Anarchism in Japan


Anarchism in Japan dates to the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The anarchist movement was influenced by World War I and World War II, in which Japan played a major role.

Early Japanese anarchism

Anarchist ideas were first popularised in Japan by radical journalist Kōtoku Shūsui. After moving to Tokyo in his teens, Kōtoku became a journalist and by 1898 he was writing for the radical daily Yorozu Chōhō. His liberalism led him to social democracy and Kōtoku participated in the formation of the first Japanese Social Democratic Party in May 1901.
The fledgling Social Democratic Party was immediately outlawed and Yorozu Chōhō shifted away from the left so Kōtoku co-founded his own radical weekly, Heimin Shinbun. The first issue appeared in November 1903 and the last was published in January 1905. Its fairly brief run earned Kōtoku a short prison sentence from February to July 1905.
In prison he read Peter Kropotkin's Fields, Factories and Workshops, and following his release he emigrated to the United States, where he joined the Industrial Workers of the World. In August 1905, Kōtoku declared that he "had gone as a Marxian Socialist and returned as a radical Anarchist."
Kōtoku returned to Japan in 1906, where he spoke on the ideas he had developed while staying in the USA which were largely a mixture of anarchist communism, syndicalism and terrorism developed from reading such books as Kropotkin's Memoirs of a Revolutionist and The Conquest of Bread amongst others. At the meeting, Kōtoku spoke on "The Tide of the World Revolutionary Movement".
While Kōtoku was in the US, a second social democratic political party was formed, the Japan Socialist Party. A meeting of this party was held in February 1907 to discuss Kōtoku's views which ultimately led the party to revoking the party rule which prescribed working "within the limits of the law of the land". Five days later, the party was banned.
In 1910, Akaba Hajime penned a pamphlet entitled The Peasant's Gospel which argued in favour of creating an anarchist paradise through anarchist communism, demonstrating the influence of Kropotkin on the movement. He was forced to go underground after illegally distributing the pamphlet, but eventually he was caught and imprisoned, dying in custody in 1912.

Violence and the High Treason Incident

While in California in 1906, Kōtoku founded a Social Revolutionary Party amongst Japanese-American immigrants. More than 50 people joined the party, including Iwasa Sakutarō. The party was inspired by the Russian Social Revolutionaries who often utilised violent tactics, and the Japanese party quickly radicalised towards the use of these tactics to bring about the anarchist revolution.
The party began publishing a journal entitled Kakumei, which routinely made such statements as "the sole means is the bomb". They also published an 'Open Letter' addressed to Emperor Meiji threatening his assassination in 1907, which was utilised by Japanese politicians to provoke harsher crackdowns on left-wing groups.
In 1910, four Japanese anarchists were arrested following the discovery of bomb-making equipment. The uncovering of a bomb plot to assassinate the Emperor sparked a widespread government crackdown on anarchism. Hundreds of anarchists were arrested, the state convicted 26 of involvement, and 12 were executed, including Kōtoku Shūsui. The trial was rigged by the prosecution, and some of those executed were innocent.

'Winter period' and revival

The High Treason trial and its fallout marked the start of the 'winter period' of Japanese anarchism, in which left-wing organisations were tightly monitored and controlled, and militants and activists were tailed 24 hours a day by police. Some anarchists, such as Ishikawa Sanshirō, fled the country to avoid persecution. On the other hand, when Iwasa Sakutarō moved from the USA to Japan in 1914 he was immediately placed under house arrest. He remained under constant surveillance for five years, and those who visited him were often subjected to police violence.
In 1912, Noe Itō joined the Bluestocking Society and soon took over production of the feminist journal Seitō. Soon Itō was translating works by anarchists Peter Kropotkin and Emma Goldman. Itō met and fell in love with Sakae Ōsugi, another Japanese anarchist who had served a series of prison sentences for his activism. Ōsugi began translating and publishing Japanese editions of Kropotkin's and Memoirs of a Revolutionist while being personally more influenced by the work of Mikhail Bakunin.
Inspired by the Rice Riots of 1918, Ōsugi began publishing and republishing more of his own writing such as Studies on Bakunin and Studies on Kropotkin.
The Girochinsha, a Japanese anarchist group hailing from Osaka, were involved with revenge killings aimed at Japanese leaders during the mid-1920s. Nakahama Tetsu, an anarchist poet, and member of the Girochinsha, was executed for his activities.

