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Who Speaks for Workers? Japan and the 1919 ILO Debates Over Rights and Global Labor Standards

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 July 2015

Dorothy Sue Cobble
Dorothy Sue Cobble*
Affiliation:
Rutgers University
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Abstract

Contrary to conventional wisdom, some of the most contentious disputes over international labor standards and worker rights occurred not between Western nations and the “rest” but within single nations. To explore the deep fissures in Japanese society over the rights of women and workers, I offer the first scholarly account of Japan's only woman representative to the ILO's inaugural 1919 Washington conference, elite social feminist Tanaka Taka, grandniece of renowned Japanese capitalist Shibusawa Eiichi. I recount her efforts in Japan and in Washington to secure free speech and economic rights for Japan's workers, men and women, and detail the hostilities she encountered from employers and organized labor. In addition, I reconstruct the parallel tale of factory supervisor Masumoto Uhei whose appointment as Japan's labor delegate led to widespread labor protests and a power struggle between trade unions and the state in Japan. The debate over who would speak for Japan's workers at the ILO and whether Japan would accept the labor standards being proposed by Western nations captured worldwide attention. It changed ideas in the East and the West about what Japan's workers deserved and desired and had lasting consequences for global politics and social policy.

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Articles
Information
International Labor and Working-Class History , Volume 87 , Spring 2015 , pp. 213 - 234
Copyright
Copyright © International Labor and Working-Class History, Inc. 2015 

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References

NOTES

2. In accordance with Japanese custom, family names precede given names except where the individual is authoring an English-language text. Macrons are used sparingly.

3. Burkman, Thomas W., Japan and the League of Nations (Honolulu, 2008), 57–103 Google Scholar; ILO, Record of Proceedings, International Labour Conference, 1st session, Washington, 1919 (hereafter ILC, 1st session), 5–10.

4. Burkman, Japan and the League of Nations, 1–28.

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7. Article 19 of the ILO Charter allowed the modification of labor standards for countries “in which climatic conditions, imperfect development of industrial organization or other special circumstances make industrial conditions substantially different.” Hetherington, H. J. W., International Labor Legislation (London, 1920)Google Scholar, appendix.

8. On the 1918 rice riots and other upheavals in Japan in this period, Young, Arthur Morgan, The Socialist and Labor Movement in Japan (Kobe, Japan, 1921; Reprint, Washington, DC, 1979), 16–38 Google Scholar; Gordon, Andrew, Labor and Imperial Democracy in Prewar Japan (Berkeley, CA, 1991)Google Scholar, part 1.

9. On the wartime surge of labor movements in the West, Eley, Geoff, Forging Democracy: The History of the Left in Europe, 1850–2000 (New York, 2002)Google Scholar; on Japan's rising worker movements, among others, Gordon, Labor and Imperial Democracy in Prewar Japan, 92–109; Mackie, Vera, Creating Socialist Women in Japan: Gender, Labour and Activism, 1900–1937 (Cambridge, UK, 1997)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Large, Stephen S., The Rise of Labor in Japan: The Yūaikai, 1912–1919 (Tokyo, 1972)Google Scholar; Ayusawa, Iwao F., A History of Labor in Modern Japan (Honolulu, 1966)Google Scholar.

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12. “Japan at the Labor Conference,” NYT, November 9, 1919. For a list of delegates and advisers attending the first ILO conference, ILC, 1st session, 5–10.

13. In reconstructing this event, I draw from “The International Labor Conference,” The Japan Weekly Chronicle (hereafter JWC), November 27, 1919, 831–33; “Tanaka daikien [Great Flame Tanaka],” Asahi Shimbun (hereafter AS), November 20, 1919, 2; Allen, A.M., Sophy Sanger: A Pioneer in Internationalism (Glasgow, 1958)Google Scholar, 152; Nolte, S., Liberalism in Modern Japan: Ishibashi Tanzan and His Teachers, 1905–1960 (Berkeley, CA, 1987), 122–23Google Scholar; and Kerstin Hesselgren Diary, “Washington Konferensen 1919” (Washington Conference 1919), Kerstin Hesselgren Papers, 1872–1962, Collection L-55, File 61, Kungliga Biblioteket, National Library of Sweden, Stockholm, Sweden. I am grateful to Karin Carlsson for translating Hesselgren's diary from Swedish into English. All translations from the Japanese into English are by Yurika Tamura, except where otherwise noted.

14. “International Labor Conference,” JWC, September 18, 1919, 463; Marshall, Capitalism and Nationalism in Prewar Japan, 62, 82–84.

