Discerning Connections: Proletarian Elocution, Rhetorical Invention, and Trans-Pacific Communication Satoru Aonuma (Tsuda College) Aonuma@tsuda.ac.

jp A paper presented at the National Communication Association Annual Convention, Washington, D.C., November 2013. That the period of imperialism is the eve of the socialist revolution; that social-chauvinism (socialism in words, chauvinism in deeds) is the utter betrayal of socialism, complete desertion to the side of the bourgeoisie; that this split in the working-class movement is bound up with the objective conditions of imperialism, etc. . . . In order to show the reader, . . . how shamelessly untruthful the capitalists and the social-chauvinists. . . are on the question of annexations; in order to show how shamelessly they screen the annexations of their capitalists, I was forced to quote as an exampleJapan! (Lenin, 1917, italics added) Introduction It happened in the late evening of July 21, 2013. No sooner than the official result of the House of Councilors (i.e., the upper house of the national parliament or the Diet) election began coming out, the Japanese people saw two political parties that curiously declared themselves victorious. One obvious winner was the incumbent majority-coalition led by Shinzo Abes Liberal Democratic Party (LDP). Despite (or rather thanks to?) its neo-liberal, pro-corporate, pro-nuclear power stance and its ambitiously hawkish political platform calling for the militarization of the Self-Defense Forces and advocating constitutional revisions that limit individual civil rights and strengthen the state power, the LDP succeeded, the district constituencies and the at-large proportional representation votes combined, in securing 65 out of 121 seats, making this electoral victory a historic landslide and leaving the left-of-center Democratic Party of Japan, the largest opposition, far behind.

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Curiously enough, the other party that declared victory in the same evening turned out to be the Japan Communist Party (JCP), the countrys fifth largest political party. As political scientist Takashi Inoguchi observed, One of the appeals of the Communists has been the clarity and consistency in their pledges It's healthy for the political development of the country that there is a party that is at least clear in what they say, whether you agree with their positions or not (quoted in Blair, 2013). Besides the newly established Japan Restoration Party, the JCP was the only opposition party that gained, increasing its seats from six to 11. For the first time in 12 years, the JCP secured a slot by the constituency vote in Tokyo, the nations capital; for the first time in 15 years, another seat was won by a communist candidate in Osaka, the second largest city in the country. While these figures in themselves may not look so remarkable, this election victory indeed translates into the historic achievement for the Japanese communists: Having secured 11 seats, the enough bloc is now given to the JCP to propose legislation in the House of Councilors. As Galvin Blair (2013) wrote in The Christian Science Monitor, Some voters appeared to have seen the Communists as the only party able to counterbalance the nationalism of the Abe administration. Although Japan is not yet on the road to a workers' paradise, having struck a chord with the electorate, the JCP may now have the opportunity to establish itself as the most cohesive opposition to the current government (also see BBC Monitoring Asia-Pacific, 2013; Mie, 2013). In fact, for the past few years the successful outing of the JCP in the next coming election had been anticipated. Writing for The Telegraph, a U.K. daily, Danielle Demetriou (2008) observed in 2008: [A] wave of discontent among [Japans] young workers is fuelling a change in the nations political landscape: communism is suddenly back in fashion. What many young Japanese view as an erosion of their economic security and employment rights, combined with years of political stagnation, are propelling droves of them into the arms of the Japanese Communist Party (JCP). New recruits are signing up at the rate of 1000 a month, selling its ranks to more than 415000 A further sign of disaffection among young Japanesewho in recent years have been more renowned for their political apathy than their revolutionary
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zealis the increasing frequency of rallies by workers on the streets of the capital. Earlier this month, crowds of up to 5000 young Japanese workers marched through the streets of central Tokyo to express their growing discontent with the government over working conditions. Speaking in rhetorical terms, the popularity of communism among the Japanese voters cannot be explained without taking into account the current politico-economic climate and the particular rhetorical situation (Bitzer, 1968). Ours is a time in which the young Japanese jobless and part-time workers that constitute the substantial part of the nations potential workforce became turning red (Norrie, 2008). It is also the time when The Cannery Boat (Kanikosen), a 1929 seminal proletarian novel by Tajiki Kobayashi, curiously made the nations bestseller lists one hundred years after its publication (Bowen-Struyk, 2009; Demetriou, 2008). In the words of Kosuke Maruo, an editor of the printing house that publishes its comics version, The Cannery Boat succeeds in representing very vividly the situation of the so-called working poor today. They cannot become happy and they cannot find the solution to their poverty, however hard they work. Young people who are forced to work for very low wages today may have a feeling that they are in a similar position to the crew of Kanikosen (quoted in Demetriou, 2008). Simply put, the timing of the election was just right for Japanese communism, and one could possibly make a case that the communist candidates kairotic response to, and skillful exploitation of, this rhetorical situation was instrumental to the electoral success of the party. Wherever one is coming from politically and ideologically, this poses interesting questions in terms of rhetorical theory and political practice. For many of the underemployed, the NEETs (those not in employment, education or training), and the working poor who found that the communists have been a consistent voice of dissent (Drovak, 2013) and voted for the communist candidates in the last election, it is quite reasonable to feel pleased and victorious about the historic achievement of this proletarian political party. Of course, it is not illegal for the Japanese people to be Marxists or communists, with the varied degree of their class consciousness. It is also true that any Japanese citizen over the 20 years of age can legally cast a ballot for the JCP at the voting
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booth, whether she is a member of the party or not. Can we then attribute the electoral success of the Japanese communists to their persuasive strategies to appeal to the larger pool of the Japanese voters, particularly beyond the proletarian class interest, such as the best use of the online campaigning (Blair, 2013) as well as the extensive use of popular cultural artifacts by the partys Proliferation Bureau (Warnock, 2013a; Warnock and Martin, 2013)? If so, beside the communism-friendly rhetorical situation that the JCP candidates took advantage of, is there anything else that makes their rhetorics uniquely communist and fundamentally different from those of the LDP and other non-communists both in terms of form and content? At the same time, I am wondering if, in the eyes of others who believe communism is not one among many but rather their one and only option, the successful outing of this 90-years-old workers party this time can translate into their own victory at all. The question, namely, is, if communism in Japan has sold its soul to the devil of the existing law and order and completely given up the creation of the workers kingdom (or the proletarian dictatorship) and the dismantling of capitalism altogether. Speaking personally, having heard the news of the little victory of the Japanese communists that evening, what first came to my mind is what Alvin Goulder once called Marxisms nuclear contradiction: [I]f capitalism is indeed governed by lawful regularities that doom it to be supplanted by a new socialist society, [w]hy must persons be mobilized and exhorted to discipline themselves to behave in conformity with necessary laws by which they would in any event be bound? (quoted in Aune, 1994, p.13). This became even more relevant and problematic when I heard the humble and modesty expressed by Yoshiko Kira, the communist who just won the seat in Tokyo the next morning: If we did take power, the JCP wouldnt try to implement a Communist economy immediately. It would require huge changes and we would seek the support of the people for each step And we would want to use the best parts of the current economic system, too (quoted in Blair, 2013). What did she really and possibly mean when one of the winning communists publicly stated that one wants to use the best part of the current economic system, i.e., capitalism? Do the Japanese communists really feel that the support of the people for each step is necessary for the change they envision? In the hope of getting more votes and representations in the

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national parliament, have they given up representing the revolutionary working class and instead started speaking the language of the people-at-large (Burke, 1935; McGee, 1975)? Prompted by these daunting and burning politico-rhetorical questions, this essay attempts to dwell upon the rhetorical-theoretic questions addressed by James Aune (1994) in his seminal Marxism and Rhetoric (1994): [W]hat sorts of communicative processes enable historical actors to see liberatory possibilities? (p.13) and how does actual message shape such responses by audience? (p.27, italics in original). Namely, I am interested in exploring what is to be done if we are to further extend the liberatory/revolutionary possibility of rhetorical dissent and create the audience that can responsively act on their own behalf in the context of representative-parliamentary democracy and the constraint of the existing law and order. To that end, the essay chooses neither to celebrate nor criticize the present rhetorics of the Japanese orator communists (Greene, 2004; Cloud, Macek, and Aune, 2006; Greene, 2006). Instead, in what follows I would like to turn the clock back to the early 20th century and revisit the inaugural years of the JCP and of the Japanese working-class movement. More specifically, this essay presents and analyzes the rhetorical pedagogy of Eizo Kondo, a founding member of the Central Committee of the JCP established in 1922, and his Proletaria Yubengaku (Proletarian Elocution), a peculiar speech handbook published in 1930. Posing a rhetorical question, Is there such a thing that we can specially call proletarian elocution? (Kondo, 1930, p.3) at the outset, Kondo, a loyal follower of Marxism-Leninism wrote this handbook to teach the Japanese proletariat (musanshakaikyu) how to win the hearts and minds of the people solely by the power of yuben, eloquent speech, in the public sphere. In so doing, he was engaged in an ambitious (re)invention of the long-cherished Greco-Roman rhetorical tradition as a branch of Marxist-Leninist agitation and propaganda or agitprop. At the same time, this orator communist forerunner also had to confront the rhetorical problem of Marxism and its nuclear contradiction in his own terms and times, as he sought the achievement of the revolutionary agenda of the proletarian movement as well as, or in the guise of, the electoral success of the proletarian political party in parliamentary politics. To proceed, my methodology here is largely descriptive and in part speculative. After sketching the history of dissident movement and of the implantation of scientific

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socialism, i.e., Marxism-Leninism, on Japanese soil after the Meiji Restoration of 1868, the essay offers a close-textual reading of Proletarian Elocution. Putting Kondos ambitious project in the development of international socialism and the trans-Pacific network of labor movement and Bolshevism (Shoki Comintern to Higashi Asia Kenkyukai, 2007; Yamauchi, 2004, 2009, 2010), my analysis overall seeks to assess how his (re)invention of rhetorical proletarianism (or proletarian rhetoric) came to terms with the liberatory power as well as practical limits of rhetorics own civic-republican tradition (Aune, 1994) inherited from the Greco-Roman antiquity. By implication, I would also like to turn to the question of rhetorical possibility in the working-class and other dissident social movements, discerning how and if the rapprochement between revolutionary discourse, rhetorical pedagogy, and parliamentary politics is ever possible. Post-1868: The Meiji Restoration and the Modernization of Japanese Dissent History has it that 1868 or the inaugural year of the Meiji period marked the end of Tokugawa feudalism and the dawn of new Japan. Unlike in Europe and other parts of the world, however, it did not come with the bourgeois revolution. In 1858, Admiral Perry and his Black Ship from the United States made a port call at the Tokyo Bay and demanded the Tokugawa Shogunate open the country for international trade and commerce. Following this incident, the legitimacy of the Shogunate as the sole political authority had drastically waned; going through a decade of political turmoil, skirmishes and civil wars, in 1868 Tokugawa finally gave up the whole of its authority and relegated its sovereign power to then defunct Imperial Throne long annexed in Kyoto. Back in power, Emperor Mutsuhito and his Meiji government immediately pronounced the Charter Oath of Five Articles. In the Charter Oath, the regime not only promised the abolition of the feudal class system but also declared, All affairs of State shall be referred to public opinion through general conferences, The government and the people shall act in harmony in energetically carrying out administrative matters, Evil customs of the past shall be broken off and everything based upon the just laws of Nature, and The foundation of the Imperial Regime shall be strengthened by the acquisition of knowledge from throughout the world. In the simplest term, post-1868 Japan was both pre-modern and modern. In the

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first place, it was still anachronistically imperial and despotic. After all, as the very cornerstone of the countrys political structure, the divinity and authority of Emperor and Imperial Throne were based on mythological foundation (Eder, 1969, p.19), e.g., ancient documents such as Kojiki (Record of Ancient Matters) and Nihon Shoki (The Chronicle of Japan). As historians rightly coin, what happened in 1868 was thus not exactly the Revolution but rather the Restoration, i.e., the reestablishment of the ancient and sacred imperial power (Nimura, 1990). In addition, appointed by Imperial Throne, most of the governmental officials were the self-assigned patriots and the powerful few coming from the southwestern clans, notably of Satsuma and Choshu; all the affairs of the state were practically controlled by a self-perpetuating oligarchy consisted of the nobility, the military, the bureaucracy, and the great industrial interests (Colbert, 1952, p.4). Further, taking advantage of the Japanese attitudes and characters nurtured by the feudalism that had lasted for more than two hundred years, the political power of the regime was premised upon the nations unquestioning acceptance of absolute paternal authority and the subordination of the individual to the interests of the divine mission of the state (Colbert, 1952, p.4). At the same time, post-1868 Japan did exhibit some modern characters, as the Meiji regime began aggressively engaged in modernizing the country soon after it assumed the political power. The government leaders felt the pressing need to transform the backward nation to a modern industrial economy as well as to a military power, as they wanted to protect from, and to possibly compete against, industrial and military powers of the West. In fact, achieving the countrys industrialization/westernization was the most important political imperative for the ruling oligarchy, as they had seen the fall of the Tokugawa Shogunate due to the foreign pressures and its diplomatic mishandling. And, to achieve this divine mission of the state, the regime took the advantage of the pre-modern, feudal national attitudes still prevalent in post-Restoration Japan and inaugurated an intensive program of westernization (Kublin, 1952, p.258) by way strong Imperial order and rhetorical slogans. As historian Kazuo Nimura (1990) observed: Under the slogan of fukoku-kyohei (a rich nation and a strong army) and shokusan-kougyo (develop industry and promote enterprise), the Meiji

