Cool Zone Media.
Hello, and welcome to Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff. You're a weekly reminder that when bad things are happening, people try to do good things like kill Japanese emperors. Because this is a rerun episode and we are going back to the very first year of Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff, I am showing you again an episode because I think is pretty cool. It's an episode about the Japanese anarchist women who kept trying to kill emperors as there was a bunch of them. And this is
totally unrelated to anything happening now. Hello, welcome to it could happen here the podcast that is my podcast.
Now.
I'm your host, Margaret Kiljoy, and with me is the Webby Award winning Sophie Lichterman as our producer, as well as the actual hosts of the show, who go without mentioning because I don't see any reason to include them.
Can that just be the intro to every episode for now?
Yeah? This is better than our all of our regular introsh I loved that.
Yeah, So what are we talking about today? Also on podcast, Garrison Davis and Christopher Wong.
Hello, Yes, so today we are we are talking about.
The sort of long and incredibly tragic history of Japanese anarchism. Well, okay, I actually about this Japanese anarchism before World War Two, because after World War Two was an entirely different story. And as much as I love people in construction helmets just like beating the shit out of cops with large sticks, that story is extremely complicated. If you want to hear
me talk more about that story a little bit. The third part of my Nobosuikikishi episode has a lot of people in construction helmets with sticks.
But yeah, no, this is.
You know, okay, So the history of anarchism generally is the history of tragedy, but even by by anarchist standards, the history of Japanese anarchism is just an absolute welter of heartbreak and loss. Out of all of the people that we're going to talk about today, exactly one of the non Russian anarchists is going to live to see world the end of World War two, and he's Korean.
Every single other person is either going to be executed by the state, assassinated, kill themselves, drink themselves of death. So this is uh, this is this is an extreme om bleak story in a lot of ways.
Good to have one of those optimistic episodes every once in a while.
Yeah, you know, I mean I think the.
Thrown down a well, well, okay, it's it's unclear whether anyone got thrown down.
Awe.
I'm sorry, I'm skipping ahead and I don't actually know.
We will get to the wells uh yeah, I I also okay, So there's a lot of Japanese anarchists and we don't have that much time. So if you're like in Asawa U, Sakataro Stan, I'm sorry, we can't.
Cover all of them. And the ever think about the history of anarchism in Japan that is weird is that the beginning of the story predates they're actually being anarchists in Japan, or pysically they're being Japanese anarchists. There's this huge degree of sort of like cultural exchange and influence running between Japan and Russia by rich of the fact that they are, you know, next to each other, and especially in the eighteen seventies and eighteen eighties. This is one of the sort of.
This is important again because Russia in this period is like a this is like the hotbed of anarchism, right like they're they're killed, they're killing the czar, They're they're they're doing all the things. They're going to the countryside, they're the Russian anarchists are sort of on the move, and a lot of the famous Russian anarchists wind up
like in Japan. Bakunin is there for like you like he has some extremely complicated arrangement who he like sneaks on a boat and he like gets out and he beats one of the sort of like samurai like Beiji Restoration revolutionaries, and they chat for a bit and then he leaves.
So he you know Muchinon's not this is when he was escaping Siberia. Yeah, well I think, yeah, he's escaped me Siberia.
And then he somehow convinces like the American embassy or something to like let him on a boat to Japan.
It's it's a very weird story, as I call.
Things, Bakunin ar But the most probably anarchists to spend time in Japan is Lev Meshnikov. Meshinakov is like he's like a pretty big deal in Russian revolutionary circles, Like he's he's considered like okay, so the the big sort of like anarchists. Left wing moving to Japan is the populist right. It's called the rob Nicks. And there's two big figures in it. There's uh Nikolai Turnichewsky and this
guy left Menchikov, And you know, he's Menchakov. Like he knows everyone he knows, like he's friends with just like every single person. And we will get to more of his friends later. But like he's a kind of part of bakoonin he he has. He has a very similar creative Bacoon in a lot of ways where he just sort of like runs away, especially like Eastern Europe. He's like runs around the world being in revolutions, which is good work.
If he can get it.
Yeah, yeah, it's it's pretty exciting. And he doesn't die, which is sort of incredible. Oh well, I love that for him, So he's still around. Yeah, this is very sad, you know, well, I mean he he you know. Look, look, this is this is the goal of Russian cosmism.
No is it actually cosmism?
I have no idea.
Yeah, the cosmonaut people, yeah yeah, yeah, they bring back all the dead people. Oh no, I don't know about this. I only know a weird thing where there was like anarchist cosmonauts in like nineteen twenties Ussia.
Yeah, yeah, so there, their whole thing was like, uh okay, so they they they thought that the anarchists had been defeated in the revolution because they were insufficiently committed to bring the dead back to life, and that that that, you know, the whole thing was like they like they're there's some of the people who are involved in like the Soviet like rocket programs, and they're doing this because they want to colonize the moon in March so they
can fit all of the dead Poltaria they're gonna bring back to life.
Wait, are you telling the truth to me?
This is all true?
This is this is just amazing. I've been trying to fight for the Anarchist Necromancer League for so long, which our slogan is raised the dead to fight like hell for the living.
That it's incredible.
