Anarchist Japan: A Letter from Taiji Yamaga

The following was published on 27 October 1963 in Ruta (Caracas), the journal of the Iberian Federation of Libertarian Youth in exile in Venezuela, edited by Germinal Gracia (Víctor García). In my opinion, Ruta was one of the most consistently interesting and open-minded of Spanish anarchist publications during the long period of post-war exile.

-       Danny

---

We are often accused of exaggeration when speaking about anarchist activity in Japan. The following paragraphs, taken from a letter from Taiji Yamaga, corroborate our previous reports.

On Monday 16 September we commemorated the fortieth anniversary of the death of our martyr Ōsugi and his partner Itō Noe, murdered by the military police in Tokyo, during the great earthquake of 1923. We held an event at a grand theatre in the capital at which Osawa, Akiyama and others spoke (as I am unable to go out at night I sent a message entitled ‘Essay on the departed comrade S. Ōsugi’, which was read out by another comrade).

The full programme was as follows: ‘On the State’ by O. Haniga, ‘Why I am researching the life of Itō Noe’ by the comrade Fumiko Ide, ‘The Russian Revolution and Ōsugi’ by K. Akiyama, and my ‘Study on the activity of Ōsugi and its impact on the Japanese intelligentsia’, expanded on by M. Osawa.

In other news, two large publishing houses are republishing The Complete Works of Ōsugi. The publishers are Sekai Bemko and Gendai Shicho. Furthermore, new books on Ōsugi are coming out: River of Fire, Life of S. Ōsugi, A Revolutionary Women (a biography of Itō Noe), Idea in the Darkness (a biography of Kropotkin in a new translation), and Bakunin’s Comments on Karl Marx [from the context, presumably these were new editions of works by Ōsugi?].

Present at some of the commemorative events was comrade Sakomoto, 88 years old and the only survivor of the massacre of 1911, in which Kotoku and eleven other anarchists were murdered, and twelve others sentenced to life imprisonment. Sakomoto himself spent twenty-one years in prison.

Our annual congress will take place on 3 November in Osaka. The most important item on the agenda will be the capitalist offensive. The situation in the workplace is changing very quickly. Soon there will be less poverty and the bureaucratised unions are losing their spirit of rebellion. Anarchism must understand this development and find a way to awaken the working class to the need for revolution.