The , commonly abbreviated as , was a Japanese trade union federation. Its roots lay in the anarcho-syndicalist movement, which joined nascent Japanese labour unions in an attempt to influence them towards decentralisation. When the anarchists came into conflict with the reformist and Bolshevik tendencies of the trade union movement, initial attempts to collaborate eventually gave way to a split in the trade union federation . In May 1926, Japanese anarcho-syndicalists established , which brought together unions from throughout the country. It developed a close working relationship with , an anarchist political organisation which supplied the unions with many of their most militant members.
quickly became involved in a series of strike actions and agitated against Japanese intervention in the Chinese Civil War. The organisation's participation in a congress of the Soviet-aligned Pan-Pacific Trade Union Secretariat led to a split between its syndicalist and pure anarchist factions, which disagreed on the issues of industrialisation, class conflict and the structure of a post-capitalist society. Conflict between the two factions came to a head at the organisation's second conference, during which Hatta Shūzō's pure anarchist faction took control of and expelled its anarcho-syndicalist membership. Under pure anarchist control, the organisation orientated itself away from workplace struggles and placed increasing emphasis on rural agitation.
Following the 1931 Japanese invasion of Manchuria, members of began calling for a rapprochement with anarcho-syndicalism, with a view towards forming an anti-fascist united front against the rise of Japanese militarism. Under the direction of Aizawa Hisao, the organisation moved closer towards anarcho-syndicalism, while maintaining much of its pure anarchist outlook. By 1934, the organisation reunified with the anarcho-syndicalist splinter organisation , but its membership numbers declined in the face of sustained political repression. After Aizawa unsuccessfully attempted to rob a bank, Japanese police carried out mass arrests against the anarchist movement, forcing to disband. Its International Workers' Day demonstration in 1935 would be the last in the history of pre-war Japan.
Background Labour unions in Japan were effectively outlawed in 1900, following the introduction of the public peace police law. The first trade union organisation to organise legally was the Friendship Society (), a class collaborationist federation established in 1912 by Suzuki Bunji. The Japanese entry into World War I brought with it a period of economic growth, as well as a rise in inflation, which exacerbated economic inequality. Industrial disputes became increasingly more common in Japan, despite the law officially prohibiting strike actions. Following the end of the war, the rapidly grew in size and received support from some in the Japanese anarchist movement, before it reorganised into the Japanese General Federation of Labour ().
At the time, the Japanese trade union movement was largely reformist. But following the Russian Revolution, supporters of the Bolsheviks sought to infiltrate the trade unions and use them to win political power for the nascent Japanese Communist Party (JCP). Japanese anarchists were also enthusiastic about the newly-established trade union movement and began to focus much of their activities on influencing the unions, leading to the growth of anarcho-syndicalism in the country. The Bolsheviks and anarchists disagreed over how to structure the trade union movement, with the former attempting to centralise power, while the latter advocated for decentralisation.
Anarchist trade unions were largely organised among printers. By 1919, anarchists had taken over the printers' union and established another, , to organise workers in the Tokyo newspaper industry. Seeking to foster collaboration between the anarcho-syndicalist and Bolshevik trade unions, the , and joined together into the Labour Union Alliance on 16 May 1920. But successive attempts to hold a conference to unify anarchists, Bolsheviks and reformists into a single organisation were broken up by police.
As political repression against the movement heightened, in early 1921, many anarcho-syndicalists began to turn against collaboration with the Bolsheviks. Conflicts between the anarchist members and reformist leadership of the also came to a head in May 1921, when the anarchists sought to use International Workers' Day to force a confrontation the police. On 4 June 1921, the reformist leadership withdrew the from the Labour Union Alliance.
In September 1922, a last attempt was made to establish a national trade union federation, with a conference in Osaka aiming to establish an All-Japan General Federation of Labour Unions, but the divisions between the anarchists, Bolsheviks and reformists were too deep to reconcile. Following the conference, 20 anarchist trade unions – representing engineers, labourers, printers, shipbuilders, telecommunication workers, watchmakers and workers from various other economic sectors – published a manifesto in which they called on workers to help them establish a decentralised trade union federation. Following the 1923 Great Kantō earthquake, military police murdered the anarcho-syndicalist movement's leading organiser Ōsugi Sakae and his partner Itō Noe.