But yeah, no, like, uh, the Russian cosmism, it's a weird one cosmism. It's like a weird mix of like like natural philosophy quote unquote, which is just like different films of like folk magic or whatever, and like religion and spiritual stuff, but also it's like a predecessor to like the modern transhumanism. It's a it's an interesting little collection of ideas that was popular at like the very beginning of the twentieth century.
It's part of my thesis that no one normal has ever been involved in the production of a rocket like I mean, yeah on the Soviet in and then there's just like the Nazis and it's like, oh, zero normal people.
I have no counter argument there was that because there was the guy who did all the multi stage rocketry, the Nihilists who killed the czar, who built the bomb that killed the czar. He like, when I talk about this in my podcast, Oh, probably already listened to this.
You have a podcast?
WHOA Yeah, I really just I'm here. I'm gonna plug this every like five minutes. This episode you can learn about the bombmaker who killed the czar and his what he brought to the world in terms of rocketry and manned rocket travel. Anyway, please continue on what on WAT show?
Margaret?
Well, okay, is this podcast that I'm recording on right now? When does it come out? When are you listening to it, dear readers? Okay, Well, then next Monday you can listen to cool people who did cool stuff, which is my podcast. Yeah, I'm so good at my job anyway. My job is to interrupt you with please tell me more about the cosmos and how they relate to Japan.
The cousm was actually nothing to do with this, unfortunately. Oh okay, but yeah, but uh Lev uh Lev Meshnikov like he also he like fights with Garibaldi to unify Italy.
He's just like all over the place.
But he's an interesting guy because Okay, so there's like a lot of foreigners who go to Japan, but he like makes Japanese friends and like learns Japanese before he goes there, which makes him like utterly different than like ninety nine percent of the people who are writing like Westerns who are writing abut Japan in this period, who like don't speak very good Japanese and never leave their houses. So nothing has changed, Yeah, yeah, well except weirdly, this
one guy's doing better. Oh no, I mean nothing has changed from now no where. No Westerners actually, they just pretend to care about Japan. Okay, Yeah, it's it's it's time, there's actually that's one of the burning themes of these two episodes is like there's a lot of stuff about this,
about anarchism and about Japan just like don't change. But you know, so one of the things that Mechiakov winds up doing is he winds up spending two years teaching at this thing called the Tokyo School of Foreign Languages. And this has a bunch of major impacts, one of which is is on Meshnikov himself, who he becomes heavily influenced by by the Major Restoration, which he thinks of as like this like but he looks at it at this is like as a revolution, like this is an
acty feudal revolution. This is the most successful social revolution of that you sent It's like he thinks that it's like destroyed the sort of stratified class system and creates this like possibility of like mass social mobility for commoners. And Okay, so this is like not the best interpretation of what's going on with with the Major Restoration. Where I mean, so the Major Restoration sort of ends the fuel system in Japan, it does a lot of other bad things.
What is it, Like, I don't know that much about this, Yeah, yeah, so maybe the audience doesn't either. Okay, So the Major restoration is a thing that happens where so so Japan has been ruled by a shogun for like a long time, and the shogun runs a fuel system. It's very elaborate.
Everyone has at least sort of ritied hard casts. But eventually there's this kind of like that there's there's this sort of it's complicated. It's this kind of nationalist movement by a bunch of like a bunch of the samurai clans, who uh this is this is happening in the eighteen sixties, and they mobilize to overthrow like the shogunate and basically like restore the emperor to a power. The emperor has been like a puppethead like figurehead guy for like two
hundred years and they bring him back to power. I because I'm a hack of a fraud and a fraud. I'm forgetting their exact slogan. It's it's something like it's revere the Emperor, and I ken't what the other part of the slogan is. It's very similar to the to the box of rebellion slogan. It's it's this sort of I mean, there's a lot of things going on here.
It's kind of a reaction to so in the in the eighteen sixties, like Japan is sort of forcibly opened to the world by like Kamadar Perry's showing up with a bunch of like the largest gunboats anyone has ever seen.
And this, like this forces Japan to sort of like.
Abandon its isolationist positions and yeah, and you know, and you get the sort of classif intellectuals you're looking at this and they're going like, Okay, if we don't do something, like we're gonna get colonized mm hm.
And so they do.
And the thing that they do is that they do this revolution and they overthrow they overthrow the shogunate. There's all this like there's what there's like a trillion anime set in this period because there's like that, there's there's like like there there are there are squads of samurai swordsmen like running around like stabbing each other in Tokyo and like Kyoto and like it's it's wild, it is it is a it is a time and and this sort of this is what sort of consolidates the modern
Japanese nation state. You know, I've talked about this in my Kishi episodes, but like it sets off this wave of colonialism. They like they conquer ho Kaido, they conquer the Yoku Islands, they do all this horrible colonialism stuff. But there's there's it's really unclear what the revolution is actually going to mean because like there has been a revolution, right, like the the sort of like feutal like class system has been swept away. There's all of this sort of
there's all this this energy in the masses. There's like one of one of the things that uh Meshnikov find is like he so he gets to Japan in like the in like the eighteenth eighteen seventies, and he's seeing like the first signs of discontentment with with the sort of the major restoration, which is the restoration of the Emperor. Because there's a lot of people who look at this and we're like, oh hey, we're gonna we finally like defeated this sort of olive art class that like rules
all of us. And then there's a new oligart class and they're like wait, hold on. And so there's there's
like there's a series of like ex samurai rebellions. There's this whole sort of like like he like uh Mechiakov literally like gets there in the middle of an uprising and he's just like in the streets and he has nobody what's going on because the guy he's been talking to winds up being in the uprising, and you know, so he guess they're But what what he sees also is he sees his upheaval, but he sees this enormous network of like cooperative movements and he's a bunch of
mutual aid groups. He sees like villages who are like pooling all of their resources, like can send kids to like school in this city. He sees like he sees the government failing to provide services for people because there's an uprising going on, and also with the government and so people are sort of people taking care of each other.
