Hitoshi Yamakawa
Hitoshi Yamakawa was a Japanese socialist intellectual, activist, and theorist. He was a central figure in the early Japanese socialist movement and a co-founder of the first Japanese Communist Party in 1922. After breaking with the party a year later, he became the leader of the Rōnō-ha, a dissident group of Marxist thinkers who challenged the Comintern's thesis that Japan required a two-stage revolution.
Born in Kurashiki into a family that had lost its wealth and status, Yamakawa developed a strong anti-authoritarian streak and a sense of social alienation during his youth. After dropping out of Dōshisha, a Christian school where he was first exposed to socialist ideas, he was imprisoned for lèse-majesté in 1900. This experience proved transformative, and he emerged a dedicated revolutionary.
Yamakawa joined the Japan Socialist Party in 1906 and, under the influence of Kōtoku Shūsui, became a leading advocate of anarcho-syndicalism. Following another prison term after the Red Flag Incident of 1908 and a period of withdrawal, he returned to activism in 1916. The Russian Revolution led him to embrace Leninism, and in 1922 he helped establish the Japanese Communist Party. He developed the doctrine of "Yamakawaism," which called for a mass-based, legal proletarian party rather than a small, secretive vanguard, leading to the dissolution of the first JCP in 1924. In 1927, he led the Rōnō-ha in a definitive split from the JCP, initiating the highly influential "Japanese capitalism debate". Yamakawa and his faction argued that Japan was an advanced capitalist country requiring a direct, one-stage socialist revolution, a position that placed them in direct opposition to both the JCP and the Comintern.
After World War II, he helped establish the Socialist Association, which became a powerful left-wing force within the new Japan Socialist Party. He remained a major figure in the socialist movement until his death in 1958.
Early life and family
Hitoshi Yamakawa was born on 20 December 1880 in the town of Kurashiki, Okayama Prefecture, into a family of peasant origin that had achieved wealth and status through the efforts of his grandfather, Yamakawa Kiyosaemon. His grandfather had been a successful official in the Tokugawa intendancy of Kurashiki, serving as Warehouse Superintendent, the most important position a commoner could hold. In contrast, Yamakawa's father, Kōjirō, was a failure who squandered much of the family fortune. Kōjirō, who was adopted into the family, inherited the family headship at fourteen but was unprepared for the responsibility. He adopted what his son later described as a "strict bushidō-like ethical outlook," believing that a concern for money was demeaning. This attitude, derived from samurai ethics and Confucianism, was antithetical to the family's merchant-class background and contributed to his failure in two business ventures: an experimental farm and a yarn shop.The contrast between his successful grandfather and his failed father, combined with his father's authoritarian and often hypocritical enforcement of a strict moral code, deeply affected young Yamakawa. He developed a "lifetime dislike of authority" and a sense of resentment that he largely suppressed due to the ethic of filial piety. He felt alienated from his family, particularly from his father, who dominated the household but did not seem to measure up to the ideals he professed. Yamakawa felt a deep affection for his overworked mother, whose hardships he attributed to his father's inconsiderate behavior. This family dynamic is seen by his biographer Thomas Swift as a major source of his later belief in social equality, particularly his conviction that women were exploited in traditional marriages. He also inherited his father's rigid ethical code, his distaste for money, and an interest in science and rational inquiry.
Yamakawa entered the public lower elementary school in Kurashiki in 1887. He proved to be a "bright rebel," a precocious student who enjoyed exposing his teachers' mistakes, which earned him low grades in deportment. He was an aloof and lonely child, spending much of his time alone in his workshop or roaming the nearby hills. He was particularly influenced by his seventh and eighth-grade teacher, Mr. Itaya, a progressive educator who encouraged his intellectual interests and love of learning. Inspired by older boys who had gone away to study, Yamakawa decided he wanted to attend middle school in Tokyo, a plan his father opposed due to the family's poor financial state and his desire for his son to take over the failing yarn store. After a heated argument, his father relented and agreed to send him to Dōshisha, a well-regarded Christian school in Kyoto with low tuition.
