Page:Sanzō Nosaka - A Brief Review of the Labour Movement in Japan (1921).pdf/24

 this century. But the Japanese „Okhrana“ has been rendering better service to its patron than to Russian. In February 1920, it did its best to break the great strike in the Yawata Iron Foundry, and now is making a bloody counter agitation against the Socialist and Communist movements.

With the rapid development of the workers' fighting bodies, strikes of large scale and long duration broke out in many industrial cities. On the other hand, the holy Tripple Alliance of employers, the government and militarists was not meanwhile idle, and was preparing for the bloody oppression against any revolts. Besides that, the economic condition stood on the verge of crisis since the summer of the year. The workers fight became more and more bitter than ever.

In September the first organised (peaceful) „sabotage“ carried on by all the workers (15,000) employed in the Kawasaki Dockyard in Kobe. Being led by the Yuai-kai this ended in complete victory of the men after two weeks fight, and also demonstrated a new fighting weapon to the Japanese workers. Since then the peaceful „sabotage“ or „go-easy“ has become one of the popular methods of fighting, because it is safe from the Police Law which has been yearly throwing hundreds of „strike instigators“ into prison.

October, the Shinyu-kai of printers proclaimed a new campaign for an eight hours day, bringing forward the demand to all printing firms (about 160) in Tokyo and other towns. The majority of employers having rejected the demand, strike or sabotage began in one shop after another. Against this, the employers who strongly combined into a body (the „Tokyo Printing Trade Association“) answered with lock-out, threat of discharge, black-leg, bribe, etc. A chaotic condition in the printing industry continued for more than three weeks. But the victory was not on the strikers. The Shinyu-kai was badly hit again.

This defeat was but a signal for the wholesale collapse of labour disputes in the following months. In November the most vehement battles simultaneously took place in three mining fields in the northern district of Japan. The first two were the strikes for increased wages and improvement of working conditions, conducted by the Miners' Federation of Japan, at Kamaishi iron and Ashio copper mines; the third was the demonstration against the dismissal of leading members of the Yuai-kai at Hidachi copper mine. In Japan, as elsewhere, mining areas are almost, isolated from the „external world“ owing to their geogra-