15. Allen, Sophy Sanger, 152; Young, The Socialist and Labor Movement in Japan, 93.

16. “International Labor Conference,” JWC, November 27, 1919, 831–33. Although newspaper reports and other extant documents do not identify the speaker, most likely it was the Committee chair, Constance Smith, a British factory inspector and social reformer serving as a governmental adviser at the ILC, who reprimanded the Japanese delegates for cutting short Tanaka's remarks.

17. Sievers, Flowers in Salt, 52; Nolte, Sharon H. and Hastings, Sally Ann, “The Meiji State's Policy toward Women, 1890–1910,” in Recreating Japanese Women, 1600–1945, ed. Bernstein, Gail Lee (Berkeley, CA, 1991), 151–74Google Scholar.

18. “Japan and the Labour Question,” JWC, November 27, 1919, 797–98, 831. Interestingly, Janet Hunter (“Factory Legislation and Employer Resistance,” 258–66) notes that Japanese employers, “caught in a dilemma,” often avoided discussions of women's supposed biological weaknesses because it might suggest the need for more protective measures.

19. “Japan and the Labour Question;” “Great Flame Tanaka.”

20. For quotes, “Great Flame Tanaka” and “Ōdōshi no shashin to naranda kagaminomae no Takako san,” [Takako in the picture] AS, December 9, 1919, 5.

21. For two astute recent contributions to this literature, Ashwini Sukthanker and Kolben, Kevin, “Indian Labor Legislation and Cross-Border Solidarity in Historical Context,” in Global Unions: Challenging Transnational Capital through Cross-Border Campaigns, ed. Bronfenbrenner, Kate (Ithaca, NY, 2007), 57–77 Google Scholar, and Zimmermann, Susan, “Special Circumstances in Geneva: The ILO and the World of Non-Metropolitan Labour in the Interwar Years,” in ILO Histories: Essays on the International Labour Organization and Its Impact on the World During the Twentieth Century, ed. Daele, Jasmien Van et al. (Bern, 2010), 221–50Google Scholar.

22. Jasmien Van Daele, “Writing ILO Histories: A State of the Art,” in ILO Histories, 18. Van Daele does not cite, however, the Japanese language literature on the ILO. See, for example, Yukio, Kudō, Nihon to ILO: Kuroko to shite no hanseiki (Japan and the ILO: A Half Century as a Backstage Supporter) (Kyokai, 1999)Google Scholar. For an introduction to Japanese language materials on Japanese labor, see, among others, the bibliographies in Garon, Sheldon, The State and Labor in Modern Japan (Berkeley, CA, 1987), 295–310 Google Scholar and Mackie, Creating Socialist Women in Japan, 236–37.

23. Wilson, Francis G., “The Pacific and the ILO,” Pacific Affairs 5 (1932): 497–511 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Ali, Aamir, “Fifty Years of the ILO and Asia,” International Labour Review 99 (1969): 347–61Google Scholar; Yukio, Nihon to ILO: Kuroko to shite no hanseiki; “ILO and Japan—Short History,” www.ilo.org (accessed October 30, 2012); Rodgers, Gerry, “India, the ILO and the Quest for Social Justice since 1919,” Economic and Political Weekly 46 (2011), 45–52 Google Scholar.

24. After the end of the Tokugawa Shogunate (1600–1868), Japanese historical eras reflect reign names—Meiji (1868–1912), Taishō (1912–1926), and Shōwa (1926–1989)—assigned by and corresponding to the ruling Emperors.

25. Scalapino, Robert A., The Early Japanese Labor Movement: Labor and Politics in a Developing Society (Berkeley, 1983), 38–77 Google Scholar; Ayusawa, A History of Labor in Modern Japan, 98–99.

26. On Yūaikai and Sōdōmei, among others, Gordon, Labor and Imperial Democracy, 92–109, part 2; Scalapino, The Early Japanese Labor Movement, chapters 2–4; Large, The Rise of Labor in Japan, chapters 4, 9; Large, Stephen S., Organized Workers and Socialist Politics in Interwar Japan (Cambridge, 1981)Google Scholar, chapter 1; and Young, The Socialist and the Labor Movement in Japan, 16–50.

27. Large, The Rise of Labor in Japan, 182.

28. Large, Organized Workers and Socialist Politics in Interwar Japan, 55–58; Mackie, Creating Socialist Women in Japan, 108–11.

29. Ayusawa, A History of Labor in Modern Japan, 120–24; Burkman, Japan and the League of Nations, 87–91.

30. Hetherington, International Labour Legislation, appendix.

31. In 1919, Japan was a constitutional monarchy with a bicameral legislature called the Diet. In Labor and Imperial Democracy, Gordon traces the increasing power of Japanese political parties after 1905 and characterizes the Japanese political system from 1918 to 1932 as an “imperial democracy.”