Amakasu Incident

The state used the turmoil surrounding the 1923 Great Kantō earthquake as a pretext to round up Itō and Ōsugi. According to writer and activist Harumi Setouchi, Itō, Ōsugi, and his 6 year old nephew were arrested, beaten to death and thrown into an abandoned well by a squad of military police led by Lieutenant Masahiko Amakasu. According to literary scholar Patricia Morley, Itō and Ōsugi were strangled in their cells.
What both accounts agree on, however, is that both or all of the prisoners were brutally executed without even the formality of a trial where conviction and death sentence would in the case of the two adults have probably have been a foregone conclusion. This was called the Amakasu Incident and it sparked much anger. In 1924, two attempts were made on the life of Fukuda Masatarô, the general in command of the military district where Itō and Ōsugi were murdered. Wada Kyutaro, an old friend of the deceased, made the first attempt, shooting at General Fukuda but merely wounding him. The second attempt involved bombing Fukuda's house, but the general was not home at the time.

Development of 'pure' anarchism

In 1926 two nationwide federations of anarchists were formed, the Black Youth League and the All-Japan Libertarian Federation of Labour Unions. In 1927, both groups campaigned against the death penalty sentence for Italian-born anarchists Sacco and Vanzetti. The international anarchist movement in the following years was characterised by intense debate between anarcho-communists and anarcho-syndicalists.
In Japan, Hatta Shūzō, considered "the greatest theoretician of anarchist communism in Japan," began speaking for anarchist communism claiming that since anarchist syndicalism was an outgrowth of the capitalist workplace it would mirror the same divisions of labor as capitalism. Arguments like Shūzō's, and those of another anarchist named Iwasa Sakutaro, convinced the Black Youth League and the All-Japan Libertarian Federation of Labour Unions to move towards anarcho-communism with anarchist syndicalists leaving both organizations.

Wartime suppression

These divisions weakened the anarchist movement in Japan and soon after the Manchurian Incident led the state to solidify itself and silence internal opposition. By the beginning of the World War II, all anarchist organisations in Japan were forced to shut down.

After World War Two

After the war, Ishikawa Sanshirō wrote Japan 50 Years Later, envisioning Japanese society after an anarchist revolution. In this work, he advocated a mutualist economy on a co-operative basis. He also supported nudism as an expression of freedom, and unlike his contemporary anarchists he endorsed the maintenance of the Japanese Emperor as a symbol of communal affection.

Japanese Anarchist Federation

Anarchists coalesced into a new Japanese Anarchist Federation in May 1946. Both anarcho-communists and anarcho-syndicalists joined, conscious of trying to mend their pre-war division. Many of the leading figures were the same as before the war, with both Ishikawa Sanshirō and Iwasa Sakutarō participating. Iwasa was elected chairman of the National Committee of the Federation, a chiefly organisational role. In June 1946, they began to publish a journal, named Heimin Shinbun after Kōtoku Shūsui's magazine.
The organisation nonetheless failed to gain much support from the general public, due to a number of factors. Anarchists were discriminated against due to a policy of anti-communism pursued by the American-led Allied occupation force, and anarchists also faced opposition from the Japanese Communist Party and its strong trade union presence. Land reform instituted after the war also effectively eliminated the class of tenant farmers that had formed the core base of the pre-war anarchist movement. The anarchists within the JAF were also divided over their political strategy, quarrelling amongst themselves frequently. Idealism, rather than the practical considerations of the populace, became the focus of Heimin Shinbun, and this hindered their capacity to muster public support.
Tensions between the 'pure' and syndicalist anarchists resurfaced due to their lack of success. In May 1950, a splitting organisation, the 'Anarcho-Syndicalist Group' ' formed. By October 1950, the organisation had firmly split, and was dissolved. In June 1951 the anarcho-communists created a 'Japan Anarchist Club' '. Significantly, Sakutarō Iwasa followed the communists in joining the Club, depriving the Federation of a central figure.

