The was a political party in the Empire of Japan. It represented the left-wing sector of the legal proletarian movement at the time.Mackie, Vera C. Creating Socialist Women in Japan: Gender, Labour and Activism, 1900–1937. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002. p. 137 Oyama Ikuo was the chairman of the party.Barshay, Andrew E. State and Intellectual in Imperial Japan: The Public Man in Crisis. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989. pp. 187–188Tsuzuki, Chushichi. The Pursuit of Power in Modern Japan 1825 – 1995. Oxford [u.a.]: Oxford Univ. Press, 2000. p. 533 At the time the party was banned by the government in 1928, it was estimated to have around 90,000 members in 131 local organizations. The party was supported by the Hyōgikai trade union federation and the Japan Peasant Union.Mackie, Vera C. Creating Socialist Women in Japan: Gender, Labour and Activism, 1900–1937. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002. p. 132Tsuzuki, Chushichi. The Pursuit of Power in Modern Japan 1825 – 1995. Oxford [u.a.]: Oxford Univ. Press, 2000. p. 218
Foundation The Rōdōnōmintō was founded in March 1926 as a continuation of the Farmer-Labour Party (which had been founded in December 1925, but banned after only two hours of existence).Duus, Peter, John Whitney Hall, and Donald H. Shively. The Cambridge History of Japan 6 The Twentieth Century. Cambridge u.a: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1988. p. 58International Labour Office. Industrial Labour in Japan. Japanese economic history, 1930–1960, v. 5. New York: Routledge, 2000. p. 113 The party was founded by the Sodomei trade union centre, the Japan Labour Union Federation (a Sodomei splinter group), the Japan Peasant Union, the Seamen's Union and the Federation of Government Employees. The Japan Peasant Union leader Motojirō Sugiyama became the chairman of the party, Nagawa, Abe, Aso and Nishio were included in its Central Committee.Beckmann, George M., and Genji Okubo. The Japanese Communist Party 1922–1945. Stanford, Calif: Stanford University Press, 1969. p. 100
Three members of the Central Committee of the party, Matsuda Kiichi, Ueda Onshi and Saiko Bankichi, were also leaders in the Suiheisha movement.Neary, Ian. Political Protest and Social Control in Pre-War Japan: The Origins of Buraku Liberation. Studies on East Asia (Cardiff). Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1989. p. 125
Party platforms
The platform of the Rōdōnōmintō stated that the goal of the organization was the political, social and economic emancipation of the proletarian class, and through legal means work advocate agrarian reform and re-distribution of production. According to the party platform the established political parties represented the interests of the privileged classes, and that the Rōdōnōmintō sought their overthrow and reform of the parliamentary system. Other demands raised in the platform included universal suffrage (for all persons above 20 years of age), right to form trade unions and to organize strikes, collective bargaining, minimum wages, 8-hour working day, women's rights, free education, increased legal rights to tenant farmers, progressive taxation and the democratization of the military leadership.
At the time of its foundation, a party by-law was passed stating that only members of the constituent organizations of the party could acquire party membership. This was done to prevent communists and other left-wing elements to gain influence inside the organization. The anti-communist sectors wanted to block members of leftwing groups like Hyōgikai, the Proletarian Youth League and the Society for Political Studies from joining the party. However, large sections of the party considered this by-law as impeding the formation of a single, unified party of the proletarian movement. The by-law was hotly debated within the party leadership. Oyama Ikuo and other younger militants of the Japan Peasant Union demanded that the by-law be scrapped. The result was a compromise, that membership was open for those individuals who were approved by the party branch in question.Beckmann, George M., and Genji Okubo. The Japanese Communist Party 1922–1945. Stanford, Calif: Stanford University Press, 1969. pp. 101–102
The compromise did however not prevent splits in the party. The extreme right-wing faction inside the party (represented by section of older Japan Peasant Union leaders such as Okabe Kansuke and Hirano Rikizō ) was the first dissident group to desert the party. In October 1926 they formed the Japan Farmers Party. On October 24, 1926, Sodomei and other trade unions withdrew from the party. The party leadership was now in the hands of Oyama Ikuo, Mizutani Chozaburo and Hososako Kanemitsu, and all restrictions on party membership were scrapped. Sodomei and other moderate sectors founded the Social Democratic Party in December 1926.Wakukawa, Seiyei. Japanese Tenant Movements, in Far Eastern Survey, Vol. 15, No. 3 (Feb. 13, 1946), pp. 40–44
In September 1926, the Rōdōnōmintō and Hyōgikai started a campaign to demand the introduction of five pieces of legislation; a minimum wage law, an 8-hour working day law, a health insurance law, a working women's protection law and a law for unemployment benefits.Mackie, Vera C. Creating Socialist Women in Japan: Gender, Labour and Activism, 1900–1937. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002. p. 115
On December 12, 1926, the Rōdōnōmintō held its first convention. The convention elected Oyama Ikuo as party chairman and Hososako general secretary.Beckmann, George M., and Genji Okubo. The Japanese Communist Party 1922–1945. Stanford, Calif: Stanford University Press, 1969. pp. 103–104
The revolutionary left was also divided within own ranks. After the disbanding of the first Japanese Communist Party in 1924, leftwing cadres had joined the Labour-Farmer Party. One sector (the Fukumoto group) wanted to reconstitute the Communist Party and concentrated their work on underground organizing, whilst Sakai Toshihiko, Yamakawa Kikue, Yamakawa Hitoshi and their sympathizers focused on building the legal Labour-Farmer Party.Mackie, Vera C. Creating Socialist Women in Japan: Gender, Labour and Activism, 1900–1937. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002. p. 227 By the end of 1926, the Fukomoto group dominated both the reconstituted Communist Party and the Labour-Farmer Party, holding key strategic positions inside the latter.Scalapino, Robert A. The Japanese Communist Movement, 1920–1966. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1967. p. 28
In March 1927, the Communist International intervened. A meeting was held in Moscow, in which Bukharin, M. N. Roy, J. T. Murphy and Béla Kun participated, along with Fukumoto and other Japanese communist leaders. Both Yamakawa and Fukumoto were condemned in the thesis issued by the Communist International. Yamakawa was denounced as a "liquidationist", while Fukumoto was branded as "sectarian". The Communist Party of Japan was instructed to organize itself as a vanguard party, working with and within mass organizations like the Labour-Farmer Party.Scalapino, Robert A. The Japanese Communist Movement, 1920–1966. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1967. pp. 29–31 In December 1927, the Yamakawa group began publishing the monthly journal Rōnō, borrowing the name of the Labour-Farmer Party for their factional organ.Scalapino, Robert A. The Japanese Communist Movement, 1920–1966. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1967. p. 32
In the midst of financial crisis that hit Japan in the spring of 1927, the party stepped up its propaganda work, launching a campaign to call for early elections.Beckmann, George M., and Genji Okubo. The Japanese Communist Party 1922–1945. Stanford, Calif: Stanford University Press, 1969. p. 125
The Kantō Women's League, a women's organization connected to the party, was founded on July 3, 1927. The Kantō Women's League was dissolved in March 1928, after the party had issued a directive against the existence of a separate organization for women.Mackie, Vera C. Creating Socialist Women in Japan: Gender, Labour and Activism, 1900–1937. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002. p. 134 The change of position regarding the women's organization was a side-effect of the factional battle inside the party.
Regarding the Chinese question, the party opposed the Japanese government policy and ran a "Hands off China" campaign. The party was supportive of the leftist Wang Jingwei.Tsuzuki, Chushichi. The Pursuit of Power in Modern Japan 1825 – 1995. Oxford [u.a.]: Oxford Univ. Press, 2000. p. 271 The party aided the foundation of the Taiwan Peasant Union and supported its struggles against the agricultural policies of the Japanese governor-general on the island.Townsend, Susan C. Yanaihara Tadao and Japanese Colonial Policy: Redeeming Empire. Curzon studies in East Asia. Richmond: Curzon, 2000. p. 119Wickberg, Edgar. The Taiwan Peasant Movement, 1923–1932: Chinese Rural Radicalism Under Japanese Development Programs, in Pacific Affairs, Vol. 48, No. 4 (Winter, 1975–1976), pp. 558–582
Electoral activity The party launched 108 candidates in the 1927 prefectural elections, out of whom 13 were elected (nine from rural areas, four from urban areas). The bulk of the votes for the party came from areas where its Japan Peasant Union was more active; Kagawa, Niigata, Akita and Hyōgo. The combined vote of the candidates of the party stood at 119,169.Banno, Junji. The Political Economy of Japanese Society. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997. p. 238
Ahead of the 1928 national Diet elections the Labour-Farmer Party issued a list of radical demands, calling for the abolition of all forms of discrimination of subject races and reductions of the size of the armed forces.Colegrove, Kenneth. Labor Parties in Japan, in The American Political Science Review, Vol. 23, No. 2 (May, 1929), pp. 329–363 Slogans such as "Establish a Worker-Peasant Government" and "Long live the dictatorship of the proletariat" were raised in the election campaign.Scalapino, Robert A. The Japanese Communist Movement, 1920–1966. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1967. p. 33
However, there was considerable government interference against the electoral campaigns of the Labour-Farmer Party.Banno, Junji. The Political Economy of Japanese Society. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997. p. 241 Electoral meetings were interrupted by police and election campaign workers were often arbitrarily arrested. Night after night, police forces interrupted the campaign speeches of Oyama Ikuo. His campaign headquarters in the Kagawa Prefecture constituency (where he stood as candidate, facing the incumbent finance minister) were raided by police.
Amongst the candidates of the party were eleven communists.Large, Stephen S. Showa Japan: Political, Economic and Social History 1926–1989. London: Routledge, 1998. p. 122 Kyuichi Tokuda, who later became the general secretary of the Communist Party, stood as a candidate of the party.Lazić, Branko M., and Milorad M. Drachkovitch. Biographical Dictionary of the Comintern. Stanford, Calif: Hoover Institution Press, 1986. pp. 472–473 Another communist, the trade union organizer Kenzo Yamamoto, was a Labour-Farmer Party candidate in Hokkaido.Lazić, Branko M., and Milorad M. Drachkovitch. Biographical Dictionary of the Comintern. Stanford, Calif: Hoover Institution Press, 1986. p. 519