Japan

Japan In 1861

The sudden appearance upon the Pacific horizon of Perry's blackhulled, smoke-belching warships was calculated to send a shook of consternation through the insular Japanese authorities. As a popular tanka (short poem) of the time put it,

"Taihei no nemuri o samasu Jôkisen, tatte shihai de yoru mo nerarezu" Translated literally, this would come out something like "Jôkisen (a strong green tea) disturbs our peaceful dreams; just four cups and sleep escapes us night or day"

Bakunin and Japan

1. Introduction

CIRA Nippon

CIRA-Nippon, founded in 1973, is a federation of autonomous libertarian groups, including the Section for International Correspondence (SIC), a small group of comrades living in the OsakaKobe area. The SIC works as the communication link between domestic anarchist groups associated with CIRA-Nippon, and various groups outside Japan. To achieve its aim of improved solidarity through international communication and understanding, the SIC has three main functions:

  • to handle day-to-day correspondence between groups outside Japan and CIRA-Nippon;
  • to publish news and materials concerning libertarian movements in Japan and East Asia; and
  • to translate or summarize published material received from outside Japan and make them more readily available to our comrades in the movement here.

CIRA - Nippon

CIRA-Nippon, founded in 1973, is a federation of autonomous libertarian groups, including Section for International Correspondence (SIC), a small group of comrades living in the Osaka-Kobe area. The SIC works as the communication link between domestic anarchist groups associated with CIRA-Nippon, and various groups outside Japan.

To achieve its aim of improved solidarity through international communication and understanding, the SIC has three main functions:

  • to handle day-to-day correspondence between groups outside Japan and CIRA-Nippon;
  • to publish news and materials concerning libertarian movements in Japan and East Asia; and

Indochina and Anarchists

The following letter was sent to us by Mit-Teilung (London), in whose No. 22 (October '75) issue it appeared. Our reply doesn't represent our last word on the subject (especially on "Nationalism," about which we'll be writing more later.) We hope that readers (G. J. included) will send us their comments and criticism.

A letter....

I too noted the comments in LIBERO INT'L No. 2, re. Marxism-Leninism and Asia. Those Japanese & English intellectuals write a good magazine, extremely good, But they are not workers and have not learned the bloody lessons of Anarchist History since 1917.

Anarchist press in Japan

The following are some of the more interesting developments in the libertarian publishing field in Japan. All are in Japanese, and are published in Tokyo unless otherwise stated. The titles we have given are all taken from review/news columns of anarchist magazines here. There is also much good libertarian materials coming out of areas like the women's movement too, though, and these are not usually listed. When we hear about these, we'll include them in our listing.

  1. Daidõkan-Kokin (Committee to Publish the Writings of lwasa Sakutarõ) No. 8: "A Refutation of the Syndicalists." Iwasa was a well- known figure in the anti-syndicalist, anarcho-communist faction both before and after the war.
  2. Libertaire No. 2 (1975): a special on anarchism and the occult.

Japanese labor today: Spring Offensive Offensive?

For better or for worse, the astonishing post-war recovery of the Japanese economy has become a celebrated phenomenon. But few people, save the Japanese consumers themselves, are aware of the accompanying, and equally astonishing, rise in consumer prices - some 10 to 20% annually. As a result, the labor movement in Japan has established as its major premise that wage rates should rise by at least an equivalent amount every year (see chart A).

The strategy devised to carry through this premise has been the uniquely Japanese "Spring Offensive" (Shuntõ). Generally speaking. the strategy runs as follows: at the beginning of each spring, representatives of the labor unions meet to formulate a proposed wage demand for that year, based on the current rate of price hikes.

Sanrizuka

One of our intreped editors recently returned, with a running nose and a battered camera, from a weekend at Sanrizuka. There he took part in a support demonstration for the local farmers, and this is what he saw and heard.

In the rolling hills of Narita, cabbages and burdock grow where once blossomed molotov cocktails. Yet the struggle of the people of Sanrizuka for the right to live and die and be buried in the sod they love has not diminished. Only, a new stage has been reached. Their unity was manifest in the twin iron towers poised above the rain-soaked land that Sunday.

What kind of organization?

Federation issue in Japan - 2 (Part 1 was published in LI2)

The Japan Anarchist Federation (JAF) dissolved itself in 1968. In the words of its dissolution manifesto, the move was a "deployment in the face of the enemy." Social conditions were heading for a new high point, and all sorts of new social movements were being born.

The post-war Left in Japan

by Yamabe Yoshiyuki

Looking back over the past ten years or so of the left wing movement in Japan, it becomes clear that a great change has taken place. As soon as the Left, at the time of the 1960 anti-Ampo struggle,1

  • 1. AMPO is short for the "US-Japan Joint Security Treaty," designed to tie the two countries in a tight military partnership dominated by the U.S. nuclear umbrella.