Voices from Asia - Hardcover

Osugi, Sakae

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0520077598 ISBN 13: 9780520077591

Verlag: UNIV OF CALIFORNIA PR, 1992

Inhaltsangabe

In the Japanese labor movement of the early twentieth century, no one captured the public imagination as vividly as Osugi Sakae (1885-1923): rebel, anarchist, and martyr. Flamboyant in life, dramatic in death, Osugi came to be seen as a romantic hero fighting the oppressiveness of family and society.

Osugi helped to create this public persona when he published his autobiography (Jijoden) in 1921-22. Now available in English for the first time, this work offers a rare glimpse into a Japanese boy's life at the time of the Sino-Japanese (1894-95) and the Russo-Japanese (1904-5) wars. It reveals the innocent—and not-so-innocent—escapades of children in a provincial garrison town and the brutalizing effects of discipline in military preparatory schools. Subsequent chapters follow Osugi to Tokyo, where he discovers the excitement of radical thought and politics.

Byron Marshall rounds out this picture of the early Osugi with a translation of his Prison Memoirs (Gokuchuki), originally published in 1919. This essay, one of the world's great pieces of prison writing, describes in precise detail the daily lives of Japanese prisoners, especially those incarcerated for political crimes.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Byron K. Marshall is Professor of Japanese History at the University of Minnesota and the author of Capitalism and Nationalism in Prewar Japan: The Ideology of the Business Elite, 1868-1941 (1967).

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"Not only an important literary work but one of the major documents dealing with the development of the left-wing movement in modern Japanese politics."—Fred G. Notehelfer, author of Kotoku Shusui: Portrait of a Japanese Radical

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"Not only an important literary work but one of the major documents dealing with the development of the left-wing movement in modern Japanese politics."—Fred G. Notehelfer, author of Kotoku Shusui: Portrait of a Japanese Radical

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The Autobiography of Osugi Sakae

By Sakae Osugi

University of California Press

Copyright © 1992 Sakae Osugi
All right reserved.
ISBN: 0520077598


First Memories to 1894 I.

It was the morning of the second or third day after we had been arrested for the Red Flags Incident.1 We had been taken first to Tokyo Jail and then to Chiba Prison. Now for the first time all of those who had been brought in together were led out into a central courtyard for exercise. The yard was between the wings of the building—a rather large dreary open area surfaced with cinders so that not a blade of grass grew.

We lined up and the prison sergeant in charge unrolled a list, slowly checking each of our faces against the names and descriptions. Suddenly he frowned and looked back and forth from my face to the list, checking and rechecking as if puzzled. Then, staring down his nose at me, he

In this Akabata jiken of June 1908, Osugi was arrested and subsequently sentenced to two and one-half years in prison for violating the Peace Preservation Law. Following a meeting to celebrate the release from prison of a prominent Socialist—Yamaguchi Gizo (also known as Kaizo or Koken [1883-1920])—Osugi and others began to sing revolutionary songs and wave large red flags emblazoned with slogans such as "Anarchism" and "Communism." Among the dozen demonstrators arrested were Arahata Kanson (1887-1981), Sakai Toshihiko (1870-1933), and Yamaguchi; three who later helped found the Japanese Communist party. Also arrested was Kanno Sugako (1881-1911), the female activist who would die on the gallows in 1911 for plotting to assassinate the emperor. Osugi's various terms in prison are recounted in chapter 7.

asked in a slightly nasal northeastern accent, "You—you're related some way to Osugi Azuma, aren't you?"

I was certain that next to my name on the list was the information, "eldest son of Azuma." To go to the trouble of asking, the guard must be someone who knew of my father. Since he looked to be in his thirties and seemed unusually alert for a prison official, and because of the friendly tone in his voice, I wondered if he hadn't perhaps once served as a noncommissioned officer in the regiment in Echigo. I thought to myself, Sergeant, you must be surprised to see the old man's name connected with a prison record like mine! Rather than answer him, I simply grinned. It was a little unsettling in these circumstances to meet someone who had known my father.

"Don't you know someone named Azuma?" he asked again suspiciously. "Osugi Azuma, the army officer?"

When I continued to stand there grinning in silence, Sakai2 broke in and answered for me: "How could he not know? That's Osugi's old man."

