Kawakami Hajime
A LETTER
FROM PRISON
I
went to Tokyo
to study at the age of twenty, after graduating from Yamaguchi High School.
I had read the Analects of Confucius and Mencius but had never
laid
hands on either the Buddhist scriptures or the Bible. The latter I read
for the
first time after going to Tokyo.
But the moment I came across the passage "Whoever shall smite thee on
thy
right cheek, turn to him the other also. And whosoever shall compel
thee to go
a mile, go with him twain. Give to him that asketh thee, and from him
that
would borrow of thee turn not thou away" [Matthew 5:39—42], it had a
most
decisive effect on my life. This was something beyond all reasoning. My
soul
cried out from within itself, "That's right. It must be so." Of
course, I was unable truly to put this teaching into practice, but
every time
something came up, these words stimulated me, encouraged me, and drove
me on to
"extraordinary" actions. Thus the direction of my life was set toward
a concern for others as well as for myself.
Two incidents took place before I
moved from Tokyo to Kyoto. One was that I went and heard
some
speeches appealing for aid for the victims of copper poisoning at the
Ashio
Mine and donated the scarf and overcoat I was wearing. Furthermore,
after going
home, I packed up everything except what I had on and turned it over to
them.
Hearing that many people were on the verge of death from cold and
disease in
the affected area and being urged to give anything I could spare,
even old
stockings, I was deeply moved and felt as if I were going to the rescue
of
somebody on the point of drowning. I thought I had done something good.
But
later I was scolded severely by my mother and suffered from a
tremendous
mental dilemma. It was quite natural that she should become angry,
because she
was supporting me without even having enough for herself to wear. And I
freely
gave away to others the things she had sent me at such great sacrifice
to
herself. This happened a little before I graduated from college.
The second
incident was my joining the Unselfish Love movement. This was two years
after
my graduation and while Kishiko was still in her mother's womb.
Unselfish Love
was a movement propagated at that time by Mr. Ito Shoshin. (He is still
engaged
in a movement bearing the same name, but over the years it seems to
have
undergone a change in its content.) I joined the movement, giving up my
teaching position and everything. After joining, I found out that the
movement
was a little different from what I had imagined it to be from the words
"unselfish
love," but I followed his theory and engaged in a sort of religious
movement for a while. It was about this time that I made up my mind not
to
sleep at all and consequently prepared for imminent death. It was an
occasion
when "death had to be faced squarely." Ever since, I believe, thanks
to that ordeal I attained a great flexibility in life. . . .
[Kawakami, Jijoden,
vol. 5, pp. 36-38; HK]
CONCERNING
MARXISM
The
following excerpts are from Kawakami Hajime's Prison
Ramblings (Gokuchu zeigo), written shortly before and
revised just after his release from prison in 1937. More of a personal
testament than a theoretical discourse, it describes his basic faith in
Marxism
as the scientific solution to the problems of world depression and
world war.
Although Kawakami deprecated the value of anything written under the
conditions
of his confinement, prison memoirs like these were very popular reading
after
World War II and moved many people who would have been untouched by
theoretical
works to sympathize with Kawakami's cause.
The ruling classes in the various
capitalist countries of today feel that Communism, which is trying
to take the
place of capitalism, is their greatest menace, and they fear and hate
it more
than anything else. As a consequence, in capitalistic countries at
the present
time such a thing as the free study of Communism is unthinkable.
Night and
day, the spurs are applied to conscious and unconscious counter
propaganda
designed to slander Communism and Marxism, while all refutations,
arguments,
and propaganda from the Marxist side that might oppose this are
prohibited.
Even now, therefore, it is extremely difficult for ordinary people
in
society—those who are said to enjoy "liberty"—to obtain the books and
materials with which to understand Marxism adequately, and they can
hardly hope
to do so without resorting to illegal methods (such as secretly
obtaining books
whose importation or publication is prohibited). [pp.26-28]
In
our country, thought-criminals—and
not only a small number of leaders but those of all degrees—have come
to
express a change in their thinking while imprisoned. It seems to me.
this may
have become a sort of trend. In my view, this phenomenon has two
meanings.
In
one sense, it is proof that—as I
have pointed out before—present-day Japanese prisons provide as many
instruments as possible to make people think Marxism is mistaken.