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government energetically set about importing modern technology and know-how. State-run factories and plants were established in all the main sectors of industry as well as in armaments, in railways, telegraphy, mining, engineering, textiles, glass, brick making and printing. Imported foreign machinery was used in these factories and foreign technical experts were employed at high salaries to instruct in their use and manufacture until the Japanese were able to carry on by themselves. Factories in these sectors of industry had already been established by the shogunate and by clan authorities, but with the introduction of western techniques and equipment, they greatly increased in scale as they were directly funded by the Meiji government which also established a number of new state-owned yards. It is true that the Meiji government was successful for a while. Restored Imperial Throne remained intact and strong. No major unrest or coup attempts resulting the violent overthrow of the government took place. Having enabled the countrys industrialization and westernization in a relatively short period of time, the oligarchical government also succeeded in achieving its political goal of modernization. However, this newly (re)created Japanese state was not without enemies; nor was it dissension-free. After all, Japan is historically a country with a strong tradition of grassroots uprising and unrest that challenge the established political authority (Krauss, Rohlen, and Steinhoff, 1984). Even under the Tokugawa feudalism, many dissident movements (e.g., hyakusho ikki, yonaoshi ikki, Ohshio Heihachiro no ran, Sakura Sogoro no ran) took place throughout the nation. It was more so after the Meiji Restoration. As Tetsuo Najita, a renowned scholar of the modern Japanese history, stated, during the early Meiji period [d]issension and vehement debates were evident in virtually every domain (quoted in Branham, 1994, p.146). As the regime was still controlled by the oligarchy of the powerful few, those felt and were actually disenfranchised did exist. And having discovered their political ambitions firmly blocked by the tightly knit new camarilla dominating the machinery of state (Kublin, 1952, p.260), as early as five years after the Restoration, the first major wave of political movement and dissension against the Meiji regime came in. In 1874, Taisuke Itagaki, an ex-samurai of Tosa, organized a group of disenfranchised commoners and began expressing

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their grievance, anger, and discontent against the government. The movement soon spread nationwide; literally hundreds of others joined Itagakis call by forming similar groups (Minken Kessha or Peoples Rights Association) and engaging political protest and dissension against the regime in unison. This is how the famous Freedom and Peoples Rights (or the Liberty and Popular Rights) Movement (Jiyu minken undo), the first-ever democratic movement (Imanishi, 1991; Irokawa, 1981; Ohata, 1987) in new Japan, broke out. While sharing the spirit of dissension with the past uprising and protests of the feudal era, this post-1868 dissent did exhibit the uniquely modern characters. In the simplest term, the participants of the Freedom and Peoples Rights Movement were more progressive than the pre-Restoration forerunners and strove to achieve the stated goal of modernization too seriously and literally than the government leaders envisioned. It is important to be reminded that the Meiji Restoration ended not only feudalism but also some two hundred years of national seclusion policy by the Shogunate. And encouraged by the Charter Oath, the people in new Japan were aggressively engaged in the acquisition of knowledge from throughout the world and breaking off with the evil customs of the past. Namely, as the modernization and westernization went beyond the domain of industrial economy and commerce, the Meiji Restoration not only enabled fukoku-kyohei (a rich nation and a strong army) and shokusan-kougyo (develop industry and promote enterprise) of the country; it also commenced the Age of Enlightenment (Miyagawa, 1971). And as a score of reformers began to promote the view that their country should identify with the progressive West (Okabe, 1973, p.189), those who turned to dissension during the early Meiji era were greatly influenced by this enlightenment movement. Perhaps the most famous among the enlightenment thinkers of this era was Yukichi Fukuzawa. The author of Gakumon no Susume (Encouragement of Learning), Bunmeironn no Gairyaku (An Outline of Theory of Civilizations), and Kaigiben (Parliamentary Speaking), Fukuzawa strongly attacked the feudal law and order, Confucianism and other old and eastern ways of life, calling for the fundamental change in the nations way of thinking and westernization of the Japanese political culture (Ohno, 2003; Okabe, 1973). Among others were Amane Nishi, the founder of Meiroku Zasshi, a journal devoted to the promulgation of the thought and

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philosophy of the progressive West, and Chomin Nakae who translated and introduced the political philosophy of Jean-Jacques Rousseau to the Japanese (Hirai, 2000; Matsunaga, 2001). Both in form and content as well as in method and goal, these progressive and western characters of the post-1868 dissension were fully embraced by those who took part in the Freedom and Peoples Rights Movement. First, whereas the angry farmers and craftsmen in the feudal era attempted physical beating-up, coercive punishment, or even death (e.g., forced suicide), of bad guys (e.g., local clans, feudal lords and superiors, etc.) in power, what they demanded was political participation in governmental affairs and their fair share of representation in state power. More specifically, calling on the Meiji government to keep the promise made in the Charter Oath, the main contention put forth by the Peoples Rights Associations was the installation of the popularly-elected national parliament in which all affairs of state will be referred to public opinion. In addition, unlike the dissenting movements in the past era that often resulted in direct confrontation, physical fighting, and killing, these modern dissidents did not resort to physical violence and coercion (at least not overtly) to get their voices heard. More specifically put, the Peoples Rights Associations were not only dissident political agents; they were also educational organs where Association members had access to modern western thought and were engaged in self-enlightenment by exposing themselves to intellectual discourse (Aonuma, 2012). As part of their daily activities, for instance, the members were reading and studying some classics in western political philosophy such as Adam Smith, John Locke, and John Stuart Mills (Ohata, 1987). Instead of going with the old-fashioned sword fighting, therefore, even Itagaki, the ex-samurai, and his group whose dissension ignited the Movement nationwide refrained from taking direct action and went out rather intellectually and civilly, as they knew a more subtle means of invading the inner sanctum of the political elite. The weapon they employ was liberalism (Kublin, 1952, p.260). Finally, as thought, not swords or fists, became their chief weapon, the primary site of struggle in the Movement was not in violent street riot or destructive sabotage of the government buildings but rather in gatherings and meetings where the Association members loudly vocalized their dissension through public address, i.e., political oratory and

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policy debating, another new technology imported from the West, in front of the audience of the general public. As communication scholar Roichi Okabe (1973) observed, In Japan the flower of western rhetoric actually bloomed in the enlightenment movement of the Meiji period This fact should be understood in the historical perspective of the era (p.187; also see Takahashi, 1985; Tomasi, 2004). For instance, members of Shonankai, one Peoples Rights Association in Tokyos southwestern suburb, are known to have discussed topics such as the purpose of the government, the nature of representative democracy, and the question of the national sovereignty (Ohata, 1987, p.88). Other topics of the day typically and nationally discussed and debated include the issue of equal rights, the legality of prostitution, and the abolition of the death penalty (Gaikotsu, 1929, p.106-107). As Gaikotsu wrote in his Meiji Enzetsu Shi (History of Oratory in the Meiji Era) (1929), it is in these political discourses emerging at the height of the Freedom and Peoples Rights Movement that oppositions to the dictatorial government, resistance of popular rights advocates, and clash between the people and the authorities(front cover) were to be found. Capitalism, Marxism, and the Politicization of the Dissenting Labor In retrospect, the political success of the Freedom and Peoples Rights Movement was unfortunately limited. Once flourished as the nationwide political movement, it officially ceased when the Meiji government pronounced the Imperial Constitution and installed the Imperial Diet in 1890. Consisting of the Houses of Peers and of Representatives, the Diet was, prima facie, the one promised in the 1868 Charter Oath, i.e., the place for general conferences where all affairs of State shall be referred to public opinion. And [b]y dint of their vociferous agitation and political maneuvering (Kublin, 1952, p.261), some dissenting liberals of the Peoples Rights Associations did succeed in securing their share of political representation there. For instance, Itagaki, the disenfranchised ex-samurai whose initial call ignited the Movement, won the election and became a member of the House of Representatives. If the Movement was really an attempt at what historians (Irokawa, 1981, 1991; Ohata, 1987) call the peoples politico-cultural revolution, however, this was hardly a success as it failed to bring about the fundamental

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change in the political culture as well as the structure of the government in post-1868 Japan. In the first place, the membership of the House of Peers was made by appointment, namely only by and for the nobility, for which no popular election was held. Second, while the election was held for the House of Representatives, the suffrage was granted only to males over 25 years of age with substantial personal wealth (paying over annual amount of 15 yen of individual income tax), which comprised only 1.1 percent of the entire Japanese population at that time. And to run for office, one had to be males over 30 years of age having the same amount of wealth. In other words, even after 1890, the vast majority of the commoners were still disenfranchised and, once elected to the Diet, a small number of the (former) Movement dissidents were coopted and rather became part of the political few that still controlled the post-1868 regime. So restricted and qualified were the basic rights and powers granted to the people, said Kublin (1952), that the net effect of the political reform in 1890, rather, was to hamstring liberalism and reinforce despotism (p.261) of the Meiji government. Meanwhile, the drive for the countrys modernization and industrialization still continued all through this period. Thanks to the government-initiated aggressive programs of modernization, nationalization, and further importation of western technology, by the early 20th century, Japan had established its name as the first non-western country to succeed in industrialization. In the textile industry, for instance, Japanese export of raw silk overtook those of Italy and then soon of China, becoming the worlds leading exporter in 1909 (Nimura, 1990). In the heavy industry, the post-1868 introduction of western technology and its diffusion enabled the drastic increase in production of steel, copper, and coal. This not only resulted in the increase in export but also became the motive power for the various [other] burgeoning domestic industries (Nimura, 1990), such as railroads, armament production, and ship-building. Especially after when Japan defeated China in 1895 and then Imperial Russia in 1905, its presence became the most evident among the worlds other major powers. And it is precisely in this development that modern Japan recognized itself, and was recognized by others, as a newly emerging competition in the world of imperialism, colonialism, and war capitalism. At the same time, with the worlds other rivaling economic and military powers,

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modern Japan had its share of the problem brought about by its own economic industrialization, namely the drastic increase of labor disputes and trade union activities, the politicization of the working-class movement, and the rise of socialism. The introduction of an industrial economy in Japan in the post-Restoration period brought with it the labor problems of the West Despite official disfavor, frequently manifesting itself in arrests, interruptions of meetings, suspension of publications, and dissolution of organizations, a number of leaders emerged who devoted themselves to the organization of trade unions and political groups (Colbert, 1952, p.7).1 During the first two decades after the Restoration, the recorded occurrence of labor dispute was just spontaneous mainly in the form of small riot and disturbance. In 1882, the very first strike by the mining workers was recorded and it soon outnumbered riots and disturbances. In the textile industry, three successive strikes by silk workers were first recorded in 1885 and 1886; after 1888 the number of disputes involving textile workers per year became double-digit. Then the first major wave of dissenting labor movement came in 1897. From this very year on, the total number of labor disputes became consistently three-digit. With the beginning of the modern Japanese trade union movement with the establishment of a union for metal workers, the country also began to see the drastic increase of labor disputes in modern industriesfactories, mines, and railwaysand the beginning of organized preparation for industrial action rather than spontaneous outbursts(Nimura,1990). The second major wave came in 1907 when two large-scale riots took place in Ashio, a small village near Nikko and the home of the countrys leading copper mine, and at the other mine in Bessho in the countrys southwest island of Shikoku, which could only be suppressed by the use of troops. With major disputes in mines, military arsenals and shipyards, the year 1907 saw more than 230 disputes and at least 130 strikes in total involving tens of thousands of workers (Nimura, 1990). It is important to note that the impetus that drove the Japanese labor to organized Unless otherwise indicated, the description of the historical events in this essay is based upon the labor and social movements database compiled and published by the Ohara Institute for Social Research at Hosei University, Japan (http://oohara.mt.tama.hosei.ac.jp/kensaku/fukkoku.html).
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dissent and sparked the trade union movement was found in the political-economic contradiction created by the modernization policy of the Meiji regime. Put simply, just as the Freedom and Peoples Rights Movement, it was in part, a by-product of post-1968 modernization and enlightenment. In the first place, although it succeeded in turning the backward country into one of the worlds major industrial economies and military powers, the policy of the Meiji government had negative side effects on the nations standard of living as it virtually ignored, or even ran counter to, the peoples wants and needs. Namely, while the country had gotten richer and stronger, the people became poorer and economically less secure in modernized Japan. Coming in less than two years after the war with China, for instance, 1897 marked the year of significant price hike, as the government, intending to secure more revenues for arms production and other spending to strengthen the military force of the state, imposed monopoly on tobacco and raised taxes on other products, notably liquor. The same can be said of what happened in 1907 when the people saw the fall of their wages as well as the sharp price increase and inflation. It is evident that, by this time, Japan had become a captive of the vicious cycle created by war capitalism. To wage and win the war against Russia, the government spent eight times as much as the entire national budget which it hoped to cover by the revenue generated through massive tax increase as well as massive foreign loans from the western industrial powers (Itaya, 2012). After the war, [The government] further tightened the tobacco monopoly and issued great number of Bank of Japan notes to pay back foreign loans; it also introduced a new state monopoly on salt which particularly hard-hit the people, for it had substantial effects on the price of staples such as miso (bean paste) and shoyu (soy sauce) (Nimura, 1990). Yet, economy was not the only reason that motivated these workers to organize and to engage dissent and unrest in this period. Another factor that should be taken into consideration has to do with the moral and social question, i.e., the status of the ordinary, i.e., blue collar worker as an individual human being. Systemically, post-1868 Japan still retained the feudal law and order inherited from the Tokugawa Shogunate where things were organized vertically and hierarchically and the inferior were supposed to blindly conform to the superior. Thanks to the end of national seclusion and the enlightenment movement, however, following the liberal commoners of the Peoples Rights Associations

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who dissented, albeit in vain, against despotism of the post-1868 regime, the working people also began departed from the bad customs of the past. Namely, the Japanese national character had become different from the one in the pre-1868 era; their politico-cultural mentality changed in such a way that it enabled and allowed the questioning of unreasonable demands and unfair treatment by those who were in power. Put simply, the working Japanese just woke up and rose, quite literally as the lyrics of The Internationale goes: Our own right hand the chains must shiver; chains of hatred, greed and fear. So comrades, come rally; and the last fight let us face. The Internationale unites the human race. As Nimura (1990) pointed out: Few labor disputes in Japan have ever simply been a matter of economics; most have included or even been centred round strongly moral or emotional issues. The root cause of many disputes which suddenly flared up, revealing the workers daily frustration, was a resentment of discrimination, which led to demands to be treated equally. Engineers and foremen tended to make their contempt for ordinary workers only too clear, and this contempt, along with a lack of good faith and a disregard for simple humanity on the part of owners and managers, was a major factor contributing to the increase in labor unrest. There is little question that the contradiction of capitalist political economy experienced by the working people in the post-enlightenment/post-Restoration period was responsible for the drastic increase of organized and dissenting labor. At the same time, however, what was behind the backdrop was not only these workers own experience or liberalism they inherited from the Freedom and Peoples Rights Movement: At the centurys turn, the Japanese people were further enlightened and mobilized by additional foreign sources and new international experiences. It is important to note that, even after the Freedom and Peoples Rights Movement ceased in 1890, the enthusiasm for the further enlightenment and the acquisition of new knowledge among the post-1868 intellectuals was consistently aggressive and even more remarkable. And unlike the members of the Peoples Rights Associations, in the process of the further enlightenment what they found inspiring was not only Anglo-Saxon and French liberalism. More specifically, they were attracted to the writing of one particular German thinker that was not so liberal or even was critical of

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it; intrigued by his radical yet promising revolutionary insight, these intellectuals eventually inaugurated a politico-intellectual movement by his name, i.e., Marxism.2 In the early 1890s, Toshihiko Sakai and Shusui Kotoku, two prominent and progressive writer-journalists of the time, encountered the writings of Karl Marx and Frederick Engels; having found them valuable and overwhelming, Sakai and Kotoku soon began translating these works into Japanese, including their Communist Manifesto (Ohkouchi, 1972; Tamaoka, 2009). In 1904, the first Japanese-translated Manifesto came out in The Commoners Newspaper (Heimin Shinbun), a radical progressive weekly they co-founded. During the next two decades that followed, other major works of Marx and Engels as well as other Marxist literature were also translated and began widely circulated among the Japanese intellectual circles, including a full translation of Capital completed in 1924. More significantly, there emerged a host of home-grown Marxist thinkers on Japanese soil; soon it would have been hard to find an intellectual who did not broadly agree with Marxs basic diagnosis of the problems of capitalist society (Goto-Jones, 2006, p.5; also see, Ota, 1999; Tsuzuki, 1962). Works of these Japanese authors appeared not only in radical-progressive outlets but also in commercial publications that aimed at more general readership; the quality and quantity of these Marxist works published in Japan almost reached those in Germany during this time. For instance, 23 percent of the articles printed in one issue of Chuo Koron (Central Review), the nations leading mass-circulated monthly, were on the issue of Marxism and workers revolution (Silverberg, 1990, p.47-48). As Masao Maruyama, one of the most noted political thinkers in 20th century Japan, reminisced, it is in this period that Marxism [swept] through the Japanese intelligentsia like a whirlwind (quoted in Goto-Jones, 2006, p.5) as the political philosophy/social theory alternative to liberalism, despotism and capitalism. In addition, the other equally important wave of new knowledge curiously came from the United States, the country that singularly enjoyed the most favored nation status in Japans international trade and diplomatic policy. Recall it is the pressure from the United States, i.e., Admiral Perry and his Black Ships port call in 1858, that forced the country to Unless otherwise indicated, the description of the socialist and Marxist-Leninist movements in this essay is based upon Koyama (1956) and Matsuzawa (1973).
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end the two hundred years of national seclusion; it should also be noted that, when Japan opened its doors to the rest of the world, the very first international treaty ever signed was the Treaty of Amity and Commerce with the United States. Because of this special bilateral relationship, all through the early phase of the countrys modernization more Japanese traveled to the United States (Hawaii and the Continental United States combined) than to any other country in the world (http://www.kajima.co.jp/gallery/kiseki/kiseki29/). The purpose of visit for these trans-Pacific travelers was varied. While some visited the United States on business or diplomatic missions, some others sought permanent immigration. Still the majority of others, especially the youth, took the trans-Pacific travel to participate in education and training, e.g., short-term study tour, vocational training, and long-term degree and certificate programs. And especially for these trainees and students who were not economically affluent, the United State was a very attractive destination; for them, in fact, the only foreign country they could travel was America, where the Social Gospel movement was at its peak (Nimura, 1990). Upon landing on American soil, however, these Japanese not only enjoyed what the land of freedom, equality and opportunity could offer; they were also forced to see the reality of the brave new world where the working Americans were exploited yet eagerly participated in sustaining the capitalist political economy by way of mass consumption and production. And while they chiefly sought the acquisition of academic knowledge and practical skills, some were even exposed to part of the American culture whereby the drive for industrial modernization was seriously called into question. Namely, these Japanese were inspired by the grievances of the men who had been drawn into work at the newly created metal, machines, and railroad industries, namely, trade unionism from the United States (Totten, 1966, p.16) as well as the Christian tradition of humanitarian idealism and socialism where the Protestant Churches were deeply perturbed by the alarming growth of plutocracy and Mammonism (Kublin, 1952, p.262). Perhaps the most notable among these Japanese who were converted in the United States was Sen Katayama (Ohkouchi, 1972). Born in 1859, a year after Japan opened itself to the rest of the world, Katayama went to the United States at the age of 25. While working at a local kitchen, he studied at Iowas Grinnell College. After graduation,

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he entered the theological seminary at Yale; earning an advanced degree in Classics, he came back to Japan in 1896, at the age of 37. Back in Tokyo, Katayama immediately initiated the countrys first Settlement Movement by which he sought to improve the welfare of those who were socio-economically disadvantaged and less-fortunate, a project that most likely came out from his faith in Christianity and humanitarianism. Along with the Settlement Movement, Katayama also became involved in labor movement perhaps for the same reason. In 1897, he founded his own trade union journal Rodo Sekai (Labor World) and became the editor-in-chief. In the following year, he participated in the foundation of the Society for the Study of Socialism (Shakai Shugi Kenkyu-kai), together with Isoo Anbe, another Christian socialist, and Shusui Kotoku, the co-translator of Marx and Engels Communist Manifesto, among others. As the countrys first socialist group, the Society held monthly meetings in Tokyos Unitarian Church whereby the members [discussed] social and economic problems and to conduct lectures on the lives and teachings of western socialists (Kublin, 1952, p.262). What concerned these Japanese socialist pioneers the most was the fearful prospect that early nineteenth century Manchester, Leeds, and Birmingham would be reborn in a twentieth century Tokyo, Osaka, and Nagoya. The task confronting them was to anticipate such dreadful eventualities and to educate the Japanese state and society to take not simply corrective, but even more important, preventive action (p.263). At this point, it should be noted that these additional foreign knowledge and new international experience the Japanese acquired at the centurys turn were never instrumental to, let alone singularly responsible for, the emergence of the dissenting labor and trade union activism. As described above, the development of Japanese Marxism that began during the mid-1890s was largely an extension of the post-1868 intellectual movement. While a host of political philosophers and social thinkers were engaged in the erudite discourse of Marxism and theory of socialist revolution, they took no time to write and publish Marx for Beginners as such. Even at their heyday, these home-grown Marxist scholars and thinkers most of who were housed at prestigious colleges and universities largely remained politically inactive; with some notable exceptions, they themselves did not proactively participate in the frontline of the labor movement. Regarding the U.S.-educated

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and -informed socialists and labor activists, while they were more sympathetic to the working people and far more aware of the socio-economic injustice and hardship the countrys industrial modernization had incurred, their orientation to socialism still remained largely theoretical and scholarly. For instance, curiously enough, many of the labor union and socialist journals, including Katayamas Labor World, regularly printed articles written in the English language, not in the native tongue of the most working people, i.e., Japanese. As Nimura (1990) observed, [t]his shows the extent of interest in the international scene and a desire to be part of the international socialist movement [I]t also shows how far removed the activists were from the daily concerns of the ordinary Japanese workers. Simply put, most of those who were further enlightened by these additional knowledge and experience were yet to become what Antonio Gramsci (1971) called organic intellectuals. Yet, at the same time, in no way does the above account deny the significance of the new intellectual input that helped to advance and represent the interest of the Japanese workers in the political sphere. As Kublin (1952) states, the international(ist) discourse of socialism can provide the dissenting workers with a catalyst needed for effective movement: The broader and ultimate objectives of the cause have encompassed all of mankind, evincing the utopianism without which no social crusade can ever hope to be successful As a philosophy of hope nurtured by despair, it has continued both to inspire historically established movements and to generate new movements among the benighted and oppressed of the entire world (p.257). Speaking specifically to the Japanese case, the most notable work of catalyst by the Marxist and socialist intellectuals is to be found in the politicization of labor movement and trade union activism. In 1890, for instance, having been feared and alarmed by the increase and radicalization of disputes involving the dissenting labor, the government enacted the notorious Public Peace Law that technically banned labor organizations and agitations. This repressive legislation devastated the organized labor dissent for a while but not for long. In fact, it had some positive effects on the organizational transformation of the Japanese labor movement as well as the advancement of Japanese socialism. Whereas many of the workers and union leaders retreated from actively engaging dissension, a militant few arrived at the conclusion so common in the history of western

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socialism: the economic struggle had to be transferred to the political arena. With abridged political and civil rights, the worker, it was felt, could never hope to attain his economic objectives. The tactics adopted, accordingly, called for the organization of a political party which would lead a campaign for the extension of suffrage and champion the interest of the workers in the Diet. (Kublin, 1952, p.267) To this call, a group of the socialist and Marxist thinkers quickly responded. In less than a year after the enactment of the law, Katayama, Kotoku, and other members of the Society for the Study of Socialism founded the Social Democratic Party. It is important to note that what the government banned this time was labor organizations and agitation, not political organizations or parties. Not missing an opportunity in which they could put their socialist knowledge and Marxism into practice, they drafted the party platform inspired by the political program Marx had written in The Communist Manifesto. While it was immediately disbanded by the government on the very same day of its foundation as it would obviously have instigated the dissenting labor, the Party is considered to be Japans very first socialist party whose primary aim is to represent the interest of the working people in the official political arena, i.e., the Diet. Far from retreating, in 1906 the Japan Socialist Party was founded this time by Katayama, Toshihiko Sakai, the other co-translator of The Manifesto, and others; Kotoku was not part of the founding membership as he was abroad at that time. Just as the defunct Social Democratic Party, this new party also sought to politically represent the angry yet voiceless labor and speak on their behalf, engaging the massive campaigns for the extension of suffrage as well as against the increase of Tokyos public tramway fare, a timely response to the working peoples needs. Meanwhile, Kotoku came back from the Unites States with the idea of anarcho-syndicalism and direct actionism influenced by the writing of Kropotkin and, more importantly, Albert Johnson, a prominent American radical he associated with (Havel, 1911). This, however, clashed with Katayama and some other founding members of the Party who believed in the parliamentary process and the political change through universal suffrage and the representation of labor in the Diet (Nimura, 1990). Eventually in 1907, the Party took a more radical turn and adopted the new

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platform part of which read, The goal of this party is the full implementation of socialism (Nimura, 1990). While this made Kotoku happy, it unfortunately forced Katayama and others in the moderate parliamentarian camp to resign from the party membership, although they continued to engage in their own socialist activities independent of the Party. Even more unfortunately, during this very time the government pressure on their political activities started to become severer. Responding to the politicization and socialization of the dissenting labor and trade unions, this time it banned their political activities, including those of the Japan Socialist Party. In 1910, the government arrested the radical socialists on the charge of conspiring high treason and plotting the assassination of Emperor and executed twelve including Kotoku. Likewise, while already defected from the Partys radical mainstream, Katayama was arrested in 1911, on the charge of masterminding a tramway workers strike in Tokyo. Having spent for a year and half in prison, he went back to the United States in 1914 to found political asylum abroad. Dissenting Mass, Bolshevism, and the Cominterns Secret Agent Chiefly because of its own socialization and radicalization that invited the severe governmental repression, the political movement that involved the dissenting labor had to go through a bleak period (Nimura, 1990) for a while. This virtual absence of the politicized labor activism did not last long, however, as the country entered a new era in which the post-Restoration Japanese once again took to the street and demanded their fair share of political representation as well as socio-economic well-being. In the first place, there was a transition in Imperial Throne. Replacing Meiji Emperor Mutsuhito who just passed away, his son Yoshihito succeeded Throne in 1912, commencing his era called Taisho (1912-1926); unlike his father, however, this new Emperor lacked political prudence and dignity which was obvious even in the eyes of ordinary Japanese. Even more importantly, a half-century had passed since the Meiji Restoration, the self-perpetuating oligarchy of the post-1868 regime began to erode. The original leaders of Meiji Japan had died, leaving their divided successors in control of the various institutions (Colbert, 1952, p.15). In 1918, Takashi Hara, the countrys first Prime Minister with a commoner background, took his office; albeit unsuccessful in becoming the actual law, motions that

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sought to universalize the right to suffrage were repeatedly submitted by the liberal members of the Diet who belonged to the existing political parties. In the atmosphere created by these political developments and transitions, what historians call Taisho Democracy (Eizawa, 1992; Matsuo, 1966; Narita, 2007) broke out. Just as the Freedom and Peoples Rights Movement in the previous era, it was a large-scale nationwide political movement where disenfranchised commoners, enlightened and inspired by a host of intellectual thoughts and diverse experiences at home and abroad, raised their voices of dissension loudly in the plebian public sphere and challenged the powerful few. On the other hand, there were some crucial differences between these two movements. As historian Takayoshi Matsuo (1966) contended, while they both were primarily stimulated by a conception of human dignity and freedom, there was a difference in terms of the demands of these two democratic campaigns which was due to the difference in the economic stage of development. The Liberty and Popular Rights Movement developed at a period when capitalistic production was still elementary, so the driving force of this movement was provided by upper class farmers and intellectuals from the ex-samurai. In the Taisho Democracy period the driving force came from the new middle class of the city assisted by unfavoured capitalists and the working and tenant farmer classes. [Another] importance difference was the presence or absence of a definite political organization to provide leadership for the campaign. In the Liberty and Popular Rights Movement, leadership was in the hands of political party organizations. More distinctively, this campaign was symbolized by Itagaki Taisuke, its leading politician. In the case of Taisho Democracy, on the other hand, political party leadership such as the above did not exist. The leadership of the campaign consisted of radical politicians within the existing parties, journalists, university professors, and members of labor unions. No unified and enduring political organizations arose capable of welding together these diverse elements. It is difficult to point out any person comparable to Itagaki Taisuke as a character symbolizing the movement. (p.616) In other words, Taisho Democracy was the first-ever political uprising involving

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the broader-based mass in post-1868 Japan. Unlike the Freedom and Peoples Rights Movement, it featured not only political speeches and intellectual debates by more or less well-behaved yet disenfranchised liberals seeking their seats in the Diet; it was rather characterized by the emergent yet consistent breakout of spontaneous and localized mass demonstrations, riots, and other forms of political uprising against the powerful few controlling all affairs of state and taking a lions share in the system of industrialization, economic monopoly, and war capitalism. In 1918, approximately two years after the end of World War I, a number of violent uprising and riots were recorded; they took place all through the country, including 38 cities, 155 towns, and 177 villages. It is to be noted that this outbreak coincided with the time when the War had boosted the countrys economy and industrial production. While this economic boom made the capitalists and other powerful few wealthier and more affluent, however, the majority of others, especially those in the working and urban middle classes, were forced to [suffer] from the abnormally high prices of commodities. The price of rice [the staple food in Japan] soared up considerably. The anger of the masses was directed not only against the rice merchants, but also against the absolutist government, which had failed to control prices and which tried to suppress the movement demanding lower rice prices by military strength (Matsuo, 1966, p.628). In addition, attempted (and actually successful) assaults of the government officials and industrial leaders also became frequent, the most notable of which was the assassination of Prime Minister Hara by a radical and angry railroad worker in 1921. In retrospect, however, the end result of Taisho Democracy was far from the very democracy the Japanese mass had envisioned. Dissenting mass movements gradually ceased as they became victims of the increased governmental repression. The political freedom they demanded, i.e., the more extended or universal suffrage, failed to become a reality. Particularly after the Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923 that devastated the Tokyo metropolitan area, the government significantly tightened restrictions on the freedom of speech and of association for the reason of maintaining and controlling the social order in the aftermath of the disaster. In 1925, the government initiated a series of political reforms, apparently in an effort to respond to their demands and easing their anger. These reforms, however, were just cosmetic, as they failed to correct the problem inherent in the political

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and governing structure set up by the preceding Meiji regime. Under the new system, the ruling political elites as well as socio-economically affluent industrialists and peers still continued to be heavily favored. While the government did hint at some possibility of extending suffrage, it did not actually put it onto its legislative agendas. At the same time, Japanese socialists and Marxists had no good reason not to take advantage of the vibrant and violent political climate during this period of Taisho. In 1922, attempting once again to [make] their bid for power and go up against giants (Colbert, 1952, p.15), radical-anarchists and moderate-parliamentarians in the Japanese socialist camp restored their comradeship and created the Japan Communist Party. Namely, whereas during the Meiji period the political movement had become defunct for some time after the Freedom and Peoples Rights Movement ceased, the socio-economic objectives and democratic political aims of dissenting mass in Taisho Democracy were immediately taken up anew by the Movement for the Emancipation of the Proletariat (Matsuo, 1966, pp.636-7). On the one hand, there is little doubt that, inaugurating the JCP, the Japanese socialists jump-started. At least in theory, communism is supposed to emancipate the working people from the domination of the bourgeoisie and capitalism, not from feudalism and absolute monarch. The Marxist theory of revolution is premised upon the idea of socio-economic evolution: Before engaging the emancipation of the proletariat, feudal despotism should have been replaced by a bourgeois revolution, i.e., the political power of the right-bearing middle-class citizens against the backdrop of the full-fledged capitalistic development. Unfortunately this stage of historical evolution was yet to come in Japan at that time, given that the structure of the government still inherited the pre-modern, feudal, and anachronistically imperial and despotic characteristics of the post-1868 Meiji regime under which even the middle-class and petit bourgeoisie were disenfranchised and remained imperial subjects of the living deity. Namely, as the founders of the JCP sought to take advantage of the political chaos created by Taisho Democracy and the mass movements, they had to bypass this important stage of historical evolution. On the other hand, opportunism is too strong a term to explain what drove Japanese socialists to make this move in the midst of the severe government repression. It

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is important to note that, by this time, the Japanese labor movement and socialist activism had become part of what Heinz-Gerhard Haupt called the international history of socialism (quoted in Yamauchi, 2010, p.100). Recall that Japan was [t]he only East Asiatic society to study western thought and to industrialize before the outbreak of the Bolshevik revolution of 1917 (Kublin, 1952, p.257, italics added). Many of the key Japanese socialists and Marxist pioneers were children of the post-Restoration enlightenment and westernization; they were also international travelers who maintained close contact with the international network of socialist movements formed on the Western Europe and American scale among the anti-war socialist left wings (Yamauchi, 2010, p.112; also see Shoki Comintern to Higashi Asia Kenkyukai, 2007). Despite its apparently opportunistic look, in fact, the JCP was a product of the premeditated and international political move. Namely, it was part of the grand strategy of international Bolshevism, more precisely of Vladimir Lenins Communist International or Comintern. Established in 1919 in Moscow, the Comintern was an organization that sets itself the aim of fighting with all means for the overthrow of the international bourgeoisie and for the creation of an international soviet republic as a transition to the complete abolition of the state. It was, according to the minute of the Second Communist International, a Cominterns world congress, held in 1921, the central organ which can realise the unification of the proletarian forces of the whole world.. [T]he Communist International, in order to fulfill its task and achieve its goal, must become a strictly disciplined and rigidly centralised organisation, and that it must supervise, guide and harmonise the revolutionary activity of the proletariat of every country. The task of the Communist International consists in fusing together and unifying the proletarian parties and other revolutionary proletarian organisations in every country into a fighting bloc. (Evening session of August 4, [1921]) In addition, the JCP was not merely a product of an external influence and foreign sources. What was instrumental to the creation of the JCP was a group of Japanese socialists residing abroad, more precisely the Japanese Socialist Group of America (Zaibei Nihonjin Shakai Shugisha Dan) led by Sen Katayama, the above-mentioned socialist pioneer who

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escaped from Japan in 1914. Having found a political alyssum, Katayama resumed his engagement in socialist and labor movement in the United States. Through this political involvement across borders, comradeship was developed between Katayama and S. J. Rutgers, a Dutch socialist who eventually became the head of the Cominterns Amsterdam Sub-Bureau in 1919 (Yamauchi, 2010). And via this comradeship, Katayama and other Japanese socialists home and abroad became convinced of the superiority of Lenins scientific socialism and international Bolshevism against the backdrop of the Russian Revolution. In January 1921, Katayama was appointed as the inaugural chairman of the Cominterns Pan-American Agency; in the summer of the same year, he attended the Third Communist International and became an official member of the Executive Committee of the Comintern (ECCI). At this point, it is important to note that, as the ECCIs official member, Katayama was involved not only in the inauguration of the JCP. During his term as the chairman of the Pan-American Agency he was rather and more active in North America, helping to create Bolshevik parties in the United States and Mexico (Yamauchi, 2010). In fact, having left Japan in 1914, he never came back to his home country for the rest of his life, i.e., until his death in 1933. The more significant and substantive role that paved the way for the launching of the JCP was played by other members of the Japanese Socialist Group of America, most notably a man by the name of Eizo Kondo, a Tokyo native born in 1883. Inspired by Saishin Tobei Annai: Tobei no Hiketsu (Updated Introduction to the Trip to the United States: Secret Tips) (Doshisha Daigaku Jinbun Kenkyujyo, 1970, p.504), a book coincidentally authored by Katayama, at the age of 19 Kondo went to the United States in 1902 for the first time. There he was enrolled in the California Polytechnic School (now known as California Polytechnic University at San Luis Obispo), specializing agriculture; in fact, in the official history of Cal Poly, he is currently recorded as the first Japanese American student enrolled (http://www.calpoly.edu/~centen/diversity/our_past.html). After graduating from Cal Poly, he came back to Japan and was involved in some retailing business in Kobe. In 1916 he decided to go back to the United State, this time as an art trader. Going back and forth across the Pacific several times, he finally settled down in New York City where he opened

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his office and started the business, supplying exotic artifacts such as Japanese nishikie and other oriental graphic arts to galleries and museums including the Smithsonians (Smithsonian Institution, 1920, p.58). There he met, in person, Katayama, the author of the book that inspired young Kondo to come to the United States. Just as back in the younger days, he was once again inspired by Katayamas teaching, this time, of socialism and labor activism and became part of the Japanese Socialist Group of America; his Manhattan studio located in 1947 Broadway (Doshisha Daigaku Jinbun Kenkyujyo, 1970, p.97), in fact, became the meeting place for the Group. As Katayamas protg, he became a firm follower of scientific socialism and the international Bolshevik movement. In addition, Kondo was actively involved in other political activism including the resistance against the anti-immigration policy of the U.S. government, sending a long letter of protest to Senator James Phelan (D-California) whose, in Kondos own words, demagogy and exaggeration (Doshisha Daigaku Jinbun Kenkyujyo, 1970, p.92) on the threat of Japanese immigrants was published in The New York Times. As an art trader, Kondo was a frequent international traveler. In 1921, however, he left the United States for the other end of the Pacific, this time not with a school degree in hand or with exotic art collection but as Cominterns secret agent (Kondo, 1949) with a distinct political mission. On his way home, he visited Shanghai and met with the Far Easter Bureau of the Comintern, trying to strengthen international Bolshevik connection through both the eastern (from Moscow via Berlin to the east of Eurasia and the Far East) and western (from Moscow over the Atlantic Ocean to North America to the Pacific Rim) paths (Yamauchi, 2009; 2010) as well as to receive some funding support for the Japanese communists. Back home, with other Japanese socialists and activists, Kondo immediately started preparation for the establishment of the JCP underground. In the subsequent year, the JCP was launched; with Katayama still residing outside the country, Kondo served as an inaugural member of the Partys Central Committee. According to Masao Ota, a historian who compiled the chronology of his life and work, in the history of Japanese dissident politics Kondo was among the most important figures through whom the Japanese activists were first introduced to the Bolshevik movement (Doshisha Daigaku Jinbun Kenkyujyo, 1970, p.493). Masamichi Takatsu, a former member of Gyominkai, a radical

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student group active in Tokyo at the time, echoed Otas assessment, saying, Kondo was the one who brought Bolshevism into the Japanese activist movement for the first time. No matter what you think personally about him, no one can deny his contribution on this point. As he was doing business in the United States, Kondo was also very fluent in English (p.493). Kiyoshi Takase, another ex-student radical, also agreed and added that Kondo was not merely an activist; he was also deep in theory (p.493), as he translated some key literature of Marxism, including Marxs Poverty of Philosophy, and co-edited, with other veteran socialists such as Toshihiko Sakai, a volume that contained his The Critique of the Gotha Program and Wage Labor and Capital. According to Aune (1994): Lenins realism is fundamental to his conception of the first element of a communicative praxis, his view of the public. Principles of Marxist science and a realistic assessment of politics require a vanguard party in order to ensure the victory of socialism. This partys rhetoric and political action provides a kind of Aristotelian mean between workers emphasis on economic power and intellectuals utopianism. Lenins theory of imperialism requires that the vanguard party direct its energies to the weakest link of capitalism first: the semi-colonial rather than advanced countries. Lenin thus reintroduces the element of Marxist internationalism present in the Manifesto. (p.58) Established at the height of the international Bolshevik movement, the political strategy of the JCP was based on Lenins realism. As the one and only vanguard party existing on Japanese soil, it also embraced and took advantage of the flexibility of the Comintern informed by the realistic assessment of the peculiar Japanese political condition. In the first place, while jump-starting the JCP, the Japanese communists seem to have recognized that they somewhat short-circuited the stages of Marxist historical evolution, i.e., the skipping of the bourgeois revolution. For that, they attempted to make up by rhetorically declaring that the JCP was a mass political party that represents the interest of all who were against the existing political institutions and state power. Recall that the structure of the government at the time was little different from the despotic and quasi-feudal post-1868 Meiji regime under which the middle-class and petit bourgeois were disenfranchised and

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given little socio-economic freedom. In addition, to take advantage of the political momentum created by the rise of the dissenting mass and their political activism in Taisho Democracy, the JCP could not but pretend to present itself somewhat populist, by speaking on behalf of all the dissenting people-at-large. In other words, instead of instigating the class warfare, the founders of the JCP were aware that that they must make efforts to mobilize all social forces that are capable of carrying on the struggle against the existing government. The party of the working class cannot remain indifferent to a struggle against the imperial government, even though such a struggle may be conducted under democratic slogans. The task of the Communist Party is to constantly intensify the general movement, emphasize all slogans, and win the dominant position in the movement during the struggle against the existing government. (Beckman and Okubo, 1966, p.280) Such realistic assessment on the part of the Japanese communists was most evident in the rhetoric of the JCPs platform drafted in November 1922 (Beckman and Okubo, 1969, p.281). There they listed the total of 23 provisions that comprise the JCPs main objective. Some of them were indeed specifically germane to Marxism and Bolshevism, such as The control of production by factory committees, The nationalization without compensation of the land of the emperor, the big landlords, and temples, The establishment of a national land fund in support of poor peasants, and transfer to peasants of all the land that they have cultivated with their own implements as tenants, and Recognition of Soviet Russia. Yet, some others were not quite so. In addition to the above-mentioned Bolshevik provisions, for instance, they listed, An eight-hour-day for workers, Labor insurance, including unemployment compensation, Complete freedom of organization for labor unions, labor parties, labor groups, and other labor association, and Progressive income tax, with tax liability becoming greater as the level of income rises. While these provisions are obviously related to the well-being of the working people in general, they are not necessarily and directly toward the realization of their full emancipation under the dictatorship of the proletariat; yet these provisions should have obvious appeal to all who suffered from the current socio-economic conditions created by the policy of the existing regime, whether they were middle-class or blue-collar.

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Similarly, for those who demanded the extension of suffrage and their share of political representation, they included in the platform, The universal suffrage for all men and women over eighteen years of age and Abolition of the House of Peers. There also were provisions specifically aiming at those who were anti-war, anti-police state and critical of military expansionism of the current government: Abolition of the armed forces, police, gendarmerie, and secret police; Abolition of all attempts at intervention; and Withdrawal of armed forces from Korea, China, Taiwan, and Sakhalin. And perhaps the most interestingly, at the very top of the provisions they drafted, Abolition of imperial system, a task that is supposed to be completed by the bourgeoisie (as it was in France) before the communists make a move. In addition to the all-inclusive party platform they drafted, the other important realistic dimension in the communicative practice of the Japanese communists was found in the function of the JCP less as a mere political party but more as a political organization. Namely, the goal of the JCP, the one and only Bolshevik vanguard in Japan, was not exactly the winning of the majority of seats in the Diet unlike other political parties, especially given that neither general election nor realization of universal suffrage was in prospect; nor was the immediate overthrow of the state power by all means. Toward the realization of the full emancipation of the working people, the JCP first had to be engaged in the proletarianization of all of the working people in the positive sense, the political education of the working class and the development of its political consciousness (Lenin, 1917, p.34). In such education, what becomes essential is the skillfully crafted and organizationally orchestrated discourse of agitation and propaganda or agitprop. As Lenin wrote in What Is To Be Done (1902): The question arises, what should political education consist in? Can it be confined to the propaganda of working-class hostility to the autocracy? Of course not. It is not enough to explain to the workers that they are politically oppressed. Agitation must be conducted with regard to every concrete example of this oppression. Inasmuch as this oppression affects the most diverse classes of society, inasmuch as it manifests itself in the most varied spheres of life and activityvocational, civic, personal, family, religious, scientific, etc. etc.is it

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not evident that we shall not be fulfilling our task of developing the political consciousness of the workers if we do not undertake the organization of the political exposure of the autocracy in all its aspects? (p.34, italics in original; also see Markoff, 1934) It is important to note that, whether as a political party or a political organization, the incorporation of the JCP was an illegal act. As such, just as other socialist parties that preceded it (i.e., the Social Democratic Party and the Japan Socialist Party), the JCP members were denied access to the means of addressing (to) the public, the last effective legal method to enlarge the appeal of their movement (Kublin, 1952, p.268). More specifically, unlike the liberals in the Freedom and Peoples Rights Movements or politicians who belonged to the legally-existing political parties, the Japanese communists were not allowed to make political speeches legally and freely in public; their political education and communicative praxis had to go covertly. At this point, it is important to recall what happened to scholarly Marxists housed in colleges and universities during this time. As it is discussed above, at the time when political socialism and Marxism, both in words and deeds, suffered from the severe governmental repression, the intellectual discourse of Marxism and of socialist theories was in full bloom: Curiously enough, the state authorities were largely inattentive to the non-political works, e.g., creative writing, historical studies, theoretical treatise, etc., of socialists and Marxists as they looked politically harmless or insignificant in their eyes. Eventually the government proceeded to ban these non-political discursive activities but, interestingly enough, not so unequivocally or immediately, for it was political and economic and not literary agitation which the government considered dangerous. Socialist literature was generally regarded by the state as being akin to yellow journalismundeniably obstreperous but, for the most part, relatively harmless (Kublin, 1952, p.269; also see Bugchardt (1980) and Ilkka (1977) for a similar attempt made in the United States). This relative tolerance for literary socialism on the part of the government enabled the Japanese communists to circumvent the government repression and engage the political education of the working mass, by publishing and distributing literature that carried socialist and Bolshevik messages. More specifically, with the literary-minded

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communists as well as some comsymps among literary circles, the JCP, as a political organization, participated in the battlefield of cultural practice (Yuichi, 1991, p.10) and orchestrated the Proletarian Literature Movement, a campaign that sought to create the distinct culture of the proletariat or Proletkult (see, for instance, Hirano, 1963; Kurihara, 1971; Odagiri, 1990; Silverberg, 1990). As Kiyoshi Aono, a leading figure in the Movement, wrote: The Proletarian Literature Movement is an ultimate collective activity with which already committed proletarian, that is, socialist-proletarian, artists seek to help other [would-be] proletarian fellows acquire the teleological consciousness of socialism. This is where the significance and the necessity of the Movement lie (quoted in Yuichi, 1991, p.10). With Bungei Sensen (Literary Front), a literary journal devoted exclusively to the work of proletarian literature, and the establishment of the Japan Proletarian Literary Arts League (Nihon Protetaria Bungei Renmei) and the All Japan Federation of Proletarian Arts (Nihon Musansha Geijyutsu Renmei), the Japanese communists aggressively engaged in literary agitprop via the Proletarian Literature Movement, their virtually only sphere of public discourse whereby they could reach and educate the working mass and help them become the full-fledged proletariat, the necessary condition for their own emancipation. Proletarian Elocution as (Re)invention of Rhetoric: Or What If an Ex-Student Debater Became a Campaign Manager for a Marxist-Leninist Political Candidate? The Rhetorical/Intellectual Situation While the literary-minded Japanese communists became aggressively engaged in literary socialism, Eizo Kondo himself did not participate in the Proletarian Literature Movement. Yet, as an international Bolshevik activist deep in theory, he was very prolific, publishing numerous books on the Russian Revolution and Marxist-Leninist political theory during the 1920s and 1930s. While many of his other works were written in a pseudonym (Ii-Kei or E-K) and published and distributed by the underground press such as Kaihosha (Liberation Company) and Musansha (Proletarian Company), Proletarian Elocution, his 1930 publication, was by Heibonsha in Tokyo, a major national printing house that still exists today. Before engaging an analysis of this speech handbook, it is important to

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contextualize the work in the specific rhetorical as well as intellectual situations (Bitzer, 1968; Crick, 2006). For that, two related questions need to be addressed. First, given that the JCP was still illegal and that the Marxist-Leninist agitprop was severely restricted by the state authorities (in 1925 the government enacted the Public Peace Preservation Act under which many of key literary communists as well as scholarly Marxists such as Takiji Kobayashi and Jun Tosaka were arrested and tortured to death), how could Kondo make this work published by a major publishing house? Second and perhaps more important, given that the Japanese communists were denied access to the means of public address (speaking and debating in the public sphere), what was his point of teaching elocution to other members of his class, i.e., the proletariat? To answer these questions, it is important to take into account a series of significant political developments that took place in Japan as well as in the international Bolshevik movement during this time. In the first place, because of the severe government repression and of the increase of internal division within the party leadership, the JCP was dissolved in early 1924, in less than two years after its inauguration. By that time, many of the party members had already been arrested, making it difficult for the JCP to engage the task of achieving the political objectives outlined in the draft platform. More importantly, not waiting their own dissolution, some leaders of the JCP were leaving home and seeking political asylum abroad. With his two other comrades, in fact, Kondo himself left his home for Soviet Russia in June 1923, just three months after he chaired the JCPs second national convention held in Chiba, Tokyos southeast suburb. Having found his new home in Moscow, Kondo participated in the Fourth Communist International, representing the Japanese communists with his mentor Katayama and others and calling for the reestablishment of the JCP. Second, there occurred the important leadership transition and policy change in Soviet Russia during this very time. Because of his sickness, Lenin withdrew from actively engaging politics in 1923; upon his death in 1924, Joseph Stalin officially and fully took over the countrys leadership. Unlike Lenin, Stalin put less emphasis on the role of the vanguard as an agent of political education. Instead, the Soviet, literally meaning the state council in the Russian language, introduced a planned economy; the proletarianization of

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the people was to be achieved through the exercise of coercive state power as well as forced labor. Equally important, under Stalin, Lenins idea of world revolution as the integral whole (Yamauchi, 2010, p.112) was disappearing from the scene; replacing it, a Stalinist slogan of socialism in one country gradually became the goal of Soviet Russia and, by effect, of the Comintern. In the meantime, making an unexpected move, the Japanese government announced that it would seriously undertake significant and substantive political reforms, including the extension/partial universalization of suffrage for elected national offices. The Diet amended the election law, abolishing the provision that set the minimum personal wealth and granting suffrage to any male over 25 years of age. In 1928, the first general election for the House of Representatives was held under this revised law. Speaking retrospectively, this was simply a token action on the part of the powerful few (and the parliamentary majority) who still controlled the state power; thanks to the overt and covert election campaign obstructions orchestrated by incumbent Prime Minister and ex-Army officer Giichi Tanaka and his Cabinet, the Rikken Seiyu Party defeated, albeit by a small margin, the Rikken Minsei Party, then the strongest opposition in the House. At the same time, however, this election reform enabled many of those who had hitherto been disenfranchised to lawfully and publicly engage themselves in national parliamentary politics. Curiously enough, the Tanaka Cabinet, while still disbanding the JCP, allowed other socialists and labor unionists as well as angry workers and farmers and even the proletariat to participate in the election race. Taking advantage of this opportunity, these dissidents formed the Japan Labor-Farmer Party, the Japan Labor Party, the Japan Peoples Party, and the Japan Farmer Party, and eventually won eight seats in the Diet. These political developments home and abroad greatly affected the fate of Japanese communism and orator communists. This is particularly true in the case of Kondo, the Cominterns secret agent who brought Bolshevism for the first time in Japan. While in Moscow, he was appointed to the committee of the Red International of Labor Unions or Profintern. It was the Cominterns labor relations section: As a newly created international body, the purpose of the Profintern was to coordinate communist activities within labor unions. The idea behind it, in fact, was already articulated at the Third Communist

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International held in 1921: The art of communist organization consists in making use of everything and everyone in the proletarian class struggle, distributing party work suitably among all party members and using the membership to continually draw ever wider masses of the proletariat into the revolutionary movement, while at the same time keeping the leadership of the entire movement firmly in hand. Thus, in its effort to have only really active members, a communist party must demand of every member in its ranks that he devote his time and energy, insofar as they are at his own disposal under the given conditions, to his party and that he always give his best in its service. Communist cells are nuclei for daily communist work in plants and workshops, in trade unions, in workers cooperatives, in military units, etc.wherever there are at least a few members or candidate members of the Communist Party. Whether a communist cell should come out openly as communist in its milieu, let alone to the public at large, is determined by meticulous examination of the dangers and advantages in each particular situation. (Guidelines on the organizational structure, [1921], italics in original) Namely, under Stalins leadership, the Comintern held that a Bolshevik revolution can be enabled not only through the activities of the one and only proletarian political party/organization, i.e., the vanguard, but also by individual or small-group activities of the proletariat and cells through the covert yet effective utilization of the already existing structure. This (re)emphasis on labor relations and cells not merely symbolizes the change in the general strategy of international Bolshevism; with the creation of the Profintern and Kondos appointment to it, this also suggested the compelling need specifically for the Japanese communists to rethink their own revolutionary strategy and redirect them to another stage. It is important to note that even in their own eyes the Japanese attempt to revolutionize the country was deadlocked; it had not proceeded as smoothly as they had planned, to say the least. The JCP, the one and only vanguard in the country, faced the severe government repression and failed to proletarianize the mass and

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mobilize them toward the goal of their own emancipation. Making use of everything and everyone in the proletarian class struggles suggested in the Second Communist International, the literary-minded proletariat and comsymps had been aggressively engaged in the Proletarian Literature Movement; yet, the politically enabling success of their literary agitprop was so far limited as it too became a victim of the governmental repression and censorship. On these grounds, the Comintern thus drafted and adopted a series of theses regarding the future prospect of Japanese communism. Speaking more specifically, it suggested that the Japanese proletariat should make more effective use of the existing dissenting forces and their legally-sanctioned political channels. In the Thesis of the 1925 Shanghai Conference (Beckman and Okubo, 1966, p.293), the Cominterns Far Eastern Bureau condemned the dissolution of the Japanese vanguard; yet, while calling for its reunion, it also suggested that the Japanese communists, with or without the JCP, should collaborate more fully with other socialist dissidents and dissenting trade unionists. More significantly, in the 1926 Moscow Thesis, the Japanese communists residing in Soviet Russia drafted the following: 5. We, the Japanese communist group, should abandon our group form immediately and concentrate on founding a party based on Comintern policies. 6. A labor-farmer party movement representing an alliance of workers and peasants is necessary in order to unite all forces opposed to the bloc of the bourgeoisie and landlords. Although the policy of creating a unitary party, in defiance of the right-wing policy of disunion, is correct, the Communist Party should not lose its independence, but should form strong factions within the Labor-Farmer Party to gain hegemony over it and place it under communist influence. (Beckman and Okubo, 1966, pp.293-4) Behind all of this Kondo played a significant instrumental role. Under the Profinterns direction, in 1925 he secretly smuggled back to Japan and investigated the conditions of Japanese trade union activities; back in Moscow he compiled his investigative report titled The current conditions of Japanese labor movement and submitted it to the Profintern. More importantly, in November 1926 Kondo left his home in Soviet Russia and

