Emperor of Japan: Meiji and His World, 1852’1912 (153 page)

While K
ō
toku was in prison, the Heiminsha was forced by developments in the war to change its stand on pacifism. Attacks on the war were of little interest to Japanese who, after the victories at Port Arthur and Mukden, were sure that the triumphant end of the war was in sight. There still was enthusiasm for socialism, as shown by the huge turnout for the first May Day celebration in Japan, but the Heiminsha’s financial backers began to withdraw, and there was dissension in the ranks, especially between Christian and materialist socialists. Even Sakai decided to leave the Heiminsha and earn his living by editing a family magazine. On August 27 K
ō
toku published a letter to his comrades stating that he planned to go to America. On September 26 after a party to celebrate Nishikawa Mitsujir
ō
’s release from prison, all its members decided to disband the Heiminsha.

K
ō
toku left for the United States in November 1905. Funds for the journey and his living expenses while in America were provided by friends and family. At the time of departure K
ō
toku wrote in his diary,

Ah, why have I left Japan? I could not stop myself. Ever since governmental oppression caused the collapse of the Heiminsha, my sickness and poverty have made it impossible to do anything. On the night of the eighth, at the farewell party given by my comrades, Kinoshita said that seeing me off was like seeing off a wounded warrior. I am not a warrior, but it is true that I am going off like a fugitive from a defeated army, hiding from the world and seeking a refuge.
³⁹

K
ō
toku discovered when he arrived in America that his reputation had preceded him. He was given a rousing welcome in Seattle and San Francisco by Japanese residents who had read his writings, notably the memorandum to the Russian Socialist Party. He was in great demand for lectures, and he mentioned having a steady stream of visitors. In San Francisco he was introduced to a Russian woman, a passionate anarchist, in whose house he rented a room. As he wrote to Johnson, while in prison he had become an anarchist, but it was only on coming in contact with his landlady
⁴⁰
that he was made aware of the general uselessness of elections and the need to assassinate rulers.
⁴¹
He had come to believe that violence was necessary in order to topple oppressive governments and allow the birth of a society without government, in which everyone worked harmoniously for the good of the whole society.

During his six months in America, K
ō
toku did not follow the program of studies he originally sent to Johnson, but he met many people and took an active part in founding the Social Revolutionary Party in America. It did not take him long, however, to discover that even in the United States there were limits to freedom of speech, and he had harsh comments about the racial prejudice that condemned Japanese immigrants to being either schoolboys or houseworkers.
⁴²
He was in San Francisco when the famous earthquake struck. K
ō
toku rejoiced in the flames: “In their path, there are no gods, no wealth, no authority of any kind. Of all the many imposing churches and towering municipal buildings, the many banks, the many fortunes, every last one fell in a rain of sparks.”
⁴³

On the ship going back to Japan, Oka Shigeki, a member of the San Francisco branch of the Heiminsha, told K
ō
toku that the first step in starting a revolution in Japan must be the overthrow of the emperor. He suggested that K
ō
toku volunteer as a guard in the House of Peers as a way of gaining access to the emperor.

While K
ō
toku was in America, there had been many changes in Japan. Of particular importance to the socialists was the resignation of the reactionary Katsura cabinet in December 1905 and the formation of the Saionji cabinet the following month. The new cabinet let it be known that it recognized socialism as a major current in the world and that it would not use police power indiscriminately to suppress it. This led some socialists in January 1906 to request permission to found the Nihon heimin-t
ō
(Japan People’s Party). The government gave its permission. Another group (headed by Sakai Toshihiko) asked to found the Nihon shakai-t
ō
(Japan Social Party), and this too was permitted. Socialist parties were now legally established in Japan.

K
ō
toku, however, was no longer interested in parliamentary socialism, which he contrasted with what he called “pure socialism,” by which he meant anarchosocialism. He was intoxicated with the anarchism of flames, like those he had seen in San Francisco. His first lecture after returning to Japan shocked and confused fellow socialists. He urged direct action—a general strike—rather than legal and peaceful parliamentary strategies. This uncompromising attitude led inevitably to disputes, especially with those socialists who had aspired to legal recognition.

In January 1907 a daily newspaper, called like its predecessor
Heimin shimbun
, published 13,000 copies, priced at one sen. It insisted on freedom of speech and declared that it would not tolerate any interference, restraint, or restriction in what it published. It soon became apparent, however, that it was dominated by a direct-action “hard-line” faction, although K
ō
toku declared that he would not attempt to force anyone to accept his beliefs. He insisted that revolution was a natural tendency, and as if in confirmation of his thesis, there was a series of spontaneous strikes at this time, including a major strike at the Ashio copper mines. The mine strike was put down by troops sent at the request of Hara Takashi, the interior minister.

On February 17, 1907, the Second Japan Socialist Party Congress was opened in T
ō
ky
ō
. A serious division soon became apparent between the socialists, who revered Marx, and the anarchists (including K
ō
toku), who turned to Bakunin. The Social Revolutionary Party, an organization of Japanese living in America, led the anarchists’ attacks. Its magazine published in late December 1906 a fierce attack on the rulers of the different countries, including a demand that the “mikado,” who represented the capitalist class, be speedily overthrown. In November 1907 a similar publication featured “An Open Letter to Mutsuhito, Emperor of Japan, from Anarchists-Terrorists.”
⁴⁴
This development could be traced back to K
ō
toku, who had organized the Social Revolutionary Party while he was in the United States and wrote every month for its magazine.