"So—I was right. I served under him when he was a battalion commander. Hmm, so this is the son of the o1' Idealist," he said half to himself as if distracted by his own thoughts. Then, returning to me, "Osugi was famous in the Second Division for being an idealist. How's it his son would end up in a place like this?"

The term "idealist" was an army cliché meaning loyal, patriotic, devoted to the military spirit. It was a term of respect but carried overtones of "stiff," "unbending," and not overly strong on military strategy.

When I had come home after being expelled from the military cadet school, many people remarked in surprise that my father was "such a gentleman." At the time someone who seemed to know my family better said in my defense, "Well, you don't know his mother." Actually I don't really know which I am more like, my father or my mother, but I certainly looked more like Mother.

Sakai Toshihiko, an influential journalist and pioneer socialist. A co-founder of the Heirnin Shirnbun (Commoners News) and of the Japanese Socialist party (in 1906), Sakai was arrested as a result of the Red Flags Incident and sentenced to two years in prison. At the time Osugi was married to the sister of Sakai's wife, but she divorced Osugi before his autobiography was published.

"Does he really look so much like me?" she would ask people. And then, gently pinching my nose, "But I don't have such a horrible nose!" My mother was pretty; her nose was high and straight whereas mine was flat and lumpy at the tip.

I was told that when my father became a second lieutenant in the Imperial Guards his battalion commander, Colonel Yamada, was selecting a husband for his wife's younger sister. Though there were two candidates, in the end the prize went to my father.

My mother, who was living with the Yamadas at the time, was quite a tomboy. When Yamada's horse was saddled and left in front of the house for him, Mother would often climb on and gallop the horse up and down the yard.

Once my younger brother Noburu and I were discussing our relatives, when he said, "I've heard our grandfather on Mother's side was quite an interesting fellow. I heard a lot about him from Yone in Osaka, but I was so fascinated listening to him I didn't try to remember any of it. Maybe you take after grandfather." And he urged me to ask our cousin Yone about it when I had a chance. Until then, of the relatives on my mother's side I knew only the sister who was married to Yamada, the next youngest sister who was Yone's mother, and my grandmother. I had never heard a thing about my grandfather or so much as given him a thought. Since my grandmother was an extremely uncouth individual, I dismissed the whole idea, thinking that my mother's family was probably not altogether respectable.

Still, since Yone and a comrade of mine in Osaka knew each other and I understood that they often spoke of me, I was inclined to feel somewhat closer to Yone. Thus when I was in Osaka I finally went to see Yone. He had inherited my grandfather's house and had a shoe shop near Yodoyabashi. I was just twenty when I met him.

"Do you recognize me?" I asked Yone as soon as I entered the shop. I had just given the slip to a man tailing me and I didn't want Yone's clerks to know my name.3

Although the text is not explicit here, Osugi was no doubt under police surveillance. Because of such police harassment, especially during the Russo-Japanese War, the socialist leaders depended greatly on students who could travel the country less conspicuously to disseminate their literature and gather subscriptions to their periodicals. Osugi had been helping at the Heimin Shimbun since 1904; he was probably in Osaka that year on some such mission but the police had marked him. By Western reckoning he was nineteen.

"Of course I do. No one except my family has eyes like those," he replied with exaggeration, staring at me with eyes even larger than mine. He then led me into the rear of the shop.

My grandfather's name was Kusui Rikimatsu. He was from near Minato-nana-maguri in Wakayama, where I understand he had a rather large sake brewery. From his youth he had been very strong and quite a rogue. When this grandfather was twelve, one of the domain's martial arts instructors, a man named Date, picked him as a pupil and Grandfather became his apprentice. By the time Grandfather was eighteen he had received his certificate of proficiency. He was well versed in judo, swordsmanship, horsemanship, and use of the lance. He made judo his particular specialty and eventually opened a judo academy under the sponsorship of Date. It had five hundred day students and one hundred...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: UNIV OF CALIFORNIA PR
• Erscheinungsdatum: 1992
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0520077598
• ISBN 13: 9780520077591
• Einband: Gebundene Ausgabe
• Anzahl der Seiten: 192
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Easy Access System Europe; gpsr.requests@easproject.com; ; Mustamäe tee 50; Tallinn; 10621; Estland