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The Labor Movement in Japan
Japan's labor movement in the early twentieth century was one of the most vibrant and tumultuous periods in global social history. In their struggles for freedom, workers organized strikes, initiated riots, and planned imperial assassinations. While all of this was taking place, small groups of radical socialists and anarchists struggled to survive under extreme state suppression, mass arrests, and political executions.
In the years that followed, the task of documenting the experiences of these workers and revolutionaries fell to Sen Katayama, a founding figure in the Asian and Asian-American radical traditions.
Originally published in 1918, Sen Katayama's The Labor Movement in Japan endures as a classic first-hand documentation of Japan's dynamic labor struggles and radical political movements in the early 20th century. This updated edition features two additional writings by the author and a new introductory essay that further illuminates the experiences and activities of Japanese working people in action, as well as the lives of other radical actors who helped shape this movement into one of the twentieth century's most fascinating moments of class conflict and revolutionary confrontation.
In the years that followed, the task of documenting the experiences of these workers and revolutionaries fell to Sen Katayama, a founding figure in the Asian and Asian-American radical traditions.
Originally published in 1918, Sen Katayama's The Labor Movement in Japan endures as a classic first-hand documentation of Japan's dynamic labor struggles and radical political movements in the early 20th century. This updated edition features two additional writings by the author and a new introductory essay that further illuminates the experiences and activities of Japanese working people in action, as well as the lives of other radical actors who helped shape this movement into one of the twentieth century's most fascinating moments of class conflict and revolutionary confrontation.
126 pages, Paperback
First published April 9, 2013
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
December 26, 2020
Un texto interesantísimo sobre el desarrollo del movimiento obrero en Japón.
Se aprecia mucho un recorrido en primera persona. Relativamente accesible, pero se disfruta mucho más con conocimientos del contexto sociopolítico y del socialismo japonés.
Se aprecia mucho un recorrido en primera persona. Relativamente accesible, pero se disfruta mucho más con conocimientos del contexto sociopolítico y del socialismo japonés.
October 24, 2017
The edition that I read, published by On Our Own Authority!, contained an introduction that takes up about half of the book's total length, and was frankly more substantive than Katayama's writing (also very critical of it). As such I would really recommend finding and reading the On Our Own Authority! edition of this book, as it, combined with Katayama's original writing, provides a brief and interesting summary into the early labor movement in Japan.
July 15, 2023
A number of important forerunners of the Japanese socialist movement began as participants in and veterans of the liberal movement.
Not only that, but in a first for Asia - possibly the world - the 1890s saw a follower of the theories of Henry George (who argued that while people should reap the value of their own production, a land tax or ‘single tax’ was necessary to ensure the economic value of land would belong to all members of society - ‘we must make land common property’ was one of his proposals, essentially a call for its socialisation) elected as a member of the Imperial Diet i.e. the Japanese parliament.
Diet members were not elected on the basis of universal suffrage, much like the Prussian Lantag and indeed the German Reichstag of the Second Reich era.
One early mutual influence between the two countries was the breaking up of Japanese workers’ meetings and assemblies on the basis of ‘applying an old law copied from Prussia.’
Sen Katayama was among the first Japanese socialists, whose activism took him around the world, including and especially the United States.
During the Russo-Japanese war his handshake with the Russian Marxist Georgi Plekhanov at the Sixth Congress of the Second International in Amsterdam was symbolic of international workers’ solidarity and opposition to imperialist war in place of national hatred and conflict. He was later a founder of the Japanese Communist Party, and died virtually exiled from his country of origin in 1933, in Moscow.
His ashes were interred in the Kremlin Wall Necropolis alongside other revolutionaries (Yakov Sverdlov, Inessa Armand, John Reed, IWW leading light Big Bill Haywood to name four) and during his funeral Stalin was one of the pallbearers, captured in a photograph from the time.
Katayama was later honoured on Soviet stamps.
His short 1918 work, ‘The Labor Movement in Japan’, is well worth the reader’s time.
Not only that, but in a first for Asia - possibly the world - the 1890s saw a follower of the theories of Henry George (who argued that while people should reap the value of their own production, a land tax or ‘single tax’ was necessary to ensure the economic value of land would belong to all members of society - ‘we must make land common property’ was one of his proposals, essentially a call for its socialisation) elected as a member of the Imperial Diet i.e. the Japanese parliament.
Diet members were not elected on the basis of universal suffrage, much like the Prussian Lantag and indeed the German Reichstag of the Second Reich era.
One early mutual influence between the two countries was the breaking up of Japanese workers’ meetings and assemblies on the basis of ‘applying an old law copied from Prussia.’
Sen Katayama was among the first Japanese socialists, whose activism took him around the world, including and especially the United States.
During the Russo-Japanese war his handshake with the Russian Marxist Georgi Plekhanov at the Sixth Congress of the Second International in Amsterdam was symbolic of international workers’ solidarity and opposition to imperialist war in place of national hatred and conflict. He was later a founder of the Japanese Communist Party, and died virtually exiled from his country of origin in 1933, in Moscow.
His ashes were interred in the Kremlin Wall Necropolis alongside other revolutionaries (Yakov Sverdlov, Inessa Armand, John Reed, IWW leading light Big Bill Haywood to name four) and during his funeral Stalin was one of the pallbearers, captured in a photograph from the time.
Katayama was later honoured on Soviet stamps.
His short 1918 work, ‘The Labor Movement in Japan’, is well worth the reader’s time.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews