The Hawera Star. TUESDAY, JANUARY 21, 1930. IS JAPAN FACING BOLSHEVISM?

Hawera Star, Volume XLIX, 21 January 1930, Page 4

The Hawera Star.

TUESDAY, JANUARY 21, 1930. IS JAPAN FACING BOLSHEVISM?

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The Japanese Government recently startled the world by announcing the l arrest and indictment of 825 Japanese I for participation in a plot to undertake a Communist uprising against the Empire. Amongst .those arrested are 125 graduates and students of the two imperial universities and many members of aristocratic families. Sov enteen women axe. in this group, which must now go on trial under charges which, in the event of conviction, carry penalties ranging from ten years ’ imprisonment .to execution. The Red scare is no longer .taken very seriously in England. Disclosures of the last few years regarding the interested sources of the agitation and repeated demonstrations of the weakness of the Communist movement have convinced most Englishmen that the danger of a Red revolution is remote. In Japan, however, | the situation is faT different. Japan is j a neighbour of Russia. She knows that Russia’s foreign policy is aimed primar!ily toward the East. Japan thinks of herself as occupying much the same relation to the Russian revolution as England held to .the Revolution in France. The analogy is not far wrong. For the last four or live years the drift -within labour circles in Japan has been plainly toward the Left. The country has been flooded with Communist literature. Not only the classic Marx, but Lenin, Bukharin and Stalin are available in Japanese translations and have been -widely read. Under the impact of these Russian ideas, a labour movement that was originally patterned on the British model became more and more impregnated with revolutionary radicalism, until finally it split into three parts, of which the farthest Left is the most active. But the most serious aspect of this situation has been the rapid growth of Communist sentiment among the youth of Japan, aud particularly among university students. As long ago as January, 1928, Japan’s most famous social reformer, Toy oink o Kagawa, said in an article published in the United States, "The students as a whole have been attracted to Marxian philosophy.’’ With the student classes becoming more and -more vociferous in their radicalism, and with the labour movement veering further and further .toward the Left, j the recent wholesale arrests are hardly surprising. Repression of "dangerous thoughts’’ has always been severe in Japan. Yet it is doubtful whether even such sw'eeping measures will end Communist agitation. Japan’s Communists have already shown their ability to conduct a daily newspaper underground-, and repression is likely to add the attractions of near-martyr-dom to the previous appeal of the Communist doctrines. Japan is experiencing fundamental social and economic dislocations .at present. Slums are on -the increase. The farms can no longer support their former population, the drift from the country to city employment -being mow at the rate of over 750,000 a year. Unemployment has doubled since 1925 and is conspicuous among the intellectuals. Facts like these lie at -the bottom of the unrest in Japan. The Government is acting as any other Government would in taking firm measures against plans for actual Communist revolt. But the only successful method of ending Communist agitation will be by eliminating underlying causes of social and economic discontent.