Education and political awakening
Dōshisha years
Yamakawa began his studies at Dōshisha's preparatory school in 1895. Though initially critical of Christianity as a foreign religion, he was soon attracted to the school's strict moral atmosphere and the self-discipline and kindness of its Christian teachers. He felt a sense of belonging for the first time in his life, finding the small, family-like society of the school appealing. He soon became involved in student life, joining a group of seven students who went sculling on weekends and a rebellious group called the Dōkōkai, which led student demonstrations against the school administration.At Dōshisha, Yamakawa's interest shifted from science to politics and social issues. This was partly because the preparatory school offered few science courses, but primarily due to the widespread concern with such topics among the students. He began to read widely, influenced by the writings of Tokutomi Sohō, whose magazine Kokumin no Tomo argued that it was the mission of Japan's youth to build a strong, modern nation. Yamakawa was also deeply impressed by Tokutomi's biography of the late-Tokugawa loyalist Yoshida Shōin, admiring Yoshida's patriotic spirit of self-sacrifice. Another major influence was his reading of the Bible. He had no interest in becoming a baptized Christian but saw Jesus as a "reformist... who became a friend of the oppressed, fought against the authorities, and opposed the old order and customs". His interest in Christian social ethics led him to the works of Leo Tolstoy, whose ideas on simple living and non-violence resonated with him, as well as the socialist-adjacent ideas of Henry George and Edward Carpenter.
Dropout and alienation
In 1897, Dōshisha changed its curriculum to gain official accreditation from the Ministry of Education, introducing courses in physical education and Japanese ethics. Yamakawa and his friends disliked the change, seeing it as a betrayal of the school's tradition of "spiritual education". The ethics course, centered on the Imperial Rescript on Education, particularly troubled him. He could no longer accept the "absurd and illogical" concept of Japan as a divine country ruled by a descendant of the sun goddess. The Rescript's emphasis on unequal hierarchical relationships also conflicted with the Western ethic of equality he had absorbed from Christian teachings. He came to believe that the professor, Dr. Morita, and by extension the Japanese Christian church, were hypocritically trying to serve both God and the Emperor, and his faith in institutional Christianity was shattered.Yamakawa and other members of the Dōkōkai began a movement against the revised school system. In a gesture of protest, Yamakawa and two others resigned from Dōshisha in the spring of 1897. After succeeding in getting his father's permission to study in Tokyo, he enrolled in a private middle school there but quickly quit, alienated by its impersonal and "amoral" atmosphere. At the age of sixteen, Yamakawa dropped out of school for good. He became almost totally alienated from society, recalling that at this time, "I came to view every thing and everyone as absurd, vulgar, and trifling". His interest in socialism deepened, however, as he learned of the establishment of the first labor unions and socialist study groups in Japan.
Imprisonment and conversion to socialism
In Tokyo, Yamakawa and a small group of other alienated, church-affiliated youths began publishing an eight-page monthly paper called Seinen no Fukuin to rally young people against the corruption of society. In the May 1900 issue, Yamakawa and his friend Morita Bunji published articles that implicitly criticized the arranged marriage of Crown Prince Yoshihito to a member of the nobility. The articles hit a sensitive political nerve, as the imperial family was the focus of national loyalty. Two days after the issue went on sale, Yamakawa and Morita were arrested and charged with lèse-majesté. After a secret trial, they were found guilty and sentenced to three and a half years in prison.The years in prison, from age twenty to twenty-three, were a period of profound transformation for Yamakawa. He later reflected that in prison he was able to "look at myself" and realize he had been an "ignorant and incompetent young man," driven by "vain, sentimental dreams". He developed the self-discipline for serious study and, through conversations with other inmates, came to believe that most crimes were committed for economic reasons. He concluded that a just society could not be achieved merely by changing men's hearts, but required a "change in the economic system". To understand this, he embarked on a systematic study of economics. Using a bookstore catalog, he ordered and read works by John K. Ingram, Alfred Marshall, Adam Smith, David Ricardo, William Thompson, John Stuart Mill, and William Stanley Jevons. According to the jugement of Thomas Swift, the time he was released from prison early for good behavior in July 1904, Yamakawa had acquired "the equivalent of a college education" and had achieved "intellectual and psychological maturity," though he had not yet found a clear direction for his life.
Upon his release, Yamakawa returned to Kurashiki and began studying Karl Marx's Capital and the works of Herbert Spencer. In October 1904, his brother-in-law asked him to manage a new branch of his wholesale drug business in Okayama City. Yamakawa proved to be an energetic and successful manager, and the business grew rapidly. However, he felt deeply ambivalent about his success. He was troubled by his growing love of competition, which conflicted with his childhood belief that business and a concern for profit were distasteful. Gradually, he decided that his life's purpose lay in socialism. In February 1906, he mailed an application for membership to the newly founded Japan Socialist Party.