Evangelizing socialism in rural Japan: imagining utopia during the Russo-Japanese war

Abstract

During the Russo-Japanese War (1904–1905), members of the Heiminsha, the nascent socialist group based in Tokyo, created and promoted a program ‘evangelizing’ socialism in the Japanese countryside. Based on a careful reading of the group’s primary publication the Heimin shinbun, as well as other complementary contemporary publications, this article explores the intellectual influences and social networks that these socialists relied upon to send their message into the countryside, the idealized images that drove them, and the realities that constrained their work. This article also examines the brief but significant overlap of leading socialists and Christians during this period, and the ways their respective adherence to international/supernational belief and intellectual systems drove their opposition to the war.