Establishment
By the mid-1920s, relations between the three factions of the Japanese labour movement had broken down and the period of collaboration was brought to an end. Many anarchists quit the , leaving its 20,000 members and 35 tade unions in the hands of the reformist leadership. In 1923, the anarchist and unions merged together into a single printers' union, which counted 3,850 members in total. In 1925, the Bolsheviks likewise split from the and established the Japanese Labour Union Council, which counted 12,500 members between 32 trade unions. On 24 May 1926, 400 anarcho-syndicalist delegates attended a conference in Asakusa, where they established the All-Japan Libertarian Federation of Labour Unions (), commonly abbreviated as . Ishikawa Sanshirō was among the founding members.
brought together 25 trade unions, which represented 8,372 members between them. Regional trade union federations were established in Chūgoku, Hokkaido, Kansai and Kantō. It also included individual trade unions which represented printworkers, mechanics, confectioners, textile workers and tenant farmers, as well as assorted workers from other industrial sectors. The organisation was decentralised, with its only central body consisting of a four-person "liaison committee". was the smallest of the three trade union federations at the time.
The founding conference in May 1926 adopted a number of resolutions for the new organisation. It was completely opposed to politics, rejecting any affiliation between trade unions and political parties. It also took a hostile line against trade unions which it considered to be a threat to working-class interests, and called for its activists to forcibly break up their meetings. As most Japanese workers were not organised into trade unions, specifically sought to organise these unaffiliated workers and convince them of libertarian syndicalist practices. demanded numerous reforms, including the establishment of the eight-hour working day, measures to curb seasonal unemployment among day labourers and the abolition of laws it considered to be oppressive. It also resolved to establish industrial unions, to persuade independent unions to join the federation, and to eventually create a network of libertarian labour unions in East Asia.
In the federation's four-point programme, adopted by the conference, it advocated for: the unity of industrial workers and tenant farmers in class conflict against the ruling class; a focus on industrial action rather than politics; a decentralised economy based on a federation of industries, as opposed to authoritarian centralisation; and proletarian internationalism as a means to counter imperialism and expansionism. Its ultimate aim was to establish a free association of producers. The programme drew inspiration from the 1906 Charter of Amiens, in which the French General Confederation of Labour (CGT) had declared its commitment to class conflict and rejection of politics.
The programme also came with a code of conduct, which emphasised that unions affiliated with would be operationally autonomous and free to manage their own affairs as they saw fit. This clause proved attractive to many unions, causing to see an immediate surge in affiliations. Among the new members were: employees of Hitachi; unions in Niigata and Asahikawa; and unions in the Tokyo newspaper and gas industries. As established a strong presence in large factories and industrial centres, it formed several new industrial unions, including national federations of printers and metalworkers. also attracted a number of members of , an anarchist political organisation, and the relationship between the two took a similar shape to the National Confederation of Labour (CNT) and the Iberian Anarchist Federation (FAI) in Spain. Militants of the gained a reputation as the most "battle-hardened" of members and formed a militant minority within it. Before the end of 1926, claimed to have over 15,000 members.
Early activities On 5 June 1926, began publishing the newspaper (; ). The paper carried a range of different perspectives on anarchist theory and strategy, with its second issue publishing an article about the founder of anarcho-syndicalism Fernand Pelloutier and its ninth and tenth issues carrying reports about the nascent Revolutionary Syndicalist General Confederation of Labour (CGT-SR). Alongside works about syndicalism, it also carried articles from an anti-industrialist tendency. In the seventh issue, a Tokyo printworker called for workers to abandon urban industrial centres and return to the land. The author concluded that cities had an inherently exploitative relationship with rural villages, and that tenant farmers were thus exploited by both their landlords and by city dwellers who lived off their produce. The paper also carried some of the most important works by anarchist theorist Hatta Shūzō, who himself focused much of his attention on organising the peasantry. Hatta believed that trade unions should take action according to anarchist methods, and should remain in keeping with anarchist philosophy.
During the first year and a half of the organisation's existence, was involved in several industrial disputes. By continuously organising trade unions and carrying out strike actions, it gained the adherence of many rank-and-file trade unionists. In June 1926, workers at a Hitachi factory in Kameido established a trade union, which affiliated itself to . In September of that year, the union went on strike, prompting militants of the to firebomb the mansion of the company's president Namihei Odaira. During the course of that year, there were around 70 industrial disputes by printworkers affiliated with . Printworkers' strikes continued into the following year, with 36 disputes taking place during the first half of the year. Articles in discussed the best tactics to make use of during industrial disputes and argued against any centralisation of union leadership during such disputes. Together with the , the campaigned against the introduction of "workers' record books", which printing companies intended to use to record data about individual workers throughout their career, including their behaviour, productivity and reasons for leaving previous jobs.