Ōsugi Sakae

Ōsugi Sakae

Ōsugi Sakae ( Japanese 大 杉 栄 ; * actually on January 17, 1885 , according to official documents on May 1 in Marugame , Kagawa ; † September 16, 1923 in Tokyo ) was the most important socialist, later anarcho-syndicalist activist, publicist and theorist the Taishō period . He represented a strongly anti-authoritarian ideology that saw individual freedom as the highest good.

He was murdered on September 16, 1923 in Tokyo by military police along with his second wife Itō Noe and a nephew. The bloody act is known as the Amakasu Incident .

Family and youth

The paternal family provided the village heads ( shōya ) of Uji outside Nagoya for generations . After the death of Azuma's father Kenkūryō, ( 大 杉 権 九郎 ; † 1894/95) administered and lost the older brother Inoko the inheritance. Azuma had originally entered a Buddhist temple. However, when the Satsuma rebellion broke out in 1877 , he joined the army in Tokyo as a non-commissioned officer. After further training, he rose to the rank of officer and achieved the rank of captain. He seems to have learned Russian later and had contacts with the Amur League ( Kokuryūkai ).

Ōsugi's actual date of birth does not match the official one. The discrepancy is explained by the fact that the father, a subordinate army officer, did not want or was able to deposit the required 300 yen security deposit for a marriage when his girlfriend was very obviously pregnant. In order to avoid the stigma of illegitimate birth, incorrect information was provided for the official family register. Sakae is the oldest of nine children from the connection between Ōsugi Azuma ( 大 杉 東 ; † November 1909) and Kusui Yutaka ( 楠 井 豊 ; † June 1902, probably after medical malpractice). Little is known about the siblings except that one sister Aki (秋) committed suicide in 1916. The 6-year-old son of the youngest sister Ayame - who had married Tachibana Sōsaburō ( 橘 惣 三郎 ) - Munekazu was murdered along with Sakae. Other sisters emigrated to China and the USA. One brother died in Hankow ( 漢口 ) in 1922.

When Sakae was five months old, the father, until then a member of the Imperial Guard , was transferred to Shibata as a punishment after his horse had run away in the presence of Heavenly Majesty . The father was sent to the front at the beginning of the Sino-Japanese War in July 1895. He also took an active part in the 1904/05 war.

education

From April 1891 Sakae attended elementary school, since April 1897 the middle school of Shibata. In the summer of 1898 he visited relatives in Tokyo, Nagoya and Osaka.

In April 1899 he entered the cadet school ( yōnen gakkō ) of Nagoya, which demanded reduced school fees from officer's sons. He grew to be a good student and athlete, but had difficulties with discipline. In April 1901 he received 10 days of arrest and 30 days of curfew, probably for homosexual activities. In November 1901 he was stabbed to death during a fight he had provoked with a fellow student and then expelled.

From January 1902 he attended the Academy in Tokyo ( Tōkyō Gakuin ), living with relatives . From October the 5th grade of the second -class Junten Middle School ( Junten chūgakko ). From September 1903 he studied at the Tokyo School of Foreign Languages ( Tōkyō gaikokugo gakkō ) from which he graduated in 1905. In the period up to 1905 he came into contact with socialist ideas, especially through the Heimin Shimbun, the pacifist newspaper of the Heimin-sha ( 平民 社 ) around Kōtoku Shūsui . 1908-09 he read works by important Russian authors.

socialist

When he was arrested for the first time on March 15, 1906 as a result of a demonstration against massive price increases on the tram, so for the one-way trip from 3 to 5 sen, he finally turned to the socialist movement and membership in the socialist party ( Nippon shakai tō ) . At that time, daily wages were about 37 yen for papermakers, 75 yen for coopers and 1.47 yen for stonecutters. He was released on bail in June. The arrest put an end to any prospect of a civil career.

In September he married Hori Yasuko ( 堀 保 子 ; † 1923) and took up a job as an Esperanto teacher. After he began publishing Kattei zasshi in November, charges of various press law violations soon followed. For this reason, he was held in Sugamo Prison from May to November 1907 . He returned there as early as January to March 1908 as a result of the rooftop incidents ( Yane-jō jiken ). He used his prison stays for further language studies.

The next arrest took place in June for the Red Flag incident ( 赤 旗 事件 , akahata jiken ) on June 22nd. He was sentenced to two and a half years in prison and a fine of 25 yen.

In the ten years after his first arrest, he developed into the most important activist, publicist and theorist of Japanese socialism, which was on the brink of annihilation, especially after the high treason incident ( Taigyaku jiken ) 1910-11. In this incident, 11 important socialist leaders were executed. Any "radical" publication suppressed.

After his release from Chiba prison in November 1910 - where he also contracted tuberculosis - he limited himself to publishing on union issues. From then on he avoided direct attacks on security forces.

anarchist

In prison he had been able to deal with radical writings that he had to read in the original as translations were more closely controlled. Influenced in particular by Kropotkin's ideas , he turned to anarchism . He was later influenced by the ideas of Georges Sorel and Henri Bergson .

