Sanji Kishi

“ Walking separately, each carried on his back the precious stones with their carved signs, wrapped in mats. The boys went in front with waving banners. They were followed by over a hundred peasants, bearing stones on their backs. Some of the front ones sang the childish peasant song, but the women and the old men carried their stones in silence, keeping time with the boys.
The snow never stopped. As the procession passed Motomura, the dawn broke.
From Motomura they ascended the hillside to Yotani. All those carrying stones slowed their footsteps. ”

“ Hamamato again scrutinized their faces.
“You still don’t understand? Then let me ask you something. Are you all tenants?”
“No. We have no land at all,” replied Miesima, thinking of old grievances.
“Good. People like you are called the agricultural proletariat, or, if you like, you are agricultural labourers. This class is at the very bottom of the social scale. There are other poor peasants as well as you, however. There are peasants renting a tiny plot of land, and almost starving on it. These two classes compose eighty per cent. of the agricultural population of our land. ”

“ Old and young in Yotani and Simati fell silent. For half a day they looked at each other’s faces and said nothing.
The murderer was a member of the reactionary “Kakusuivan.” In the whirlpool of events following on March 15th, Hamamato was the only representative of the workers and poor peasantry left in parliament. The “Sosi,” the name given in Japan to persons who will commit any crime for money, had killed Hamamato because he was the deputy of these classes.
It seemed to the old men and women as if the murderer’s dagger had pierced their own breasts. And then their grief gave way to rage. ”

“ If you work beyond your strength and give up half your crops gratis, you are condemning yourself to starvation. There can be no victory without a struggle. You must join an organization that will struggle for you, you must join the Peasants’ Union. The very poorest peasantry and agricultural labourers in the country, by setting up the Japanese Peasants’ Union and drawing up a joint programme, have spread the united front throughout Japan. ”

“ And so the poor peasantry and agricultural workers cultivate rice”—here Hamamato suddenly raised his voice—“and the landowners, who don’t do a stroke of work, get half the crop for nothing. The landowners don’t work themselves. Until we drive them out of the countryside, because they’re absolutely useless people, there will be no way of improving our own conditions. You, the agricultural proletariat, without even rented land, must be the first to seize the landlords’ lands.
“Next, those peasants cultivating tiny plots of land must see that they get more from the proprietors’ land. ”

“ Throughout the next few days peasants from Simati and Yotani armed with spades and picks and sticks streamed to the house of Ozawa and guarded their snow-covered monument.
Winter came to an end. The snow melted. Spring approached. The sun melted the snow. The words, “In Honour of the Father of the Peasant Union in Osawa,” gleamed in the sunshine from the top of the monument.
The guard increased to a hundred. Under their straw winter cloaks they hid weapons.
↑ There are over three million craftsmen in Japan, engaged in trades that are considered disgraceful, such as tanning. ”

“ There are two or three strikes a day at Osaka, and it is usually the workers who win them. But the peasant movement lags far behind the workers’. By developing the peasant movement, and linking it up with the workers’ movement, we shall form a united front of the masses in town and country, for resisting our common oppressors, the landowners and the capitalists! ”

“ A struggle must be waged.
Such was the decision come to by six peasant farmers and forty-one tenants.
Forty-seven homesteads from Yotani (“The Hermit’s Valley”) sought out the local branch of the Suihei (“Despised Peasants”) in Otsu, and set up a branch in the village of Osawa.
The peasants who did not join the organization because they were dazzled by the big price of one thousand yen offered them by the company to quit (the average price prevailing at that time being two hundred yen) , rapidly came to terms with the company and bade farewell to their friends and left the village. ”

“ Hamamato Sendzi was returned, much to the alarm of the bourgeoisie.
The elections were over, but not police repressions. The district police administration increased police guards and arrested peasants wholesale all over the province. Houses were broken into and old men, women, and even children were corded up and dragged off to prison. There was not a single family that included members of the union in Osawa which had not suffered arrests. An aged paralytic, all of whose relatives had been taken away, committed suicide. ”

“ If these demands are not fulfilled, the members of the Union must put up a fight against the counter­ measures of the landlords, such as ‘taking away the land,’ ‘forbidding work on rented land,’ and the like. The only way to the emancipation of the poorest peasantry lies in the creation of peasant unions, for the carrying out of this struggle! ”

“ And the workers have to struggle with the capitalists for higher wages, and other improvements in working conditions, through their trade unions and by means of strikes. The labour movement in Tokyo and Osaka just now is blazing up. ”

“ Over twenty of them had been thrown into prison as a result. The Osawa Peasant Union had become the centre of the peasant movement in the district, the motive-power of the whole organization in the Shiga province. Miesima, Ozawa and Kurose had become whole-time organizers.
The day of the elections approached. Miesima, as the secretary of the local Ronoto organization, exerted all his energies to get the central committee to accept the candidacy of Hamamato Sendzo for the electorate of Shiga. Almost all through the elections Hamamato himself was confined to his bed. ”

“ A group of peasants from Yotani and Simajzi, just released, was again seized on March 15th, in their sleep, thrown into an automobile, taken to Moriyama, Kusanu and Otsu and kept there some two months. Eleven from Yotani—including Miesima, Ozava and Kurose—were sent up for trial.
The Peasant Union was continually harried by the police. Any prominent member of a local union was thrown into prison directly after being sent up for trial. ”

“ Very often they had to ward off surprise attacks from the company. When they were abused in insulting language the fathers of families joined together and attacked the company, but they were always defeated. ”

“ And that’s because it is backed up by the Communist Party, the party which is really fighting for the interests of the workers and peasants. Listen! We are against the government of proprietors and capitalists——”
Banging on the table with his fist he spoke about the Party which had issued these slogans. But, first of all, he explained the slogan which demands “confiscation of the big properties and the transfer of the land to the poor peasantry.”
This village had the advantage of much fighting experience. ”