Perspectives on the Failure of the Labour Movement in Pre-War Japan

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to explore some distinctive features of Japanese labour that bear on a question which has long preoccupied Japanese historians and which has received the attention of Western scholars as well: why was it that Japan, the first non-Western country to experience the industrial revolution, did not witness the parallel develop ment of a strong labour movement in the pre-World War II period when there existed in Japan many of the same strains that gave rise to powerful and assertive labour movements in such other late-developing industrial societies as, for example, Germany. Before proceeding, however, two caveats are in order. First, I do not intend considering at length the quick answer to the question of why the pre-war Japanese labour movement ultimately suffered extinction in 1940: that is, the answer which attributes the movement's failure simply to political repression by an authoritarian State centred on the Emperor system, in alliance with the conservative zaibatsu, the huge financial combines that epitomised Japanese capitalism. That political repression occurred is undeniable. Japanese labour unions remained illegal until after World War II and they were often hounded by the police. This was true throughout the two cycles of the movement's pre-war history. The first unions that arose in Japan in the 1890s succumbed by 1911 to police harassment after lending support to a budding socialist movement that they felt would help redress worker grievances on the political front but which the State regarded as sub versive.