Marxism and the Crisis of Development in Prewar Japan

Rival Imagined Communities: Class and Nation in Japanese Proletarian Literature

“…This, however, was to be carried out in an environment dominated by a strong bourgeoisie, which resulted in the "untenable formula of the revolution as 'a bourgeois revolution versus bourgeois power.' " 10 Japanese Marxists did not all agree with the leadership of the Comintern, however. In fact, early Japanese Communist Party (JCP) leader Yamakawa Hitoshi and others, as part of a group known as the Rnha (Labor-Farmer Faction), argued otherwise.…”

Guest Editor's Introduction: Proletarian Arts in East Asia

“…As a result, the Comintern's pursuit of revolution in China was a major factor in its strategy for the rest of Asia. 25 The Comintern's "Theses on East Asia," which spelled out strategy for revolution, represented a significant horizon of awareness for anyone interested in the possibility of revolution in East Asia.…”

“…Japanese capital controlled about 25 percent of the 25 million tons of annual Chinese coal production, over 90 percent of the 1 million tons of iron ore produced annually in China, and 60 percent of the Chinese spinning industry, the only sphere in China to have achieved "modern industrial development." 27 According to Inomata, this economic interdependence was helping to set the stage for proletarian revolution throughout East Asia: "The nationalist revolution in China threatened the very existence of Japanese capitalism, which would perish if it could not expand." 28 Reminiscent of the optimism of "The Communist Manifesto," Japanese imperialism was said to contain the seeds of its own undoing.…”

“…Lenin and Bukharin saw Asia as the most unstable link in the capitalist chain -and therefore alternately the most likely locus for the start of an international revolution, on the one hand, and the greatest threat to the security of the Soviet Union, on the other. 32 Comintern analyses of the development of capitalism in East Asia could not ignore the serious security problems posed by Japanese imperialism. In practice, strategy for Asia had to put the threat and fact of Japanese imperialism before other concerns; it was not lost on Russia that, if Japan accomplished its goals in Manchuria, it might only be a matter of time before the Japanese army would march north into Russia's southeastern front.…”

Against ‘modernity’: a dissident rant

“…These would not be very interesting statements to make, to put it mildly. First, because they were first made by Japanese Marxists (Hoston 1987) in the 1930s and then repeated by modernizationist missionaries in the 1960s (Morley 1971, for example). And, second, because they are highly misleading.…”