And this has an enormous influence on him, and he starts to, you know, like the way he thinks about anarchism changes, and he's he's like, he starts to think about sort of like anarchism as cooperation, like mutual cooperation between people who like mutual aid enters the sort of lexicon And.
Okay, so there's a there's a modern historian named.
Sho Kooshi who writes this book called anarchist anarchist modernity, cooperatism. Wait, hold on, yeah, anarchist madernity cooperatism and Japanese Russian intellectual relationship modern Japan. And he makes the argument basically, yeah, there's there's two there there.
It's it's a better title.
Than I'm reading it, because there's there's two. There's like a heading and like a subheading straight because I'm But he's making the argument that this this is like this is actually like something that's very important the development of narcro communism because this guy, he knows everyone liked the anarchist geographer, Like, uh, at least Ricklouse, I can't pronounce his name.
I think it's the clue. Yeah, I think so, but I can't not with a gun to my head, I'm not sure.
Yeah anyway, Yeah, like they're roommates, like they're like they live together for like a while, and like he he he writes the Japan entry and like the encyclopedia, he's
friends with Krapotkin. And after after his his sort of like thoughts starts to change about mutual aid, you start to see a lot of the same stuff, like you know, like this is like he's he's there before Kripatkin writes mutual Aid, and then you see you see all the sort of vitel aid stuff popping up with Krikpotkin, And you know, I don't know how seriously to take the argument that like you're sort of seeing like that that a lot of this theory is sort of a rebound
of reflection of what they were seeing in Japanese society.
But it's interesting, and I think I should mention it because I don't know, like, there's there's this whole sort of intellectual sphere of people who were like associated with anarchists, and the every thing that happens in this period is that like so there's a bunch of like Meshnikov like has a bunch of friends in Russia who all got arrested because they were in like terrorist groups, and he's able to get like a whole bunch of these people to like he's able to get them like exiled, and
their exile is they go to Japan, they teach with him, and so suddenly there's like there's like a bunch of people who are now like these populists are like writing stories about like the stuff they were doing, and like all the people who are still fighting in Russia. So there's suddenly there's all these people who are like reading about the Russian populists in Japan. And and you know, and this is there's there's this kind of like anarchist cultural sphere that exists in Japan.
Like before there's anarchists, like anarchists.
Yeah, yeah, for jah anarchists, they'll be like one, like yeah, there's like a couple of Russian anarchists and like yeah, but uh like uh Meschakov leaves one. But the other big thing with this is Tolstoy, who is like Tolstoi in like the eighteen eightyes, eighteen nineties, like early ninete hundreds. He's like he's the like he I think he's like
the most translated author like on Earth in Japan. And it's they're not just reading his like literary work, they're reading his like theology, his political work, which is important because Tolstoi is like a Christian arco pacifist, right yeah, And and this influences this there's this kind of like there's there's a lot of sort of like left wing anti imperial strains of Christianity that pop up in Japan, and this is one of the reasons for us, because
everyone's reading Tolstoy and so you get the seeds of this anarchist movements that eventually sprout into a man named uh oh god, this guy's name is actually hard Kotoku Shusi.
I'm butchering the last part of it. I'm sorry.
My Japanese does not extend to this many yous and eyes in a row.
But Kotaku.
He's an interesting guy.
Because so he doesn't so he has like a whole career before it becomes an anarchist. He's he's like he's a very premp my journalist intellectual, Like he writes a newspaper.
It's very famous. Everyone reads it.
And he's the heir apparent to this other like very famous sort of liberal journalist who again, because lev Metchnikov knows literally everyone, was like a friend of Lef Meshnikov. He just knows every single person on earth. It's incredible, ye know.
That rules, yeah, goals?
You know?
Yeahs turn if you ever snitched to be terrible apparently he never did, so yeah yeah, I mean it's still around, so I mean he still could snitch. He's still around. He still ask the chance oh, I guess everyone would snitched on his dead so makes it harder the epic skip blurry area. Yeah.
So Kotoku is like he's kind of like a standard liberal, but he gets involved with the anti war movements especifically, this is the anti uh why it does anti a lot of wars because the Japan is fighting an enormous series of wars in like the early nineteen hundreds.
Yeah, they kicked Russi's ass at that point.
Yeah, yeah, they fight uh Japan, they fight Japan. Sorry, they fight China. Yeah, and do you know who else is fighting China?
