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Pure Anarchism in Interwar Japan M Alm by John Crump Hatta Shftze) and NON·MARKET SOCIAUSM IN THE NINETEENTH AND TWENTIETH CENTURJES (edited with MaximilimRI.lkl) Pure Anarchism in STATE CAPITALISM: The Wages System under New Management (co-authOT�dwith Adam Buick) THE ORlGINS OF SOCIALIST THOUGHT IN JAPAN Interwar Japan John Crump I SO.h YEAR M St. Martin's Press C>John C""np 1993 This book is dedicated to Derek and Marjorie All rights rese,,,ecl. No reproduction, copy or t ....nsmiMion of this public:uion may be made: w,thout writlen penniMion. Crump, who taught me that no things are more No paragraph of IIlis pUblication may be reproduced, copied or important than mutual love, social justice, and u-:ansmiued 1a''C with wriuen permi!05ion or in accordance with the prO\'isions or the Cop)'right. Designs and PalCntsAct 1988, decency in human relations or under the terms or any licence permiuing limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, 90TotlCnham Coun Road,Loudon WIP 911E. Any person "'ho does any unauthorised act in rdation to this publication may be liable to criminal prwcnuion and d"il claims ror damages. First published in Great Britain 1993 by THE MACMILl..A!'l" PRESS LTD Houndmills. Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 2XS and London Companies and rt:prc.w:ntatives throughout the world A catalogue l"ei:onl ror this book is available from the Boitish Library. ISBN 0-333-56577-0 P,inted in Great Britain by Ipswich Book Co Ltd Ip$wich. Suffolk first published in the Un'ted Slates of America 1993 by &hoJariyand Reference Division, ST. MARTIN'S PRESS. INC., 175 fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010 ISBN 0-312-10631-9 Library or CongreM Cataloging.in·Publication Data Crump, John. 1944- Hana Sh\iro and pure anarchism in inlerwarJapan / John en.,mp. p. cm. Includes bibliographical ,'ererence, and inde�. ISBN 0-312-10631-9 I. Anarchism-:lapan-HisIOry. 2. Halla, ShiizQ, 188&-1934. I. Tille. HX91i.C78 1993 335'.83·0952-dc2O 93-26328 CIP Contents Acknowledgements ox Introduction: tll£ Importance oj Pure Anarchism X> Map of Principaljapanese IS/aTlds xix 1 Anarchist Communism 1 2 Japanese Anarchism to 1923 21 Kotoku Shusui and Anarchism 21 High Treason and its aftermath 30 The End of the 'Winter Period' 35 3 Hatta Shiizo: Christian Pastor to Anarchist Militant 45 Origins and Education 46 Provincial Clergyman 50 Anarchist Propagandist 56 Theoretician of Pure Anarchism 60 Decline and Death 64 , 4 Organisational Confrontation: Pure Anarchists versw; Syndicalists 1926-31 69 Kokuren 69 Zenkoku Jiren 75 Zenkoku Jiren's Second Conference 83 Kokuren and Zenkoku Jiren after the split 87 The Anarchist Syndicalists 95 5 Critique of the Old World 101 Syndicalism 101 The Division of Labour 104 The Class Struggle III Physiocracy (juniishugi) 118 Sketch of Hatta Sh[u.O flyMochi;"uki Kei Science 123 Marxism 128 vii viii Contents 6 Hope for a New World 137 Acknowled ements Social Physiology 138 g Decentralisation 141 Abolishing the Division of Labour and Writing this book has involved a great deal of painstaking Exploitation 146 work and most of my 'spare time' during the past five years. Taking Consumption as the Basis 151 What has made it worthwhile, in addition to the fascination A World to Win 154 of the subject, are the many fine people who have helped and encouraged me during those years. The main fieldwork 7 Repression, 1931-6 159 for the book was carried Olll.during 1990, when a fellowship Zenkoku Jiren after 1931 160 from the Japan Foundation enabled me to spend three Noson Seinen Sha (Farming Villages months at Keio University in Tokyo. I chose to be based at Youth Association) 172 Keio because the foremost authority on Japanese anarchism, Nihon Museifu Kyosanto (Anarchist Communist Komatsu Ryilji, is a professor there. His encouragement, P<\rty of Japan) 180 interest and unparalleled knowledge of the subject enriched my time !n Japan enormously. I also incurre� considerable 8 Pure Anarchism: an Assessment 189 debts to Oshima Eizaburo and Mihara YOko. Oshima-san has spent a small fortune in financing Kokushoku Sensensha's Noles 205 (the Black Battlefront Company) republication of numer­ Sekct Bibliography 217 ous, otherwise unobtainable, anarchist texts. As one of the Index 221 few surviving anarchists of the interwar era, he also provides an inspiring link with the past. I gratefully acknowledge the fact that much of the research material J obtained from him was priceless in both senses of the word. Discussions with Mihara-san always enlivened my visits to Kyoto and study of her informative writings on anarchism in interwar Japan provided me with much food for thought. I am particularly grateful to her for efficiently answering several requests for factual clarification after 1 returned to England. Another