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went back to his old home for good. Early next year he, by himself, reported to the Tokyo District Court and, after a brief interrogation, won acquittal of the past crimes he allegedly committed as a communist. It is important to note that, by this time, the JCP was reestablished by a small fraction of Japanese communists who had remained in the country. As a political party, it was still illegal and soon the internal division and infighting within its leadership (once again) broke out; further, the Comintern discredited and excommunicated the new JCP under the leadership of Kazuo Fukumoto as his call for the more radicalization of the JCPs activities as the vanguard failed to conform to the (new) international strategy of the Comintern. Not (re)joining his old comrades and the reunited JCP, all through 1927 Kondo stayed (or pretended to be?) politically inactive, writing and publishing on the Russian history and the life in new Russia. In January 1928, i.e., in the eve of the first general election for the House of Representatives, he suddenly joined the Japan Labor-Farmer Party. After the election, the Japan Labor-Farmer Party was merged with the Japan Farmer Party and the Proletarian Mass Party and newly formed the Japan Mass Party in which Kondo also participated in December 1928. Taken together, these historical developments and Kondos own political maneuvering enabled and called for the publication of Proletarian Elocution in June 1930. In the first place, at the time of the publication Kondo was no longer part of the JCP: He was a member of a different and legally-sanctioned political party (the Japan Mass Party). Because it was not a communist book written by and for communists, therefore, the authorities were not able to ban this little speech handbook outright. While it had to go through the government screening, with some words and phrases crossed off or made blank in print, the book was able to circumvent the government prohibition and be published and distributed by a major printing house. Second and more important, as a member of the political party legally allowed to participate in parliamentary politics, Kondo was justified to write about public address, the above-mentioned last effective legal method of mass persuasion, in the context of election campaign. In fact, it was quite natural for him to do so given that, as Kanji Hatano (1968) observed, Oratory was yet to find its distinct position within Marxist propaganda in the inaugural year of Showa [1926], i.e., the time when the nations political consciousness aroused extremely high (p. 1469).

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Further, as Kondo deliberately and skillfully distanced himself from the reunited JCP and communism, the primary readers of this work were to be found outside the JCP, i.e., among the proletariat who belonged to other legally-sanctioned parties that represented the interest of the working class such as the Japan Mass Party. As Kondo wrote in the beginning of the Preface, what motivated him to write and publish Proletarian Elocution was a particular youkyu or exigence (Bitzer, 1968) he found in the current state of the Japanese proletarian movement that lacked rhetorical sensitivity as well as among the full-fledged yet rhetorically-disadvantaged proletarian candidates miserably defeated in the 1928 general election. I take it that a study of elocution is invaluable, because it is the method that enables us to have access to the most effective use of speech [genron], our most powerful weapon. After the first general election, I experienced and felt this quite bitterly and I undertook some research only to have found that a work that dealt with the topics of elocution from a proletarian perspective is yet to be published even in foreign countries (p.1). Rhetoric, Logos and Beyond Most simply put, Proletarian Elocution was a work of a veteran Marxist-Leninist who assigned himself as a campaign manager for proletarian candidates running for national office. In the guise of non-communist yet with a host of international experience and deep theoretical knowledge, Kondo attempted to play that role, helping them become effective orators to gain more votes in the next election to come. That way, hoped he, the Japanese working class could increase its representation in the Diet and the national politics in the short run as well as strengthen the communist presence in the countrys political culture that paves a way for a Bolshevik revolution, eventually enabling the full emancipation of the Japanese people in the long term. Consisting of the preface, seven main chapters and an appendix, this is what the contents of the book look like: Preface (pp.1-3) Section I: Theory Chapter 1: Introduction (pp.4-17) Chapter 2: Basic Ideological Foundation (pp.18-46)

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Chapter 3: The Study of Logic from the Proletarian Perspective (pp.47-94) Chapter 4: The Study of Rhetoric from the Proletarian Perspective (pp.95-116) Chapter 5: The Study of Proletarian Audience (pp.117-128) Part II: Practice Chapter 6: Voice and Gestures in Proletarian Elocution (pp.129-150) Chapter 7: Speech Preparation in General (pp.151-205) Part III: Sample Speeches (pp.206-278) Appendix: Organizing a Speech Event and the Procedural Rule (pp.279-295) In Introduction (Chapter One) Kondo started his lesson with a proposition that we now take to be obvious: Oratory is a kind of art. Using analogies of a good painter drawing a beautiful painting and a singer with her/his beautiful voice to impress and move people, he wrote that those who are adept at elocution can do the same. That is, by learning and making utmost use of this techne, we can create a piece of verbal art that effectively communicates messages to the audience, exerting powerful influence on them and dictating ways in which they think and act by appealing to their minds and hearts. Kondo then moved onto classifying two distinctive types of these powerful arts and suggests his readers not to confuse these two. On the one hand, there is the bourgeois art whose purpose is to eradicate the class consciousness among the proletarian mass. That is, it conspires to suppress our class-based anger in the name of expressing beauty (p.7). The other, called the proletarian art, revolts against this very deceit. The more the work fuels the class-based anger, the better it becomes; the stronger impact the work provides to ignites the mass consciousness, the greater its artistic quality becomes(p.7). For the proletariat, this distinction is of extreme significance whenever they are engaged in artistic creation. This is particularly true when they become orator communists and address to the audience for the achievement of their cause by way of persuasive discourse. As Kondo stated: The quality of proletarian elocution is assessed in accordance with the magnitude of such impact it generates. Proletarian elocution refuses any and all of the

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[bourgeois] deceit. It is a logical expansion of the proletarian truth where the exhibition of a powerful expression of the proletarian class consciousness suffices. Proletarian elocution is fundamentally different from, and diametrically opposes, bourgeois elocution. (pp.7-8) Having this said, Kondo offered the next lesson to his comrades: the Bolshevik strategy of agitprop. Here Kondo attempted to appropriate the idea of political education Lenin outlined in What Is To Be Done for election campaign discourse. Quoting Lenins words in length, Kondo first contended that agitation and propaganda have their distinct functions and purposes hence they should not confuse these two. Propaganda appeals to ones mind whereas agitation to ones heart and emotion; If one forgets, or knows nothing about, the distinction and engages in a verbal agitation on the stage where the purpose of the gathering was primarily that of propaganda, the end result will be no more than a farce (p.13). Second and more interestingly, Kondo argued that, unlike the one between the bourgeois and proletarian arts, this distinction is just a matter of degree, for any fiery eloquence or declamation does involve agitation and [i]n reality, the overall value of eloquence is determined by how agitating it is (p.14). For one, said Kondo, proletarian oratory must not be merely agitating. Otherwise, it becomes no different from the bourgeois elocution that aims at impressing the uninformed audience through the use of a beautiful voice that merely tweets, of the magic of sophistry, of exaggerating yet empty phrases, and of the absurdity of gymnast-like gestures (p.7). Here he criticized the orations typically practiced by liberals and the bourgeoisie on the basis that they not only suppressed the working-class interest and anger but also were mere rhetorics, i.e., public performance devoid of any intellectual substance or content. Yet at the same time, he warned his comrades not to discredit or fear passionate speech that exerts the power of agitation and appeals to the peoples hearts: Fear of agitation comes from [censored] consciousness. As the exploited class, the proletariat should rise above this bourgeois consciousness(p.14). This is particularly true, continued Kondo, when the proletariat confront a particular rhetorical situation that especially calls for the mobilization of the broad-based mass including election race: Oratorical agitation is commonly practiced as formative part of mass

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mobilization (one example is on May Day) and this is quite acceptable. More or less, a speech that seeks to mobilize the mass and to direct them to the voting booth during election campaign is a type of oratorical agitation. This is the reason that passionate eloquence is welcomed in election campaign speeches. (pp.16-7) Lenin insisted again and again that agitation must be linked with theory, that in our agitation we must not limit ourselves to mere slogans or appeals; there must be content (Markoff, 1934, p.110). As a veteran Marxist-Leninist, Kondo loyally followed this Leninist dictum all through the remainder of Proletarian Elocution. In Chapter Two (Basic Ideological Foundation), he outlined one of such theories that help communist orators invent the content appropriate for proletarian elocution, i.e., Marxism-Leninism. As his readers are supposed to be the proletariat with full-fledged class consciousness, however, Kondos teaching of this theory was relatively brief. Namely, given that convincing the already convinced is an unnecessary labor, in less than 30 pages he simply reviewed the three basic theoretical concepts: materialism versus idealism, proletarian philosophy (dialectical materialism), and class consciousness and struggle. On the other hand, Kondo allotted the considerably more space for teaching the other theory, i.e., the theory of persuasion and of logos inherited from the western antiquity. Namely, he seems to have held that rhetoric and logic are two intellectual disciplines significant and indispensable for performing oratorical agitation with substantive content. First, proletarian elocution should exploit and appropriate the classical tradition of rhetoric which is, in the words of Aristotle, the faculty of observing in any given case the available means of persuasion (Aristotle, 1354b). Second, in order to make the content of their discourse true and truthful, orator communists also need logic, i.e., the study that deals with questions as to whether something has happened or has not happened, will be or will not be, is or is not (1354b). Together with Marxism-Leninism, these should provide the foundation for proletarian elocution. From the proletarian perspective, the book thus tries to explain the principles and rules in these disciplines as plainly possible (p.3). That way, whether by accident or by design, he was able to present Proletarian Elocution not as an exclusively communist book or a book exclusively about Bolshevik revolution. In fact,

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if one takes a glance only at the table of contents without knowing the title of the book, she may even think that this is just one of many speech textbooks on the market! More importantly, Proletarian Elocution not only blended the Leninist strategy of agitprop with the teaching of Aristotle. As a speech handbook written for a distinct purpose, it also has one particularly unique feature, i.e., the focus on Invention by way of logos. Namely, while the book covers all of the five classical rhetorical canons in general, discussing Style and Arrangement (Chapter Four) as well as Delivery (Chapter Six) and speech preparation (part of which has to do with the rhetorical canon of Memory) (Chapter Seven), the space and energy Kondo devoted most is onto artistic proof and logical operation of language that play a significant instrumental role for the substance of persuasive rhetorical discourse. Chapter Three (The Study of Logic from the Proletarian Perspective) is thus the longest (47 pages to be exact) of all the chapters in Proletarian Elocution. Of the modes of persuasion some belong strictly to the art of rhetoric and some do not. The one kind has merely to be used, the other has to be invented. [P]ersuasion is effected through the speech itself when we have proved a truth or an apparent truth by means of the persuasive arguments suitable to the case in question (Aristotle, 1354b). Consistent with this Aristotelian notion of logos and artistic proof, Kondo began this chapter first reminding his would-be orator communist readers of the value of studying logic for proletarian elocution. To make their discourse reflect the (proletarian) truth, says he, the content of their speech must be based on the rules of logic that explore the forms and principles of thinking in order to establish the norms that should be secured for the acquisition of true knowledge (p.49). Additionally and perhaps more interestingly, at the outset of this chapter Kondo noted some instructional precautions to his readers. Given that logic is a subject considerably demanding, quibbling, and abstract, said he, it is reasonable for the proletariat who try to make ends meet everyday to regard that discipline as remote and far less interesting (p.47). For this, Kondo first noted that he attempts to make his logic lesson as simple and easy as he can, promising his comrades that he only deals with and makes reference to logic only when we find it helpful for our chief aim, namely the study of

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proletarian elocution (p.48). To make it more accessible, comprehensible, and specific, he also guaranteed his readers that he would discuss and explicate the essence of logic and logical reasoning in the language of the proletariat and by providing examples familiar to the working people. Having made these precautions and promises, Kondo proceeded with the more substantive part of his logic lesson. The first topic he covered is the most basic of formal logic: Laws of Thought that constitute the fundamental principles of logic, i.e., Laws of Identity, of Contradiction, of Excluded Middle, and of Sufficient Reason. Devising the language of the working class, he explained each of these Laws. For instance, to explain Law of Identity, Kondo wrote: Imagine the following two propositions or judgments: He is a worker. I am a worker, too. In the both cases above, the concept of worker is identical. That is, while he and I are different, they are identical as both are workers. This years he is not the same as the previous years as his life conditions may be somehow different. Yet, he is consistently a worker in principle as he has been engaged in miserable wage labor. By the same token, I in the above may have changed jobs several times since last year. Yet, unable to escape from the status of wage slave, I am still no less a worker than he is. This way, law of identity is a way of thinking that seeks to recognize permanence change, regularity in variety, and commonality within difference. (pp.50-51) Moving on, Kondo next explained the fundamentals of Logical Inference, another important component of formal logic. First, he covered deduction and syllogism, a form of reasoning to reach a true and certain conclusion logically deduced from the self-evident and/or generally accepted premises. And to provide his proletarian readers with its basic operation with the utmost accessibility and familiarity, Kondo again took advantage of the language and examples largely shared among the working people. When he introduces so-called categorical syllogism, for instance, he wrote to his comrades as follows: [Categorical syllogism:] in

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[Major premise:] Workers are wage slaves. [Minor premise:] He is a worker. [Conclusion:] Therefore, he is a wage slave. (p.68) By the same token, to explain conditional syllogism, another type of deductive reasoning, he gave the following example: [Conditional syllogism:] [Major premise:] If one is a true labor activist, s/he must be highly-spirited with a full of the class consciousness. [Minor premise:] If one betrays her/his comrades, s/he is not highly-spirited with a full of the class consciousness. [Conclusion:] Therefore, if one betrays her/his comrades, s/he is not a true labor activist. (pp.75-6) As a practical speech handbook, the lecture on Invention and the art of logos in Proletarian Elocution does not end with formal logic. In addition to deduction and syllogism, Kondo also discussed enthymeme and logical fallacies as well as what we now call informal logic and inductive reasoning, i.e., another basic mode of logical inference that draws or evaluates a conclusion from specific examples. It is important to note that, as Kondo turned to induction, his lesson suddenly became more distinctively proletarian and Marxist-Leninist. It is due not only to the language he employed to elaborate the concept but also to the theoretical substance and practical operation of induction itself as well. In the first place, he criticized the previous studies on elocution that assume the primacy of deduction over induction. While he agreed with a commonplace that induction is a mode of inference useful for new scientific discovery and deduction is for providing proof, he also states that in many everyday instances induction should actually take precedence over deduction. More specifically, as a method of material inference (p.86) induction is the invaluable logical operation that checks the material truth of promises in deduction as well as provides genuinely true materials to it: It is self-evident that deductive inference is based on inductive inference. It is because many of the universal judgments that provide premises for deductive inference are based upon the conclusions reached by way of inductive inference (p.86).