I don't know.
I'm afraid to know. The products and services that support the show. Are we supported by American nationalism?
Apparently? Yes, question mark.
And we're back with the first rush, the first actual Japanese anarchist. So in nineteen hundred, kotuk who writes this book called Imperialism Monster of the twentieth Century, which is like good, yeah, yeah great, he rules and this certificate for a number of reasons, one of which is that, like, this is one of the first major like books about imperialism, Like there are some other Western writers whose stuff like predates this, but like this is nine hundred. This is
before Lenin has written about imperialism. This is before like Hobson. This is before Luxembourg. And I'm just gonna read it a little bit from it because it rules. So this is from the first section. It's called imperialism of wildfire in an open field. Imperialism spreads like a wildfire in an open field. All nations bow down to worship this new god, sing hymns to praise it, and have created a cult to pay it, to pay it adoration. Look
at the world that surrounds us. In England's both governments and citizens have become fervent acolytes of imperialism. In Germany, the war loving emperor never loses a chance to extol its virtues. As for Russia, the regime has long practiced a policy of imperialism. France, Austria, and Italy are all delighted to join the fray. Even a young country like the United States has recently shown its eagerness to master this new skill. And finally, this trend has reached Japan.
Ever since our great victory in this Japanese War, Japanese of all classes burned with fervor to join the race for an empire like a wild horse freed from its harness.
So you know, the one thing that he got incorrect is, as I understand by spending a lot of time on Twitter, is that actually only the United States is imperialist and any actions, especially by Russia. I was very confused that he included Russia as the I can't finish the sun, so this great face what Russia would be? Also, how could it be imperialism if Lenin hadn't yet defined the term for us? Oh this is okay, this is the whole thing.
Okay, So Kuduko gets like a lot of shit from this book, like from later on for Japanese leftst because were like he's insufficiently materialist. It's like, yeah, he is mostly just talking. Like the book's mostly about like how patriotism and nationalism like create this stuff. It doesn't look
at economics much. But like, okay, there's a whole problem here, which is that if you try to apply Lenin's definition of imperialism to Japan, it doesn't work because like like when Japan is invading China, they have like I think it's like fifty total factories.
Yeah, like the everything is completely backwards.
Yeah, like it's like yeah, and like you know, so like like like Lenin's imperialism is supposed to be like the highest stage of capitalism, but then you go to Japan, Japan's like barely started the transition to capitalism. Like if Lenin's imperialism is supposed to bet like debt exports, right, but Japan is just conquering countries while they're just literally
like borrowing massively from whether states to funder industrialzations. Everything does nothing, None of it works, and koto Ku gets like again he has like a lot of shit for this, but it's like, no, he's right, like Lenin is wrong. Like Lenin's analysis if you try to apply Japan does not work and codiness does.
So imagine that.
Yeah, and you know, Cotico, I think like he's keyed into things that the Marxists aren't, but like specifically about like about the power of nationalism, because you know, I mean like obviously, if if you go a bit later, it's like, well, all of these people who are like, oh, imperialism is the highest age of capitalism, and then all of their parties vote to go to war with each other in will War one, Like you know, okay, Codico, I think like gets this because his relationship the socialism
and anti imperialism are like backwards from the Marxist right where the Marxists arrive at anti imperialism, like from their Marxism. But Coutico like becomes a socialist because he sees it as a way to stop wars. Like that's like his big thing is he's in the anti war movie and he wants his wars to stop, and.
That's the right direction to do shit. Yeah, you should do shit because like you don't pick the label because what's cool. You pick You figure out what you believe, and then you pick the label that fits what you believe instead of the other way around. You know. Yeah, and you know, and it means that he's less sort of like he's less dogmatic than like his successors, because you know, I'll make because because he's he's working off of his actual principles versus sort of like this like
dictation stuff. And I mean he's he's he inc you know.
Three, he publishes The s of Socialism, which is like this is like the first like socialist like book written by Japanese person. It's like one of the I think there's maybe like one or two other ones that are before, but this is like the first big one and he so he's also like he's involved in founding the Japanese Socialist Party and then he gets like arrested and sent to the US and something happens when he's in the You, I don't know, there's I've seen like six conflicting accounts.
Like I've seen accounts that say he joins he joins the IWW.
I don't know. I've seen other people say he lived, he lived in a commune, Like he definitely read ger Pocket, he like becomes an anarchist. Let's decide he did all of these things.
Yeah, lived in a commune and tried to organize the comedy with the IWW. Yeah, but you know, I mean this guy is a normal influential in history of Japanese left. Like he is the guy when he comes back in nineteen know six, he's the guy who introduces the concept of the general strike Japan.
Yeah, like he's.
The first guy to write about it.
He's very cool.
He also like, yeah, you know, he starts pushing this and start this. He starts pushing anarchism as a direct action as like I said of like doing parliamentary stuff, and he translates like Kropocket's work in the Japanese. He translates like the company's manifesto. He does labor organizing. He's sort of like all over the place. And you know, like labor and the anti war movement are like two
of the big currents that are adroucing anarchists. But the other like big current that's making anarchists period is feminism. Because okay, so I stop me if this is in any way surprising, but the late eighteen hundreds and early nineteen hundreds are not a time to be a woman in Japan.
