, pen name , was a Japanese socialist politician and trade unionist active in the Taishō and early Shōwa periods. A graduate of Tokyo Imperial University, he rose in the labour movement through the Yūaikai and as founder of the All Japan Miners' Federation, leading major strikes before helping establish successive centrist proletarian parties. He served as secretary-general and later chairman of the Social Mass Party (Shakai Taishūtō), was elected to the House of Representatives for Tokyo's 5th district in 1936 and 1937, and subsequently advocated collaboration with right-wing renovationist elements and the military, dissolving the party in July 1940 to support Fumimaro Konoe's New Order movement. He was a mentor to Inejirō Asanuma, the future chairman of the Japan Socialist Party.
Biography
Early life and education Hisashi Asō was born on 24 May 1891 in Higashi-Iida Village, Kusu District, Ōita Prefecture (present-day Kokonoe, Ōita).東京堂年鑑編輯部編『出版年鑑 昭和16年版』東京堂、1941年8月、pp.93-94 He attended the old-system Ōita Middle School (now Ōita Prefectural Ōita Uenogaoka High School), graduated from the Third Higher School in 1913, and entered the French Law Department of Tokyo Imperial University that year, graduating in 1917.『第三高等学校一覧 大正2年9月起大正3年8月止』第三高等学校、1914年2月、p.237 During his student days he immersed himself in Russian literature, particularly Tolstoy and Turgenev, which sparked his interest in the Russian Revolution. He was also known for his flamboyant relationships with women.
After graduation Asō joined the Tokyo Nichinichi Shimbun (now Mainichi Shimbun) as a journalist in 1917 but soon left.上田正昭、津田秀夫、永原慶二、藤井松一、藤原彰、『コンサイス日本人名辞典 第5版』、株式会社三省堂、2009年 38頁。
Labour movement In 1918 he serialized "From Peter to Lenin" in the paper, openly supporting the Russian Revolution. That same year, with Sakuzō Yoshino and others, he helped found the Renmeikai (Dawn Society), an enlightenment organization for Taishō democracy, involving prominent intellectuals such as Inazō Nitobe, Ikuo Ōyama, Shinzo Koizumi, and Akiko Yosano. He participated in the Thursday Society and, as a senior, in the Shinjinkai at Tokyo Imperial University.
In 1919 Asō joined the Yūaikai (Friendly Society), later serving as its publishing section chief, and with his contemporary Kotora Tanahashi pushed the organization, originally inclined toward labour-management harmony, toward more radical and militant positions. On 2 December 1919 he and 14 other union leaders were arrested during a speech event organized by the Hitachi branch, leading to its collapse.労働 9巻1号 In 1920 he founded the All Japan Miners' Federation and led disputes at the Ashio Copper Mine, Hitachi Copper Mine, Yūbari Coal Mine and elsewhere, resulting in repeated imprisonments. His eldest son Yoshikata was born in 1923; that year he published Swimming in the Muddy Stream.
In 1925 Asō became political section chief of the Japan General Federation of Labour (successor to the Yūaikai). He participated in proletarian party movements and became a central executive committee member of the Labour-Farmer Party upon its formation in 1926. After internal left–right splits dissolved the party, he co-founded the Japan Labour-Farmer Party in December 1926 with Toshio Miwa, Shōichi Miyake, Yamana Yoshitsuru and others. He subsequently held leadership roles (secretary-general or chairman) in the successive centrist proletarian parties: the Japan Masses Party, National Masses Party, and National Labour-Farmer Mass Party.
Around the late 1920s Asō also acted as defence counsel in a disturbance case involving sugar-cane farmers and a Japanese sugar company in a tropical colony (almost certainly Taiwan). In a 1929 essay he described the company's practice of arbitrarily harvesting mature cane without prior agreement on quantity or price, the subsequent police escalation of the commercial dispute into mass arrests and prolonged pre-trial detention, and the colonial courtroom's inability to answer a defendant's pointed comparison with ordinary commercial practice in Japan proper. In the same piece he recounted witnessing a Japanese official (later revealed as a police chief) strike a local boy after colliding with him on a bicycle, and the subsequent intervention by a military policeman that exposed inter-service rivalry between the police and the kenpeitai. Asō presented these episodes as revealing fragments of colonial life and power relations.某殖民地發生的事變 (Chinese translation of Asō’s 1929 essay), Chinese Wikisource
Relationship with Inejirō Asanuma Asō was an important early influence on Inejirō Asanuma. In his memoirs, Asanuma recalled working alongside Asō in the labour movement. On 1 September 1923, Asanuma and Asō (together with Komakichi Matsuoka) were among the speakers at a social-issues meeting in Ōmama, Gunma Prefecture, attended by approximately 800 people when the 1923 Great Kantō earthquake struck.
Asanuma later became involved in the labour movement at the Ashio Copper Mine. Following his arrest during a strike in 1924, he was defended in court by Asō, Tetsu Katayama, and Jusō Miwa. Asanuma also recalled that Asō was among the senior activists at the headquarters of the Japan Miners' Union, alongside Kanju Katō and Manabu Sano, whose activities strongly attracted him to the mining labour movement.
From the mid-1920s onward the two men remained closely aligned within the intermediate current of the proletarian parties. After the short-lived Farmer-Labour Party (1925), Asanuma joined the Japan Labour-Farmer Party, of which Asō became a leading figure; Asanuma served as organisation director. When the various proletarian parties merged into the Social Mass Party in 1932, Asō became its secretary-general and Asanuma one of its central executive committee members. Asanuma was deeply impressed by Asō's personality and wholeheartedly supported the latter's turn toward a form of national socialism that sought social transformation through cooperation with the military.
