The Cannery Boat/Takiji Kobayashi Murdered by Police

Takiji Kobayashi
Murdered by Police

Takiji Kobayashi
Murdered by Police

The latest victim of the police terror against Communists in Japan is the foremost Japanese proletarian writer, Takiji Kobayashi. At the time of his death he was only thirty, but, starting with the sensation caused five years ago by his story The Cannery Boat (which is something akin to The Jungle), followed up by a series of militant stories, his name was a household word. Those stories include: The Fifteenth of March, 1928, For the Sake of the Citizens (these three are included in this book), Absentee Landlords, Factory Cells, The Organizer, Solitary Confinement, The Village of Numajiri, People of the District and the posthumous Age of Transformation.

He had already served several terms of imprisonment, but managed to disappear just before a police raid on his house about a year ago, and was engaged in underground work for the Communist Party when, about 1 p.m. on February 21st, 1933, he was arrested on the street and within five hours was tortured to death. On the street he struggled with the police for half an hour and almost succeeded in getting free. He was finally dragged to the police station in an exhausted condition, and then Third Degree methods were started on him, but nothing could make him divulge one word, one name. His iron will resisted all their torture until unconsciousness and then death relieved him. The police took the dead body to a hospital and got a false death certificate saying the doctor had seen him before death and that he was suffering from heart trouble.

The relatives were then called and the body was handed over to them. His fine old mother of sixty, Oseisan, was in sympathy with his ideas and asked that he be given, not a religious funeral, but a workers’ one. When she saw the body she turned on the police and said that never would she believe he had died a natural death.

Friends communicated with all the big hospitals to get a post-mortem examination, but everywhere this was refused. One hospital did consent, but when the body was brought and they saw whose it was they too refused. Obviously they were acting under orders. The police department had learned wisdom since last November, when at the post-mortem of Comrade Iwata the doctors at the Imperial University had shown up their murder.

Photographs of the body, however, were taken, clearly revealing the ghastly wounds. The branding of a red-hot poker was easily visible on the forehead. Round the neck were marks left by a thin rope. On the wrists were deep handcuff marks, while one wrist was twisted right round. All the back was abrased and from the knees up the legs were swollen and purple with internal bleeding. The police were not yet satisfied. They arrested 300 people who tried to attend the night watch beside the coffin and sent back to their donors many of the wreaths, including one sent by the bourgeois writers’ federation. But immediately comrades set about organizing a big Workers’ and Peasants’ funeral for him. March 15th was chosen, as it was the fifth anniversary of the first great arrest of Communists, which he had told of in one of his first stories.

On that day, in spite of the fact that almost the whole of the police were mobilized as a precaution, and that they did succeed in stopping the presentation of a dramatization of his story The Village of Numajiri by arresting all the actors, workers and students in all the big cities came out into the streets and demonstrated and distributed leaflets protesting against his foul murder.

To commemorate the great work Comrade Kobayashi did for the masses with his pen it has been decided to call March 15th Culture Day, and to keep it every year as a day when the workers will demonstrate in his memory and for the spread of real proletarian culture.