Organized Workers and Socialist Politics in Interwar Japan. by Stephen S.

Large
Review by: Sheldon M. Garon
The Journal of Asian Studies, Vol. 42, No. 1 (Nov., 1982), pp. 167-169
Published by: Association for Asian Studies
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2055396 .
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BOOK REVIEWS- JAPAN 167

Trading declined in the early twentieth century when residents were drawn to
employment in Fukuoka and Kitakyiishui, but fishing still engaged about 100
persons in 60 to 70 households in 1930. New species (sand lance and yellowtail)
replacedthe declining sardine, and the large purse seine, requiring several boats to set
and take up, became as important as the beach net. Merchants, however, had
abandoned net ownership; net groups were formed by individual fishermen, dozoku
kin groups, or shareholding cooperative enterprises.
By 1976, these net groups had been dissolved or were inactive. A smaller purse
seine (the gochiami)had been adopted that could be worked by single boats with crews
of 1 to 3 persons, and Kalland details the roles and working relationships on the
twelve gochiamiboats. Cooperation survives only as informal arrangements among
boat crews in the brief, but highly lucrative, season for a particular sea bream fry and
in marketing through the fishing cooperative. Despite the ability to exploit this new
niche, gochiamiboats are economically viable only if operated with family labor, and
wives have come to work beside husbands on five of the twelve boats. Even so,
prospects are bleak for Shinga fishermen. It is difficult to attract spouses. In
twenty-five fishermen marriagesbefore 1960, the averagemale was 26.3 years old and
the average female, 23.5 years; from 1965 to 1978, it rose to 33 years for both. The
wife was the older in seven of the fourteen marriages from 1960 to 1978, and these
fourteen marriages have produced only 16 children. It is no wonder that "few people
in Shingu have any idea of what it is to be a fisherman"(p. 63).
Kalland's ethnography is admirably focused and historically sensitive, despite his
occasional lapses into conjectural history, e.g., the sex ratio imbalance in the 1825
population figures can hardly be explained as sex-selective infanticide among the
fishing households when fishermen were a minority of the population (pp. 44-45).
Also I do not believe that Kalland is particularly well-served by the analytical
language with which he has chosen to couch his material. The frequent referencesto
the "resources relevant to a status" (p. 88) and the "actors . . . allocating their
resources"(p. 146) imply a transactionalexchange theory of social behavior, but such
a theory is never applied rigorously, and the vocabulary by itself remains unconvinc-
ing. His "model of growth and decline" (pp. 146-53) may describe the sequence of
choices that a boat operator confronts, but it does not account for the constraints and
opportunities that form the context of those choices. Fortunately, these stand out
elsewhere in his book: industrial development, coastal pollution, and overfishing (pp.
13, 89); changes in regional employment (pp. 95, 153); shifts in markets for fish (pp.
185-86); reforms in fishing rights and increasingly strict licensing (pp. 89, 135-36);
and growing tensions within the fishing cooperative (pp. 140-45). Taken together,
these provide much more convincing explanations for the precariousposition of the
Shingiu fishermen and will ring true with any student of rural Japan.
WILLIAM W. KELLY
Yale University

Organized Workers and Socialist Politics in Interwar Japan. By STEPHEN S.

LARGE. New York:CambridgeUniversityPress, 1981. viii, 326 pp. Appendix,
Notes, Glossary, Bibliography, Index. $49.50.
In this new age of "Japanas Number One," we sometimes forget there was a time
when Japanese labor was not a respected partner in an efficient, harmonious system of

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168 JOURNAL OF ASIAN STUDIES

