Kotoku Shusui
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Kōtoku Shūsui (1871-1911) |
Kotoku Shusui (幸徳 秋水
Kōtoku Shūsui,
November 4 or
September 23,
1871–
January 24,
1911) was a
socialist and
anarchist who played a leading role in introducing anarchism to
Japan in the early
20th century, particularly by translating the works of contemporary
European and
Russian anarchists, such as
Peter Kropotkin, into
Japanese. He was a radical
journalist and is often considered an anarchist
martyr, as he was executed for
treason by the Japanese government.
Socialist years and imprisonment
Kotoku moved from his birthplace, the town of
Nakamura in the
Kochi prefecture, to
Tokyo in his mid-teens and became a journalist there in 1893. From 1898 onwards he was a columist for the
Every Morning News, one of the more radical daily papers of the time; however, he resigned that position when the paper switched to a pro-war stance in October 1903 in the build up to the
Russo-Japanese War. The following month he co-founded the
Common Peoples' Newspaper with another
Every Morning News journalist,
Sakai Toshihiko. This paper's outspoken anti-war stance and disregard of the state's press laws landed its editors in trouble with the government on numerous occasions, and Kotoku himself served a five month jail sentence from February to July 1905.
America and the anarchist influence
In 1901, when Kotoku had attempted to found the Japanese Social Democratic Party with Sakai, he was not an anarchist, but a social democrat — indeed, Sakai and Kotoku were the first to translate
The Communist Manifesto into Japanese, which appeared in an issue of the
Common People's Newspaper and which got them heavily fined. His political thoughts first began to turn to a more libertarian philosophy when he read Kropotkin's
Fields, Factories and Workshops in prison. In his own words, he "had gone [to jail] as a Marxian Socialist and returned as a radical Anarchist." [
1]
In November 1905 Kotoku travelled to the
United States in order to freely criticise the
Emperor of Japan, whom he now saw as the linchpin of
capitalism in Japan. During his time in the US, Kotoku was further exposed to the philosophies of
anarchist communism and
European
syndicalism. He had taken Kropotkin's
Memoirs of a Revolutionist as reading material for the
Pacific voyage; after he arrived in
California, he began to correspond with the Russian anarchist and by 1909 had translated
The Conquest of Bread from
English to Japanese. One thousand copies of his translation were published in Japan in March of that year and distributed to students and workers.
Return to Japan
On Kotoku's return to Japan, in June 1906, a public meeting was held to welcome him. At this meeting, on June 28, he spoke on "The Tide of the World Revolutionary Movement", which he said was flowing against parliamentary politics (ie. Marxist party politics) and in favour of the
general strike as "the means for the future revolution." This was an
anarcho-syndicalist view, and one which, because anarcho-syndicalism was growing in the US at the time, with the founding of the
Industrial Workers of the World, showed the American influence clearly.
He followed this speech with a number of articles, the most well-known of which was "The Change in My Thought (On Universal Suffrage)". In these articles, Kotoku was now advocating
direct action rather than political aims such as
universal suffrage, which was a shock to many of his comrades and brought the schism between anarchist communists and social democrats to the Japanese working class movement. This split was made clear when the relaunched
Common People's Newspaper folded in April 1907 and was replaced two months later by two journals: the social democrat
Social News and the
Osaka Common People's Newspaper, which argued from an anarchist position, in favour of direct action.
Although most anarchists preferred peaceful means, such as the dissemination of
propaganda, many anarchists in this period turned to
terrorism as means of achieving revolution and anarchist communism, or at least hitting out against the state and authority. Repression of publications and organisations, such as the
Socialist Party of Japan, and "public peace police law", which effectively prevented
trade union organisation and strikes, were both factors in this emerging trend in Japan. However, the only incident was when four anarchists were arrested for possessing bomb making equipment. Although no attacks had been carried out, on January 18 1911 twenty-six anarchists were convicted of plotting to
assassinate the Emperor. Kotoku was hanged along with ten others on 24th January, 1911, (the one woman, Kanno Suga, was executed the following day because it had already turned dark, not for reasons of delicacy) even though only four of the many arrested were found to be involved in a planned attempt on the Emperor's life, and Kotoku had by this time removed himself from the plot. This episode became known as
The High Treason Incident (
Taigyaku Jiken).
*
The Anarchist Movement in Japan, a pamphlet by
John Crump and one source for this article.
*
e-texts of Shusui's works at
Aozora bunko