Really. Yeah, it's not a good time like anywhere.
But it's not even now.
It's not the best.
Yeah, I mean I will be improved.
I will say it's it's better than this. This is like sure, like the major regime is sort of like consultating self is as is consolidating itself. It gets like progressively more like patriarchical misogynist. I'm going I'm gonna read from the book Reflections on the Way to the Gallows.
Which is this is a great book.
It's also a collection of Yeah, well so that's oh god, I forget one of the Japanese anarchists Who's about to die? Like that's the title of like a piece.
That she wrote.
And this book is like a collection of Japanese feminist writings, mostly from people who get killed by the state, because that's what happens in your feminist Japan in this period.
Oh yeah, it's bad.
All right, Okay, So I'm gonna read the quote from this. In eighteen ninety two, the government forbid women to make political speeches, and in eighteen ninety mayde it illegal for women to participate in political activities whatsoever. Women were forbidden to even listen to political speeches. The Police Security Regulations of nineteen hundred reinforce these strictures. Article five of the regulations prohibited women from forming any political organization whatsoever.
Jesus.
Yeah, it's like that's like a level of restriction that like, I'm not sure I've ever seen like that explicit level of no, you can't do this.
Yeah, I feel like it's usually implicit in a lot of westerns.
Yeahs.
And then also, like one of the things that really strikes sticks out to me about that is that I'm so used to thinking about I think people tend to think about like this like linear progress model where like you go back really far, like all women and all other oppressed categories had it terrible and then just slowly gets better or whatever. But if they're passing these laws in nineteen hundred, there's an implicit it was a little better before nineteen hundred.
Oh yeah, yeah, it's very specially it's worse. Like so one of the things with the eighteen ninety eight legal coaches that like it literally just legally enshrines like patriarch control the house holds, and this is this is this is a massive reactionary shift in in Serve Jeopardese like
domestic and political culture. Like this is like that that kind of patriarchal control of the household was like a thing in some Samurai families, but like it wasn't a thing for there's a huge number of popular classes like just that didn't exist and they just legislated into existence.
And like.
You know, I mean like the things that the things that they're applying here, like women need consent of their father to marry. It is for this another quote for the book, what are the provisions held that quote, cripples and disabled persons and wives cannot undertake any legal action.
Fucking hell uh huh.
Yeah.
So this is this is this is an incredibly reactionary state.
And there's also like there's a lot of sex trafficking going on, like like actual like there's a lot of people just being grabbed off the street. It's a it's a it is a disaster, and it is into this patriarchal mess that like several generations of Japanese narco feminists step into the most famous of the first round is Connor Asukako, who's she's a socialist author who converts to she's originally socialist, and she con vers anarchism, which is like a thing that happens a lot in this period.
And she she's working as a journalist and you know, she she's she's like she's just a very sort of controversial figure. The government like hates her. So she meets Kotoku and they have an affair. And this is like one of the other things that keeps happening here is there's a lot of like free love stuff going around
the Japanese anarchist circle at this time. And this this has two consequence is one is a lot of men use it to be really shitty and means there is like there is a again, this is this is this is this is the big like nothing has ever changed the anarchist movement. There are so many relationship drama things nothing.
There are so many times this lat circle like like there are two different times when the most famous Japanese anarchists man and the most famous Japanese anarchist women wind up in a relationship.
Uh it ends with it with them explaining the movement and them both dying in prison.
Like this happens twice. Exact sequence happens twice.
It's not.
Like they're they're just they're just doing pollicule shit, Like it's oh, they just the better mediators.
Yeah, yeah, have that well, And I mean this is this is the thing with like the Japanese Like so the Japanese anarchist movement like has a huge feminist wing, but like the men still.
Suck, like they just keep being bad.
And so the other thing about this is that uh Konosukoko is like enormously more militant than like almost every any other anarchists that's alive in Japan at this point. And so in nineteen ten, she gets involved with the plan to assassinate the Emperor and this becomes known as the High Treeson incidents, and the state like gets wind of this. They arrest her, they arrest Kotaku, and they arrest like twenty two other twenty two twenty two other anarchists.
Now like five of these people are like even tangentially involved in this plot, but they this is okay, So I can't say that the Japanese government only does this to anarchists because they do this to fascist like once. But like they do this thing where okay, So they have a bunch of people that they want to execute, right, So they find one person who's like an ideological figure and they're like, okay, you're now in the middle of this and you're the link between like this group and this.
Other group want to kill. This other group want to kill the other group want to kill.
And so they convict uh like Chuosio and kind of Psygaku, Like they all get convicted, they all get executed. Yeah, and so this case is also interesting because there's a bunch of people who the state like wanted to kill but they couldn't because they'd already arrested. They'd already they like this is like two years after like a mass
arrest of like half of the Japanese nargist movement. And so they have all these people who are in prison, and it's like even by like the standards of the Japanese state, it's like, Okay, how are we going to convict all of these people who have been in prison for two years of trying to of like being a part of this plot to kill the emperor that was
like organized outside of the jail. And so this this is the thing that saves like a huge portion of the Japanese anarchist movements, that saves it from literally so like this the hydrogen incident kills like most of the famous anarchists Japan, but it leaves like like a couple alive.
