Speaker 1: Hello, welcome to it could happen here the podcast that
Speaker 1: is my podcast. Now. I'm your host, Margaret Kiljoy, and
Speaker 1: with me is the Webby Award winning Sophie Lichterman as
Speaker 1: our producer, as well as the actual hosts of the show,
Speaker 1: who go without mentioning because I don't see any reason
Speaker 1: to include them. Can that just be the intro to
Speaker 1: every episode from now? This is better than our all
Speaker 1: of our regular intros. Oh I loved that. Um yeah,
Speaker 1: so what are we talking about today? Also on podcast,
Speaker 1: Garrison Davis and Christopher Wong. Hello, yes, so so today
Speaker 1: we are we are talking about the sort of long
Speaker 1: and incredibly tragic history of Japanese anarchism. Well, okay, actually
Speaker 1: Japanese anarchism before World War two, because after we were
Speaker 1: two is an entirely different story. And as much as
Speaker 1: I love people in construction helmets just like beating the
Speaker 1: ship out of cops with large sticks, Uh, that story
Speaker 1: is extremely complicated if you want to hear read, Uh,
Speaker 1: talk more about that story a little bit. Uh. The
Speaker 1: third part of my Nobasikikishi episode has a lot of
Speaker 1: people in construction help us with sticks. But you know
Speaker 1: this is you know Okay said that the history of
Speaker 1: anarchism generally is the history of tragedy, but even by
Speaker 1: by anarchist standards, the the history of Japanese anarchism is
Speaker 1: just an absolute welter of heartbreak and loss. Um. Out
Speaker 1: of all of the people that we're going to talk
Speaker 1: about today, exactly one of the non Russian anarchist is
Speaker 1: going to live to see world the end of World
Speaker 1: War two, and he's Korean. Every single other person is
Speaker 1: either going to be executed by the state, assassinated, killed themselves,
Speaker 1: drink themselves to death. So this is uh, this is
Speaker 1: this is an ex bleak story in a lot of ways.
Speaker 1: Good to have one of those optimistic episodes every once
Speaker 1: in a while. Yeah, you know, I mean I think
Speaker 1: the gets thrown down a well. Uh well, okay, it's
Speaker 1: it's unclear whether anyone got thrown down away. I'm sorry,
Speaker 1: I'm skipping ahead and I don't actually know. Well, we will,
Speaker 1: we will get to the wells uh yeah. I also okay,
Speaker 1: so there's a lot of Japanese anarchists and we don't
Speaker 1: have that much time. So if you're like in a
Speaker 1: sawa u sakataro, stand um, I'm sorry. We can't cover
Speaker 1: all of them. Do you ever think about the history
Speaker 1: of anarchists in Japan. That is weird is that the
Speaker 1: beginning of the story pre dates they're actually being anarchists
Speaker 1: in Japan, or specifically they're being Japanese anarchists. Um. There's
Speaker 1: this huge degree of sort of like cultural exchange and
Speaker 1: influence running between Japan and Russia by riche of the
Speaker 1: fact that they are, you know, next to each other, um,
Speaker 1: and especially in the seventies and eighties, this is one
Speaker 1: of the sort of this is important again because Russia
Speaker 1: in this period is like this is like the hotbed
Speaker 1: of anarchism, right, Like they're they're killing, they're killing those
Speaker 1: are they're they're they're doing all the things. They're going
Speaker 1: to the countryside there. The Russian anarchists are sort of
Speaker 1: on the move, and a lot of things the Russian
Speaker 1: anarchists wind up Like in Japan, baccun In is there
Speaker 1: for like he like he has some extremely complicated arrangement
Speaker 1: who like he like sneaks on a boat and he
Speaker 1: like gets out and he beats one of the sort
Speaker 1: of like samurai like Beiji Restoration revolutionaries, and they chat
Speaker 1: for a bit and then he leaves, so he he
Speaker 1: you know, but you did, It's not this is when
Speaker 1: he was escaping Siberia. Yeah, well I think, yeah, he's
Speaker 1: escaping Siberia. And then he somehow convinces like the American
Speaker 1: embassy or something to like let him on a boat
Speaker 1: to Japan. It's it's a very weird story. It's like
Speaker 1: all things Baccunan are, but the most problem in anarchists
Speaker 1: to spend time in Japan is Lev ah Nikov. Um
Speaker 1: Mashnikov is like he's like a pretty big deal in
Speaker 1: Russian revolutionary circles. Like he's he's considered like okay, so
Speaker 1: the big sort of like anarchists left wing moving to
Speaker 1: Japan is the populist right. It's called the road nicks
Speaker 1: Um and there there's two big figures in it. There's
Speaker 1: uh Nikolai Turnachevski and this guy uh Lev Menschikov. And
Speaker 1: you know, he's like he knows everyone he knows, like
Speaker 1: he's friends. Was just like every single person and we
Speaker 1: will get too more of his friends later. But like
Speaker 1: he's a kind of part of bakun in um he
Speaker 1: he has he has a very similar career in Beacuoni
Speaker 1: in a lot of ways where he just sort of
Speaker 1: like runs, especially like Eastern Europe. He's like runs around
Speaker 1: the world being in revolutions um, which is good work
Speaker 1: if he can get it. Yeah, yeah, it's it's pretty exciting.
Speaker 1: And he doesn't die, which is sort of incredible. Well,
Speaker 1: I love that for him. So he's still around. Yes,
Speaker 1: it's very sad, you know, I mean he look, look,
Speaker 1: this is this is the goal of Russian cosmism. No,
Speaker 1: is it actually cosmism? I have no idea. Yeah, the
Speaker 1: cosmonaut people, yeah, yeah, they would bring back all the
Speaker 1: dead people. Oh no, I don't know about this. I
Speaker 1: only know a weird thing where there was like anarchist
Speaker 1: cosmonauts in like nineteen twenties Russia. Yeah. Yeah, so the
Speaker 1: their their whole thing was like, okay, so they thought
Speaker 1: that the anarchists had been defeating in the revolution because
Speaker 1: they were insufficiently committed to bringing the dead back to life,
Speaker 1: and that that that, you know, the whole thing was
Speaker 1: like they like, they're there's some the people who were
Speaker 1: involved in the Soviet like rocket programs, and they're doing
Speaker 1: this because they want to colonize the Moon and Mars
Speaker 1: so they can fit all of the dead Poleteraria, They're
Speaker 1: gonna bring back to life. Wait, are you telling the
Speaker 1: truth to me? This is this is all true. This
Speaker 1: is amazing. I've been trying to fight for the Anarchist
Speaker 1: Necromancer League for so long. Which are slogan is um
Speaker 1: raised the dead to fight like hell for the living.
Speaker 1: That's that's It's incredible. But yeah, no, like the Russian cosmism,
Speaker 1: it's a weird one cosmism. It's like a weird mix
Speaker 1: of like like natural philosophy quote unquote, which is just
Speaker 1: like different films of like folk magic or whatever, and
Speaker 1: like religion and spiritual stuff. But also it's like a
Speaker 1: predecessor to like the modern transhumanism. Um, it's a it's
Speaker 1: an interesting little collection of ideas that was popular at
Speaker 1: the very beginning of the twentieth century. It's it's part
Speaker 1: of my thesis that no one normal has ever been
Speaker 1: involved in the production of a rocket, like I mean,
Speaker 1: yeahs the send and then there's just like the Nazis
Speaker 1: and it's like, oh, zero normal people. I have no
Speaker 1: counter argument. There was that because there was the guy
Speaker 1: who did all the multi stage rocketry, the nihilist who
Speaker 1: killed the czar who built the bomb that killed the tzar.