32. Gordon, Labor and Imperial Democracy, 127–29; Young, The Socialist and Labor Movement in Japan, 55–58; Large, The Rise of Labor in Japan, 186–89.

33. “Election of Laborers' Delegate Causes Excitement in Japan,” NYT, November 9, 1919; Young, The Socialist and Labor Movement in Japan, 55–60; Japan Times and Mail (hereafter JTM), September 12, 1919; “The International Labor Conference,” JWC, September 11, 1919, September 18, 1919, October 2, 1919, and October 16, 1919; “Japan's Labour Conference,” JWC, September 25, 1919, 496.

34. “Labour Holds Anti-Masumoto Meeting at Meijiza Theatre,” JTM, October 7, 1919; “International Labour Conference,” JWC, October 2, 1919.

35. “Labour Holds Anti-Masumoto Meeting at Meijiza Theatre.” See also JTM, September 22, 1919; “Japan's Labour Conference;” “The Awakening of Japanese Labour,” JWC, October 2, 1919, 510 and October 9, 1919, 541–42.

36. Young, The Socialist and Labor Movement in Japan, 58–60; “Yūaikai warned by Police,” JTM, October 10, 1919, 1; “Labour Delegates Left Yesterday,” JTM, October 11, 1919; “Japanese Labor Ferment,” NYT, October 14, 1919, 6; JWC, October 9, 1919, and October 16, 1919, 589.

37. JWC, November 27, 1919, 822; “Nihon rōdōkaini shinkigen o kakusura (Opening a new era)”AS, October 11, 1919.

38. Sievers, Flowers in Salt, 50–52; 79–83; Garon, Sheldon, Molding Japanese Minds: The State in Everyday Life (Princeton, 1997), 12–18 Google Scholar; Marsland, Stephen E., The Birth of the Japanese Labor Movement: Takano Fusataro and the Rōdō Kumiai Kiseikai (Honolulu, 1989), 31–32 Google Scholar; Buckley, Susan, Broken Silence: Voices of Japanese Feminism (Berkeley, CA, 1997), 306–8Google Scholar; Tsurumi, Factory Girls, introduction.

39. Young, The Socialist and Labor Movement in Japan, 88–91; Gordon, Labor and Imperial Democracy, 92–109; Mackie, Creating Socialist Women in Japan, 108–11. See also Yūko, Suzuki, Josei to Rōdō Kumiai (Women and Labor Unions) (Toyko, 1991), 25–100 Google Scholar.

40. Young, The Socialist and Labor Movement in Japan, 91–93.

41. “Mrs. Tanaka to be woman advisor,” JTM, September 27, 1919; “Mrs. Tanaka, Inouye to Join Labor Delegation,” JTM, September 30, 1919.

42. Young, The Socialist and Labor Movement in Japan, 92.

43. “Labour Holds Anti-Masumoto Meeting at Meijiza Theatre.”

44. “Awakening of Japanese Women,” JWC, October 16, 1919; “Yūaikai hujinbu taikai ni mezametaru jokō (Worker's union Yūaikai women's meeting),” AS, October 6, 1919; Mackie, Creating Socialist Women in Japan, 109.

45. On Ichikawa, Molony, Barbara, “Ichikawa Fusae and Japan's Prewar Women's Suffrage Movement,” in Women in Japanese History, ed. Tomida, Hiroko and Daniels, Gordon (London, 2005), 57–92 Google Scholar; on Hiratsuka, Sievers, Flowers in Salt, chapter 8; on Oku, Loftus, Ronald P., Telling Lives: Women's Self-Writing in Japan (Honolulu, 2004)Google Scholar, chapter 2, and Tokuza, Akiko, The Rise of the Feminist Movement in Japan (Tokyo, 1999)Google Scholar, 204, 212–19.

46. “Labour Holds Anti-Masumoto Meeting at Meijiza Theatre;” Nolte, Liberalism in Modern Japan, 122–23; Tokuza, The Rise of the Feminist Movement in Japan, 115–18.

47. On Masumoto, “The Representation of Japanese Labour,” JWC, October 2, 1919, 510 and October 9, 1919, 542–42, 551.

48. For examples from the United States and Germany, Sklar, Kathryn Kish et al. , eds., Social Justice Feminists in the United States and Germany (Ithaca, NY, 1998)Google Scholar.