person whose kindness I wish to acknowledge is Mochizuki Akiyoshi, who permitted me to include in this book a sketch of Hatta Shiizo which was drawn by his father, the famous anarchist artist Mochizuki Kei. In Europe my thanks are mainly due to friends and com­ rades whose interest in my research encouraged me to be­ lieve, even when the going was tough, that the project was worthwhile. I cannot mention them all by name, but it would be churlish to omit the following four. Adam Buick in Lon­ don and Peter Nicholson in York were kind enough to com- ix x Acknowledgtmenls ment on early chapters of my manuscript. I am grateful for their useful and informed criticisms. Alain Pengam in Paris Introduction: the read the entire manuscript and thus I benefited from his derailed knowledge of anarchist communism. Mark Shipway Importance of Pure in Leeds also read the entire manuscript and his many help­ ful comments were unfailingly meticulous in their attention Anarchism to detail and their communist content. I am pleased to be able to use this opportunity to pay tribute to Mark as an exemplary friend and comrade. 'Pure anarchism' was the dominant current within Japanese Last, but not least, come the three women in my life. With anarchism during the interwar years. hs adherents were an­ good humour. Emily Midorikawa Crump and Erica Midori­ archist communists who wished to rid anarchism of the 'im­ kawa Crump put up with their father's strange enthusiasms purity' of syndicalism. It might well be asked: why write a for visiting obscure bookshops, for paying respect at the book on these pure anarchists? After all, did they not ulti­ graves of fallen revolutionaries, and for interminable discus­ mately fail in their attempt to establish an anarchist com­ sions on the minutiae of anarchist communism. Their only munist society and are they not largely forgotten today even resistance as they traipsed behind me across the length and within Japan? Besides, was it not Spain where anarchism's breadth of a very differentJapan from that which features in life-and-death struggle was fought in the 1930s? Why, then, the glossy brochures was to rename Hatta Shulo 'Hatta sho�lid we in Europe pay much attention to what happened Shoesore'. Midorikawa Tacko helped me in more ways than durmg roughly the same period in an East Asian country, far she knows or I can record. Her just being there was no less removed from the drama in Spain? important than her obvious role of checking my translations In reply, I can give at least three reasons why a study of of the pure anarchists'Japanese on the many occasions when Japanese pure anarchism is worthwhile. First, the image of they expressed themselves in language which was even more theJapanese (includingJapanese working men and women) convoluted, polemical or jargon-ridden than usual. The best which has prevailed in the West during recent decades has compliment I can pay to these women in my life is that, if been of an overwhelmingly conformist and docile people. ever we do achieve a society which is both anarchist and com­ The oft-repeated epithet 'economic animals' has been used munist, it will be inhabited by people like them. to describe the apparent character of the Japanese during much of the postwar period and has conveyed their seeming JOHN CRUMP indifference to political principles or ethical questions. At an early stage of my research into pure anarchism I read a paper Author's Note on 'The Communist Idea in Japan' at a seminar in Oxford, where I was criticised because I had supposedly overlooked Japanese names are given in the customary East Asian form, the 'fact' that the Japanese are the most unrevolutionary. Le. family name (e.g. Hatta) followed by personal name (e.g. order-loving and conformist people in the world. Of course, Shulo). Long vowels in Japanese words are indicated by this widely held image derives from attributing to all Jap­ macrons (e.g. 0). anese in all eras certain characteristics which, even if present tOday (and it is arguable that they are nowhere near as universal as is often claimed), are of very short historical duration. Not only does this image conflict with the percep- xu Introduction Introduction xiii tion of the Japanese as a revolutionary people, which was their own to popularise communism, the commune which widespread throughout East Asia in the years following the they, like anarchist communists everywhere, advocated as the upheaval of 1868, but it also clashes with the supposedly unit of communist society had ceased to be a European unJapanese concern for political principles and ideological transplant from Kropotkin's texts and was clearly aJapanese claricy which was demonstrated by the pure anarchists of farming village, transformed by an anarchist revolution no the interwar years.
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