Pressure against the socialists increased. In April 1907, after three months of publication, the daily
Heimin shimbun
was forced to close down, largely because of an article by Yamaguchi Koken urging readers to “kick their fathers and mothers”—an appeal to overthrow the establishment. Apart from the government pressure on socialists, the rivalry between K
ō
toku and Katayama became increasingly bitter. K
ō
toku’s faction was known as the “hard-line” and Katayama’s as the “soft-line,” the difference being K
ō
toku’s refusal to compromise in their anarchist demands. K
ō
toku defended anarchism, insisting that it was not an organization of assassins and declaring that its mission was “to demolish the foundations of tyrannical oppression and to ignite the divine fire of insurrection in the hearts of the timid.”
⁴⁵

In June 1908, while K
ō
toku was recuperating from illness in Tosa Nakamura, members of the “hard-line faction” staged a demonstration in T
ō
ky
ō
during which red flags inscribed with the words “anarchism” and “anarchocommunism” were paraded through the streets.
⁴⁶
The incident was relatively minor, but most of the anarchist leaders were arrested and their punishment was severe. It was symptomatic of the intensified stridency of the anarchists and the harshness of the police. Yamagata, the most vigorous opponent of socialism, decided that Saionji was too soft on the radicals and schemed to get the emperor to replace him with Katsura. He was successful: in July 1908 Katsura was asked to form a cabinet, which soon adopted extremely repressive measures to control the socialists.

Meanwhile, in many parts of Japan, anarchist opposition to the government was springing up. The daily
Heimin shimbun
had converted many of them to anarchism, but most, far from being intellectual theorists, were farmers, factory workers, or unemployed. Despite the police surveillance of suspected radicals, they managed to form small groups known as the “Kish
ū
Band,” the “Hakone Band,” the “Shinsh
ū
Band,” and so on. In Hakone, for example, the Buddhist priest Uchiyama Gud
ō
privately published a pamphlet called
A Memento of Prison: Anarcho-Communism
, which included such passages as

The present boss of the government, the one they call “the son of Heaven,” is not the child of the gods or anything of the kind, regardless of what you have been told by your elementary school teachers…. You tenant farmers have to struggle even to get enough to eat each day. You can’t be in the least grateful that Japan is the Land of the Gods or whatever it’s called…. And because you’ve been taught to spend your whole life working for and being used by a descendant of robbers who wears the mask of a god, you will never be able to free yourselves from poverty.
⁴⁷

The “enemy” in anarchist writings, whether in Japan or California, now stood revealed as the emperor rather than any corrupt politicians or greedy capitalists. The proposed weapon to be used in effecting change also had shifted from general strikes to bombs. K
ō
toku argued that a successful assassination would not require many participants. He favored a suicide squad of fifty people.

At first there was little liaison among the different groups, each of which had arrived at its own program of action. Uchiyama Gud
ō
had dynamite that could be used but thought it would be easier to kill the crown prince than the emperor. Miyashita Taikichi of the Shinsh
ū
Band had the most concrete plan: he proposed making bombs himself and using them on the emperor. But when Miyashita called on K
ō
toku in February 1909, K
ō
toku expressed doubts about his plan’s feasibility, although he admired Miyashita’s courage. K
ō
toku was in poor health, and he wanted to complete other projects before he died, including the translation of Peter Kropotkin’s
Conquest of Bread
and a massive attack on Christianity. Perhaps, too, despite his reiteration of anarchist principles, his long reverence for the emperor made it difficult for him to join bomb throwers.
⁴⁸

Probably the most extreme anarchist was a woman, Kanno Suga. After being forced by her family into a loveless marriage, she ran away and lived for a time with the writer Arahata Kanson, who converted her to his leftist views. They both were arrested in the Red Flag incident, but she was released for lack of evidence. While Arahata was still in prison, Suga shifted from him to K
ō
toku and eventually became his mistress. K
ō
toku thought that he at last had found the wife of his dreams who shared his revolutionary ideals, but Suga was so fanatically determined to carry out the assassination that K
ō
toku’s ardor was cooled and they separated.

Even after K
ō
toku had made it clear that he would not take part in the assassination attempt, Miyashita was still determined to carry out his plan. He recruited three others—Kanno Suga, Niimura Tadao, and Furukawa Rikisaku. On November 3, 1909,
⁴⁹
he successfully exploded one of his bombs. On May 17, 1910, the four drew lots to decide each person’s role when the emperor’s carriage approached on its return from the military review on November 3, the emperor’s birthday. Suga drew the lucky number: she would throw the first bomb.

On May 20 the police, who had been suspicious of Miyashita for some time,
⁵⁰
raided his rooms and discovered two tin canisters. Next they searched the lumber mill where he worked and found chemicals and additional canisters. On the twenty-fifth a bill of indictment was issued, and five members of the Shinsh
ū
Band were arrested. Other arrests followed, including that of K
ō
toku, on June 1. The arrests led from one group to another, with the last made on October 18.

The trial began on December 10 and ended on December 29. The twenty-six defendants were accused of having violated article 73 of the criminal code, which prohibited harming or intending to harm the emperor or the imperial family. During the trial, Kanno Suga insisted that only four persons were involved in the plot, and quite apart from her testimony, it was evident that K
ō
toku had not been involved. Nevertheless, he was accused of having inspired the others with his anarchist teachings.
⁵¹
The police were determined not to let him escape.

The verdicts were read on January 18, 1911. Twenty-four of the twenty-six defendants were sentenced to death, and the remaining two, to imprisonment. On January 19 in accordance with the emperor’s wishes, concerned judges and officials met to consider an amnesty. They recommended that the sentences of twelve defendants be reduced one degree to life imprisonment. This was accepted, but the remaining twelve (including K
ō
toku) were executed by hanging on January 24 and 25.
⁵²