EMERGENCE OF THE RICE RIOTS

THE FIRST WORLD War lasted from 1914 to 1918. It stimulated an increase in overseas orders for Japanese manufactured goods and this produced rapid economic growth. On the one hand, it produced a new class of nouveau riche while at the same time the increase in prices caused by the resulting inflation was not matched by an increase in wages and so it produced a decline in working class living standards. Meanwhile in August 1917 the government decided to send an expeditionary force to Siberia to try to keep the Russian revolution in check. Rice merchants anticipating an increase in the price of rice began to buy up rice stocks while restricting sales. This spurred an increase in rice prices but the government took no effective action apart from issuing an anti-profiteering ordinance. Prices continued to increase dramatically. This caused difficulties for the workers who had no option but to buy rice to eat and small scale tenant farmers who paid rent for their land to landowners and had difficulty in getting rice for their own consumption.

The first people to take action were the wives of fishermen in Toyama in July 1918. Protests and rioting then spread across the country reaching a peak in early to mid-August but continuing until October. Disturbances were recorded in every part of Japan apart from Aomori, Iwate, Akita, Tochigi and Okinawa, and in some areas the army had to be mobilized to suppress them (Rekishi Kyōikusha Kyōgikai 2004).

Residents of discriminated Buraku communities typically had been prevented from accessing stable employment by discrimination and had little alternative but to rely on unstable jobs such as day labouring. Most were either unemployed or only semiemployed. For example, in one Buraku community in Okayama prefecture only five out of 110 households could make a living as tenant farmers with 1–2 tan of land (between a quarter to half an acre). The rest were just about able to make ends meet selling meat, working in slaughter houses or making zōri (Sanin Shimpō 11 August 1918).

For this reason, women and children from the Buraku had to go out to work in match factories, find work as child nurses, or plait zōri at home to supplement their household income.