Speaker 1: He like when I talked about this in my podcast,
Speaker 1: probably already listened to this. You have a podcast? WHOA, yeah,
Speaker 1: I really just I'm here. I'm gonna plug this every
Speaker 1: like five minutes. On this episode, um, you can learn
Speaker 1: about the bomb maker who killed the czar and his
Speaker 1: what he brought to the world in terms of rocketry
Speaker 1: and manned rocket travel. Anyway, please continue, and what on
Speaker 1: what show? Margaret? Well, okay, is this podcast that I'm
Speaker 1: recording on right now? When does it come out? When
Speaker 1: are you listening to it, dear readers? Okay, well, then
Speaker 1: next Monday you can listen to cool people who did
Speaker 1: cool stuff, which is my podcast. Yeah, I'm so good
Speaker 1: at my job. Anyway, My job is to interrupt you
Speaker 1: with please tell me more about the cosmos and how
Speaker 1: they relate to Japan. The cols was actually nothing to
Speaker 1: do with this, unfortunately, but yeah, but I live, uh
Speaker 1: live Meshnikov like he also he like fights with Garibaldi
Speaker 1: to reunify Italy. He's just like all over the place.
Speaker 1: But he's an interesting guy because okay, so there's like
Speaker 1: a lot of foreigners who go to Japan, but he
Speaker 1: like makes Japanese friends and like learns Japanese before he
Speaker 1: goes there, which makes him like utterly different than like
Speaker 1: the people who are writing like Westerners who are writing
Speaker 1: Abu Japan in this period, who like don't speak very
Speaker 1: good Japanese and never leave their houses. So nothing has changed. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: well like it, except weirdly this one guy is doing better.
Speaker 1: Oh no, I mean nothing has changed from nowhere, no where.
Speaker 1: No Westerners. Actually they just pretend to care about Japan. Okay, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's it's time, there's actually that's one of the
Speaker 1: borning themes of these two episodes is like there's a
Speaker 1: lot of stuff about this, about anarchism and about Japan
Speaker 1: just like don't change. But you know, so one of
Speaker 1: the things that winds up doing is he winds up
Speaker 1: spending two years teaching at this thing called the Tokyo
Speaker 1: School of Foreign Languages. And this this is a bunch
Speaker 1: of major impacts, one of which is on Meshnikov himself,
Speaker 1: who he becomes heavily influenced by by the major restoration,
Speaker 1: which he thinks of as like this like but he
Speaker 1: looks at it this is like as a revolution, like
Speaker 1: this is an anti feudal revolution. This is the most
Speaker 1: successful social revolution of the century. It's like he thinks
Speaker 1: that it's like destroyed the sort of stratified class system
Speaker 1: and creates this like possibility of like mass social mobility
Speaker 1: for commoners. And Okay, so this is like not the
Speaker 1: best interpretation of what's going on with with the Major Restoration.
Speaker 1: Where I mean, so the Major Restoration sort of ends
Speaker 1: the field system in Japan, it does a lot of
Speaker 1: other bad things. What is it? Like, I don't know
Speaker 1: that much about this, yea, so maybe the audience. Okay,
Speaker 1: so the Major Restoration is a thing that happens where so,
Speaker 1: so Japan has been ruled by a shogun for like
Speaker 1: a long time, and the show and runs the field system.
Speaker 1: It's very elaborate. Everyone has at least sort of minted
Speaker 1: hard proadcasts. But eventually there's this kind of um like
Speaker 1: that there's there's this sort of it's complicated. It's this
Speaker 1: kind of nationalist movements by a bunch of um like
Speaker 1: a bunch of the Samurai clans who this is this
Speaker 1: is having in the six season they mobilized to overthrow
Speaker 1: like the shogunate and basically like restore the emperor a power.
Speaker 1: The emperor has been like a puppet head like figurehead
Speaker 1: guy for like two years and they bring it back
Speaker 1: to power because I'm a hack about fraud and a fraud.
Speaker 1: I'm forgetting their exact slogan. It's something it's something like
Speaker 1: it's Revere the Emperor, and I can't remember what the
Speaker 1: other part of the slogan is. It's very similar to
Speaker 1: the to the box rebellion slogan. It's it's this sort
Speaker 1: of I mean, there's a lot of things going on here.
Speaker 1: It's kind of a reaction to so in the in
Speaker 1: the sies, like Japan is sort of forcibly opened to
Speaker 1: the world by like Comma our Paris showing up with
Speaker 1: a bunch of like the largest gunboats anyone has ever
Speaker 1: seen um and this like this forces Japan to sort
Speaker 1: of like abandon its isolation dispositions and yeah, and you know,
Speaker 1: and you get this sort of classic intellectuals you're looking
Speaker 1: at this and they're going like, Okay, if we don't
Speaker 1: do something like we're gonna get colonized. And so they do.
Speaker 1: And the thing that they do is that they do
Speaker 1: this revolution and they overthrow um. They overthrow the shogunate,
Speaker 1: there's all this like there's there's like a trillion anime
Speaker 1: set in this period because there's like that, there's there's
Speaker 1: like like there there are there are squads of samurai
Speaker 1: swordsmen like running around like stabbing each other in Tokyo
Speaker 1: with like Kyoto and like it's it's wild, it is
Speaker 1: it is a it is a time and and this
Speaker 1: sort of this is what sort of consolidates the modern
Speaker 1: Japanese nation state. Um. You know, I've talked about this
Speaker 1: in my Kishi episodes, but like it sets off this
Speaker 1: wave of colonialism. They like they conquer I know, they
Speaker 1: conquered the islands, they do all this horrible colonialism stuff.
Speaker 1: But there's there's it's really unclear what the revolution is
Speaker 1: actually going to mean because like there has been a revolution, right,
Speaker 1: like the sort of like feudal like class system has
Speaker 1: been swept away. There's all of this sort of there's
Speaker 1: all this this energy and the masses. There's like one
Speaker 1: of one of the things that Meshikov finds is like
Speaker 1: he so he gets to Japan in like the in
Speaker 1: the eighteenth seventies, um, and he's seeing like the first
Speaker 1: size of discontentment with with the sort of the major
Speaker 1: restoration um, which is the restoration of the emperor Um.
Speaker 1: Because there's a lot of people who look at this
Speaker 1: and we're like, oh, hey, we're gonna we finally like
Speaker 1: defeated the sort of olig Art class that like rules
Speaker 1: all of us. And then there's a do olig Art
Speaker 1: class and they're like wait, hold on. And so there's
Speaker 1: there's like there's a series of like ex samurai rebellions.
Speaker 1: There's this whole sort of like like he he like
Speaker 1: Mashikov literally like gets there in the middle of an
Speaker 1: uprising and he's just like in this reason, he has
Speaker 1: nobody what's going on, because the guy he'd been talking
Speaker 1: to winds up being in the uprising, and you know,
Speaker 1: so he gets there and but what what what he
Speaker 1: sees also is he sees his upheaval, but he sees
Speaker 1: that this enormous networker of like cooperative movements. I mean,
Speaker 1: he's a bunch of mutual aid groups. He sees like
Speaker 1: villages who are like pooling all of the resources they
Speaker 1: can send kids to like school in the cities. He
Speaker 1: sees like he sees the government failing to provide services
Speaker 1: for people because there's an uprising going on, and also
Speaker 1: the governments and so people are sort of people taking
Speaker 1: care of each other, and this has an enormous influence
Speaker 1: on him. Um, and he starts to, you know, like
Speaker 1: the way he thinks about anarchism changes, and he sees
Speaker 1: like he starts to think about sort of like anarchism
Speaker 1: as cooperation, like mutual cooperation between people who like mutual
Speaker 1: aid enters the sort of lexicon and Okay, so there's
Speaker 1: a there's a modern historian named show Kota she who
Speaker 1: writes this book called Anarchist mcdar Anarchist Majornity Cooperatism. Wait,
Speaker 1: hold on, yeah, Anarchist Majornity cooperatism and Japanese Russian intellectual
Speaker 1: relationship Modern Japan. And he makes the argument basics, yeah,
Speaker 1: there's there's two there. They're there. It's a it's a
Speaker 1: better title than I'm reading it, because there's there's two.
Speaker 1: There's like a heading and like a subheading straight because
Speaker 1: I'm flound But he's making the argument that this, this
Speaker 1: is like this is actually like something that's very important
Speaker 1: to development of Marco communism. Because this guy, he knows
Speaker 1: everyone liked the anarchist geographer, like at least Rick LuSE.
Speaker 1: I can't pronounce his name. I think it's Lue. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think so, but I can't not with a gun
Speaker 1: to my head, I'm not sure anyway. Yeah, like their
Speaker 1: roommates like they're like they're like they lived together for
Speaker 1: like a while, and like he he he writes the
Speaker 1: Japan Entry, and like the Encyclopedia, he's friends with Coropotkin.
Speaker 1: And after after his his sort of like thoughts starts
Speaker 1: to change about mutual aid, you start to see a
Speaker 1: lot of the same stuff, like you know, like this
Speaker 1: is like he's he's there before Kopakin writes mutual aid,
Speaker 1: and then you see you see all the sort of
Speaker 1: mutual ad stuff popping up with Kropotkin, And you know,
Speaker 1: I don't know how seriously to take the argument that
Speaker 1: like you're sort of seeing like that that a lot
Speaker 1: of this theory is sort of a rebound of reflection
Speaker 1: of what they were seeing in Japanese society. But it's interesting,
Speaker 1: and I think I should mention it because I don't know,
Speaker 1: like there's there's this whole sort of intellectual sphere of
Speaker 1: people who are like associated with anarchists and the other
Speaker 1: thing that happens in this period is that like, um,
Speaker 1: so there's a bunch of like Mashnikov like has a
Speaker 1: bunch of friends in Russia who all got arrested because
Speaker 1: they were in like terrorist groups, and he's able to
Speaker 1: get like a whole bunch of these people too, Like
Speaker 1: he's able to get them like exiled, and their exile
Speaker 1: is they go to Japan, they teach with him, and
Speaker 1: so suddenly there's like there's like a bunch of people
Speaker 1: who are now like these people, these populist are like
Speaker 1: writing stories about like the stuff they were doing, and
Speaker 1: like all the people who are still fighting in Russia.
Speaker 1: So there's suddenly there's all these people who are like
Speaker 1: reading about the Russian populists uh in Japan and and
Speaker 1: you know, and this is that there's there's this kind
Speaker 1: of like anarchist cultural sphere that exists in Japan, like
Speaker 1: before there's anarchists, um like other examples as yeah, yeah
Speaker 1: for Japan as anarchists. They'll be like one like yeah,
Speaker 1: there's like a couple of Russian anarchists and like yeah,
Speaker 1: but like Mashikov leaves at one of the other big
Speaker 1: thing with this is Tolstoy, who is like Tolstoy in
Speaker 1: like nineties, like early nights. He's like he's the like
Speaker 1: he I think he's like the most translated author like
Speaker 1: on earth in Japan. And it's they're not just reading
Speaker 1: his like literary work, they're reading his like theology is
Speaker 1: political work, which is important because Tolstoy is like a
Speaker 1: Christian and reco pacifist right and and this influences this.
Speaker 1: There's this kind of like there's there's a lot of
Speaker 1: sort of left wing anti imperial strains of Christianity that
Speaker 1: pop up in Japan. And this is one of the
Speaker 1: reasons for us, because everyone's reading Tolstoy, and so you
Speaker 1: get the seeds of this anarchist movements that eventually sprout
Speaker 1: into a man named God. This guy's name is actually
Speaker 1: hard Kotuku Shoosi. I'm butchering the last part of it.
Speaker 1: I'm sorry my Japanese does not extend to this many
Speaker 1: years and eyes in a row. But Kotaku kodak he's
Speaker 1: an interesting god because so he doesn't so he has
Speaker 1: like a whole career before it becomes an anarchist. He's
Speaker 1: he's like he's a very premp min journalist intellectual, like
Speaker 1: he writes a newspaper. It's very famous. Everyone reads it,
Speaker 1: and he's the heir apparent to this other like very
Speaker 1: famous sort of liberal journalist. Who again, because Lev Meshnikov
Speaker 1: knows literally everyone was like a friend of Left Mashnikov.
Speaker 1: I don't. He knows every single person on earth. It's incredible.
Speaker 1: You know that rules you know, unless you ever turned,
Speaker 1: if you ever snitched to be terrible apparently never did
Speaker 1: so yeah yeah, I mean it's still around, so I
Speaker 1: mean he still could snitch. He's still around still as
Speaker 1: the chance. Oh I guess everyone he was snitched on
Speaker 1: his dead so um makes it harder. The ethics Scipilari area. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so Kodaku is like he's kind of like a standard
Speaker 1: liver bowal, but he gets involved with with the anti
Speaker 1: war movements. Um specifically this is this is the the
Speaker 1: anti uh well is it does anti a lot of
Speaker 1: wars because the Jet Japan is fighting an enormous series
Speaker 1: of wars and like the early nine hundreds. Um, yeah,
Speaker 1: they kicked Russia's ass at that point. Yeah. Yeah, they
Speaker 1: fight Japan, they fight Japans. Sorry, they fight China. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and you do you know who else is fighting China?
Speaker 1: I don't know. I'm afraid to know the products and
Speaker 1: services support the show. Are we supported by American nationalism?
Speaker 1: Apparently yes, question mark, and we're back first Rush the
Speaker 1: first actual Japanese anarchist. So in nteen, Cuckoo writes this
Speaker 1: book called Imperialism, Monster of the twentieth Century, which is
Speaker 1: like good, yeah, yeah, And this certificate for a number
Speaker 1: of reasons, one of which is that, like, this is
Speaker 1: one of the first major like books about imperialism. Like
Speaker 1: there there are some other Western writers who stuff like
Speaker 1: predates this, but like, this is not Hunter. This is
Speaker 1: before Lenin has written about imperialism. This is before like Hobson.
