A PRINCIPLED ANARCHIST WHO FACED DEATH WITH BRAVERY, FUMIKO KANEKO IS A MODEL OF UNWAVERING DEFIANCE IN THE FACE OF OVERWHELMING ODDS ~ Jay Arachnid ~ Fumiko Kaneko is not a well-known figure in Japanese history, primarily due to her adherence to anarchism; she is also not a well-known figure in anarchist history, primarily due to her adherence to the more nihilist tendency. Prison Memoirs is her incomplete autobiography, requested by the presiding judge at her trial for treason; he wanted to know what led to her thoroughgoing rejection, not just of the judicial process, but of the entire Emperor System. The result is a memoir of her formative years, starting out as a non-person in the bureaucracy of the Meiji Period—her parents were not married at the time she was born, and she was not officially registered as the daughter of her aunt (then living in recently occupied Korea) until she was nine years old. The physical and emotional abuse by her aunt and grandparents was accompanied by an enforced penury that could be described as Dickensian. The oppression she felt as a child was reinforced both inside and outside her home by her family’s mistreatment of Koreans they encountered, as well the Japanese occupiers’ mistreatment of Korean people more generally. I say her autobiography is incomplete because it’s only in the final thirty pages or so that the exciting part starts, when, after a brief stint as a devotee of The Salvation Army, she gets involved with Korean anarchists in Tokyo. But the preceding two hundred-plus pages are a fascinating narrative of class differences, poverty and middle-class pretension, the rigidly hierarchical Emperor System, and how it all intertwines to crush the yearnings and desires of a clearly intelligent child and young woman. She writes: “But all the while I was leading this aimless, listless life, I never abandoned my true goals and hopes. What were these? To read all kinds of books, to acquire all kinds of knowledge, and to live life to the absolute fullest.” Fumiko, however, is not crushed, merely bruised. Her experiences of poverty and hierarchical oppression (as a female child, as a bastard, as a comrade of Koreans) clearly primed her for an attraction to anarchist ideas. She says, “Socialism did not have anything particularly new to teach me; however, it provided me with the theory to verify what I already knew emotionally from my own past… the feeling, almost as for a comrade, toward the poor dog my grandparents kept; and the boundless sympathy I felt for all the oppressed, maltreated, exploited Koreans I have not written about here but whom I saw while at my grandmother’s – all were expressions of this. Socialist ideology merely provided the flame that ignited this antagonism and this sympathy, long smoldering in my heart.” A classic anarchist coming of age story, similar to so many others (cf, Paul Goodman, Emma Goldman, and others). Once she found her place among other like-minded individuals, she was able to read everything she could get her hands on. She mentions the influences of Bergson, and Hegel, but the books that had the greatest influence on her “were those of the nihilists. It was at that time that I learned of people like Stirner, Artsybashev, and Nietzsche.” A true rogue’s gallery! Is it any wonder that she says later, “What is revolution, then, but the replacing of one power with another?” The memoirs end with the beginnings of her relationship with the Korean anarchist-nihilist Pak Yeol, with whom she was brought to trial. Unfortunately, for readers interested in the specifics of Fumiko’s political leanings, or the Japanese anarchist movement of the 1920s more generally, there’s nothing in her memoir about the trial, the absurdity of the charges, or the anti-Korean pogroms that had taken place in the wake of the Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923. Fumiko and Pak had been arrested along with hundreds of other Korean and Japanese radicals in the wake of the powerful tremblor. Naturally they were found guilty of treason and sentenced to death. The so-called mercy of the Emperor led to their sentence being commuted to life imprisonment. Her defiance during the court proceedings—nicely recreated in the film Anarchist From Colony—calls to mind other famous anarchists who defied judges, like Louise Michel (“I have finished; if you are not cowards, kill me.”) and Louis Lingg (“I despise your force-propped authority. Hang me for it!”). This rejection and contempt continued when she received the letter of commutation: she ripped it to shreds in front of her warders. Fumiko Kaneko was found dead in her cell in 1926. She had written a nearly 700-page manuscript, but left no suicide note. And there was no autopsy. The introduction to the English translation, written by Mikiso Hane, states categorically that she hanged herself from a rope she made in the prison workshop, but that seems like a convenient tale told by a historian nominated to the National Council on the Humanities by the first President Bush. Regardless of the truth, the fact remains that Fumiko Kaneko was an example of a principled anarchist who faced death with bravery and deep contempt for the state and all its institutions. Her story, both the Prison Memoirs and the larger context of early 20th century Asian anarchism, deserves to be more widely known among contemporary anarchists. Not as a footnote of defeat, but as a model of unwavering defiance in the face of overwhelming odds. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Prison Memoirs of a Japanese Woman, by Fumiko Kaneko. Detritus Books, 2025 The post Book review: Prison Memoirs of a Japanese Woman appeared first on Freedom News.