And that's why they're alive because they were all in prison. Oh god, wait, how are they going to kill the emperor?
The plant didn't get very far. I think they were trying to use a bomb, but the police got wind of it like very very early, so they never really got much like past.
The planning stage. This is a shame.
Yeah yeah, And do you know what else?
Never gets very far plast past the planning stage when they're trying to assassinate the emperor of Japan?
Is it the ads because they don't know how to do direct action because they're too immeshed in capitalism.
That is actually exactly what we were talking about, Margaret, Thank you so much, and we're back.
I was genuinely trying to see if I could like think of a company that had like tried to kill the Japanese emperor, and I couldn't think of one. And I was like, hmm, this says something about society.
This does. This is a real, real solid critique we have here.
I really hope that ten years from now this all seems very dated. You're like, of course someone major company has tried to never.
Mind, one can dream, so kind of Skaku is dead is also dead in this This means that it's time for sort of like another generation of anarchists to try to fill in the gaps.
Wait, so they're executed.
Yeah, yeah, they're dead, Like they just die and they kill, they kill, they kill like twenty two of the anarchists or something.
And I mean this is a this is a huge purge.
The wind up executing just like there's just like a like a sympathetic like Buddhist priest it's executed.
When is this?
This is nineteen eleven. Sorry, yeah, this is nineteen eleven. And actually there's another ansty thinking about this kind of Sukaku becomes the first woman ever executed by the Japanese state.
She will not be the last, like oh.
Boy feminist diicon, Yeah, I mean equal rights, equal fights.
There's another like very influential Marco feminist who's emerges lightly after, like just like in like nineteen fourteen, nineteen fifteen is echo Noah. She's an egoist anarchist who eventually.
Like, yes, finally, finally we bring it out.
That's all I have to say about yes, But that's.
Like almost all I have to say. She she she takes over the editorial.
Position of this this magazine called Bluestocking Magazine, which is like Japan's I think she's like, this is like the most important feminist magazine in Japan, and she takes over
the editorial staff about it. And her work is really interesting in a lot of ways because it just it just straight up is contemporary feminism in a way that like a lot of the stuff on this period isn't like if if you go and read the arguments she's having she's arguing that sex work should be legal and that everyone should be able to be able to get abortions because women should have autonomy over their bodies.
Yeah, it's like rule keep winning.
Well, sometimes this.
Is not going to end well for her, but you know it doesn't end well for any of us on a long enough timeline. You know, like all that matters is the time of what were this time we are gularly bad?
Okay, fine, yeah, so yeah, and I think so she's able to do this for like a year, and the Japanese state looks at this it is like absolutely not and shuts the magazine down. And so she she gets forced to move on to other things. And the other thing she moved on she moves on to is being extremely heavily involved in the free love movement of course.
Yeah yeah, and and.
But also, and this is the thing that that's interesting about this sort of period of Japanese anarchism is that like the egoists are all also syndicalists.
Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah yeah yeah.
And she's so she's like heavily involved in labor organizing, and this is how she comes into contact with her partner, who she's like cheating on her imprisoned husband, who will later form the Japanese Communist Party.
Oh wow, that is that's a lot of stuff happening.
There's the there's so much there's so much beef.
It's incredible.
There's there's so this like we haven't even gotten to the wild part of this relationship yet.
Okay, which is so so okay.
So she she comes to contact with her partner pushing who will become her partner Osagi Sakai, who is like dating another very famous Japanese narco feminist who she stabs him in the neck over the fact that he's multiple relationships at once.
So this is really a free love situation from her point of view. Yeah, this is this is the thing that keeps happening with.
Free love of this period.
It's like you gotta like, you gotta lay down, you gotta make sure everyone's okay with everything.
They sure seem to the right things in theory, but then they sure, yeah.
Sure do fall apart. Huh isn't that funny?
Yeah? And this too divides the Japanese.
But did she win, does she succeed? Did she kill him or did he survive that? Okay, Yeah, I'm just I have there's a special place in my heart for split slit throats of patriarch.
Yeah.
Anyway, so oh Saki is also very heavily volve in labor organizing, and he he's one of the guys who like turns anarchist labor into like a serious political force, which.
Is maybe it's that they survived.
Yeah, like it's probably not good. But all of the guys in this story like suck excepts.
Do I haven't accept here. What about the Korean guy who? Oh yeah we got to him. Yeah he's he's I kind of like I think he's actually fine. Yeah, I think maybe the end of his story gets weird. Yeah, well real, we'll get to that in a second.
But yeah, so Osaya Sakai has like he has he has this like fusion of like egoism and syndicalism, where like the individual ego will be liberated through like collective action, but the goal of the workers movement is not to just like end poverty, it's to like liberate the individual and give themselves developments. And he's also this like incredible fierce like like one of his big thing is that like he does not want intellectuals anyone your the workers movements like.
Does not this so absolutely not.