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Second, Kondo reminded his proletarian comrades of what they should take to be obvious: They live in a society where we can easily observe the fabrication of the principles and the patronization of science that contributes to the feigned eternity of capitalism (p.86). Namely, many of the conventions and principles that they generally accept as true and self-evident in the presently existing capitalist society are far from true hence we cannot uncritically take them as our logical base (p.86). Accordingly, he suggested that, as long as they live in capitalism, there would be more instances that necessitate inductive inference One mission of the proletariat is to debunk and destroy many of these manufactured principles (p.86). Namely, Kondo suggested that would-be orator communists engage the critical task of inductive inference before attempting to deduce the conclusion from the already given premises. In so saying, he sounded both Aristotelian/Ciceronian and Marxist-Leninist. For one, he reminded us of the words of Aristotle: Among modes of persuasion some belong strictly to discursive techne or logical operation and some do not; despite its great utility, there is a significant limit in the study of logic to be used for proletarian elocution. By the same token, the kind of elocution Kondo professed is also Ciceronian: Rhetoric was like the palm in the hand, dialectic like the closed fist (Cicero quoted in Hohmann, 2002, p.44). For another, sounding like Lenin and Marx, he suggested that, to make the substance of our discourse of agitation more persuasive and truer, we should consider something beyond logos and the logical operation of language. What orator communists need for Invention, namely, is the concrete experience of the working class; the inferential inquiry of induction, i.e., the scientific discovery of the self-evident truth, must be guided by the knowledge derived from Marxist-Leninist materialism. As Kondo concluded: First and foremost, we should go back to our own experience as the proletariat. More often than not, that is how and where we should start and extend [our logical inference] inductively [T]he significant assumption that constitutes the basis for our inductive inference must be the judgment provided by dialectical materialism. (p.87) Making an Inferential Leap: Agitprop, Proletarian Audience, and Kondos America

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Having explicated Kondos ambitious rhetorical project with a distinct focus on Invention, logos, and Marxist-Leninist materialism, one important question should emerge. That he put more emphasis on agitation in the Bolshevik strategy of agitprop does make sense if we perceive Proletarian Elocution as a speech handbook for a political candidate who seeks short-term oratorical success, i.e., collecting just enough votes to win the election and securing his seat in the Diet. If so, then, what is it that made Kondo focus on logic, reasoning, and proletarian truth for the making of persuasive oratory? In other words, given that the JCP (the vanguard) was not what it should be and that the political education (i.e., the positive proletarianization of the mass) through the literary socialism and proletarian literature had not produced tangible success so far, and if winning the election was the best and only available strategy they could take to strengthen the proletarian representation/communist presence inside and outside the parliament, why not perform a mere rhetoric of agitation that should emotionally appeal to the peoples hearts and secure the voters adherence, just as liberals and the bourgeois had successfully done, instead? Why is it that proletarian elocution needs to be logical and rational and attempt to appeal rather exclusively to the peoples mind and intellect, not to their emotion? One possible explanation is that it is due to Kondos ethical and professional commitment to political activism. That is, as a Cominterns secret agent as well as a veteran of the international Bolshevik movement, Kondo was still committed to the scientific socialism and its rational worldview. Accordingly, the content of oratorical agitation has to conform to the same level of objective and logical standard as Marxist-Leninist materialism. Further, given election campaign was the one and only viable avenue through which proletarian orators, in the guise of non-communists, could reach the mass, the message that their discourse coveys should not only enable them to instigate the peoples anger and win their votes by way of agitation; it should also function as part of political education, a discursive orchestration of propaganda that should expose to the mass, in Lenins words, every concrete example of oppression that manifests itself in all aspects of their life and activity. That would certainly need logic and logical construction, for, as Lenin (1902) recited (yet in part discredited) the words of Plekhanov and Martynov, A propagandist presents many ideas; an agitator presents only one or a few ideas (p.40). While Lenin

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posited that the propagandist operates chiefly by means of the printed word; the agitator by means of the spoken word (p.41, italics in original), it may well be the case that, in drafting Proletarian Elocution, Kondo assigned the dual function of agitprop (agitation and propaganda) only to the spoken word, i.e., public speech, and required that it has the same level of logical rigor, objectivity, and argumentative force as the printed word and written discourse. The question is if this would overburden proletarian elocution and communist orators. Yet, another explanation is also possible: Kondos emphasis on the rational and logical over the emotional and evocative in the teaching of elocution might have come from his own (more or less) personal experience and training, i.e., as a young man who traveled across the Pacific to study in the United States. Recall Kondo was the first Japanese student enrolled at the California Polytechnic School back in the early 1900s. While he was an Agriculture major, it was not the only subject he studied at Cal Poly. As a regular student, Kondo also had to take other subjects in order to graduate, such as courses in the humanities, social sciences and English. In addition, historical evidence suggests that young Kondo was active in one extra-curricular program: He was an Associate Editor of The Polytechnic Journal, Cal Polys student monthly, for the 1907 school year; despite English being his second language, The Journal printed some essays and columns allegedly written by Kondo, including the one on a Japanese martial art that made the cover article of its April-May 1907 issue (Jujitsu, 1907, pp.3-5). On these grounds, perhaps we can make a case that Kondo himself was skillful in logos and the logical operation of language thanks to the education and training he received at Cal Poly. And knowing the power of logic that can impress and persuade others, it may as well be the case that, when teaching young comrades how to make speeches some 20 years later, he wanted them to be like him and do the same. Along the same line, historical evidence suggests another remarkable fact that should be taken into account when we discuss Proletarian Elocutions logic-oriented Invention focus. Namely, Kondo was not merely the first Japanese student Cal Poly accepted and graduated; he was one of the first, if not the very first, Japanese who took part in school debating in the formative years of the American forensics, i.e., public speaking

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and debate pedagogy. This was the time before Cal Poly became a university or college; this was also the time when intramural and contract-based home-to-home interscholastic debates were the dominant form of educational debating (Keith, 2007). At Cal Poly the first student body association was formed to govern athletics, debating, publications and social events in 1909, two years after Kondo graduated (http://lib.calpoly.edu/universityarchives/history/timeline/). Yet the evidence also indicates that Cal Poly students already started debating before 1909: As soon as the school was founded in 1903, they were given opportunity for participating in forensic events. As printed in Cal Polys school catalogue for the 1907-8 academic year: Training in practical public speaking is not neglected. Students in the English department from time to time are given opportunity to present before the morning assembly papers on subjects of current interest. A series of debates between the Polytechnic School and local high schools serves to stimulate interest in practical public speaking. (Catalogue, 1907, p.17) As the first (and only) Japanese student at Cal Poly, young Kondo did participate in these forensic events. One 1906 issue of The Polytechnic Journal printed a small column in which two good debates held on the Cal Poly campus in the spring of 1906 were reported (School happenings, 1906, p.14). Apparently using the Harvard/Yale-style three-person-team debate format popular among college debate circuits (Keith, 2007), first of the debates featured six first-year students on the proposition, Resolved, That a Mechanical Education is of greater value to a young man than an Agricultural Education. The affirmative team consisted of Nathan Lewin, Valentine Drougard, and Ben Duncan; debating for the negative were Le Rue Watson, Harvey Hall, and Eizo Kondo. It is curious that Kondo himself wrote nothing about his school life in California, except the only one passage in his own memoire (written curiously in the voice of he, a third-person singular) part of which goes: He wanted to escape from small Japan and cultivate his own pioneering self in big America Yet he had to come back to Japan, giving up his desire to become big in the midst of his foreign adventure. Whatever excuse he gave publicly, the real reason in fact was his homesickness (Doshisha Daigaku Jinbun Kenkyujyo, 1970, p.4). It is equally important that Kondo chose not (or refused?) to

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mention Proletarian Elocution in any of his later writings, including Cominterns Secret Agent (Comintern no Misshi) (1949) in which he confessed that all he did as a communist was under the direction of Soviet Russia and the Comintern. If we are allowed to make an inferential leap, bridging a missing link between these two little known mysterious happenings in his life and work, however, perhaps we can better understand the rhetorical potentials and limits inherent in Kondos proletarian elocution. This is particularly germane to the idea of proletarian audience he discusses in Chapter Five. In this chapter Kondo began with the concept of mass and suggests that, citing the words of Lenin as well as Stalin, proletarian orators should learn from, not teach, the mass. Our real leaders are those who learn together with the mass, speak together with the mass, and act together with the mass. Proletarian elocution is one method of mass education. As such, [we] should make a speech together with the mass (p.120). As he proceeded to distinguishing the concept of the public (koshu) and that of the audience (choshu), however, his discussion of the proletarian audience becomes confusing. On the one hand, Kondo defined the public as those who read newspapers hence are influence by the printed word of the dominant class; as such the public opinion is in the hands of the capitalist class in the modern capitalist society (p.123). On the other hand, however, he failed to locate the audience specifically for proletarian elocution in a genuine sense of that term. Proletarian elocution should ride on the wave of the public opinion and turn the non-class-interested public opinion into the class-interested one. For that, we specifically need to solicit the audience from the public mobilized by the public opinion. This is an easy task (p.125), he writes, if we hold a critical oratorical meeting on contemporary issues [jikyoku hihan enzetsukai] on the regular basis and criticize the public opinion from the standpoint of the proletariat. Member of the interested public will surely come to such our oratorical meeting (p.126). What Kondo called the easy task, however, is hardly easy. In the first place, his teaching of proletarian elocution simply lacks the strategy of mass mobilization, that is, how to convince the people-at-large to come and attend such critical oratorical meeting. This becomes even more difficult if these masses are already part of the public who are under the control of capitalists and the powerful few. Even if they come at all, when the

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meeting is over and as soon as they leave the assembly hall, they will be once again perpetually exposed to the powerful influence of the printed word against which proletarian oratorical discourses, no matter how logical or even passionate, are just ephemeral. Second and equally important, it is unlikely that the members of the interested public under the capitalist influence will come to attend such meeting hosted by the proletariat and join the debate. Unlike those who attend on-campus school debate and public speaking events, they have no interest or desire to hear, let alone are obliged to be engaged in, the argumentation that comes from the other side of political spectrum. This is particularly true when they are dealing with the lesser who only want to criticize them, refuting their positions and exposing their fallacies by way of logical and critical reasoning. In fact, there had been some debating events held among labor unionists even before the publication of Proletarian Elocution. For instance, Kanke and Morooka (2012) referenced a newspaper article reporting one of such union events in 1919 where the moderator of the debate stated, The debate we have today is not an imitation of the Imperial Diet... On the contrary, our national diet should imitate this debate we will have today (p.188). The question we need to ask, however, is who exactly came to hear these critical discourses, especially outside the union membership. There is no evidence available regarding the demography of audience who gathered at these events; in all unfortunate likelihood, however, engaging these debates labor orator-activists might have had to be content with learning/speaking/acting together with nobody else but themselves. Likewise, despite his ambitious political agenda, proletarian elocution Kondo attempted to teach his comrades may have ended up with a rhetorical genre of display, i.e., an epideictic oration that seeks to demonstrate the rhetorical skills of the speaker in front of those who are already convinced. Conclusions This essay has been an attempt to navigate into the formative years of Japans modern representative democracy and to interrogate the rhetorical history of those who dissented against the power that be. Having probed the discursive strategies of dissension taken by the disenfranchised commoners, the labor, the mass, and socialists/communists with a

