Japanese communist founder who shook Plekhanov's hand and shaped Comintern East Asia strategy
Amsterdam, 1904. When the chair announced that the vice-chairs were the delegates of the two warring powers — Plekhanov and Katayama — the two rose and clasped hands in silence. The hall answered with a standing ovation.
Father of Japanese communism. Born in Okayama, he studied in the United States and founded Japan's first trade union and Social Democratic Party. As a Comintern Executive Committee member he shaped anti-imperialist strategy for East Asia, and was buried in the Kremlin Wall.
Career Timeline
- 1884–1896Studied in US; Grinnell College and Yale Divinity; became Christian and socialist
- 1896–1901Returned; founded Iron Workers' Union, Labour World, Social Democratic Party
- 1904Amsterdam Second International; anti-war handshake with Plekhanov
- 1911–1912Led Tokyo streetcar strike; 9 months imprisonment
- 1914–1921Exiled to US; joined CPUSA; communist groups among Japanese workers
- 1921–1922Via Mexico to Soviet Russia; led founding of Japanese Communist Party
- 1922–1933ECCI member and Presidium; anti-imperialist and anti-war congresses
Related historical events
Comintern and Anti-Imperialist Strategy for East Asia
Arriving in Soviet Russia in 1921, Katayama quickly established himself as the Comintern's leading expert on East Asia. At the Congress of the Toilers of the Far East in Moscow (January–February 1922), he advanced a framework for a united front of Japanese, Chinese, and Korean communists against Japanese imperialism. That December, addressing the Fourth Comintern Congress with his Report on the Eastern Question, he argued that Japan was the Far East's sole politically and economically independent nation and simultaneously the greatest threat to Soviet Russia. He expressed optimism about the revolutionary potential of the Japanese proletariat, noting that unlike in Europe there was no labour aristocracy or Gompers-style trade union conservatism. He cited the Yuaikai (Japanese Federation of Labour), which in barely a decade had transformed from a moderate educational society under police patronage into a militant organization adopting Bolshevik resolutions. As an ECCI member and Presidium member, Katayama reported regularly on colonial and semi-colonial East Asia and built liaison networks linking the Japanese Communist Party with Korean and Chinese revolutionaries. He attended the Brussels Anti-Imperialist Congress (1927), the Frankfurt Anti-Imperialist Congress (1929), and the Amsterdam Anti-War Congress (1932), condemning Japanese militarism's aggression in Manchuria and China while appealing for international solidarity. His East Asia strategy centred not on revolution in a single country but on breaking the Eastern link of the imperialist chain through the joint struggle of the Japanese, Chinese, and Korean working classes.