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The Romance of Revolution in Japanese Anarchism and Communism during the Taishō Period
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 November 2008
Extract
Much can be learned about the character of a political movement by examining the personal relations between its principal members as well as their political writings, speeches, and ‘formal’ activities in the movement. This is all the more the case if the movement is politically radical, for radical politics often generate a radical subculture which has as its chief function the moulding of an ideal revolutionary personality which will serve the movement in all of its vicissitudes and be a model for the type of citizen the movement wishes to create in society.
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References
1 Ōsugi was born in 1885, the son of an army officer in Kagawa Prefecture. For a full biographical study on Ōsugi, see Masamichi, Ōzawa, Ōsugi Sakae kenkyū (Studies on Ōsugi Sakae) (Tokyo: Dōseisha, 1968).Google Scholar A good short study in English is Simcock, Bradford, ‘The Anarcho-Syndicalist Thought and Action of Ōsugi Sakae’, Papers on Japan (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1970).Google Scholar
2 The best study of Watanabe is Nobuyuki, Tsunekawa, Nihon Kyōsantō to Watanabe Masanosuke (Watanabe Masanosuke and the Japanese Communist Party) (Tokyo: San'ichi Shobō, 1971).Google Scholar
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40 Ibid., pp. 47–8 for discussion of the meaning of ‘the spirit of Nankatsu’.
41 Ibid., pp. 87–123 for material on Tanno's early life. Also, cf. Tsunekawa, Nihon Kyōsantō to Watanabe Masanosuke, pp. 101–15.Google Scholar Note that Tsunekawa knew Watanabe and Tanno personally.
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52 Large, ‘Revolutionary Worker’, pp. 383–4. After 1927, Watanabe was unofficially characterized as the Party's ‘secretary-general’, cf. Yoshio, Shiga, Nihon kakumei undō shi no hitobito (People in the History of Japanese Revolutionary Movements) (Tokyo: 1948), p. 202.Google Scholar
53 Tanno's biography includes much data on the fujinbu dispute in the Hyōgikai. In particular, cf. pp. 144–50. Another excellent source on this is Taniguchi, Nihon rōdō kumiai Hyōgikai shi, pp. 164–216.Google Scholar Taniguchi states that many Hyōgikai opponents of the fujinbu proposal were politically immature and that they greeted it with derision (p. 214).
54 Watanabe fully supported the fujinbu proposal in his writings. For example, see his article, ‘Rōdō kumiai no fujinbu wa naze ni hitsuyō ka’ (Why is a Women's Department in Labour Unions Necessary?), written in 1926 and reproduced in Sayoku, pp. 111–22.Google Scholar
55 Cf. Taniguchi, , regarding the establishment of the central fujinbu in the Hyōgikai in 1927, pp. 214–16.Google Scholar
56 The Party's trials and tribulations in 1928 are discussed in Beckmann and Okubo, Japanese Communist Party, ch. 6, ‘Suppression of the Party, 1928’, pp. 138–63.Google Scholar
57 Cf. Tsunekawa, , Nihon Kyōsantō to Watanabe Masanosuke, pp. 338–53, for an account of how Party members, especially Watanabe, were forced underground in 1928.Google Scholar
58 Ibid., pp. 350–63 for the circumstances surrounding Watanabe's death.
59 Tanno, , Tanno Setsu, pp. 177–243 for her account of her prison term. After she was released, she resumed her nursing career and founded a private health-care clinic in 1946.Google Scholar
60 The subsequent prewar history of the Party is traced in Beckmann and Okubo, Japanese Communist Party, chs 7–9.Google Scholar
61 Tanno, , Tanno Setsu, p. 180.Google Scholar
62 Watanabe's emergence as a hero in communist history is analysed in Tsunekawa, Nihon Kyōsantō to Watanabe Masanosuke, pp. 361–3. In 1967, Watanabe's collected works were published by the Party: Watanabe Masanosuke chosakushū, in Tokyo.Google Scholar
63 Scalapino develops these themes in his account, esp. pp. 43–7.
64 Harootunian, Harry, Toward Restoration (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1970), p. 410.Google Scholar
65 The romantic ethos surrounding the terrorists of the 1930s is portrayed by Wilson, George, ‘Restoration and Shōwa Politics’, in Wilson, (ed.), Crisis Politics in Prewar Japan (Tokyo: Sophia University Press, 1970), pp. 71–8.Google Scholar For an alternative view, cf. Shillony, Ben-Ami, ‘Myth and Reality in Japan of the 1930's’, in Beasley, W. J., (ed.), Modern Japan: Aspects of History, Literature and Society (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1975), pp. 81–8.Google Scholar
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67 Ibid., p. 227.
68 Ibid., p. 232.
69 Ibid., p. 233.
70 Ibid.
71 Ibid., p. 237. Lifton defines ‘totalism’ as ‘psychological extremism’. ‘Totalism of the new’ occurs when young people create a ‘closed ideological system (usually derived from Marxism) in which there are combined elements of idealism, scientism, a moral imperative for bold (sometimes violent) action, and a degree of martyrdom’.
72 Ibid., p. 233.
73 Losche, Peter, ‘Stages in the Evolution of the German Labour Movement’, in Sturmthal, Adolf and Scoville, James (eds), The International Labour Movement in Transition (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1973), p. 110.Google Scholar
74 Notehelfer, Fred, Kōtoku Shūsui: Portrait of a Japanese Radical (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1971), is a good source on Meiji anarchism.Google Scholar Also see Kublin, Hyman, Asian Revolutionary: The Life of Sen Katayama (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1964).Google Scholar
75 The history of Japanese labour in early Taishō period is discussed in Large, Stephen S., The Rise of Labour in Japan: The Yūaikai, 1912–1919 (Tokyo: Sophia University Press, 1972),Google Scholar and in his article, ‘The Japanese Labour Movement, 1912–1919: Suzuki Bunji and the Yūaikai’, Journal of Asian Studies, XXIX, 3 (05 1970), 559–79.Google Scholar
76 Arima, , Failure of Freedom, p. 64.Google Scholar
77 Hunt, Richard, German Social Democracy, 1918–1933 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1964), pp. 241–60.Google Scholar
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