49. On Shibusawa and the 1909 mission to the United States, www.shibusawa.or.jp (accessed August 20, 2012).

50. Taka, Tanaka, Tōyō (Blossoming Season) (Toyko, 1943)Google Scholar; Taka Takanashi, “The Change in the Status of Women under the Modern Conditions of Japanese Life” (M.A. thesis, University of Chicago, 1918); Morio, Ichiyama, Noda no rekishi (History of Noda) (Tokyo, 1979), 266–69Google Scholar; Nolte, Liberalism in Modern Japan, 90–94, 118–28.

51. Large, The Rise of Labor in Japan, 172–73; Garon, The State and Labor in Modern Japan, 51–53; Hunter, Factory Legislation and Employer Resistance, 245–48; Harari, Ehud, The Politics of Labor Legislation in Japan: National-International Interaction (Berkeley, CA, 1973), 20–22 Google Scholar; Ayusawa, A History of Labor in Modern Japan, 107–10.

52. “Seihu gawano rōdō komon toshite Tanaka fujin tsuini shōdaku (At last Tanaka accepts the position of government-appointed adviser),” Yomiuri Shimbun (hereafter YS), September 29, 1919, 5.

53. “The Women's Representative,” JWC, October 16, 1919.

54. On Tanaka Ōdō's philosophy and his role in the Taishō democracy movement, Nolte, Sharon H., “Industrial Democracy For Japan: Tanaka Ōdō and John Dewey,” Journal of the History of Ideas 45 (1984): 277–94CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

55. Mumeo, Oku, Nobi aka akani: Oku Mumeo jiden (Wild Fire Burning Fiercely: Autobiography) (Tokyo, 1988)Google Scholar, 38; Tokuza, The Rise of the Feminist Movement in Japan, 101; Loftus, Telling Lives, chapter 2; Nolte, Liberalism in Modern Japan, 118–23.

56. Molony, Ichikawa Fusae and Japan's Prewar Women's Suffrage Movement, 57–63; Orii Miyake and Hiroko Tomida, “Shin Fujin Kyōkai (The Association of New Women) and the women who aimed to change society,” in Women in Japanese History, 232–57, quote, 234; Tokuza, The Rise of the Feminist Movement in Japan, 115–16; Watanabe, Hanako, “Feminismus und Sozialismus in Japan,” in Sozialistische Frauen-internationale und Feminismus, ed. Leirer, Irmtraut et al. (Berlin, 1984), 103–4Google Scholar. I thank Tobias Schulze-Cleven for translating German to English.

57. “Massakini kicho surunowa Tanaka fujin ka (Mrs. Tanaka Taka first to come back),” YS, November 29, 1919, 4. Mina, Yamanouchi, Jiden: Jūnisai no bōseki jokō kara no shōgai (Autobiography of Yamanouchi Mina: Path After Becoming a 12-Year-Old Woman Textile Worker) (Tokyo, 1975), 57–66 Google Scholar; Mackie, Creating Socialist Women in Japan, 108–10.

58. The ILC's Committee to consider labor standard exemptions was quickly dubbed the “Oriental Committee” since only Asian nations were thought in need of such exceptions.

59. “Masumoto Asks for 8 Hour Day,” JTM, December 3, 1919.

60. “Japanese Discord,” JTM, December 2, 1919; “Masumoto Asks for 8 Hour Day;” “Delegate Attacks Japan's Labor Law,” NYT, November 28, 1919, 8; “The International Labour Conference,” JWC, November 27, 1919, 831–32.

61. Hetherington, The International Labour Conference, 14–15.

62. Young, The Socialist and Labor Movement in Japan, 62.

63. The International Labour Conference, 831–32.

64. Ibid., 832.

65. Cobble, Dorothy Sue, “U.S. Labor Women's Internationalism in the World War I Era,” Revue Francaise d'Etudes Americaines 122 (2009): 44–57 CrossRefGoogle Scholar and “A Higher ‘Standard of Life’ for the World: U.S. Labor Women's Reform Internationalism and the Legacies of 1919,” Journal of American History 100 (2014): 1052–85CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

66. Anderson, Mary, Women at Work: The Autobiography of Mary Anderson as told to Mary Winslow (Minneapolis, 1951), 128–29Google Scholar.

67. Ibid.

68. “Japan and the Labour Question,” JWC, November 27, 1919, 797–98.

69. Ibid.

70. Oddly, unlike the other Commissions at the first session of the ILC, there are no minutes from the Commission on Women's Employment in the ILO archives in Geneva. These minutes have been missing for at least fifty years and may not have been preserved initially.

71. “First Labour Pact Reached,” JTM, November 25, 1919.

