A Brief Review of the Labour Movement in Japan/Part 3/Chapter 6
CHAPTER VI.
Communism and Trade Unions.
In conclusion I wish to consider an important issue that in Japan the Trade Unions should play by far the principal role in the future development of Communism more than in European countries. The reason is rather plain. In our country most of the leading Unions sprang up for, or as as a result of, the fighting against the employer, and not for the mere friendly benefit nor protection of their craft privileges. Therefore, they are comparatively free from narrow-minded and exclusive spirit, free from such a superstition as draws the futile line of demarcation between industry and politics, between industrial and political action—the political „neutrality“—as British Trade Unionists like to do. In other words, from the very beginning the Japanese Trade Union has been fulfilling both industrial and political functions; and the Trade Union constitutes by itself a Political or Socialist body.
Again, it is only the Trade Union in Japan which openly combines the mass of industrial workers in a permanent form. And the government is now compelled to recognise it as one of the social powers and also to permit it more freedom than to Socialists and Communists who are under the extreme watch of the authority, and this not because o any moderation of Trade Union leaders but because it is backed by the powerful mass forces. Consequently, it is obvious that there is no other way to influence, to capture the mass of the workers for Communism than through existing (more or less legal) Trade Union organisations, whether they are not revolutionary enough or are so.
In short, the Japanese Trade Union is not merely in a position exceedingly sensible to revolutionary ideas, but also constitutes the sole school of the masses for Communism. Nothing is more absurd, more harmful, more criminal than to neglect, to desert the proletarian mass organisations: particularly so in Japan.
The Japanese government pays a great deal of attention to the national education. The official record tells us that more than 98 per cent of the children of school age go to school; (the elementry school is compulsory—6 to 12 years of age—and, as a rule, free). Since 1920, the regular lectures on the social, economic, and political subjects for the workers were started by the Yuai-kai in Tokyo, Osaka, and Kobe.