Yeah, and this is because like again he's been around for ages, Like he becomes an anarchist around the time when Kotoku does like that's No. Six, So he's been like around it. He's one of the guys who survives the High Trees an incident because he was already in prison. Okay, all right, it's all he like he's one of the people who like keeps the sort of flame of anarchism
alive after like they're Prussian nineteen eleven. But unfortunately for him and for Echo Noe, they get caught up in the Canto earthquake of nineteen twenty three, which is this like this earthquake between Yokohama and Tokyo alone kills two hundred thousand people. It is like it is like it is one of the worst like natural disasters. It's it's really bad, and it immediately gets worse.
The state wouldn't use a natural disaster to try and further its aims through extra legal means.
Yeah, So okay, I'm gonna start with one of the ways that the genocide of Korean people in Japan at this time starts is so there's a bunch of Korean workers in a long stur union that's been organized by this built and like leftist union guy named Yamaguchi Sakhaan and and Okay, so like they're in this long shot union.
There's this disaster they start doing virtually, they start going out, they start taking care of the vivories, are giving people food, but you know, they're like waving red flags and stuff, and the Japanese police lose their minds and are like, oh my god, they're the Koreans are doing socialism and
they just start killing them. And they there's this whole thing about like there's these rumors start to like Koreans are raping Japanese women and it turns into this thing about like looting, and then like Korean malcontents are supposed to be like overrunning police stations and the lynch mobs those also are mostly targeting Koreans, but they're also target like if you're Chinese, if you're from Buku Islands, like
they're killing you. Two they kill two thousand Koreans in Tokyo and another two thousand in Yokohama, and like two thousand Koreans in Yokohama, that is half the Korean population.
Of the city.
Wuck.
And these people die like horribly, like because and it's not just like so that the police are actively hunting them down. Like the entirety of Japanese society like remembers that they really like killing people and they really like fighting, and like, I mean, you have people like taking their like ceremonial swords from like their ancestors who are in the major revolution, Like they're taking their katanas and going
industry and murdering people with them. Like people just like have fish hooks and they're just murdering people in the street. And this goes on for like, this goes on for days. And one of the things that happens in this is.
Well, okay, so the one of the other things happens.
In this period is that the Javanese government just starts like arresting random leftist and executing them. Yeah, and that's what was supposed to happen to knowe to Eato Noe and Osaga Sai Kai. But they get arrested by a squad of military police led by Mashahiko Amakasu who just he just murders them. There's like conflicting stories of how this happened. There's there's one version of it where like he kills them and like their six year old nephew
and throws their bodies on a well. There's another version of it where they get strangled, and that he strangles him in prison and this is like a huge outrage, but it's not a huge outrage because he murdered them, but he huges outrage.
Because he was supposed to wait for the trial.
I mean, and.
Yeah, and this is one of the things that like this is this is part of how like fascism comes to Japan, is that like he becomes a hero with the fascist right, Like he goes to prison for ten years supposedly, but he only serves three and then he gets out. He becomes a hero, and then he becomes basically the head of like the the sort of fascist secret police and the like mencharian puppet state. But on the upside, he when when Japan loses to worry, kills himself.
So when I yay with the story I had heard was the Throne in the Well story, and I remember it. It stuck with me so much because the first time I met anarchists from Japan. They gave me a zine and it was like Japanese anarchist martyrs, you know, like
the martyrs of our movement or whatever. And I was like looking through it and were all of these children, and it just like really emotionally affected me that I was like, oh, y'all's martyrs include all of these like not like like literal like like six year olds and stuff, because yeah, you know they came and killed not just the grown up anarchists but the baby anarchists or whatever as well.
I know that must have.
Happened lots of places, but it just it really stuck with me. So whether it's true or not, the story I heard was this story about the well and it stuck with me. Yeah. I mean, like the level of repression in Japan, like.
It's it's unlike anything I've ever seen that's not in a country that's literally in the middle of a civil war.
Hm.
Like they just they just like murder people like constantly. Yeah.
And then this is one of the other things, like one of the things that starts the right wing like turn in Japanese society is when is when the earthquak happens and the government is like like they're like the police are being like, it's the Koreans. Need to go fight the Koreans, and so they do and like I mean yeah, like wait, they.
Like blame the earthquake on the Koreans.
Yeah, well, so everything is there's this fire. The fire kills like sixty thousand people like it it consumes. They're like they're they're the urban core of uh uh what's the name of the city. Uh, the urban corep of Yokohama just goes up in flames, like sixty thousand people burn to death, and that's the government needs some explanation for it. Yeah, but it's horrible. It's yeah, the government needs some explanation for it. They're like, oh, we'll blame
the Koreans. And then suddenly all of these people are just like like the whole Jappan society just goes into this total mobilization like kill mode thing and they just murder enormous numbers of people and this and like this has this normous sort of like like cultural affection, shifting people back to the right and shifting people back towards militarism because now they've like you know, like they've they've tasted blood they've like they've gotten.
This sort of sense of it in it. Yeah, it is brutal. And uh, before we go, we're gonna kill off one more anarchist team. Can we kill off the other team instead? I? Unfortunately no, none of them die in this story. It's the worst. All of the assassination attempts fail.
It's so sad.
Yeah, I'm sorry, that's all right.