Speaker 1: This is before Luxembourg. And I'm just gonna read it
Speaker 1: a little bit from it because it rules. So this
Speaker 1: is from the first section. It's called imperialism of wildfire
Speaker 1: in an open field. In imperialism spreads like a wildfire
Speaker 1: in an open field. All nations bow down to worship
Speaker 1: this new god, sing hymns to praise it, and have
Speaker 1: created a cult to pay to pay it adoration. Look
Speaker 1: at the world that surrounds us In England's both governments
Speaker 1: and citizens have become fervent acolytes of imperialism. In Germany,
Speaker 1: the war loving emperor never loses a chance to extol
Speaker 1: his virtues. As for Russia, the regime has long practiced
Speaker 1: to policy of imperialism. France, Austria, and Italy are all
Speaker 1: delighted to join the fray. Even a young country like
Speaker 1: the United States has recently shown his eagerness to master
Speaker 1: this new skill. And finally, this trend has reached Japan.
Speaker 1: Ever since our great victory in the Sino Japanese War,
Speaker 1: Japanese of all classes burned with fervor to join the
Speaker 1: race for an empire, like a wild horse freed from
Speaker 1: its harness. So you know, the one thing that he
Speaker 1: got incorrect, as as I understand by spending a lot
Speaker 1: of time on Twitter, is that actually only the United
Speaker 1: States is imperialist and any actions, especially by Russia. I
Speaker 1: was very confused that he included Russia as the finished
Speaker 1: the sentence of the straight face. Um, what Russia would be? Also,
Speaker 1: how could it be imperialism if Lenin hadn't yet defined
Speaker 1: the term for this is? Okay, this is the whole thing. Okay. So,
Speaker 1: so Kutico gets like a lot of ship from this book,
Speaker 1: because for like from later on, for having his leftis
Speaker 1: because it like he's insufficiently materialist. It's like, yeah, he
Speaker 1: is mostly just talking, like the books mostly about like
Speaker 1: how patriotism and nationalism like create this stuff. It doesn't
Speaker 1: look at economics much. But like, okay, there's a whole
Speaker 1: problem here, which is that if you try to apply
Speaker 1: Lenin's definition of imperialism to Japan, it doesn't work because
Speaker 1: like like what would Japan is invading China, they have
Speaker 1: like I think it's like fifty total factories. Yeah, like that,
Speaker 1: the everything is completely backwards, Like it's like yeah, and
Speaker 1: like you know, it's like like like Lettin's imperialism is
Speaker 1: supposed to be like the highest stage of capitalism, but
Speaker 1: then you go to Japan, Japan's like barely started the
Speaker 1: tradition to capitalism. Like Lettin's imperialism is supposed to be
Speaker 1: about like debt exports, right, but Japan is just conquering
Speaker 1: countries while they're just literally like borrowing massively from whether
Speaker 1: states of funder industrialzations. Everything does nothing, None of it works,
Speaker 1: And Kodaku gets like again he has he has like
Speaker 1: a lot of ship for this, but it's like no,
Speaker 1: she's right, like letting is Letting is wrong, like Lettings analysis,
Speaker 1: if you try to apply in Japan does not work
Speaker 1: and does so. Yeah, and you know, Cutko, I think
Speaker 1: like he's keyed into things that the Marxists aren't, but
Speaker 1: like specifically about like about the power of nationalism because
Speaker 1: you know, I mean like obviously if you if you
Speaker 1: go a bit later, it's like, well, all of these
Speaker 1: people who are like, oh, imperialism is the highest age
Speaker 1: of capitalism, and then all of their parties vote to
Speaker 1: go to war with each other in World War One,
Speaker 1: Like you know, Okay, Critico I think like gets this
Speaker 1: because his relationship with socialists and anti imperialism are like
Speaker 1: backward from the Marxist right where the Marxists arrive at
Speaker 1: eti imperialism, like from their Marxism. But Cudico like comes
Speaker 1: a socialist because he sees it as a way to
Speaker 1: stop wars. Like that's like his big thing is he's
Speaker 1: in the anti war move when he want he's wars
Speaker 1: to stop. And that's the right direction to do. Ship.
Speaker 1: You should do ship because like you don't pick the
Speaker 1: label because what's cool. You pick You figure out what
Speaker 1: you believe, and then you pick the label that fits
Speaker 1: what you believe and so of the other way around,
Speaker 1: you know, yeah, and and you know it means that
Speaker 1: he's less sort of like he's less dogmatic than like
Speaker 1: his successors, because you know, I mean because because he's
Speaker 1: he's working off of his actual principles versus sort of
Speaker 1: like this like dictation stuff, and I mean he's he's
Speaker 1: he initial three. He publishes the es as a Socialism,
Speaker 1: which is like this is like the first like socialist
Speaker 1: like book written by Japanese person. It's like one of
Speaker 1: the I think there's maybe like one or two other
Speaker 1: ones that are before this is this is like the
Speaker 1: first big one. And he's he's also like he's involved
Speaker 1: in founding the Japanese Socialist Party and then he gets
Speaker 1: like arrested and sent to the US and something happens
Speaker 1: when he's in you. I don't know, there's I've seen
Speaker 1: like sis conflicting accounts, Like I've seen accounts to say
Speaker 1: he joins he joins the I w W. I I
Speaker 1: don't know. I've seen other people said he lived, he
Speaker 1: lived in a commune, like he definitely read pocket, he
Speaker 1: like becomes an anarchist. Let's decide he did all of
Speaker 1: these things. Yeah, lived in a commune and tried to
Speaker 1: organize the commedy with the I WW but you know,
Speaker 1: I mean he he this guy is enormously influential in
Speaker 1: history of Japanese left. Like he's the guy with when
Speaker 1: he comes back and actually know six, he's the guy
Speaker 1: who introduced the concept of the general strike Japan. Like
Speaker 1: he's the first guy to write about it. He's very cool.
Speaker 1: He he also like yeah, you know, he's he starts
Speaker 1: pushing this and started this. He starts pushing anarchism in
Speaker 1: sort of direct action as like instead of like doing
Speaker 1: parliamentary stuff. And he translates like Corpocket's work in the
Speaker 1: Japanese he translates the like the comedy's manifesto. He says,
Speaker 1: labor organizing. He's sort of like all over the place,
Speaker 1: and you know, like labor and the anti war movement
Speaker 1: are like two of the big currents are proucing anarchists.
Speaker 1: But the the other like big current that's making anarchists
Speaker 1: this period is feminism. Because okay, so I stop me
Speaker 1: if this isn't any way surprising, but the late eighteen
Speaker 1: hundreds and early neteen hunters are not a time to
Speaker 1: be a woman in Japan. Really. Yeah, it's not a
Speaker 1: good time like anywhere, but it's not not even now,
Speaker 1: it's not the best. Yeah, I mean I will be improved.
