Page:Sanzō Nosaka - A Brief Review of the Labour Movement in Japan (1921).pdf/22

 „Jujo-kai“ of employees of military powder mill who waged the sympathetic strike, and the other is the black-leg Union, called the „Kojo-kai“ spreading now to important government workshops over the country.

In this month, more important Unions appeared to exist. The „Transport Workers Union“ of tramway employees in Tokyo which challenged so-called „citizen“ with a general stoppage of city transportation early in 1920; the „Miners Society“, a strong Union in the northern colliery field of Kyushu; the "Miners Federation of Japan" (5,000) at Ashio copper mine. The last Union succeeded in creating a branch at Kamaishi iron mine and later carried on desperate strikes.

Also printing workers Unions sprang up rapidly in several important towns (e. g. in Osaka. Kobe, Kyoto, Kure, Hiroshima,) of which the most important one is the „Taishin-kai“ in Tokyo.

In Sept. the Japanese Proletariat experienced three momentous events. In the first place, the Yuai-kai, throwing away its former opportnuist mantle, acomplished complete reconstruction. The second event is the great „sabotage“ in Kobe with which I shall deal later.

The third occurrence arose from the election by the government of a former Director of a big shipbuilding firm as a Labour Delegate to the Washington International Labour Conference to be held in October. Against this nonsensical measure all the working classes rose up spontantaneously and instictively; huge demonstration after demonstration, violent protest after protest. Many arrests of agitators; threats to the life of the Labour Delegate. For a while the whole of the workers seemed to have become mad. In spite of the opposition of all workers, however, this absurd Delegate sailed in secret for Washington. For what? In order to entreat a Special treatment for Japanese workers, that is to say, in order to continue the present sweating system, to let men and women toil for more than eight hours a day. And the Washington Conference granted this to him.

The tactics which the organised workers (led by the Yuai-kai, the Shinyu-kai, the Miners' Federation) took in the agitation is worthy of note. From the very beginning they boycotted the election of the government, and strove to ummask the true nature of the League of Nations and the International Labour Conference, and also openly propagated before the masses that the government is nothing more than the executive committee of the robber class. Japanese workers have begun