Shusui, Kotoko, 1871–1911
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Kotoku Shusui

Born 4 November or 23 September 1871 — Japan, died 24 January 1911 —
Japan



Kotoku Shusui 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 columnist for the Every Morning News, one
of the more radical daily papers of the time; however, he resigned that
position when the paper took up a pro-war stance during the Russo-Japanese
War. In 1903 he co-founded the Common People’s 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 in 1905 from February to July.

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.”



In November 1905 Kotoku traveled to the United States in order to freely
criticize the Emperor, 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 favor 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 favor 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 organizations, such as the Socialist Party of Japan, and
“public peace police law”, which effectively prevented trade union
organization 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,
in December 1910 twenty-six anarchists were convicted of plotting to
assassinate the Emperor. Kotoku was hanged along with twelve others on 24th
January, 1911, even though only four of the hundreds arrested were found to
be involved in a planned attempt on the Emperor’s life, and Kotoku
wasn’t one of them.



     From : TheAnarchistLibrary.org

Events :
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     Shusui, Kotoko, 1871–1911 -- Added : January 30, 2021

     Shusui, Kotoko, 1871–1911 -- Updated : January 07, 2022

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