Masanosuke Watanabe (Asano) was leading Japanese Marxist and Chair of the Communist Party when he was murdered by police on October 6, 1928 in today’s Taiwan, then a Japanese colony, on the run after the March 15 crackdown against leftists and trade unionists.

‘Reactionaries Kill Japanese Militant’ by K. Yamamoto from The Daily Worker. Vol. 5 No. 318. January 9, 1929.

As a result of the raging reaction in Japan, the trade union movement has been deprived of a great number. of leaders and fighters, and it has now lost one of its most prominent leaders.

In the beginning of October, Comrade Masanosuke Watanabe (Asano), was killed by the police at Kilung, Formosa.

Leader of Left Wing.

Comrade Watanabe was the creator of the Tokyo Codo Kodo Kumiai (General Workers’ Union) of the Hyogikai, he was also the leader of the Hyogikai (Trade Union Council of Japan), and, consequently, the leader of the entire left wing trade union movement in Japan.

Comrade Watanabe’s activities in the trade union movement were remarkable and splendid. He was born at Ichikawa, a small village near Tokyo, in 1899. As the son of a poor handicraftsman, he was a worker from his boyhood. He was one of the pioneers in the post-war trade union movement in 1917-18. Such famous trade unions as the New Celluloid Workers Union, the Kokushoku Rodo Kumiai, the Nankatsu Rodo Kai, etc., were founded either under his direct leadership or with his closest collaboration. His activity was mainly confined to the Kanto District (Eastern Japan), until after the Kameido Case, when, burning with hatred of the ruling class which had murdered his seven comrades, he advanced to the leadership of the national left wing trade union movement.

Split Reactionaries.

The most epoch-making event in the history of the trade union movement in Japan, was the split of the Sodomei (Trade Union Federation) and the formation of the Hyogikai (Trade Union Council). In the development of a militant rank and file struggle against the compromising policies of the Sodomei leadership, Suzuki, Matsuoka & Co., Comrade Watanabe represented most clearly the left wing ideas and program.

In this struggle his genius for organization showed itself; when in March, 1924, his union sent him into the Sodomei as its representative, he had only a hundred members behind him, but when in September of the same year the reactionary officials expelled him, he already had the solid support of more than two-thirds of the membership of the Kanto Sodomei.

Extended Unity Movement.

After the formation of the Hyogikai on a national scale, in May, 1925, Comrade Watanabe’s activity. extended greatly. The labor movement at that time was greatly split up. Unity was only possible through building a strong left wing, permeating all the unions. It was Comrade Watanabe who realized this necessity first, and his tireless efforts, in Tokyo, in Osaka, in Kyushu, etc., brought everywhere the left wing groups into existence that laid the foundation for the unity movement in Japan.

Exposed Reformists’ Treason.

His activity in the proletarian party organizing campaign in 1925 was also remarkable in the history of the Japanese working class. He carried on a relentless struggle against Nishio and other right wing leaders on a series of political questions. The first issue was between Nishio’s proposal for a reformist parliamentary “labor party,” against which Watanabe proposed a party representing a united front between the proletariat and the peasantry. He put forth the program of “confiscation of land by the peasantry,” against Nishio’s proposed “land nationalization” by the bourgeois state; he advocated “complete emancipation of the colonies,” against Nishio’s “autonomy of the colonies”; and against Nishio’s slogan of “disarmament” he put forth. the demand for “arming of the workers and peasants.” The sharp divisions on these questions were made the occasion by the right wing for seceding from the campaign, thereby exposing thoroughly the anti-working class character of the right wing leaders.

Of course the opportunists called him a “destroyer of organization” on this account, because his militant program and organizational abilities shook the right wing control of the masses. He published a pamphlet on the British Minority Movement, which contributed much to the left movement in Japan. He also organized the first factory committee movement. By the autumn of 1926 these efforts had been crystallized in the Toitsu Domei (Unity League) which embraced one-third of all organized workers in Japan, largely as the result of his years of tireless ideological and organizational activities.

Was A Fighting Marxist.

In 1927, Comrade Watanabe’s visited Moscow and also spent much time in visiting and conferring with comrades in revolutionary China. He doubtlessly learned much, arming himself with the revolutionary theories of Leninism. He declared decisive war on the liquidatory tendency of the “senile Communists” Yamakawa, Inomata, and others; explained the necessity of a bourgeois-democratic revolution in Japan and the perspective of its growing over into a proletarian revolution, and attacked thoroughly the social-democratic views.

The Daily Worker began in 1924 and was published in New York City by the Communist Party US and its predecessor organizations. Among the most long-lasting and important left publications in US history, it had a circulation of 35,000 at its peak. The Daily Worker came from The Ohio Socialist, published by the Left Wing-dominated Socialist Party of Ohio in Cleveland from 1917 to November 1919, when it became became The Toiler, paper of the Communist Labor Party. In December 1921 the above-ground Workers Party of America merged the Toiler with the paper Workers Council to found The Worker, which became The Daily Worker beginning January 13, 1924.

PDF of full issue: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/dailyworker/1929/1929-ny/v05-n318-NY-jan-09-1929-DW-LOC.pdf