Speaker 1: I will say it's it's it's better than this. This
Speaker 1: is like sure, like the major regime is sort of
Speaker 1: like consultating self as just consultating itself. It gets like
Speaker 1: progressively more like patriarchal, misogynist. I'm gonna I'm gonna read
Speaker 1: from the book Reflections on the Way to the Gallows,
Speaker 1: which is this. It's a great book. It's it's an
Speaker 1: awesome a collection of Yeah, well so that that's uh,
Speaker 1: how god, I forget one of the Japanese anarchists who's
Speaker 1: about to die, Like that's the title of like a
Speaker 1: piece that she wrote. Um, and they this book is
Speaker 1: like a collection of of Japanese feminist writings, mostly from
Speaker 1: people who get killed by the state, because that's what
Speaker 1: happens when your feminist Japan this period. Um oh yeah,
Speaker 1: it's bad, okay, So I'm gonna read the quote from this.
Speaker 1: In two the government forbid women to make political speeches,
Speaker 1: and in eighteen ninety made it illegal for women to
Speaker 1: participate in political activities whatsoever. Women were forbidden to even
Speaker 1: listen to political speeches. The Police Security Regulations of reinforced
Speaker 1: these strictures. Article five of the regulations prohibited women from
Speaker 1: forming any political organization whatsoever. Jesus. Yeah, it's like that's
Speaker 1: like a level of restriction that like I'm not sure
Speaker 1: I've ever seen like that explicit level of no, you
Speaker 1: can't do this. Yeah, I feel like it's usually implicit
Speaker 1: in a lot of Western tries. And then also, like
Speaker 1: one of the things that really strikes sticks out to
Speaker 1: me about that is that I'm so used to thinking
Speaker 1: about I think people tend to think about like this
Speaker 1: like linear progress model, where like you go back really far,
Speaker 1: like all women and all other oppressed categories had it
Speaker 1: terrible and then it just slowly gets better or whatever.
Speaker 1: But if they're passing these laws in nine hundred, there's
Speaker 1: an implicit it was a little better before. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's very specifically gets worse on them. Like so one
Speaker 1: of the things with the eighteen ninety legal coaches that
Speaker 1: didn't like it literally just legally enshrines like patriarch control
Speaker 1: the households and this this is this is a massive
Speaker 1: reactionary shift in jack in Sert of Jeoparanese like domestic
Speaker 1: and political culture like this, like that that kind of
Speaker 1: patriarchal control. The household was like a thing in some
Speaker 1: Samurai families, but like it wasn't a thing for there's
Speaker 1: a huge number of popular classes like just that didn't
Speaker 1: exist and they just legislated into existence. And like you know,
Speaker 1: I mean like the things that the things that they're
Speaker 1: applying here, like women need consent of their father to marry.
Speaker 1: Um is for another quote for the book, one of
Speaker 1: the provisions held that quote cripples and disabled persons and
Speaker 1: wives cannot undertake any legal action. Fucking huh. Yeah. So
Speaker 1: this is this is this is an incredibly reactionary state.
Speaker 1: And there's also like there's a lot of sex trafficking
Speaker 1: going on, like like actual like there's a lot of
Speaker 1: people just being grabbed off the street. Um. It's a
Speaker 1: it's a it is a disaster, and it is into
Speaker 1: this patriarchal mess that like several generations of Japanese ARCA
Speaker 1: feminists step into. Um. The most famous of the first
Speaker 1: round is Kano Sugako, who's she She's a socialist author
Speaker 1: who conversed to She's originally Scius listen and she conversed anarchism,
Speaker 1: which is like a thing that happens a lot in
Speaker 1: this period. And she she's working as a journalist and
Speaker 1: you know she she's she's like she's a very sort
Speaker 1: of controversial figure in the government like hates her. So
Speaker 1: she meets Kotuku and they have an affair. And this
Speaker 1: is like one of the other things that keeps happening
Speaker 1: here is there's a lot of like free love stuff
Speaker 1: going around the Japanese anarchist circle at this time. And
Speaker 1: this this has two consect which is one is a
Speaker 1: lot of men use it to be really shitty and
Speaker 1: means there was like there is a again this is
Speaker 1: this is this is the big like nothing has ever
Speaker 1: changed the anchist movement. There are so many relationship drama
Speaker 1: things nothing. There are so many times this last circle,
Speaker 1: like like there are two different times when the most
Speaker 1: famous Japanese anchist man and the most famous Japanese anecists
Speaker 1: women wind up in a relationship. It ends with it
Speaker 1: with them explaining the movement and then both dying in prison.
Speaker 1: Like this happens twice. Exact sequence happens twice. It's nuts,
Speaker 1: like they're they're just they're just doing polyquel ship like
Speaker 1: it's oh, they just need better mediators. Yeah, well, I
Speaker 1: mean this is this is the thing with like the
Speaker 1: Japanese like the Japanese anchist movement like has a huge
Speaker 1: feminist wing, but like the men still suck, like you
Speaker 1: just keep being bad. And so you know when you
Speaker 1: ever thing about this is that Kano Sukako is like
Speaker 1: enormously more militant than like almost every other any other
Speaker 1: anarchists that's alive in Japan at this point. And so
Speaker 1: in the nineteen ten she gets involved with the plan
Speaker 1: to assassinate the emperor um and this becomes known as
Speaker 1: the High Treason incidents, and the state like gets wind
Speaker 1: of this, they arrest her, They arrest uh Go Taku,
Speaker 1: and they arrest like twenty two other twenty two yeah,
Speaker 1: twenty two other anarchists. Um. Now like five of these
Speaker 1: people are like even tangentially involved in this plot. Um,
Speaker 1: but they this is okay, So I can't say that
Speaker 1: that the Japanese government only does this to anarchists because
Speaker 1: they do this a fascist like once, but like they
Speaker 1: do this thing where okay, So they have a bunch
Speaker 1: of people that they want to execute, right, so they
Speaker 1: find one person who's like an ideological figure, and they're like, Okay,
Speaker 1: you're now in the middle of this, and you're the
Speaker 1: link between like this group and this other group want
Speaker 1: to kill. This other grouple want to kill the other
Speaker 1: grouple want to kill. And so they convict uh like
Speaker 1: jo Um and uh like they they all get convicted
Speaker 1: and they all get executed. Yeah, And so this case
Speaker 1: is also interesting because there's a bunch of people who
Speaker 1: the state like wanted to kill but they couldn't because
Speaker 1: they'd already arrested. They'd already they like this is like
Speaker 1: two years after like a mass arrest of like half
Speaker 1: of the Japanese anarchist movement, and so they have all
Speaker 1: these people who are in prison, and it's like, even
Speaker 1: by like the standards of the Japanese state, it's like, Okay,
Speaker 1: how are we going to convict all of these people
Speaker 1: who have been in prison for two years of trying
Speaker 1: to of like being a part of this plot to
Speaker 1: kill the emperor that was like organized outside of the jail.