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particular focus on Kondos proletarian elocution, all through the analysis the two questions posed by Aune (1994) resonated: What communicative process enables historical actors to see liberatory possibilities?; How does their message shape the audience response to act upon these possibilities? In the first place, the foregoing analysis highlights, if anything, the transformation of the rhetorical situation in which the oratorical dissent of post-1868 Japan had to operate. Namely, as far as modern Japan is concerned, it is the successive political, social and economic changes that both empowered and constrained the process of communication where dissident actors sought their own emancipation as well as political participation. The disenfranchised commoners who took part in the Freedom and Peoples Rights Movement at the dawn of the countrys modernization were empowered by western liberalism and demanded their share of state power by way of parliamentary representation. While some including Taisuke Inagaki succeeded in their attempt, what resulted was far from the very democracy they had envisioned as they became part of the powerful few who controlled the regime. During the late Meiji and early Taisho periods, the angry labor and trade unionists dissented against industrialization and economic exploitation and turned political when they found that they were fighting was the political economy of state power and (war) capitalism. Precisely because of their own politicization, however, these dissidents invited and fell victim to the severe government repression. The same thing can be said of early Marxists and Christian- and internationally-educated socialists. Indeed, the two political parties they inaugurated (the Social Democratic Party and the Japan Sociality Party) were a timely response to the needs of the dissenting labor; yet, at the same time, it was also untimely in that the authorities did not want any political representation of the working class in state affairs. It is precisely in this rhetorical situation that the JCP had to make its political maneuvering. As part of the international Bolshevik movement, it is in the communicative practice of the vanguard that the Japanese Marxist-Leninists found liberatory possibilities. On the one hand, the JCP, as a political party, sought to speak on behalf of both the working class and the people-at-large in representative democracy. On the other hand, as a political organization it engaged a particular political education or, more precisely, the proletarianization of all the working people in the positive sense. And it is precisely in this

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context that Eizo Kondo attempted to (re)invent the rhetorical tradition by the publication of Proletarian Elocution. His blending of the Leninist agitprop and rhetorico-argumentative theory oscillates between the short-term goal of election success and the long-term revolutionary agenda against the backdrop of the strategy change in the Comintern and the international Bolshevik movement. As the first-ever attempt to incorporate the rhetorical tradition into the strategy of Marxist-Leninist political program, the historical significance of Kondos rhetorical (re)invention may be comparable to similar attempts made by his Euro-Marxist contemporaries such as Eduard Davids Referenten Fhrer and Angelica Balabanoffs Erziehung der Massen zum Marxismus, Psychologish-Pdagorische Betrachtungen (cf., Wilkie, 1968; 1974). Yet, no historical evidence suggests that his teaching of proletarian elocution amounted to any pragmatic success. There is no record of proletarian political candidates practicing proletarian elocution based upon the book and winning general elections; nor do we have any empirical evidence that indicates the contribution of Kondos rhetorical agitprop to the (further) proletarianization of the working Japanese during this era. Perhaps even more remarkable, what historical evidence does inform us is that in less than two years after he published Proletarian Elocution Kondo defected from the international Bolshevik movement and the proletarian political activism. In December 1931 he published a book titled Musansha Seito Denaosubeshi (The Proletarian Party Needs a Turn-Over), declaring his conversion to fascistic nationalism, more precisely, the Nazis-style national socialism (Doshisha Daigaku Jinbun Kenkyujyo, 1970, p.512). No sooner than making this turn, Kondo began preparing for launching the Japan National Socialist Party; while his effort to form that party resulted in vain, he did succeed in creating another Nazis-like party (the New Japan National Alliance) and tried an unsuccessful run for Tokyo Metropolitan Assembly in June 1932. Singaporean English-language daily Straits Times dated on August 2, 1932 had a feature article on reds-turned Japanese nationalists where Kondo was listed among Japans new nationalist leaders: [S]tarting as a Socialist, turned to Communism and employed for a time in the Comintern Secretariat at Moscow, but later returned to Japan to join the Taishuto [the Japan Mass Party] (the former central bloc of the proletarian movement) [Kondo] has now become an ardent fascist (Current politics in Japan, 1932,

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p.16). Interestingly enough, Kondo right-wing politics was perceived too dangerous and extreme even by the government authorities. In 1942, i.e., the very year when Imperial Japan signed the Tripartite Pact with Nazis Germany and Fascist Italy, in fact, Kondo was arrested on the charge that his national socialist political activism violated the Public Peace Preservation Act (Doshisha Daigaku Jinbun Kenkyujyo, 1970, p.514). After World War II, he completely retreated from the countrys political scene. Deprived of his suffrage and right to political participation in 1948, Kondo spent the rest of his life for the improvement of living conditions of those who were physically challenged and economically disadvantaged, a similar project that his old mentor Sen Katayama had engaged in the late 1890s. Ironically enough, as the president of Shunyokai, a non-profit social welfare service cooperation, he was awarded for his life-long dedication to this worthy cause by the Governor of Tokyo in 1958. Regarding the possible motivation for his political conversion, Kondo later mentioned what he observed in Soviet Russia, i.e., the exploitation of farmers and workers in the name of the proletarian state which was no different from the imperial period and the restriction on freedom and liberty of the people under the dictatorship of the proletariat (Doshisha Daigaku Jinbun Kenkyujyo, 1970, p.450). From a rhetorical-theoretic vantage point, perhaps we can make a case that a kind of frustration he might have had about his own rhetorical project could also be a factor contributing to his giving up of the revolutionary proletarian cause. As Aune (1994) wrote, in the pursuit of Marxist-Leninist agenda, orator communists need to have a sense of prudence that allows them to make a strategic choice between reformist and revolutionary rhetorics: The former addresses or tries to constitute a more or less unified audience in the social formation whereas the latter necessarily address[es] a partial and partisan audience and refuses dialogue with others (p.56). Rather than making a prudent choice between these rhetorical strategies, Kondo unfortunately hasted to go for an easy-way-out; national socialism was, in a sense, the final solution for his own rhetorical problem. As it is discussed above, the logical- and critical-reasoning-oriented feature of Invention in his rhetorical teaching was of little utility, for, unlike in interscholastic forensic events, no opposition team would show up to debate

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orator communists. More importantly, the political effectivity of proletarian elocution is limited in that it lacks a theory and method of mass mobilization. As such, it fails to reach, let alone educate, the mass audience outside the proletariat. Given that the proletarianization of the mass was impossible by the revolutionary strategy of proletarian elocution, it is likely that he was attracted to the strategy of audience unification not by the force of reason, i.e., political education by the rhetorical agitprop, but by the reason of force. Not only refusing dialogue with others, namely, national socialism would enable him to eradicate them so that neither persuasion nor political education would be necessary. There are a number of lessons that todays winning communists as well as we students of rhetoric can and should learn from the diverse rhetorical experience of the working-class and other participants in post-1868 dissident movements in Japan. In the first place, it is important to remember that winning an election is not tantamount to political change or reform, let alone cause a fundamental transformation of the regime. While it is true that the power that be does fear the political presence and parliamentary representation of the dissenting force, the fact is that it unfortunately means little if it does not win the parliamentary majority. While the winning JCP can now propose a legislative bill to the Diet, the Cabinet of Prime Minister Abe and his majority coalition can safely vote it down without much deliberation. To coin the famous words of John Stuart Mill (1859/1989), it is the tyranny of the majority that works in the Diet against which a small minority of communist representation and opposition, however significant and vocal it may be, is powerless. In so saying, I do not intend to downplay the historic achievement made by the communist candidates in the last election. The JCP was one of the very few political parties that gained seats, a remarkable fact we should all recognize; a recent opinion poll conducted by the Nikkei even indicated that the JCP is now the second most popular political party in Japan (although some 40 percent behind the most popular LDP) (Warnock, 2013b). While it is important that it continues to seek the [further] support of the people, as stated by Yoshiko Kira who won her seat in the Tokyo District, the Japanese communists should also be aware that they have already secured a considerably huge number of supporters (the underemployed, the NEETs, the working poor, and the like) who are willing to cast their ballots for the JCP.

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To the question, What is left of socialism? Jurgen Habermas immediately answered, Radical democracy (Habermas and Micknik, 1991, p.11). If we can take his words at face value and if the JCP wishes to continue to be a consistent voice of dissent, the Japanese communists should also learn from Eizo Kondo, arguably the most controversial of their founding fathers, and his rhetorical-pedagogical attempt made in 1930. More specifically, as a political organization, it should be engaged in vitalizing the critical discourse outside the Diet, by encouraging public discussion and debate that should involve not only the party members and full-fledged proletariat but also the broader-based mass and, most importantly, the opposition, i.e., the ruling parliamentary majority. As Holmes (1988) wrote: Democracy is governed by public discussion, not simply the enforcement of the will of the majority. Public disagreement is an essential instrument of popular government. Not any will, but only a will formed in vigorous and wide-open debate should be given sovereign authority. The legally guaranteed right of opposition is an essential precondition for the formulation of a democratic public opinion. Without being threatened or deprived of their livelihood, citizens must be able to articulate and publicly defend heterodox political views. Consent is meaningless without institutional guarantees of unpunished dissent. (p. 233) It is to be recalled that the Meiji Restoration of 1868 enabled not only the westernization/modernization of the countrys industrial economy; it also brought about the enlightenment movement and enabled the importation of western rhetoric, including public speaking and debating. Some 150 years have past since then, now debate is no longer considered obscure or foreign on Japanese soil: With both positive and negative connotations, the term debate has now become part of Japans household vocabulary. As Inoue (1996) maintained, The accommodation of debate in Japanese society is undergoing a rapid change now. Popularity of debate in education and media is increasing peoples familiarity with the [Japanese] word dibeeto (Section 5, para. 2). Perhaps the time has come for the Japanese communists to revisit the ambitious rhetorical project attempted by Kondo and make the proletarian public debate event he proposed, i.e., the critical oratorical meeting on contemporary issues, as part of its political agenda. In fact, some

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LDP politicians seem more than ready to debate as they had been engaged in debate training, inviting an instructor who does not seem to know much about rhetoric, debate and argument theory (although he claims to be the president of a debate organization whose name is almost unheard of among debate educators and forensic professionals in Japan) as their coach (http://blog.goo.ne.jp/ta6323blue/e/631cfccf97152d1bdbfec7dfdee91cd8). The conflict between liberal democracy and Marxism-Leninism was between ideologies which, despite their major differences, ostensibly shared ultimate goals of freedom, equality and prosperity. A Western democrat could carry on an intellectual debate with a Soviet Marxist (Huntington, 1993, p.44). Fortunately for the JCP debaters, they already have the American-educated debate coach of their own; by learning Kondos logical- and critical-reasoning-focused rhetoric blended with the science of Marxist-Leninist dialectical materialism, if given the opportunity I assume that the Japanese communists would easily beat the Liberal Democrats taught by their inexperienced debate coach on diverse policy issues. By the same token, it is high time for scholars of rhetoric and public argument to revisit Kondos ambitious project. This is particular true if we are to recognize the significance of this work in the context of international Bolshevism as well as of international forensics: Blending Marxism-Leninism with Greco-Roman rhetoric by a Japanese educated in part in the Unites States, Proletarian Elocution was a product of East-West collaboration in a multiple sense of the term. As Woods and Konishi (2007) noted, the student debate exchange co-sponsored by the Committee on International Discussion and Debate in the United States and the Japan English Forensic Association/the Japan Debate Association has historically promoted friendship and produced significant collaborative research between the two countries in terms of rhetorical and argument scholarship. If so, there is no good reason for argument and rhetorical scholars at the both ends of the Pacific not to further investigate and take a closer and more critical look at Kondos proletarian elocution and other post-1868 rhetorical dissensions in Japan where we can find a rather strong U.S. presence and influences (Christian socialists educated in the United States, the importation of U.S. trade unionism, etc.). Regardless of ones political orientation and persuasion, we cannot possibly deny that the rhetorical history post-1868

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Japan features a plethora of socialists, Marxist-Leninists, and other leftists who engaged in public communication. If the liberally- and conservatively-minded Japanese-speaking rhetorical scholars wish to continue ignoring this particular part of their own history, it is very unfortunate, to say the least.

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References Aristotle. (n.d.). The art of rhetoric: Book I. W. R. Roberts (trans.). From, http://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/rhetoric.1.i.html. Accessed, March 1, 2013. Aonuma, S. (2012). Tradition rhtorique et transition dmocratique. Histoire de lart oratoire et de ses publics dans le Japon du dbut de lre modern [The rhetorical tradition and democratic transition: An alternative history of the rhetoric and its publics in early dodern Japan]. Xavier Blandin (trans.). Participations: Revue du sciences socials sur dmocratie et la citoyennet 2.141-160. Artz, L., Macek, S., and Cloud, D. L., eds. (2006). Marxism and communication studies: The point is to change it. New York: Peter Lang. Aune, J. A. (1994). Rhetoric and Marxism. Boulder: Westview Press. Bitzer, L. (1968). The rhetorical situation. Philosophy & Rhetoric 1. 1-14. BBC Monitoring Asia-Pacific. (2013, July 22). Japanese opposition voices concern over ruling party's dominance. From, Lexis/Nexis. Accessed, August 30, 2013. Beckman, G. M., and Okubo, G. (1969). Japanese Communist Party, 1922-1945. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Blair, G. (2013, August 5). July's elections were the first in Japan where online campaigning was permitted, and it was Japans Communist Party that is widely seen as having made best use of it. The Christian Science Monitor. From, Lexis/Nexis. Accessed, August 30, 2013. Bowen-Struyk, H. (2009, June 29). Why a boom in proletarian literature in Japan? The Kobayashi Takiji Memorial and The Factory Ship. The Asia-Pacific Journal: The Japan Focus, 26-1-9. From, http://japanfocus.org/-Heather-Bowen_Struyk/3180#sthash.EuQlNUWJ.dpuf. Accessed, June 1, 2013. Branham, R. J. (1994). Debate and dissent in late Tokugawa and Meiji Japan. Argumentation and Advocacy 30. 131-149. Bugchardt, C. R. (1980). Two faces of American communism: Pamphlet rhetoric of the third period and the popular front. Quarterly Journal of Speech, 66. 375-391. Catalogue 1907-8. (1908). California Polytechnic School: San Luis Obispo.

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