Paper short abstract:

Prewar left-wing activists are usually thought to have been primarily interested in discussing Marxist theory. How did the progressive elite of the 1920s and 30s come to be immersed in concrete welfare activities in the context of the Tōkyō Imperial University Settlement House?

Paper long abstract:

Henry D. Smith, in his seminal work on prewar student radicalism, has opined that "the claim of the elitist students that they represented 'one wing of the proletarian movement' was little more than a fiction of their romantic populism." The dominant image of the prewar left-wing activist is that he was immersed in his books and preferred discussing arcana of Marxist theory with his peers. Yet, under the influence of communist leader Yamakawa Hitoshi, whose watershed article "A Change of Course" appealed for practical social mobilization to cultivate a proletarian movement, we find in the Tōkyō University Settlement many of the progressive elite absorbed in the kind of welfare activities normally denounced by staunch Marxist as social democratic reformism.

This presentation will contextualize the activities of the Tōkyō University Settlement by situating them within the expansion of public (national and municipal level) and private welfare in 1920s Japan. It will ascertain the extent and character of the activities of the Settlement, mainly through reports issued by the settlers during the 1920s and 1930s and memoirs written in the postwar period, focusing on the child care program, the provision of legal and medical services, and the afternoon classes offered to school children.

The effort to balance social relief activities on the one hand and and radically progressive goals on the other is also instrumental in explaining why the Settlement could exist until 1938, a point in time at which any overt left-wing political groups had long since been disbanded by the Japanese state authorities. In addition to the sources mentioned above, media accounts and reports by the secret police will also be taken into consideration. Overall, this presentation will conclude that radical activists were genuinely interested in social reform, while at the same time the Settlement also represented a form of coalition between different groups and individuals interested in social change in prewar Japan.