From 1911

He earned his living by translating for Baibunsha . In October 1911 he began with friends with the publication of the literary magazine Kindai shisō. Since his release he has been under constant police surveillance, whereby there has been a certain understanding in the sense of bushidō between the two sides.

Affair (1915/16)

From December 1915 to November 1916 practiced Sakae Ōsugi his kind of "free love", whose ideas on the based on mutual non-interference and economic independence of all concerned, it is already in articles 1906 Dobutsu no Ren'ai and 1913 Shuchi to teisō set had when, in addition to his wife, he had open affairs with the feminist journalist Kamichika Ichiko - member of the radical Seito-sha - and at the same time with Ito Noe (* 1895), at the same time editor-in-chief of the feminist Seito . The comrades disapproved of this condition. Itō, who was to become his second wife, had met Ōsugi in 1914, although the affair probably didn't begin until February 1916. She had her second child in August 1915 from her husband, who had married a month earlier, who was formerly her schoolteacher, Tsuji Jun . The love triangle ended when Kamichika rammed a short sword into his neck on November 8, 1916 and hit the windpipe. She was sentenced to four years in prison in March 1917. On appeal, the sentence was reduced to two years. His wife Hori separated from him, making the separation public in a newspaper article. He was also generally criticized by his fellow campaigners and he was temporarily isolated. Sakae and Noe lived together until they were murdered. She gave birth to her third child, daughter Mako, in September 1917. At times they practiced an anarchist communal lifestyle by accepting proletarians into their household in Tokyo's working-class district of Kameido .

Ōsugi, who often changed his place of residence, was poor with money all his life, but a certain chutzpah could not be denied when obtaining it. In 1916, for example, he got the interior minister of the Terauchi cabinet, Gotō Shimpei (1857–1929) to lend him 300 yen for the establishment of a new magazine. His reason was that after the government was hindering his business, he could also beg the government for support. Surely the Minister understands that? In 1922 this credit earned him the charge of corruptibility.

1918/19

In his attempt to reach the working classes directly, he created a base within the groups Hokufūkai ( 北風 會 , successor organization to the Kenkyūkai ), Shin'yukai ( 新 友 會 , a typesetting union ) and Seishinkai ( 正 進 會 , December 1919 ) from 1918 onwards founded organization of newspaper employees). In an essay published in August 1918, he was self-critical of his own petty-bourgeois background and thinking, although modesty was not otherwise his forte. He had already shown anti-intellectual tendencies.

After he was taken into protective custody from August 16 to 26, 1918 during the rice riots , the first half of 1919 saw several provocations by the police , as a result of which Ōsugi was briefly detained several times. Then that summer he let himself be fisted in the face of a police officer, which earned him another three months in prison.

Union work

In 1919-20 he made several attempts to expand his influence in the yellow unions . He appeared as a heckler at meetings. The disruption of order should serve to smash the class structure, as it also exists within trade unions. He claimed that the absolute necessity of expanding the ego through willpower is a prerequisite for liberation. At the same time he criticized Marxist theories of the labor movement. This was in early 1920, when the victory of the Russian Bolsheviks in the Russian Civil War was in great danger. From April 1920 he lived in Kamakura again . The years 1920–22 were the heyday of Japanese syndicalism, but it was weakened by the depression that began in 1920 and ideological differences with the socialists.

However, Ōsugi not only limited himself to the labor movement, but also tried to establish a culture of the masses. For him, the “masses” were the simple workers ( heimin rōdōsha , minshū geijutsu ). This art by workers for workers would have a similar function to a good union.

Shanghai 1920 and the Bolsheviks

In October 1920, against the will of his comrades, he traveled to Shanghai with borrowed money to meet representatives of the Comintern. At that time he was still ready to collaborate with non-syndicalist forces for the benefit of the movement. The attacks by Lenin against the anarchists did not take place until the KPR (B) party congress from March 8-16. March 1921. Shortly after his return, the Nippon shakaishugi dōmei was founded on December 10, an amalgamation of various radical groups, with the anarcho-syndicalists dominating. Ōsugi had a seat on the 30-member board. The group had about 1000 members. It followed a government dissolution order on May 29, 1921. In late 1920, he completed the translation of Kropotkin's autobiography into Japanese.

In June 1921 there was a final break with the Japanese Bolsheviks, partly because they did not want to work with him due to the affair of 1915/16. In 1922, when he received more information from Russia, he published several critical articles against the Leninist dictatorship of the proletariat. In September, he attended a conference in Osaka as an observer to establish a nationwide union. This project failed because of ideological differences ( ana-buro ronsō ).

