Sen Katayama

Katayama at 25 years old

Sugataro Yabuki was the second son born to Kunizo and Kichi Yabuki in 1859 in the Hadeki district of what would later become Japan's Okayama Prefecture. He was adopted by the Katayama family at nineteen and took the name Sen Katayama, becoming the Katayamas' "first son" after his birth mother was deserted by her husband. The adoption avoided Katayama's conscription and allowed him to continue his education. In his autobiography, Jiden (自伝), Katayama admitted that he was fortunate not to have been the first born in his birth family, as it saved him from some of the responsibilities that burdened some of his acquaintances.

In 1878, Katayama travelled to Tokyo to apprentice as a printer while studying at a small preparatory school, the Oka-Juku, where he formed a friendship with Iwasaki Kiyoshichi (岩崎清七), nephew of one of the founders of Mitsubishi. Iwasaki's departure for Yale University inspired Katayama to work his way to the United States, where he attended Maryville College in Maryville, Tennessee and Grinnell College, from which he graduated in 1892, proceeding to the Andover Theological Seminary and then to Yale Divinity School. During this period, Katayama became a Christian and a socialist.

Katayama in 1925

Postage stamp issued in the USSR in 1967, with a portrait of Sen Katayama (1859-1933).

Katayama returned to Japan in 1896 and from 1897 to 1901 edited Labour World (労働世界, Rōdō Sekai), the organ of the Iron Workers' Union (鉄工組合) and Trade Unions' Federation (労働組合期成会) and Japan's first socialist party. He returned to America in 1903 at the urging of Iwasaki to look into rice-farming opportunities. During this trip he attended the Second International Socialist Congress in Amsterdam where he gained recognition for shaking hands with the Russian delegate, G. V. Plekhanov, in a gesture of amity between the Russian and Japanese peoples, despite the then-ongoing Russo-Japanese War.

In 1904, he attended an American Socialist Party convention in Chicago. He settled in Texas and his main business became rice farming. When his crop failed he became employed by a Japanese restaurant owner in Houston, Tsunekichi Okasaki, who bought 10,202 acres (41.29 km²) of land in Texas with the plan that Katayama farm it. In late 1905, the two borrowed $100,000 from Iwasaki to fund the rice harvest, together forming a "Nippon Kono Kabushiki-gaisha" (Japan Farming Company) to develop the project, with Katayama as managing director. However, the company quickly dissolved, reputedly over Katayama's socialist leanings, and he returned to Japan in 1907, rejoined the socialist movement, and pursued a career in journalism.

He was arrested and jailed for his participation in the Tokyo Streetcar Strike of 1912, and after his release he left for California. Attracted by the success of the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917–1918, Katayama became an active communist and an officer for the Communist International. He travelled to Mexico and later to Moscow, where he was hailed as a leader of the Japanese communist movement. He remained in the Soviet Union until his death on November 5, 1933, and his ashes buried in the Kremlin Wall Necropolis in Red Square.

Katayama had two children by his first wife, Fude, who died in 1903, and another daughter by his second wife, Hari Tama, whom he married in 1907.

• The Labor Movement in Japan. Chicago: Charles H. Kerr & Co., 1918.
• Japan and Soviet Russia, The People's Russian Information Bureau, 1919.

• Shinkigen

• Kublin, Hyman; Asian Revolutionary: The Life of Sen Katayama, (Princeton University Press, 1964).
• Orii, Kazuhiko and Conroy, Hilary; "Japanese Socialist in Texas: Sen Katayama, 1904–1907", Amerasia Journal 8 (1981).
• Handbook of Texas Short Biography
• Sawada, Mitziko; Tokyo Life, New York Dreams: Urban Japanese Visions of America, 1890–1924, (University of California Press, 1996) chapter

• Sen Katayama Archive at Marxists Internet Archive

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