The "rice riot" in Japan refers to the rice-grabbing riots of 1918, which were spontaneous mass struggles on an unprecedented scale in Japanese history and were part of the revolutionary upsurge of the capitalist countries after World War I and the October Revolution.
<h1 class= "pgc-h-arrow-right" >, the basic situation in Japan in the early days of the "rice riot"</h1>
World War I became a "blessed" opportunity for the Japanese ruling class. European and American countries have no time to look east and demand for military supplies, so that Japan has changed from overstepping to a large number of overstepping, and rising from a debtor country to a creditor country. For example, Mitsui took advantage of the huge wartime profits to increase his capital from 60 million yen to 200 million yen in 1919. According to statistics, the total number of factories in Japan was more than 17,000 in 1914, and by 1919 it had reached 44,000.
The surge in Japan's exports and domestic investment has spurred higher prices. In 1918, the real wages of workers fell by five fifths from before the war. Wartime prosperity gave some benefits to the self-employed and middle peasants, but the sharecroppers were deeply exploited by parasitic landlords and capitalists and were in a difficult situation. In the last years of the War, the struggle between workers and peasants increased rapidly, with one hundred and nine strikes in 1916 and three hundred and ninety-eight in 1917; eighty-five tenancy disputes in 1917 and two hundred and fifty-six in 1918.
At the same time, the defects and contradictions in Japan's economic structure have also become apparent. The investment boom increased the demand for commodity grains, but semi-feudal agriculture could not meet this demand, and rice prices continued to rise. In addition, the cabinet of the temple decided to send troops to intervene in the Russian revolution, so it purchased a large amount of military rice, and the rice merchants took the opportunity to accumulate and settle down, which further promoted the price of rice to skyrocket. In August 1918, the price of rice was four times that of before the war, which seriously threatened the lives of working people in urban and rural areas.
<h1 class= "pgc-h-arrow-right" > the influence of the external environment and the causes of the "rice riot" event</h1>
The victory of the October Revolution inspired the Japanese people to struggle courageously. The defeat of militaristic Germany in the war facilitated the spread of democratic ideas. In May 1918, Prime Minister Terauchi gave a lecture at a meeting of local governors, saying:
"Because the life of the people at home is very difficult, the gap between capitalists and workers is getting deeper and deeper, and the national ideology is undergoing changes that are not in line with the national system under the influence of the foreign environment, and we should be vigilant."
Against this background, the "Rice Riot" broke out in Japan in 1918. On July 22, the wife of a fisherman who works as a porter in the town of Uzu, Shinkawa-gun, Toyama Prefecture, refused to ship rice out of the prefecture. With this as a starting point, villages and towns along the coast of Toyama Prefecture set off a mass movement demanding that rice merchants, capitalists, and village and town offices lower the price of rice and provide relief to those in need. On August 5, Osaka's Asahi Shimbun and Mainichi Shimbun reported the "Vietnamese-Chinese Housewife Riots" to the whole country, and the wave of rice riots spread throughout the country.
< h1 class = "pgc-h-arrow-right" >3, the impact and scope of the "rice riot" event in Japan</h1>
From August 10 to 15, the impact and scope of the incident began in Kyoto and Nagoya, and violent riots began in large and medium-sized cities, including Osaka and Tokyo, from August 10 to 15. Thousands of buraku in Kyoto (buraku means discriminated against "untouchables") attacked rice merchants for the first time, which followed into four consecutive days of riots.
In Nagoya, tens of thousands of people gathered at Maizuru Park to demand a reduction in the price of rice, and then the crowd destroyed the rice shops in the city. In Wu City, on the night of the 14th, 30,000 people, mainly navy yard workers, destroyed rice shops and rich mansions, and engaged in a street battle for several hours with the sailors who came to suppress it.
Since mid-August, riots have spread to local towns and villages, and riots have occurred in many coal mines. Most of the rural riots took place in areas around cities where there were many poor peasants and where the confrontation between landlords and tenant farmers had always been fierce. In these places, landlords and rice merchants were attacked by farmers. The struggle among the miners was even more intense, notably the riots at the Okiyama Coal Mine in Yamaguchi Prefecture. From August 17 to 19, the Okiyama miners' request for wage increases was rejected, and all 10,000 miners rose up at the same time to destroy the Okiyama Coal Mining Office and burn the capitalists' houses and villas.
In order to quell the riots, while suppressing them by force, the emperor, the government, the chaebols (consortiums), and the rich took out large sums of money as "relief fees for the poor" and sold imported rice to the residents cheaply in an attempt to ease the resistance of the masses.
On September 12, the miike coal mine in Fukuoka Prefecture was suppressed, and the rice-snatching riot ended for 53 days. In addition to Aomori, Iwate, Akita, and Okinawa, demonstrations and riots occurred in various prefectures. Demonstrations and riots occurred in 38 cities, 153 towns (towns), and 177 villages. The participants were about 10 million (about one-fifth of the country's population), including workers, peasants, buraku, the urban poor, students and others.
<h1 class = "pgc-h-arrow-right" > fourth, the attitude of people from all walks of life in Japan to the "rice riot" incident</h1>
The rice riot was a spontaneous mass struggle, with the masses taking economic demands such as lowering rice prices and providing relief to the poor as the main content. No political slogans were raised except for a few individuals who raised the slogan "Down with the cabinet within the temple" or demanded that certain officials be punished. Workers often engage in struggle in their places of residence as residents. However, workers also echoed the rice riots with strike struggles, with one hundred and eight strikes in August alone, a quarter of the total number of strikes throughout the year.
Although the "Rice Riot" incident in Japan was not a political struggle in itself, a group of people-oriented people (who believed that politics should respect the masses and the mysteries and advocated party politics) sympathized with the struggles of ordinary people, held the responsibility for causing the rice riots, and carried out activities to overthrow the Terauchi Cabinet. For example, the people-oriented journalists focused on the incident.
Eighty-four newspaper reporters in Japan, who were more influential at the time, held a large gathering of newspaper reporters in Osaka on August 25, demanding that the Cabinet of the Japanese Government resign, implement freedom of speech, and establish constitutional government.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" >5</h1>
At that time, the "rice riot" incident in Japan was jointly cooperated by the ruling class and the chaebol (chaebol) tycoons, and the incident was eventually quelled, but it had great significance and impact.
At the same time, it also exposed the profound contradictions in the japanese domestic ruling system at that time, showed the great strength of the ordinary people, and effectively shook and struck a blow at the reactionary ruling class. The warlord Terauchi's cabinet was forced to step down and was formed by the "civilian prime minister" Hara Kei. The rice riots promoted the development of the Japanese workers' and peasants' movement, made the ordinary people realize the importance of organization, and also promoted the spread of Marxism and Leninism in Japan at that time. Since then, the organized workers' and peasants' movement in Japan has made remarkable progress.