The Autobiography of Osugi Sakae / Edition 1

by Sakae Osugi, Byron K. Marshall

Overview

In the Japanese labor movement of the early twentieth century, no one captured the public imagination as vividly as Osugi Sakae (1885-1923): rebel, anarchist, and martyr. Flamboyant in life, dramatic in death, Osugi came to be seen as a romantic hero fighting the oppressiveness of family and society.

Osugi helped to create this public persona when he published his autobiography (Jijoden) in 1921-22. Now available in English for the first time, this work offers a rare glimpse into a Japanese boy's life at the time of the Sino-Japanese (1894-95) and the Russo-Japanese (1904-5) wars. It reveals the innocent—and not-so-innocent—escapades of children in a provincial garrison town and the brutalizing effects of discipline in military preparatory schools. Subsequent chapters follow Osugi to Tokyo, where he discovers the excitement of radical thought and politics.

Byron Marshall rounds out this picture of the early Osugi with a translation of his Prison Memoirs (Gokuchuki), originally published in 1919. This essay, one of the world's great pieces of prison writing, describes in precise detail the daily lives of Japanese prisoners, especially those incarcerated for political crimes.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780520077607
Publisher:	University of California Press
Publication date:	12/17/1992
Series:	Voices from Asia , #6
Edition description:	First Edition
Pages:	192
Product dimensions:	6.14(w) x 9.21(h) x 0.40(d)

About the Author

Byron K. Marshall is Professor of Japanese History at the University of Minnesota and the author of Capitalism and Nationalism in Prewar Japan: The Ideology of the Business Elite, 1868-1941 (1967).

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments 
Translator's Introduction 
Chronology of Major Events in The Autobiography 

THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF OSUGI SAKAE
Chapter 1 First Memories: To 1894 
Chapter 2 Childhood: 1894-1895 
Chapter 3 A Young Hooligan: 1895-1899 
Chapter 4 Cadet School: 1899-1901 
Chapter 5 A New Life: 1901-1902 
Chapter 6 Memories of Mother: 1902-1904 
Chapter 7 Life in Prison: 1906-1910 

Bibliography

Editorial Reviews

This first English translation of Osugi's autobiography limns a portrait of late Meiji Japan that is rarely seen. Osugi, a flamboyant and notorious left-wing activist, began his radical career as a 19-year-old student in 1904. Murdered by the Japanese military police in 1923, Osugi left his writings, which bolstered his image as a romantic rebel hero. His autobiography covers only his younger years, but it includes a fine description of Japanese radicalism in its early stages of development. Osugi also provides readers with a close look at the brutal, dehumanizing practices prevalent in Japanese schools while he engagingly chronicles the making of a radical, especially in a valuable chapter on prison life in his time. Since little information about the early Japanese left-wing movement exists in English, this volume offers Westerners a unique chance to peer into the mind of a Japanese radical. Highly recommended for academic and public libraries.-- Katharine L. Kan, Aiea P.L., Hawaii

Library Journal