Trip to Europe in 1923

On November 20, 1922, he received an invitation to take part in the 2nd International Anarchist Congress in February 1923 in Berlin. After borrowing 1,000 yen for travel expenses from the writer Arishima Takeo and others, he escaped from his guards and reached Shanghai on December 13th. There comrades helped him obtain a false Chinese passport. He landed in Marseille on February 13 with a French ship. He did not succeed in obtaining the necessary foreigner identification card in Lyon. Nevertheless, he traveled to Paris. In the meantime he collected material on the Machno movement . He was appalled by the living conditions of the French proletariat and the poor hygiene. In April he gave up his plans to travel to Berlin. While giving a speech on May 1st in a Paris suburb, he was arrested by plainclothes police who knew of his possible presence in Europe. He was sentenced to a three-week prison term and deportation for a passport violation. On June 2, he boarded the Hakone-maru, which moored on July 11 in Kobe .

End of life

After his return from financial difficulties, he translated a two-volume work by the French entomologist Jean-Henri Fabre and wrote Nippon dasshutsu ki (Report of my escapes from Japan). His autobiography Jijōden also appeared .

On September 1, 1923, the great Kanto earthquake occurred . Much of Tokyo was destroyed in the fires that followed. The hastily formed government of Admiral Yamamoto Gonnohyōe declared martial law on September 2. After nine prisoners (trade unionists and vigilantes) had been murdered in the Kameido police station on September 4, Ōsugi and Itō were arrested on September 16 by a squad under the command of Captain Amakusa while visiting their younger sister . An autopsy report that was made public in 1976 shows that all three had been strangled and the two adults had been severely mistreated. Amakusa was sentenced to 10 years in prison, pardoned after three years and transferred to the military police in Manchuria. In 1931 he was involved in the preparation of the Mukden incident , a fact which gives grounds for believing that the claim that Ōsugi was disposed of by higher orders.

Works

Ōsawi Masamichi; Ōsugi Sawae zenshū, Tōkyō 1968 (Dōseisha), 14 vols. [Collected works]

Magazines

Overall, Ōsugi (often together with Arahata Kanson ) was significantly involved in the publication of nine magazines:

• Katai zasshi
• Kindai shisō (Oct. 1912 to Sept. 1914, 23 issues published)
• Heimin Shimbun (Oct. 1914 - March 1915, 6 issues published, all but one confiscated by the censors)
• Kindai shisō (New episode, until 1916; all numbers except the first confiscated by the censors)
• Bummei hihyō (Jan. – Apr. 1918, 3 issues published)
• Rōdō shimbun (Apr. – July 1918, 4 issues, all confiscated. As Ōsugi only worked in the background, he was not arrested like the rest of the editorial team.)
• Rōdō undō (1st episode, October 1919-June 1920, discontinued due to lack of funds)
• Rōdō undō (2nd episode, financed by the Communist International , January – June 1921)
• Rōdō undō (3rd episode without Bolshevik participation, December 1921 to July 1923)

literature

• Ōsugi Sakae, Byron K. Marshall: The autobiography of Ōsugi Sakae; Berkeley 1992; ISBN 0-520-07759-8
• Ōsugi Sakae: The free love I long for. Story of how I saw a ghost; in: Ito Noe, Kamichika Ichiko, Ilse Lenz: Women in the Revolution; Berlin 1978 ( Karin Kramer Verlag )
• Thomas A. Stanley: Ōsugi Sakae, anarchist in Taishō Japan: the creativity of the ego; Cambridge (Mass.) 1982; ISBN 0-674-64493-X
• Herbert Worm: Studies on the young Ōsugi Sakae and the Meiji socialists between social democracy and anarchism with special consideration of the reception of anarchism; Hamburg 1981; Sert. Communications [d. Dt.] Ges. F. Natural u. Ethnology of East Asia , 88
• Stephen S. Large: The Romance of Revolution in Japanese Anarchism and Communism during the Taishō Period; Modern Asian Studies, Vol. 11, No. 3. (1977), pp. 441-467.

Web links

Commons : Ōsugi Sakae  - collection of images, videos and audio files

• osugisakae.com (English)
• The Autobiography of Osugi Sakae. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992
• "The Legends of Sakae Osugi and Noe Ito" (Eng.)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ today: Kamori-cho, Tsushima-shi
2. ↑ Thomas A. Stanley: Ōsugi Sakae ..., p. 1
3. ↑ Stanley, Thomas A .; Ōsugi Sakae, p 180, fn 34 quoting Dai Nippon teikoku tōkei nenkan XXVII
4. ↑ Stanley, Thomas A .; Ōsugi Sakae, p. 84ff
5. ↑ Shoshinshi teki kanjō
6. ↑ See: Original draft of the resolution of the Xth Party Congress of the KPR on the syndicalist and anarchist deviation in our party, Lenin: Selected Works, Berlin 1970, Vol. III, pp. 663–6
7. ^ Asahi Shimbun, Aug. 26, 1976, p. 22

Japanese name: As is common in Japan, the family name comes before the first name in this article . So Ōsugi is the family name, Sakae the first name.