Speaker 1: And so this this is the thing that saves like
Speaker 1: a huge portion of the Japanese anarchist movements, that saves
Speaker 1: it from literally so like this. The hydrogen incident kills
Speaker 1: like most of the famous anarchists in Japan, but it
Speaker 1: leaves like like a couple alive. And that's why they're
Speaker 1: alive because they were all in prison. Wait, how are
Speaker 1: they going to kill the emperor? The plan didn't get
Speaker 1: very far. I think they were trying to use a bomb,
Speaker 1: but the police got wind of it very very early,
Speaker 1: not classes so that they never really got much like
Speaker 1: past the planning stage. Um, this is a shame. Yeah yeah,
Speaker 1: and do do you know what else never gets very
Speaker 1: far plass past the planning stage when they're trying to
Speaker 1: assassinate the Emperor of Japan? Is it the ads because
Speaker 1: they don't know how to do direct action because they're
Speaker 1: too investion in capitalism. That that is, that is actually
Speaker 1: exactly what we were talking about. Margaret, Thank you so much,
Speaker 1: and we're back. I was genuinely trying to see if
Speaker 1: I could like to think of a of a company
Speaker 1: that had like tried to kill the Japanese emperor, and
Speaker 1: I couldn't think of one. And I was like, hmmm,
Speaker 1: this says something to society. This does This is a real,
Speaker 1: real solid critique we have here. I really hope that
Speaker 1: ten years from now this all seems very dated. You're like,
Speaker 1: of course someone's major company has tried to never mind
Speaker 1: one one can dream, so kinda, Sugaku is dead, Kotaku
Speaker 1: is also dead, and this this means that it's time
Speaker 1: for sort of like another generation of of anarchists to
Speaker 1: try to fill in the gaps. So they're executed. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: they're dead, Like they just die and they kill, they kill,
Speaker 1: they kill like twenty two of the anarchists or something.
Speaker 1: And I mean this is a this is a huge purge.
Speaker 1: I mean they don't wind up executing just like there's
Speaker 1: just like a like a sympathetic like Buddhist priest. It's executed. Um,
Speaker 1: I when is this? This is nice? And eleven? Sorry yeah,
Speaker 1: this is nice un eleven um, And actually there's nothing
Speaker 1: to think about this kind of Saku becaus the first
Speaker 1: woman ever executed by the Japanese state. She will not
Speaker 1: be the last. Like oh boy, um feminist, Yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean equal rights, equal fights. There's another like very influential
Speaker 1: market feminist who's emergence slightly after like just like in
Speaker 1: like nineteen four and nine is each on No way,
Speaker 1: she's an egoist, anarchist who eventually, last, finally, finally we
Speaker 1: bring it up. That's all I have to say about
Speaker 1: That's like almost all I had to say. She she
Speaker 1: she takes over the editorial position of this, uh, this
Speaker 1: magazine called Blue Stocking Magazine, which is like Japan's I
Speaker 1: think it's It's like, this is like the most important
Speaker 1: feminist magazine in Japan, and she takes over the editorial
Speaker 1: staff about it. And her work is really interesting in
Speaker 1: a lot of ways because it just it just straight
Speaker 1: up is contemporary feminism in a way that like a
Speaker 1: lot of the stuff in this period isn't. Like if
Speaker 1: if you go and read the arguments she's having, she's
Speaker 1: arguing that sex work should be legal and that everyone
Speaker 1: should be should be able to get abortions because women
Speaker 1: should have autonomy over their bodies. Yeah, it's like, yeah,
Speaker 1: this is this is not going to end well for her,
Speaker 1: but you know what, it doesn't end well for any
Speaker 1: of us in a long enough timeline. You know, like
Speaker 1: all that matters is the time of what we do.
Speaker 1: At this time, we are bad. Okay, fine, yeah, so yeah,
Speaker 1: I think so she's able to do this for like
Speaker 1: a year in the Japanese state looks at this, it
Speaker 1: is like absolutely not and shust the magazine down. Um,
Speaker 1: And so she she gets forced to move on to
Speaker 1: other things. And the other thing she moved on she
Speaker 1: moves on to is being extremely heavily involved in the
Speaker 1: free love movement of course, yeah yeah, and and but
Speaker 1: also and this is the thing that's that's interesting about
Speaker 1: the sort of period of Japanese anarchism is that like
Speaker 1: the egoists are all also syndicalists. Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah
Speaker 1: yeah yeah. And she's so she she's like heavily involved
Speaker 1: in labor organizing. And this is how she comes into
Speaker 1: contact with her partner, who she's like cheating on her
Speaker 1: imprisoned husband, who will later form the Japanese Communist Party.
Speaker 1: That's a lot of stuff happening. There's there, there's so much,
Speaker 1: there's so much beef. It's incredible. There's there's this like
Speaker 1: we haven't even gotten to the wild part of this
Speaker 1: relationship yet, okay, which is so so okay. So she
Speaker 1: she comes to contact with her partner or person who
Speaker 1: would become her partner, Saki Sakai, who is like dating
Speaker 1: another very famous Japanese arca feminist who she stabs him
Speaker 1: in the neck over the fact that she's in multiple
Speaker 1: relationships at once. So this isn't from her, Yeah, this
Speaker 1: is this is the thing that keeps happening with free
Speaker 1: love of this period. It's like, you gotta like, you
Speaker 1: gotta lay down, You got to make sure everyone's okay
Speaker 1: with everything. Sure seemed to the right things in theory,
Speaker 1: but then in practice they sure, yeah, sure do fall apart?
Speaker 1: Huh yeah, And this two divides the Japanese anicy. But
Speaker 1: does she win, did she succeed? Did she kill him
Speaker 1: or did he survive that? Nod? Okay, Yeah, I'm just
Speaker 1: I have there's a special place in my heart for
Speaker 1: split slit throats of patriarchal man anyway. So most like
Speaker 1: Kai is also very heavily involved in labor organizing, and
Speaker 1: he he's one of the guys who like turns anarchist
Speaker 1: labor into like a serious political force, which is maybe
Speaker 1: it's good that they survived, Yeah, like it's probably net good.
Speaker 1: But all of the guys in this story like suck
Speaker 1: except do I haven't except here? What about the Korean
Speaker 1: guy who? Um, oh yeah, we get to him. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he's he's kind of like I think he's actually one. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think maybe the end of his story gets weird. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we'll we'll we'll get to that in a second. Um.
Speaker 1: But yeah, so Saya Sakai has like he has he
Speaker 1: has this like fusion of like egoism and syndicalism, where
Speaker 1: like the individual ego will be liberated through collective action,
Speaker 1: but the goal of the workers movement is not to
Speaker 1: just like end poverty, it's to like liberate the individual
Speaker 1: and give themselves developments. And he's also this like incredibly fierce,
Speaker 1: like like one of his big thing is that like
Speaker 1: he does not want intellectuals anywhen you're the workers movement,
Speaker 1: like does absolutely not. Yeah, and this is because like
Speaker 1: again he's been around for ages, Like he becomes an
Speaker 1: anarchist around the time when um Kotaku doesn't like that's no. Six,
Speaker 1: So he's been like arounded. He's one of the guys
Speaker 1: who survives the High Trees in the incident because he
Speaker 1: was already in prison, Okay, all right, and he like
Speaker 1: he's one of the people who like keeps the sort
Speaker 1: of flame of anarchism alive after like they're fussion nineteen eleven.