I forgot how depressing this because I was I was remembering part two of this, which is this like absolutely hilarious, kind of pointless like ideological battle over like things that are kind of dumb, and then I forgot about the first part of the story, which is everyone gets executed.
So the last person who we're talking.
About he gets executed is is Fumi ko Kanako, who is from Ko Kanko. So she she she's a nihilist anarchist, but she's different from like everyone else we've talked about today so far because when she's a kid, she gets sent to live in Japanese occupied Korea, and so she goes there and she gets like horribly abused by her family, which leads to become like leads of her becoming a nihilists.
But it means that like okay, so, like like a lot of the anarchists, like in Japan, talk a big game about anti imperialism, right, and like they will do things like yeah, like they will go fight police to try to stop a warf FM mappening, but they don't
really talk to people in Korea very much. And from Go Kanico was like the exception to that, because you know, she she lived there for a long time and she she winds up marrying Pak Yol, who is a very influential Korean anarchist, and they do a bunch of organizing they specifically like that they're their thing is they're trying to like get they're trying to like ny the Japanese occupation,
and you know, they're doing great work. And then unfortunately the earthquake, she and pac Yol are and stop me if you've heard this one before, They are sentenced to death for a supposed plot to kill the emperor.
Wait now, yeah, we already did this part. You're just repeating, Yeah, yeah, they do it again.
This is the second time.
Like they just keep doing this, and this one it's unclear if there was actually a plot, and if there was a plot, it's unclear to what extent Fumio Kanicoat was like involved with it, But while she's getting interrogated.
She's like, oh, yeah, no, like I hate the emperor. I was absolutely involved in a plot to kill him, Like I was making a bomb to kill him.
Also I'm an anarchist. And here's like an incredibly detailed sketch of like all of the oppression in Japanese society.
And I'm just gonna tell you, like.
The person she's like like the court examiner who's.
Like and am you know, there's there's an internal thing that happens where she and Paciol are like are handed pardons as like the sort of like mercy of the Emperor thing, and Paciol like takes it, but Hugo Kandako like they hand her the paper and she tears it to shreds in front of them, And it's so in embarrassing that like the record of what happened is like sealed until after World War two.
Because it was a big like it was like a big media scandal, all of the stuff with them being arrested, right, And I'm I'm yeah, yeah, I don't actually know more. But I watched a movie once there's a great movie about this called Anarchists from Colony.
This part of it, yeah.
Yeah, and she yeah, and like yeah, it's just like whole thing. And like the government also kind of doesn't want to assassinate them because it looks really bad that. I mean, they've they've they've picked they've they've arrested two random people who like have done nothing, and they're just gonna kill them. But for mechanicals like no, like I believe in the things that I believe in, and I will literally like tear up this part in and die
for it. And so she tears out the pardon and so she goes to prison, and she lives long enough to write like the greatest entry in the genre of a narcofeminist, a Japanese narcofeminist prison memoirs, which is an entire genre. There's like multiple books because this it keeps happening and these people get arrested and set the prison. It's called the Prison Memoirs of a Japanese Woman. It's great, everyone should go read it. It's it's also shouldn't be depressing because her life sucks.
But.
Yeah, it's it's it's good.
Yeah.
And so now having killed off the leading intellectuals of anarchism again for the second time in a generation. You would think that this would this would kill the movement, like I think, I think like ninety nine percent of movements, Like if if you kill their leading intellectuals, like all of them, like twice in like.
Twelve years, like the movement collapses. Yeah. That, but at the very beginning there was the guy who said keep the intellectuals away from the labor organizing.
Maybe yeah, right, well, but this this is Yeah, the incredible thing about this is no, it doesn't it doesn't kill them. They keep going like and they have they have one last glorious, glorious and absolutely baffling hurrah okay of like infighting, extremely weird and funny infighting. Okay, So yeah, that that's what we're gonna be talking about next episode. All right, Yeah, is.
It time for the plug of the plug?
Yes?
Oh oh, Margaret, you have a new podcast I do.
It's about that.
It's on this very network, Cool Zone Media.
On this very network. I have my own podcast. Is it called Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff? And does it I believe so? Does it come out on May second? And is it produced by the webby award winning Sophie Lichterman.
Perhaps, and do episodes drop every Monday and Wednesday?
I think they do.
That is super, super exciting. And you can find that wherever you get your podcasts.
Remember quickly anywhere you get them, like if there's a pedler on the corner who sells you podcasts your pain that.
Gets your pods, get your podcast half off today two for one exactly.
And where and where can people follow you on the interwebs?
Uh? Well, for now, you can follow me on Twitter before the mass exodus at Magpie Killjoy, and you can follow me on Instagram, which we've all known for a very long time is owned by evil people, and that is Magpie No Margaret Killjoy because I wasn't clever enough
to get my own name in both places. I don't know why I am explaining this to you, but you can follow me on social media and that's where I am and I post pictures of my dog that keeps barking in the background while I'm trying to record this episode.
But but if you, if you follow Margaret, you'll see her dog and you'll understand that it is worth it because he is handsome.
And agrees.
Well I'm very excited to start listening to CPWDC. It's just the best.
Oh is that the episode? Episode? It could happen here as a production of cool Zone Media.
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