Valery Burati and the Formation of Sohyo during the U. S. Occupation of Japan

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T HE GENERAL COUNCIL of Trade Unions of Japan (Nihon RUd& Kumiai So yogikai or Sohy6 as it is known inJapan and referred to hereafter in this essay) was founded in 1950 during the postwar U. S. occupation ofJapan. Valery Burati, a former textile union organizer, worked in the Labor Division of SCAP (Supreme Commander Allied Powers) from 1948 to 1951, and was the Occupation liaison officer assigned to the trade union movement in Japan during this period. He played a prominent role in promoting Sohy5. Burati died in 1988 and his personal papers were deposited with the Walter P. Reuther Library at Wayne State University. The dissolution of Sohy6 in November 1989 and access to Burati's personal papers prompted the undertaking of this study to review Sohy6's origins in the hope that such a study might help clarify how Sohy6 turned from a chicken into a duck. I This phrase, popular inJapan's labour and academic circles, describes the apparent transformation of Sohy6 from a U.S. sponsored, antiCommunist labour federation in 1950, into an organization that openly defied U.S. policy even before the end of the Occupation. Sohy6 subsequently became Japan's largest and most militant national union federation but its adversarial orientation provoked a conservative backlash that culminated in the formation of a rival national federation, the Japanese Trade Union Congress (Zenru Kaig') in 1954. Sohy6's origins and metamorphosis into a militant federation have been the subject of a host of interpretations. The noted labour historian Okochi Kazuo has formulated the dominant interpretation about Sohy6's origins. He contends that Sohy6's birth was not the result of independent union