Speaker 1: But unfortunately for him, Um and for eacho no way,
Speaker 1: they get caught up in the Canto earthquake, of which
Speaker 1: is just like this earthquake between Yokohama and Tokyo alone
Speaker 1: kills two hundred thousand people. It is like it is
Speaker 1: like it is one of the worst like natural disasters.
Speaker 1: It's it's really bad and in immediately gets worse. The
Speaker 1: state wouldn't use a natural disaster to try and further
Speaker 1: its aims through extra legal means. Yeah, so, okay, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna start with. One of the ways that the genocide
Speaker 1: of Korean people in Japan at this time starts is
Speaker 1: so there's a bunch of Korean workers in a long
Speaker 1: turre union that's been organized by this builitin like left
Speaker 1: his union guy named Yamaguchi Sakan And okay, so like
Speaker 1: they're in this long shore union, there's this disaster. They
Speaker 1: start doing vitual a, they start going out, they started
Speaker 1: taking care of so if iver start giving people food.
Speaker 1: But you know, they're they're like waving red flags and stuff,
Speaker 1: and the Japanese police lose their minds and are like,
Speaker 1: oh my god, there the jet the Koreans are doing
Speaker 1: socialism and they just start killing them and they there's
Speaker 1: this whole thing about like there's these rumors start that
Speaker 1: like Koreans are raping Japanese women and it turns into
Speaker 1: this thing about like looting, and then like Korean malcontents
Speaker 1: are supposed to be like overrunning police stations and the
Speaker 1: lynch mobs. The lists are mostly targeting Koreans, but they're
Speaker 1: also tart, like if you're Chinese, if you're from Baku Islands,
Speaker 1: like they're killing you. Two um, they kill two thousand
Speaker 1: Koreans in Tokyo and another two thousand in Yokohama, and
Speaker 1: like two thousand Koreans in Yokohama that is half the
Speaker 1: Korean population of the city. And these people die like horribly,
Speaker 1: like because it's not like so that the polices are
Speaker 1: actively hunting them down. Like the entirety of Japanese society
Speaker 1: like remembers that they really like killing people and they
Speaker 1: really like fighting, and like you have people like taking
Speaker 1: their like ceremonial swords from like their ancestors who are
Speaker 1: in the major Revolution, Like they're taking their katanas, going
Speaker 1: industry and murdering people with them, like people just like
Speaker 1: have fish hooks and they're just murdering people the street
Speaker 1: and this goes on for like, this goes on for days,
Speaker 1: and one of the things that happens in this is um, well, okay,
Speaker 1: so the one of the other things happens in this
Speaker 1: period that the Javits government just starts like arresting Brandon
Speaker 1: left Iss and executing them. Yeah, and that's what was
Speaker 1: supposed to happen to know to Echo no A and
Speaker 1: Osaka Saikai. But they get arrested by squad and military
Speaker 1: police led by mashachikom Akasu who just she just murders them. Um.
Speaker 1: There's like conflicting stories of how this happened. There's there's
Speaker 1: one version of it where like he kills them and
Speaker 1: like their six year old nephew and throws their bodies
Speaker 1: out a well, there's another version of it where they
Speaker 1: get strangled and that he strangles have been prison and
Speaker 1: this is like a huge outrage, but it's not huge
Speaker 1: at range because he murdered them as the huge outrage
Speaker 1: because he's supposed to wait for the trial, h I
Speaker 1: mean and yeah, and this is one of the things
Speaker 1: that like this is this is part of how like
Speaker 1: fascism comes to Japan, is that like he becomes a
Speaker 1: hero for the fascist right, Like he goes to prison
Speaker 1: for ten years supposedly, but he only serves three, and
Speaker 1: then he gets out he becomes a hero, and then
Speaker 1: he becomes basically the head of like the sort of
Speaker 1: fascist secret police in the like Maenturian puppet state. But
Speaker 1: on the upside, he when would Japan loses to war,
Speaker 1: he kills himself. So when I with the story I
Speaker 1: had heard was that the Throne in the Well story,
Speaker 1: and I remember it. It's stuck with me so much
Speaker 1: because the first time I met anarchists from Japan, they
Speaker 1: gave me a zine and it was like Japanese anarchist martyrs,
Speaker 1: you know, like the martyrs of our movement or whatever.
Speaker 1: And I was like looking through it and we're all
Speaker 1: of these children, and it just like really emotionally affected
Speaker 1: me that I was like, oh, y'all's martyrs include all
Speaker 1: of these like literally not like like literal like like
Speaker 1: six year olds and stuff, because you know they came
Speaker 1: and killed not just the grown up anarchists, but the
Speaker 1: baby anarchists or whatever as well. Um. I know that
Speaker 1: this has happened lots of places, but it just it
Speaker 1: really stuck with me so whether it's true or not,
Speaker 1: the story I heard was this story about the well
Speaker 1: and then it's stuck with me. Yeah, I mean, like
Speaker 1: the level of repression in Japan, like it's it's unlike
Speaker 1: anything I've ever seen that's not in a country that's
Speaker 1: literally in the middle of the civil war. M Like,
Speaker 1: they just they just like murder people like constantly. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And then this is one of the other things, like
Speaker 1: one of the things that starts the right wing like
Speaker 1: turn in Japanese society is when is when the three
Speaker 1: happens and the government is like like they're like the
Speaker 1: police are being like, it's the Koreans. You need to
Speaker 1: go fight the Koreans, and so they do, and like
Speaker 1: I mean yeah, like wait, they like blame the earthquake
Speaker 1: on the Koreans. Yeah. Well, so everything is there's this fire,
Speaker 1: the fire kills like sixty people, like it consumes they're
Speaker 1: like they're they're the urban horror of uh what's the
Speaker 1: name of that city. Ah, the urban core of Yokohama
Speaker 1: just goes up in flames, like sixty people burned to death,
Speaker 1: and that's the government needs some explanation for you. It's horrible.
Speaker 1: But like the government is an explation for it. They're like, oh,
Speaker 1: we'll blame the Koreans. And then suddenly all of these
Speaker 1: people are just like like the whole of Japanese society
Speaker 1: just goes into this total mobilization like kill mode thing
Speaker 1: and they just murder enormous members of people and this
Speaker 1: and like that this has this enormous sort of like
Speaker 1: like cultural affection, shifting people back to the right and
Speaker 1: shifting people back towards militarism because now they've like you know,
Speaker 1: like they've they've tasted blood, they've like they've gotten this
Speaker 1: sort of sense of it. Yeah, it is brutal, um
Speaker 1: And before we go, we're gonna kill off one more
Speaker 1: anarchist the team. Can we kill off the other team instead? Unfortunately, no,
Speaker 1: none of them die in this story. It's the worst.
Speaker 1: All of the assassination attempts fail. It's so sad. Yeah,
Speaker 1: all right, I forgot how depressing this because I was
Speaker 1: I was remembering part two of this, which is just
Speaker 1: like absolutely hilarious, kind of pointless like ideological battle over
Speaker 1: like things that are kind of dumb, and then I
Speaker 1: forgot about the first part of the story, which is
Speaker 1: everyone gets executed. So the last person who we're talking
Speaker 1: about he gets executed is is Fumiko Konako, who is Fumkokko.