In
another sense, it is
powerful evidence as to how many among the elements that have devoted
themselves to the Communist movement go no deeper than the superficial
aspects
of it and only echo the views of others. [The reasons for this are] (1)
the
development of capitalism in Japan has been slower than in western
European
countries; (2) on the occasion of the Meiji Restoration the bourgeois
democratic
revolution was not thoroughgoing and left feudal remnants in
varying degrees;
police restrictions on freedom of discussion and the like persisted
throughout
and were very cruel; (3) even though the movement for Communist
organization in
Japan is young (capitalism entered a period of general crisis only
after World
War I), its growth has been ceaselessly trampled on from the beginning.
Hampered by these circumstances. Communist education in Japan
has been
woefully incomplete. . . . The fact that thought-criminals—who are
sometimes
called "criminals by conviction"—necessarily lack firm convictions in
Japan is certainly rooted in peculiarly Japanese conditions, but
these
peculiarities are not of the sort spoken of as the "Japanese spirit,"
or as a "national polity without parallel in the world," but are
peculiarities because of the development of Japanese capitalism
and hence of
the Japanese Communist movement, [pp. 30-32]
Again and again Communists are
arrested and accused of being "disloyal to the nation." That this is
a simple misconception, however, is made perfectly clear if we take
just one
glance at actual conditions in the Soviet Union.
. . . Detailed figures for economic conditions in the Soviet Union are published annually. If studied
carefully, they indicate
the following: (i) there is no longer a single unemployed person in the
Soviet
Union; (2) national income and the wage fund are increasing by a
certain
percentage each year; (3) some of this revenue comes from the annual
increase
of treasury expenditures for educational, health, and recreational
facilities
for the masses; (4) consequently, the standard of living of the masses
is
rapidly improving; (5) in order to make all this possible the
productivity of
labor (amount of production per worker), which is the "basic motive
force
of history," is truly developing rapidly; and (6) in this respect
Japan,
whose stagnation ranks with that of Hungary, Poland, and Romania,
is in a
diametrically opposite condition. All this proves beyond doubt that my
conjectures while in prison were in no way mistaken.
Reconsidering the
question, then, we may well ask: Do such great advances in the fortunes
of the Soviet Union and the unusual
rise in the standard of
living of its people indicate that the Russian Communists have been
disloyal to
their nation or betrayers of their country? . . .
Since
leaving prison, every time I have heard of political conditions in Japan—particularly
when I heard of the outbreak of the February 26 [1936] incident—I
have
realized that the contradictions inherent in Japanese capitalism are
becoming
progressively more and more violent. Everything has happened just as we
scientifically predicted it would; nothing domestic or foreign has gone
contrary to our expectations. How can one say that our thinking is
mistaken.
[pp.47, 53-55]
One thing I must say is that the
danger of a world war is increasing day by day. The prelude to a world
war has
already begun; the smell of gunpowder permeates both East and West, and
the
fire is waiting for some opportunity to break out suddenly and spread
over the
whole world. Even the most ignorant person must be aware of all this.
(This
spring—the sixth since the outbreak of the Manchurian incident—there
was a
special ceremony at the Yasukuni Shrine. I heard on that occasion that
from
January to December last year [1936] the number of dead commemorated in
the
Yasukuni Shrine increased by one thousand several hundred. We must
realize that
it is not only in Spain
that war is going on.)
Yet who is it that has proved
scientifically that a world war is inevitable? Who has a scientific
grasp of
the basic causes of it? Who has a scientific faith that they can be
eradicated?
It
is none other than the
Marxists—the Communists. ... If we reflect on the extraordinary
advancement in
weapons since the last world war—especially of air forces—the coming
second
world war, with the misery it will bring to humanity, is truly a cause
for
alarm. In point of war dead alone, it will probably exceed by thousands
upon
thousands the dead of the first world war. Every time I think of it,
while it
engraves on my heart the chaos of the world, I also feel painfully that
the
responsibility Marxism has taught us to bear is indeed heavy.
Why is this?
Because
only
the Marxists know the real reasons why world war is inevitable; only
the
Marxists have the real method that the world offers us for eradicating
it and,
seeing their duty in regard to this method, fight for it. . . .
Our faith is such
that
even though we should be imprisoned for a number of years, it would be
possible
to direct anew the attention of some dedicated men—themselves ready to
undergo
the same hardships—to the truth of Marxism. If we think of this,
we can
discover the full meaning of daily life, and there will be no real
hardship.
Since it is to save the hundreds of thousands and millions of lives
that would
be sacrificed in world wars breaking out among the nations every twenty
or
thirty years, the jeopardizing of one's own life need hardly be
considered,
[pp. 56-60]
[Kawakami, Gokuchu
zeigo, pp. 26-60; HK]
Fron DeBarry p.923