In a later autobiographical essay, Asanuma described himself, Asō, Jōtarō Kawakami, and Miwa as belonging to the same political tradition originating in the Japan Labour-Farmer Party, which he described as part of the older political "lineage" of the postwar socialist movement.
Asō's sudden death from heart failure on 6 September 1940 was a severe personal and political blow to Asanuma. Contemporary and later biographical accounts state that Asanuma regarded Asō as his spiritual pillar; the loss left him in deep distress and contributed to his decision to withdraw from national politics and decline to stand in the 1942 Yokusan election. This withdrawal later helped him avoid the postwar purge of public officials.
The personal connection continued into the next generation: Asō’s eldest son, Yoshikata Asō, later served as Asanuma’s secretary before entering the Diet himself.
Social Mass Party and Diet career In 1932 the National Labour-Farmer Mass Party merged with the Social People's Party to form the Social Mass Party, where Asō became secretary-general (chairman: Isoo Abe). From this period he sought to expand socialist influence by aligning with the military's “renovationist” elements. Although condemning the Manchurian Incident as capitalistic and imperialist, he claimed it pushed the army in an anti-capitalist direction and became involved in the 1931 March incident. He praised the 1934 Army pamphlet The Basic Principles of National Defense and Proposal for Strengthening It as expressing socialist tendencies in the military and became one of its strongest advocates alongside Kan'ichirō Kamei. With Kamei he advanced the party's shift toward totalitarianism.
Asō was elected to the House of Representatives for Tokyo's 5th district in the 1936 general election and reelected in 1937. With the outbreak of the Second Sino-Japanese War in 1937 he supported the government on condition of localized resolution and non-escalation, approving military budgets. In 1938 he and Kamei worked with Akiyama Teisuke to draft plans for a new reformist, totalitarian party led by themselves and Fumimaro Konoe. In 1939 he attempted a merger with Tōhōkai under Seigō Nakano to explore right-wing ties, though it failed at the last minute despite pushing against Abe's reservations.
In 1940, amid the controversy over Saitō Takao's anti-military speech, Asō supported Saitō's expulsion from the House. He purged party members who opposed the expulsion, including Abe Isoo, Bunji Suzuki, Tetsu Katayama, Suehiro Nishio, Chōzaburō Mizutani and Jiichirō Matsumoto, and succeeded Abe as party president. Cooperating actively with Konoe's New Order movement, he dissolved the Social Mass Party on 6 July 1940, ahead of other parties, anticipating a leading role in the Imperial Rule Assistance Association. He joined the preparatory committee for the new system under the Second Konoe Cabinet. He died of heart failure on 6 September 1940 at the age of 49. He is buried at Tama Cemetery.
Evaluation Asō was described in contemporary and later accounts as an action-oriented, boss-like personality. He believed Japan's revolution could succeed only through collaboration among military forces, proletarian forces, the Emperor, and popular forces. As military dictatorship intensified, however, he supported the military, the Sino-Japanese War and the Imperial Rule Assistance Association while suppressing internal opposition, leading some later commentators to view his stance as war-affirming.
Family Eldest son: Yoshikata Asō (secretary to Inejirō Asanuma; later member of the House of Representatives) Grandson: Teruhisa Asō (Shinjuku Ward assembly member)
Selected works A Labour Activist's Soliloquy (Kinsei Shakai Shisō Sōsho), Ōtōkaku, 1921 The Crowd Striving to Live, Shinkōsha, 1923 Swimming in the Muddy Stream, Shinkōsha, 1923 (reissued by Kaizōsha, 1930) Dawn, Shinkōsha, 1924 Theory and Practice of Proletarian Parties, Kagaku Shisō Fukyūkai, 1924 Those Crossing Life, Shinkōsha, 1925 What Is a Proletarian Party? The Newly Born Labour-Farmer Party, Shichōsha, 1926 An Incident That Occurred in a Certain Colony (某殖民地發生的事變), 1929 (Chinese translation by Xie Liuyi; included in the collection Fan Mou de Fanzui / 范某的犯罪) Talks on Socialism, Seibundō Jūsen Bunko, 1930 Life Exists in Struggle, Ōtōkaku, 1930 Father, Do Not Grieve: A Full-Length Novel, Senshinsha, 1930 The Approaching Crisis of World War: Positively Recognize the Current Situation (National Policy Studies No. 3), Kokusaku Kenkyūsha, 1938 The Meaning of Modern War, Shakai Taishūtō Shuppanbu, 1938 Selected Works of Hisashi Asō Vol. 2 (Dawn), Kaikō Shoten, 1947
Translation James Welsh, Heroes from the Bottom: The Story of Coal Miner Robert Sinclair, co-translated with Yasuo Watanabe, Shinkōsha, 1924
Biographies Biography of Hisashi Asō, compiled by Hisashi Asō Biography Publication Committee, 1958 Shōichi Miyake, History of Japanese Social Movements in a Turbulent Period: The Trajectories of Toyohiko Kagawa, Hisashi Asō, and Inejirō Asanuma, Gendai Hyōronsha, 1973
References
Bibliography
『麻生久伝』（麻生久伝刊行委員会編・刊、1958年） 三宅正一『激動期の日本社会運動史 賀川豊彦・麻生久・浅沼稲次郎の軌跡』現代評論社、1973年 三輪建二『祖父三輪寿壮—大衆と歩んだ信念の政治家』鳳書房、2017年
See also Reform faction (Japan) The Basic Principles of National Defense and Proposal for Strengthening It
External links
麻生久 at Kotobank (in Japanese)