true
representatives now, we can be the majority in the meeting, and that's
how we can pass the resolutions that we want.”
“All we need to do is shut up and forge the chains. Just continue to
wrap the chains around ourselves. Then, when the day comes every few
years that we choose our representative, we simply vote for our own
representative.”
“Our representative will gradually loosen our chains, and will,
ultimately, take back the key to our bellies from the master. We will
then find ourselves in a factory under a new organization and a new
system of our own ideals, with our chains in the hands of our
representative.”
For a time, I thought this to be the soundest argument. But the idea of
relying simply on numbers, or relying on someone else over myself, did
not sit right with me somehow. And when they declared their philosophy
to be scientific, I then realized that they were not my comrades.
They are dreadful Panlogists.^([2]) Dreaded mechanical fatalists. In
their ideal of the new organization of the factory, they believe
themselves to be the natural inheritors of the current factory
organization, the result of an inevitable economic process. Thus, their
belief is vested in simply changing the factory system and organization
according to economic processes.
When pushed to decide, I, myself, am also a Panlogist. I am a mechanical
fatalist. But there are a great many unknowns in my thinking, in my
mechanical fatalism. As long as I do not discern these unknowns, the
achievement of my ideals will not be inevitable. They will remain
probabilities with a degree of potential. I cannot look optimistically
to the future like these men. In fact, my pessimism about the future is
what nourishes my efforts in the present.
The larger part of what I refer to as unknown is located in humans
themselves. It is with the development of life itself. It is with the
power of life itself. More specifically, it lies with the efforts to
realize one's potential, to realize one's autonomy, to struggle
tirelessly for that development, and all of the effort put into that
struggle.
I have no doubt that economic processes are a major force in determining
the future of our factory. Yet those unknowns—more specifically, our
power and efforts—shape what kind of organization and system should be
brought about as a result of those processes. Whether it be an
organization or a system, these are merely phenomena manifested from the
interactions of human beings. The interaction of nothing with
nothing—the relationship between nothing and nothing—will, ultimately,
be nothing.
And yet, I cannot help but shudder in fear at what might rightly be
called the omnipotence of the organizations and systems that already
exist today. Those fellows in the factory, steeped in a dream within a
dream, consider themselves to be complete individuals and give not a
moment's thought to the destruction of those systems.
Sloth has no ambition. Sloth makes no history.
I looked around myself once again.
I am surrounded almost entirely by sloth. They work dutifully fashioning
chains and wrapping them around their own bodies, under the full control
of the mind of another; almost not a single one moves of his own mental
faculties. It matters not how many of these fellows are brought
together, for they have no ambition, no creative power.
I have given up on this vulgar group.
My hopes rested on myself alone. They rested only on the scant minority
that come to realize their own power and autonomy, go through their own
revolutions to some extent, and put forth all they can to achieve their
own betterment.
We must face the men who hold the keys to our bellies, look upon the
organization and system of the factory they have created to subjugate
us, and turn on it like wild beasts.
We will likely be a scant minority until the bitter end. Yet we will
have the initiative and we will make the effort. And we will also have
the experience of actions born of this effort. Our aspirations will be
born from this experience. We will fight to the last.
This struggle is a demonstration of our power. It is the touchstone of
our personal autonomy. We are the magnets who draw the slothful within
our sphere of influence and transform them into warriors.
This struggle yields new meaning and new power within our lives, and
germinates the seed of the new factory we are trying to construct.
Well, I've relied too much on argument alone. Arguments don't break
chains. Arguments don't snatch back the keys to our bellies.
The chains draw ever tighter around us now. The keys to our bellies are
ever more difficult to turn. Even the slothful among this vulgar group
begin to grow restless. The time for the efforts of the conscious,
combative minority is now. I threw off the chains wrapped around my
hands and feet, and stood up.
I awoke. The night had passed, and the mid-August morning sun shines on
my half-asleep countenance.
[1] The abrupt shifts from past to present tense and back again are
ĹŚsugi's, not the translator's -- perhaps reflecting the dreamlike
quality of the narration.
[2] English in the original. The term appears to be associated with the
writing of Inoue EnryĹŤ (1858-1919), who attempted to reconcile Hegel's
philosophy with Buddhism on the grounds that both were forms of
"pan-rationalism" or "panlogism." See Masaaki Kōsaka,
Japanese Thought in the Meiji Era
(Tokyo: Pan-Pacific Press, 1979) 244-45 and James M. Shields, Against
Harmony: Progressive and Radical Buddhism in Modern Japan (New York:
Oxford University Press, 2017).