The Leading initiator of the Japanese Consumer Cooperative Movement

斎藤嘉璋氏の『現代日本生協運動小史』が英訳され、日本生協連の英語サイトに掲載されました。以下は、１５０ページの英文ファイルの中の「コラム賀川豊彦」です。Think Kagawaの読者にとって熟知の内容でしょうが、「なるほど英語ではこういうのか！」という表現が多くあると思います。暗記すれば、外国人に賀川豊彦を説明するのに自信となるでしょう。ぜひ一度挑戦を！
　http://jccu.coop/eng/aboutus/pdf/a_brief_chronicle.pdf
Column Toyohiko Kagawa (1888 - 1960),
a Christian priest/crusader, and The Leading initiator of the Japanese Consumer Cooperative Movement

He was born in the city of Kobe, bereaved of the parents at his infant stage and raised by his father’s family home in Tokushima prefecture. In 1902 (at the age of14), he was tutored English by a Christian missionary, was baptized at the age of 16 and then sympathized with the Christian Socialism through writing works of Isoo Abe (1879−1949), one of the pioneers of socialism of Japan).
After transferring from preliminary course of divinity at the Meiji-gakuin College in Tokyo to the Kobe School of Divinity, he engaged in mission works in Kobe and in 1909 (at the age of 21) began pro-relief actions in a slum of Kobe living there with the poor. He got married with Haru Shiba in 1913. In 1914 he went to the United States to study at Princeton University and Princeton School of Divinity. During his stay in the US, he witnessed workers’demonstrations in New York and was inspired to get into practical actions to improve weakened conditions of workers and farmers. Then he organized a union of croppers (Japanese emigrants and the Mormons) to protest high-handed employers and won in the State of Utah. Through these experiences he realized the significance of social movements such as worker campaign.
Returning to Kobe, he restarted the relief actions including free medical care and engaged in the initiation of social movements and ameliorations. The main actions are as follows:
　Labor campaign
He establishment the Yuai-kai Kansai labor Alliance,. Yuai-kai was an early form of today’s worker unions, with characteristics and functions were mutual insurance among workers. Then he directed a worker campaign at shipbuilding dockyards in Kobe to loose, While the campaign got radical, his principle of “non-violence and non-resistance” was rejected making him apart from the worker campaign and leading him to unionizing tenant farmers.
　Tenant farmer unions
In 1922, he organized the Japanese Tenant Farmer Union to improve farming conditions and ensure the rights of farming in rivalry with land owners. It founded the farmer unions of today.
Socialist party Based on the tenant farmer union, he engaged in incorporation of the Worker-Farmer Party and elected as a member of its central committee. After its tearing apart between the left and right, however, he withdrew from the party. In 1945 after the Asia-pacific War he engaged in establishing the Japan Socialist Party (today’s Social Democratic Party of Japan) and was appointed to be Advisor of the party in 1955.
Consumer cooperatives
In 1920 he organized the Purchase Association Kyoeki-sha in Osaka to improve living conditions of urban workers’ families and the Kobe consumer association in Kobe in the next year. He also guided the incorporation of the Nada Purchase Association in 1021. The both cooperative associations merged with each other in 1961, formulating today’s Co-op Kobe.In 1923 he went to Tokyo, devastated by the Great Kanto Earth Quake to provide relief services. Afterward, he moved to Tokyo In 1926 he with Isoo Abe guided the incorporation of the Tokyo Student Consumer Cooperative, and initiated the Koto Consumer Cooperative in the next year. He represented the series of Family Purchase Cooperatives centering on Christians and intellectuals. In 1932 he incorporated a medical service user cooperative, the predecessor of the Tokyo Medical Cooperative of today,. in cooperation with Inazo Nitobe.
In 1945 after the end of the war, he united the two schools of consumer cooperatives movement taken over from ones before the war time: the family purchase cooperatives led by cultural figures and the Kanshoren-group cooperatives lead by leftists and worker campaigners, establishing the Japanese Cooperative Alliance and assumed office of the president of the Alliance. In 1951 he assumed office of the president of the Japanese Consumer Cooperative Union (JCCU) incorporated under the Consumer Cooperatives Act.
In 1935 he visited the United States to deliver a serial lectures on the Christianity and Cooperatism all over the nation, inspiring cooperative activists there. Especially at the Barclay Consumer Co-op, California, he gave a great influence by advocating elimination of religious and racial discrimination from the employment.
　Anti-war and peace actions
As a man of the Meiji era, it was natural for him to positively accept the tenno [emperor] system and respected the Showa Emperor. Surprisingly enough, he led banzai [hurrah] by shouting “Harrah for the Emperor” at the end of the inauguration convention of the Japanese Socialist Party, puzzling the participants. Nevertheless, he participated in the International War Protesting Alliance at the broke out of the World War ?, and joined a peace mission to the US in the time of overhanging of the break out of the war between the two nations.
Under the oppression by the police and the military police which detained him for
Kagawa with children in a Kobe slum interrogation under suspicion of his thought of anti-war and socialism, he was forced to refrained from frank actions including the religion. In 1952 after the end of the war, he was installed as the vice-chair at the World Federation Movement and nominated for the Nobel Literature Prize consecutively 3 times from 1954 to 1956. Although he was, beyond controversy, a pacifist, his attitude toward the Asia-Pacific War had compassion for it because he though it was resistance or protection against the control of Asia by the great western powers.
　Writing works
In addition to the above, he was engaged in the campaigns to liberate people of discriminated communities and to heal leprosy patients.
Other than the mission works and social reformation works at home and abroad, he left many writing works relating to social reforming. In addition, what rose his reputation as a literary person was the autographical novel “Surviving the Life-or-Death Crisis” published in 1920, the best-seller at the time, bringing him to be a nominee for the Nobel Literary Prize in 1948.His high reputation in these writing works along with his social l works among Japanese people greatly contributed for the Japanese consumer cooperatives to establishing their social trust.
Commemorating the 100th anniversary of his dedication In spite of criticism at his weakness such as misunderstanding on the origin of people of the discriminated communities (he once wrote that their origin was the mixed-breed with foreigners to be criticized by the concerned parties), the attitude toward the emperor system during the war time and his weakness to repression by power, his contribution to the social reformation largely outweighed these weaknesses. He was a person of action rather than a theorist and set out many schemes in various areas. Therefore, he was often criticized as an opportunist or a man without consistency. However harshly they criticize him, any one can not injure his great achievement for the society.
The year 2009 was the 100th anniversary of the initiation of his crusade. At the anniversary, the JCCU and other organizations related to him organized a joint committee to commemorate his dedication to hold various events.