Speaker 1: So she she she's a nihilist anarchist, but she's different
Speaker 1: from like everyone else we've talked about today so far
Speaker 1: because when she's a kid, she gets sent to live
Speaker 1: in Japanese occupied Korea, and so she goes there and
Speaker 1: she gets like horribly abused by her family, which leads
Speaker 1: to become like leaves of her becoming a nihilist, but
Speaker 1: it means to like okay, so like like a lot
Speaker 1: of the anarchists like in Japan talk a big game
Speaker 1: again about anti like imperialism, right, and like they will
Speaker 1: do things like yeah, like they will go fight police
Speaker 1: to try to stop a war for happening, but they
Speaker 1: don't really talk to people in Korea very much. And
Speaker 1: food kind of Coope was like the exception to that,
Speaker 1: because you know, she she lived there for a long time. Um,
Speaker 1: and she she winds up marrying Paciol who is a
Speaker 1: very influential Korean anarchist, and they they do a bunch
Speaker 1: of organizing the specifically like that their their thing is
Speaker 1: they're trying to like get there, trying to enter the
Speaker 1: Japanese occupation and you know, they're they're doing great work.
Speaker 1: And then unfortunately after the earthquake, Uh, she and pak
Speaker 1: Yo are and uh stop me if you've heard this
Speaker 1: one before, they are sentenced to death for a supposed
Speaker 1: plot to kill the emperor. Wait wait now, yeah, we
Speaker 1: already did this part. You're just repeating, Yeah, yeah, they
Speaker 1: do it again. This is the second time. Like they
Speaker 1: just keep doing this and this one it's unclear if
Speaker 1: there was actually a plot, and if there was a plot,
Speaker 1: it's unclear to what extent form kan Code was like
Speaker 1: involved with it. But while she's getting get arrogated, she's like,
Speaker 1: oh yeah, no, like I hate the emperor. I was
Speaker 1: absolutely involved in a plot to kill him, Like I
Speaker 1: was making a bomb to kill him. Uh. Also, I'm
Speaker 1: an anarchist. And here's like an incredibly detailed sketch of
Speaker 1: like all of the appreshiative Japanese society. But I'm just
Speaker 1: gonna tell you, like the person she's like like the
Speaker 1: court examiner who's like and and you know, there's there's
Speaker 1: anything that happens where she and Pacuole are like are
Speaker 1: handed pardons as like the sort of like mercy of
Speaker 1: the Emperor thing and Paciol like takes it but go
Speaker 1: kind of co like they hander the paper and she
Speaker 1: cheers it to shreds in front of them, and it's
Speaker 1: so embarrassing that like the record of what happened is
Speaker 1: like sealed until after World War Two because it was
Speaker 1: a big like, um, it was like a big media scandal,
Speaker 1: all of the stuff with them being arrested, right, and
Speaker 1: I'm basically I don't actually know more, but I watched
Speaker 1: a movie once. There's a great movie about this called
Speaker 1: Anarchists from Colony. This part of it, yeah yeah, and
Speaker 1: she yeah, and like yeah, it's just the whole thing,
Speaker 1: and like that. The government also kind of doesn't want
Speaker 1: to assassinate them because it looks really bad that. I mean,
Speaker 1: they've they've they've picked, they've they've arrested to random people
Speaker 1: who like have done nothing, and they're just gonna kill them,
Speaker 1: but for mechanicals like no, like, I believe in the
Speaker 1: things that I believe in, and I will literally like
Speaker 1: tear up this parted and die for it. And so
Speaker 1: she tears out the pardon and so she goes to prison,
Speaker 1: and she lives long enough to write like the greatest
Speaker 1: entry in the in the genre of an archi feminist
Speaker 1: a Japanese narchi feminist prison memoirs, which is an entire genre.
Speaker 1: There's like multiple books because this keeps happening and these
Speaker 1: people get arrested and set the prison. It's called the
Speaker 1: Prison Memoirs of a Japanese Woman. It's great, everyone should
Speaker 1: go read it. It's it's also extremely depressing because her
Speaker 1: life sucks. But yeah, it's it's it's good. Um. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And so now having killed off the leading intellectuals of
Speaker 1: anarchism again for the second time in a generation, Uh,
Speaker 1: you would think that this would this would kill the movement,
Speaker 1: Like I think, I think like movements like if if
Speaker 1: you kill they're leading intellectuals, like all of them, like
Speaker 1: twice in like twelve years, like the woman collapses. Yeah
Speaker 1: that but at the very beginning, there was the guy
Speaker 1: who said keep the intellectuals away from the labor organizing.
Speaker 1: Maybe he is right, well, but this, this is this. Yeah.
Speaker 1: The incredible thing about this is no, it doesn't it
Speaker 1: doesn't kill them. They keep going like and they have
Speaker 1: they have one last glorious, glorious and absolutely baffling hurrah.
Speaker 1: Okay of like infighting, extremely weird and funny in fighting.
Speaker 1: So yeah, that that's what we're gonna be talking about
Speaker 1: next episode. All right, yeah, is it time for the
Speaker 1: plug of the plug? Yes? Oh oh, Margaret, you who
Speaker 1: have a new podcast about that. It's on this very network,
Speaker 1: Cool Zone Media, on this very network. I have my
Speaker 1: own podcast. Is it called cool People Who Did Cool Stuff?
Speaker 1: And doesn't? So? Does it come out on May second?
Speaker 1: And is it produced by the webby award winning Sophie
Speaker 1: lich German? Uh? Perhaps? And two episodes drop every Monday
Speaker 1: and Wednesday. I think they do. Uh. That is super
Speaker 1: super exciting. And you can find that wherever you get
Speaker 1: your podcasts, remember quickly anywhere you get them, like if
Speaker 1: there's a peddler on the corner who sells you podcasts,
Speaker 1: your pain, get your podcast, get your podcast. It's half
Speaker 1: off today to two for one exactly. And where and
Speaker 1: where can people follow you on the interwebs? Uh? Well,
Speaker 1: for now, you can follow me on Twitter before the
Speaker 1: mass exodus h at Magpie killed Roy And you can
Speaker 1: follow me on Instagram, which we've all known for a
Speaker 1: very long time is owned by evil people and that
Speaker 1: is Magpie. No, Margaret killed Roy because I wasn't clever
Speaker 1: enough to get my own name in both places. I
Speaker 1: don't know why I'm explaining this to you, but you
Speaker 1: can follow me on social media and that's where I am,
Speaker 1: and I post pictures of my dog that keeps barking
Speaker 1: in the background while I'm trying to record this episode.
Speaker 1: But but if you, if you follow Margaret, you'll see
Speaker 1: her dog and you'll understand that it is worth it
Speaker 1: because he is handsome, very nice and agrees. Well, I'm
Speaker 1: very excited to start listening to cp w DC as
Speaker 1: just the best Oh is that the episode episode? It
Speaker 1: Could Happen Here is a production of cool Zone Media.
Speaker 1: Well more podcasts from cool Zone Media. Visit our website
Speaker 1: cool zone media dot com, or check us out on
Speaker 1: the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
Speaker 1: listen to podcasts. You can find sources for It Could
Speaker 1: Happen Here, updated monthly at cool zone Media dot com
Speaker 1: slash sources. Thanks for listening.