was a Japanese socialist. He advocated opposition to the

Russo-Japanese War The Russo-Japanese War ( ja, 日露戦争, Nichiro sensō, Japanese-Russian War; russian: Ру́сско-япóнская войнá, Rússko-yapónskaya voyná) was fought between the Empire of Japan and the Russian Empire during 1904 and 1 ...

, founded the

Heiminsha Political dissidence in the Empire of Japan covers individual Japanese dissidents against the policies of the Empire of Japan. Dissidence in the Meiji and Taishō eras High Treason Incident Shūsui Kōtoku, a Japanese anarchist, was critical ...

and published the newspaper ''Heimin Shimbun''. He formed the

Japan Socialist Party The was a socialist and progressive political party in Japan that existed from 1945 to 1996. The party was founded as the Social Democratic Party of Japan by members of several proletarian parties that existed before World War II, including ...

and the

Japanese Communist Party The is a left-wing to far-left political party in Japan. With approximately 270,000 members belonging to 18,000 branches, it is one of the largest non-governing communist parties in the world. The party advocates the establishment of a democr ...

, and became the first general secretary of the Japanese Communist Party. His pen name is . He is also known for his translation with Kōtoku Shūsui.

Biography

Sakai was born as the third son to a samurai class family in what is now Miyako, Fukuoka. He attended what is now the Kaisei Academy where he studied the English language. However, he was expelled from the prestigious No.1 Higher Middle School for failure to pay his tuition, and worked as a tutor and a journalist in Fukuoka and Osaka while studying literature on his own, and writing works of fiction. He was invited to Tokyo by Suematsu Kenchō to stay at the residence of the former Mōri clan to help edit a history of the Meiji Restoration. Afterwards, he went to work for the ''Yorozu Morning News'', where he began to support social justice causes and pacifism. In 1903, Sakai established the socialist organization ''

,'' together with Shūsui Kōtoku and Uchimura Kanzō. With the start of the

, ''Yorozu Morning News'' adopted a pro-government stance, and Sakai quit to form the weekly '' Heimin Shimbun'' together with Shūsui Kōtoku, which was critical of the war , p. 337. and decried the high taxes which the war was causing. It also published a Japanese translation of the

Communist Manifesto ''The Communist Manifesto'', originally the ''Manifesto of the Communist Party'' (german: Manifest der Kommunistischen Partei), is a political pamphlet written by German philosophers Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. Commissioned by the Comm ...

in its November 13, 1904, issue. Sakai was sentenced to two months in jail.''Modern Japan: An Encyclopedia of History, Culture, and Nationalism The Commoners Newspaper (Heimin Shimbun) (1903–05)'' p. 35 Sakai was also a strong supporter of the Esperanto movement, helping create the Japana Esperanto-Instituto in 1906. In 1906, Sakai became one of the founding members of the Japan Socialist Party. He was arrested in the 1908

Red Flag Incident The refers to a political rally that took place in Tokyo, Japan, on June 22, 1908. In the mixed political climate of the late Meiji and early Taishō period, celebrated political activist and anarchist Koken Yamaguchi was discharged from a te ...

and was sentenced to two years in prison. Following the end of the First World War he participated in Rousoukai group. In 1922, he became one of the founding members of the Japan Communist Party and was elected to a seat in the Tokyo City Assembly in 1929. Sakai translated many works related to socialism, as well as

utopian literature Utopian and dystopian fiction are genres of speculative fiction that explore social and political structures. Utopian fiction portrays a setting that agrees with the author's ethos, having various attributes of another reality intended to appeal to ...

into Japanese. In June 1932, he was admitted to a hospital after an incident of

domestic violence Domestic violence (also known as domestic abuse or family violence) is violence or other abuse that occurs in a domestic setting, such as in a marriage or cohabitation. ''Domestic violence'' is often used as a synonym for ''intimate partner ...

under suspicion of insanity, and died of a

cerebral hemorrhage Intracerebral hemorrhage (ICH), also known as cerebral bleed, intraparenchymal bleed, and hemorrhagic stroke, or haemorrhagic stroke, is a sudden bleeding into the tissues of the brain, into its ventricles, or into both. It is one kind of bleed ...

on January 23, 1933. His grave is at the temple of Sōji-ji in Tsurumi-ku, Yokohama. Martyrsanarchistesjaponais

References

External links

e-texts of Sakai's works
at Aozora Bunko {{DEFAULTSORT:Sakai, Toshihiko 1871 births 1933 deaths People from Fukuoka Prefecture Japanese Esperantists Japanese socialists Japanese communists Japanese journalists Meiji socialists

Biography

See also

References

Further reading

External links