Japanese Worker-Peasant Party

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Japanese Worker-Peasant Party
Nihonrōnōtō
Japan Labor Farmer Party
Party presidency ( sōsai) Asō Hisashi
Secretary General Miwa Juso
founding December 9, 1926
Place of foundation Tokyo
resolution December 1928
Headquarters Tokyo
Members 6,000 (1927)
Number of members 6,000 (1927)

The Japanese Labor Farmer Party ( 日本 労 農 党 , Nihonrōnōtō , English Japan Labor Farmer Party ) was a socialist political party in Japan in the period before the Second World War . During its existence it took a centrist position in the divided socialist movement.

founding

The Japanese Workers-Peasant Party was one of several proletarian parties that existed in Japan in the late 1920s. It was founded on December 9, 1926 in Tokyo as a division of the Shakai Minshū-tō (it was founded just four days after the Shakai Minshū-tō was founded). The split had both personal and ideological dimensions. Asanuma Inejirō and his followers in the Japanese Peasant Union as well as left-wing socialist intellectuals such as Asō Hisashi, Kono Mitsu, Suzuki Mosaburō, Tanahashi Kotora and Kato Kanju were among the founders of the Japanese Workers-Peasant Party . Asō Hisashi became chairman of the party, while Miwa Jusō was its general secretary.

Political Perspectives

Programmatically, the party differed little from the workers-peasants party (which had non-communists in the ranks but was essentially controlled by the Japanese Communist Party ). In fact, several members of the Japanese Workers-Peasant Party were themselves former communists (such as Kondo Eizo, the founder of the Communist Party of the Enlightened People ). In practice, however, there was a clear political demarcation between the Japanese Worker-Peasant Party and the Worker-Peasant Party. The Japanese Workers-Peasant Party then occupied a centrist position on the Japanese left, between the Japanese Communist Party and the Workers-Peasant Party on the left and the Social Democratic Party on the right. The party tried to mobilize the masses of the working class in legal disputes and refused Japanese intervention in China.

Polemics with other socialist parties

Although the leadership of the Japanese Workers-Peasant Party rejected ties to the Communist International , they identified themselves as revolutionary Marxists . The party declared that it had chosen the right line in the proletarian movement . In their discourse, the left side of the socialist movement suffered from infantile disorder , while the right side was senile . The party was also criticized from its two flanks, the left characterizing it as petty-bourgeois and the right claiming that the party was abused by the communists. There were also several other regional, proletarian parties that were in centrist positions, such as the Japanese Workers-Peasant Party.

In its 1927 dissertation , the Japanese Communist Party found that the role of the Japanese Workers-Peasant Party was particularly treacherous and that the only difference between the party and the right-wing Social Democrats was that it used a feigned left-wing language. However, in 1928 the Communist Party changed its position in order to unite the Japanese Workers-Peasant Party and the Worker-Peasant Party. The Communist Party directed the officials to work within the Japanese Workers-Peasant Party. In practice, however, they could not gain a foothold in the party as they did in the workers-peasants party.

Mass organizations of the party

After the split in the Social Democratic Party in 1926, a split followed in the Sodomei trade union building. The leaders of the Japanese Labor Peasant Party have been asked to resign from their leadership positions in Sodomei because they refused to be expelled from the organization. The Japanese Workers-Peasants Party reorganized its followers into a labor movement and established a new union center of its own, the Japanese Union League. In February 1927, the peasants sympathizing with the party separated from the Social Democrat-led General Association of Japanese Farmers 'Associations and founded the All-Japanese Farmers' Association as the agricultural wing of the Japanese Worker-Peasant Party. In October 1927, a women's organization affiliated with the party, the National Women's League, was founded.

Elect 1927 and 1928

According to a 1927 Communist Party document, the party was estimated to have around 6,000 members. The party won three seats in the prefectural elections in October 1927. In total, they put up 32 candidates, which together received 34,718 votes.

Before the national parliamentary elections of 1928, the Japanese Workers-Peasant Party proposed various far-reaching reforms, such as the abolition of military training for students and the introduction of state regulation of food prices. The election was marked by fierce arguments not only between the government and the opposition, but also between the various proletarian parties. In addition, the latter parties lacked known candidates and the financial resources of established politicians. Bribery and coercion were widespread in several constituencies. In Ashio, where the leader of the Japanese Workers-Peasant Party Asō Hisashi ran as a candidate, the police disbanded the party's election rallies , and the Ashio copper mine , a local mining company, financially supported the campaign of Asō Hisashi's opponents.