Refounding

By 1956, the Japanese Anarchist Federation had been reformed, albeit without reuniting with the communist faction. In that year, the JAF started publishing a new journal, Kurohata, which was later renamed Jiyu-Rengo. Within the latter, a new anarchist theorist named Ōsawa Masamichi began to rise to prominence. He advocated a more gradual revolution, focusing on the social and cultural rather than the political. His ideas were controversial, decried by some as 'revisionist', but he firmly established a more reformist strand within the anarchist movement.
As an anarchist movement, the Federation supported direct action on multiple occasions through its lifespan. One of the most significant of these was the national opposition to the Japan-US Security Treaty in 1960. Huge demonstrations swept major cities, and the Sōhyō union and others staged strikes of around 4 to 6 million workers. Nonetheless, the treaty was accepted by the government. Disillusionment with constitutional politics led the 'Mainstream' faction of the Zengakuren student movement to join with the JAF in calling for political violence as a form of protest. A similar protest broke out in 1965 against the treaty with South Korea, with a similar result.
Ōsawa commented in Jiyu-Rengo that the government's action was an 'outrage', but that this had happened repeatedly - and that each time a 'threat to parliamentary democracy' was talked about by journalists, two camps of party politicians furiously decried the other's action, but then proceeded to make a truce and ignore the problem. Out of this disillusionment, anarchism gained ground within the protest movement, including the Zenkyoto student power movement created during anti-Vietnam War protests. The rise of protest groups encouraged the Japanese Anarchist Federation to declare 'The Opening of the Era of Direct Action' in 1968. This culminated in the occupation of Tokyo University by anarchist students for several months in 1968.
Despite this, the anarchism espoused by these students was not aligned with that of the JAF. The 'Council of United Struggle' at the university declared that they were "aristocratic anarchists", struggling not on behalf of the worker but for themselves, attempting to deny their own aristocratic attributes by engaging in political struggle. Ōsawa, for example, approved of the use of violent tactics, but feared that it was too separated from the masses, claiming that "it would come to a new Stalinism" even if it did succeed.
The separation of the Japanese Anarchist Federation from the contemporary political protests demonstrated the weakness of the organisation. In 1968, the organisation was finally disbanded. It resolved "creatively to dissolve" in an attempt to formulate new forms of organisation, and announced its dissolution formally in Jiyu-Rengo on the 1st January 1969.
Its anarcho-communist rival, the Japan Anarchist Club, remained active after this point, publishing a journal until March 1980.

Connection to Korean anarchism

Korean and Japanese anarchism developed in close connection to each other. While Korea was under Japanese occupation, Korean radicals were first introduced to anarchism in China and Japan. Due to the development of Japanese left-wing thought and translations of major works, Koreans in Japan often had greater access to both socialist and anarchist materials, bolstering the spread of these ideologies. For instance, Korean anarchist Yi Yongjun was attracted to anarchism through Ōsugi Sakae's translations of the works of anarchist theorist Peter Kropotkin, and was influenced by both Kōtoku Shūsui and the Chinese anarchist Liu Shifu.
One of the primary goals of the Korean anarchist movement was independence from Japanese colonial rule. Despite this, their ultimate goal at all times was the social revolution, rather than just national independence. Attempts to form anarchist organisations in Korea were routinely suppressed by the Japanese colonial government, and so Korean anarchism often developed in Japan itself. Korean activists in Japan often worked in close collaboration with their Japanese counterparts, and several Japanese anarchists, including Sakai Toshihiko, Ōsugi Sakae, Hatta Shūzō, and Iwasa Sakutarō, supported the efforts of these Japan-based Koreans. Ōsugi was particularly influential amongst this group, and he was a supporter of Korean independence.
, a Korean anarchist who became involved in anarchist groups in Tokyo
Several organisations were formed by these Japan-based Korean anarchists. This included the Fraternal Society of Koreans, the "first anarchism-oriented Korean organisation in Japan", which was established in Osaka in 1914. The Black Wave Society was established in Tokyo in 1921, and was helped by Japanese anarchists too.
The media organ of the Black Wave Society, named Black Wave, was published in Japanese and edited by the Korean anarchist Pak Yol. It proclaimed support for the amalgamation of Japan and Korea, and ultimately the entire world, an idea that stemmed from the prominent transnationalist aspect of Korean anarchist thought in the era. The Japanese anarchist Fumiko Kaneko joined the Society and became involved in a romantic relationship with Bak Yeol, who personally shared her affinity for self-description as a nihilist rather than an anarchist.
Korean anarchists even participated directly in the activities of Japanese anarchists. The Black Movement Society established in 1926 became a registered member of the Japanese Black Youth League. This close connection meant that the split between 'pure' anarchists and anarcho-syndicalists that had occurred in the Japanese organisations was replicated amongst the Korean movement as well.

In China and East Asia

Japanese and Korean anarchists alike involved themselves in anarchist struggles in China. Iwasa Sakutarō was amongst those invited to China, spending two years there from 1927 until 1929. Iwasa, together with other Japanese, Taiwanese, Korean, and Chinese activists, worked together in joint projects such as the Shanghai Labour University, an experiment with new educational institutions and theories.
During his stay in China, Iwasa planned to establish a 'Greater Alliance of East Asian Anarchists'. The idea had originally been proposed by Chinese anarchist Yu Seo in 1926, who had argued against a "mad wave" of patriotism amongst Korean, Indian, Filipino, Vietnamese and Taiwanese anarchists, demonstrating the huge scope of the idea. In September 1927, this was realised practically, when about 60 anarchists from China, Taiwan, Japan, Korea, Vietnam, and India gathered in Nanjing to organise an 'Eastern Anarchist League'. The League established a headquarters in Shanghai, created a network connecting anarchists across the region, and published a journal called 'The East', the first issue of which was published in August 1928.