industrial relations. Stephen Large, in his history of Japan's labor movement between
1919 and 1940, describes how it was that independent trade unions emerged as an
assertive, growing force after World War I, only to suffer stagnation and finally
dissolution in the late 1930s. For Large, this is more than a problem of industrial
relations. He explicitly relates the rise and fall of organized labor to one of the most
significant questions in the political history of interwarJapan: Why did the unions
fail to defend Social Democracy? More to the point, why did many labor leaders and
Socialist politicians enthusiastically support the drift toward militarism and authori-
tarianism?
This book is a refreshing antidote to the many Japanese accounts that dwell on the
romantic struggle of Marxist labor leaders against capitalism and the repressive
prewar state. Large avoids treating the unions as hapless victims, arguing that
organized labor possessed a certain degree of choice in its strategies. Taking a cue
from studies of Western social democratic movements, he distinguishes Japan's
Socialist parties, dominated by intellectuals, from the supporting unions, led by
working-class activists. The Socialist politicians generally promoted an ideological
brand of Socialism, but most unions-led by the. General Federation of Labor
(Sodomei)-preferred a more reformist policy of improving the lives of workers by
legislation and negotiation with employers.
Large's conclusions are unexpectedly partisan, yet intriguing. The reformist
Sodomei-not the smaller, Communist-influencedCouncil of Japanese Labor Unions
(Hyogikai)-incurs the major share of the blame for fragmenting organized labor
and the movement for a unified Socialist party after 1925. Recalling the fate of
Weimar Germany's Social Democratic unions, Large comes down hard on Sodomei's
leaders for becoming "bossified," "ossified," and "bourgeoisified." In his opinion,
they collaborated much too closely with management and governmental authorities
to safeguard their positions and distance themselves from the rival Communists.
Their strategy of accommodation forms the key element in the author's discussion of
labor in the hostile environment of the 1930s. He argues that the Socialist intellectu-
als of the newly united Social Masses' party challenged the government's policies of
authoritarianism and imperialism, but were undercut in their efforts by Sodomei
and other labor groups, which had retreated from Socialist politics to unqualified
patriotism and narrowly economic trade unionism. In 1940 the cautious Sodomei
found itself in the worst possible position: neither patriotic enough to prevent its
local membership from defecting to government-sponsored "industrial patriotic"
associations nor militant enough to rally labor against the dissolution of independent
unions.
Notwithstanding the clarity of the case, this book rests on a ratherprovocative set
of assumptions. Large is convinced that the labor movement could have succeeded
only if it had retained the unity and Socialist elan that it briefly enjoyed in
1919-1920. This contributes to Large's brooding portrayal of the developments of
the next two decades in terms of a steady fall from political activism. In fact, the labor
movement experienced a series of peaks and troughs that merit closer examination.
Total union membership quadrupled during this period, and Sodomei succeeded in
uniting two-thirds of the nation's organized workers behind a campaign for a labor
union law in 1929-1931 and probably enjoyed its greatest input in the formulation
of governmental social legislation as late as 1936-1938. Readers may also question
why the author feels that the unions' quest for improved working conditions detracted
from overall Social Democracy.

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BOOK REVIEWS- JAPAN 169

Large's case would have benefited from further discussion on three important
points. He might have demonstrated that organized labor, which accounted for only a
small proportion of Japan's working population, prevented the Socialist parties from
effectively appealing to the more numerous classes of small farmersand shopkeepers.
Second, he could have shown that Socialist politicians like Aso Hisashi were more
resistant to authoritarianism and imperialism than Sodomei's Nishio Suehiro and
Matsuoka Komakichi were. Instead he says that Aso and like-minded labor leaders
led the way in dissolving their unions and the Social Masses' party with the hope of
gaining the government's support for "Socialism from above." In contrast, the
supposedly "conservative" Sodomei officials and their political allies fought a
principled, if futile, battle to preserve independent unions and the multiparty system
until 1940. Who then were the true Social Democrats?
Third and most fundamental, Large's criticisms of the Sodomei's pragmatic
strategy require a fuller analysis of the alternatives available to organized labor. He
readily admits that the Hyogikai's militant tactics in the mid- 1920s and Kato
Kanju's "popular front" of 1937 resulted in total suppression by the state. If such
class-conscious Socialism was not the solution, what was? In view of the movement's
vulnerability, one could argue that Sodomei's cooperation with sympathetic gov-
ernmental authorities and established parties did more to advance Social Democracy
than the actions of labor's militant minority. Unfortunately, Large offers only
minimal coverage of the efforts of the Home Ministry and the Kenseikai/Minseito to
adopt a series of protective labor legislation and policies.
Last, mention should be made of the work's bold use of comparative history.
Studies of European and American labor movements have clearly inspired Large to
uncover new facets of Japan's union movement, most notably Sodomei's developing
subculture of workers' schools, newspapers, and consumer cooperatives. Large, how-
ever, tends to draw too many comparisons and contrasts without questioning their
significance. In the end, we are not sure whether the Japanese unions failed because
they became bourgeoisified as in Germany or because Japanese workers stoically
accepted capitalist inequality as did their British counterparts (I hadn't recalled
British Labour "failing" as a result).
Despite these shortcomings, Large presents us with a thoughtful analysis of the
political impact of Japan's interwar unions and the serious dilemmas they faced. In
the process, he has opened up a new debate on the potential for political and
industrial democracy in Japan before World War II.
SHELDON M. GARON
PomonaCollege

Masamune Hakucho. By ROBERTRoiF. Boston: Twayne, 1979. 171 pp. Pre-

face, Chronology, Titles of Hakucho's Works Cited, Notes and References,
Selected Bibliography, Index. $13.95.
Twayne's World Authors Series (TWAS) is difficult to write for. Each volume is
meant to be constructed so that young adults in preparatoryschools and college can
read it with ease. The series sets high standardsfor scholarly accuracyand chooses its
authors for their expertise. Because the series is intended for young people, each
volume ought to be written in a sufficiently lively style to hold the attention of this
special audience. These would not be easy goals for a writer in any field, but they are

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