The party supported 14 candidates in the election, which together drew 93,400 votes (0.9% of the nationwide vote). One of its candidates was elected, but Banno says the party had 13 candidates, with a total of 86,698 votes, one of which was elected. The only winner of a parliamentary seat of the Japanese worker-peasant Parei was Kawakami Jōtarō, a lawyer from Kobe . The overwhelming majority of votes for the party in these elections came from urban areas (where most of its candidates were running).

After the election, the three proletarian parties in the assembly (the Japanese Worker-Peasant Party, the Worker-Peasant Party and the Social Democratic Party) succeeded in forming a joint parliamentary committee despite their political contradictions. The committee did not last long, however, as the government banned the Workers-Peasant Party. The Japanese Workers-Peasant Party wanted the Joint Committee to protest the ban, while the Social Democratic Party neither protested the ban nor maintained contact with the Workers-Peasant Party after the ban was passed.

Merger to form the Japanese People's Party

In December 1928, the party merged with the Proletarian People's Party, the Japanese Peasant Party and four regional political parties to form the Japanese People's Party. But even after the merger, the leadership clique of the Japanese Workers-Peasant Party continued to exist as an independent group in the 1930s.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d George M. Beckmann, Genji Okubo: The Japanese Communist Party 1922-1945 . Stanford University Press , 1969, pp. 34, 49, 372 .
  2. ^ A b c Robert A. Scalpino: The Japanese Communist Movement . University of California Press , 1967, pp. 24, 33 .
  3. ↑ a b c d e George M. Beckmann, Genji Okubo: The Japanese Communist Party 1922–1945 . Stanford University Press , 1969, pp. 102-104 .
  4. ↑ a b Stephen S. Large: Organized Workers and Socialist Politics in Interwar Japan . Cambridge University Press , Cambridge 1981, pp. 108 .
  5. ↑ Sheldon Garon: The Statement and Labor in Modern Japan . 1987, p. 118 .
  6. ↑ Stephen S. Large: Showa Japan: Political, Economic and Social History, 1926-1989 . tape 2 . Routledge , London 1998, pp. 123 .
  7. ^ Henry DeWitt Smith: The Japan's First Student Radicals . Harvard University Press , Cambridge 1972, pp. 252 .
  8. ↑ Robert A. Scalpino: Democracy and the party movement in prewar japan: the failure of the first attempt . University of California Press , 1975, pp. 332 .
  9. ^ A b c Janet Hunter: Concise Dictionary of Modern Japanese History . University of California Press , 1984, pp. 79 .
  10. ↑ a b c d Kenneth Colegrove: Labor Parties in Japan . In: The American Political Science Review . tape 23 , 1929, pp. 329-363 .
  11. ^ George M. Beckmann, Genji Okubo: The Japanese Communist Party 1922-1945 . Stanford University Press , 1969, pp. 304 .
  12. ↑ Seiyei Wakukawa: Japanese Tenant Movements, in Gar Easterm Survey . tape 15 , February 13, 1946, p. 143, 150 .
  13. ^ Vera C. Mackie: Creating Socialist Women in Japan: Fender, Labor Other Activism, 1900-1937 . Cambridge University Press , 2002, pp. 138 .
  14. ↑ a b c Stephen S. Large: Organized Workers and Socialist Politics in Interwar Japan . Cambridge University Press , 1981, pp. 124-125 .
  15. ↑ a b c Junji Banno: The Political Economy of Japanese Society . Oxford University Press , 1997, pp. 238 .
  16. ^ George M. Beckmann, Genji Okubo: The Japanese Communist Party 1922-1945 . Stanford University Press , 1969, pp. 151 .
  17. ↑ Kenneth Colegrove: The Japanese General Election of 1928 . In: The American Political Science Review . tape 22 , 1928, pp. 401-407 .
  18. ^ JAA Stockwin: Dictionary of the Modern Politics of Japan . Routledge , 2003, pp. 136 .
  19. ^ George M. Beckmann, Genji Okubo: The Japanese Communist Party 1922-1945 . Stanford University Press , 1969, pp. 173 .
  20. ^ International Labor Office. Industrial Labor in Japan . Routledge , 2000, pp. 114 .