Rodo wa Shinsei nari, Ketsugo wa Seiryroku nari

In this long-awaited biography of Takano Fusatarō, a study of one of Japan's most important early labor organizers and itself a labor of love, Nimura Kazuo takes his readers on a remarkable journey through Japan and the US of the turn of the 20th century with a remarkable example of the historian's craft. This is Nimura's second major book, following his (1985) prize-winning study of the Ashio Copper Mine dispute and riot of 1907.1 In some ways it is hard to imagine two more different works. The Ashio study examined a three day incident in exhaustive detail with a laser-like focus on two basic questions of broad importance in social science and the study of labor in general: the presence (or absence) of social solidarity among mine workers and the dynamics of wage determination, changing technology and skill formation among those workers and their bosses. It effectively challenged key assertions in the social and economic thinking of two of the most eminent figures in 20th century intellectual life in Japan, Maruyama Masao and Ōkōchi Kazuo. This book, in contrast, offers a leisurely and meandering account of one man's entire life, albeit a short one (Takano was born in 1869, one year after the Meiji Restoration, and he died in 1904). It does seek to answer intriguing questions about Takano himself, and about the character of the labor movement of Japan's early industrial era, and challenges some accepted views of Japan's labor history, but the interpretative stakes are significantly lower than in the Ashio work, with no such eminent figures as intellectual sparring partners. At a leisurely pace, the book vividly conveys a sense of a bygone era in both the US and Japan, offering views of social and economic life and of political ideas in varied locales in each country. Some of my favorite sections are found where the author pauses along the roadside, as it were, to reflect on interesting matters he has uncovered in his investigation, even if they are not directly relevant to answering his main research questions.

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