72. “Japan Makes Concessions in Labor Conference,” JTM, December 8, 1919, 5; December 11, 1919, 906.

73. Tanaka Taka letter, November 12, 1920, published in ICWW Bulletin 8, January 25, 1921, Box 72, File 4, Mary Van Kleeck Papers, Smith College, Northampton, Massachusetts, USA.

74. Ayusawa, A History of Labor in Modern Japan, 194–95; Molony, Barbara, “Equality versus Difference: The Japanese Debate over ‘Motherhood Protection’, 1915–1950,” in Japanese Women Working, ed. Hunter, Janet (London, 1993), 122–48Google Scholar.

75. Wilson, The Pacific and the ILO, 504–5; Ali, Fifty Years of the ILO and Asia, 354.

76. For example, Stansell, Christine, “The Origins of the Sweatshop,” in Working-Class America, ed. Frisch, Michael and Walkowitz, Daniel (Urbana, IL, 1983), 78–103 Google Scholar.

77. Cobble, A Higher “Standard of Life” for the World, 1052–85.

78. Garon, The State and Labor in Modern Japan, 48.

79. Rodgers, Gerry, “India, the ILO and the Quest for Social Justice since 1919,” Economic and Political Weekly XLVI (2011): 45–52 Google Scholar.

80. For examples, Ayusawa, A History of Labor in Modern Japan, viii and Burkman, Japan and the League of Nations, 138–40. Ali (“Fifty Years of the ILO and Asia,” 356) extends the claim beyond Japan, noting that the “influence of ILO standards on legislation in Asia is far more marked than it is on that of Europe.”

81. Young, The Socialist and Labor Movement in Japan, 48.

82. Gordon, Labor and Imperial Democracy, 123–234; Large, The Rise of Labor in Japan, chap 9.

83. Garon, The State and Labor in Modern Japan, chapters 2, 3; Scalapino, The Early Japanese Labor Movement, chapter 5.

84. Garon, The State and Labor in Modern Japan, 52 and Marshall, Capitalism and Nationalism in Prewar Japan, 83.

85. Yamanouchi Mina, Jiden [Autobiography], 66.

86. Miyake and Tomida, Shin Fujin Kyōkai (The Association of New Women) and the Women Who Aimed to Change Society, 232–57; Molony, Ichikawa Fusae and Japan's Prewar Women's Suffrage Movement, 62–63; Loftus, Telling Lives, chapter 2.

87. Tachi, Women's Suffrage and the State, 21–24; Molony, Barbara, “Women's Rights, Feminism, and Suffragism in Japan, 1870–1925,” in Globalizing Feminisms before 1945, ed. Offen, Karen (London, 2010), 53–56 Google Scholar; Molony, Equality versus Difference; Mackie, Creating Socialist Women in Japan, 109–10.

88. Mackie, Vera, “Gender and Modernity in Japan's ‘Long Twentieth Century,’” Journal of Women's History 25 (2013): 63 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

89. Tokuza, The Rise of the Feminist Movement in Japan, 115–18.

90. Nolte, Liberalism in Modern Japan, 126.

91. Tanaka, Tōyō (Blossoming Season), 261–62.

92. Nolte, Liberalism in Modern Japan, 337–38.

93. For some contributions to this effort, Sklar, Kathryn Kish, Schüler, Anja, and Strasser, Susan, eds., Social Justice Feminists in the United States and Germany: A Dialogue in Documents, 1885–1933 (Ithaca, NY, 1998)Google Scholar; Jonsson, Pernilla, Neunsinger, Silke, and Sangster, Joan, eds., Crossing Boundaries: Women's Organizing in Europe and the Americas, 1880–1940s (Uppsala, 2007)Google Scholar and Cobble, A Higher “Standard of Life” for the World, 1052–85.

94. Mackie, Creating Socialist Women in Japan, 110–11; 124–27.

95. Gordon, Labor and Imperial Democracy, 220–30; Garon, Molding Japanese Minds, 236.

96. Sievers, Flowers in Salt, 194.

97. Tachi, Kaoru, “Women's Suffrage and the State: Gender and Politics in Pre-War Japan,” in Feminism and the State in Modern Japan, ed. Mackie, Vera (Melbourne, Australia, 1995), 16–30 Google Scholar. December 12, 1945, the date commemorated as suffrage day in Japan, is when women officially gained the vote for the House of Representatives. Women voted in the national election for parliamentary representation for the first time in 1946 but did not gain the vote for the House of Councilors until 1947.

98. Seidman, Gay, Beyond the Boycott: Labor Rights, Human Rights, and Transnational Activism (New York, 2009)Google Scholar, chapter 6.