Inejirō Asanuma
61 quotes
Biography
Inejiro Asanuma was a Japanese politician and leader of the Japan Socialist Party. Known for his large stature and powerful voice, he tirelessly toured the country delivering speeches, earning him the nicknames "speech-making everyman", "human locomotive", and the affectionate "Numa-san".
"Now, let us perform remote worship toward the Imperial Palace."
"Even if the electoral districts are small and the number of winners are limited, if a party gathers a large number of votes nationwide, it should naturally be able to participate in politics through that support. Therefore, a system that respects political parties must emerge. That is why adopting a policy of carving up the electoral districts into tiny pieces is clearly an act of repression against smaller parties. And if it is repression, the end result will be the obstruction of Japanese democracy. This is a point that we simply cannot accept."
"I entered Waseda in September of Taishō 6 (or 7), the year of the school disturbances when professors like Nagai Ryūtarō and Ōyama Ikuo resigned. I was drawn to Waseda because it was founded by Marquis Ōkuma Shigenobu as a free academy aiming for the independence of learning and freedom of research in opposition to the bureaucratic military clique of the time."
"From the standpoint of students, we began researching democracy and socialism, but influenced by external socialist and labor movements, two currents emerged among the students: those pursuing it ideologically and those focusing on practical action."
"Five or six thousand students gathered in front of the statue of Marquis Ōkuma. [...] It ended in a great student brawl, with people like Tokano Takeshi falling from the top of the Ōkuma statue and being injured. Since the day happened to be a Friday, we students called it Bloody Friday<nowiki/> and greatly raised our spirits."
"America also has people who have come to terms with the war and those who have not. The same can be said of Japan. Those who have come to terms with the war welcomed us very warmly and have come to understand Japan very well."
"I have lived for twenty years in a small apartment in Fukagawa consisting of three rooms: a six-mat room, a four-and-a-half-mat room, and a three-mat room. It is cramped, and I receive many visitors, so I cannot rest properly. Sometimes I think about moving, but after living in one place for so long, I cannot bring myself to decide to leave. The neighbors tell me not to go, and I myself, even though things have improved a little, do not feel like leaving this apartment. Moreover, I serve as the head of the local cooperative here. The cooperative runs the bathhouse, fish shop, and vegetable shop, so I am, so to speak, the fishmonger boss, the greengrocer boss, and the bathhouse boss. This makes me even closer to everyone in the neighborhood, and because of these human ties, I find it hard to move."
"People often call me Maa-Maa Koji<nowiki/> or say I am indecisive, timid, passive, etc. But in a mass organization, once a policy is decided at a congress, if everyone abides by it, there will be neither conflict nor split."
"No matter how many different arguments may arise, I think it is fine to bring things together where they need to be brought together. In a mass organization like the Socialist Party, there should be someone who can be called a unifier."
"As I said during the recent party self-criticism, everyone must adopt the attitude of being a pure Socialist Party member — that is, I am a Socialist Party member. Neither right nor left, just a Socialist Party member.<nowiki/>"
"The Socialist Party is a mass party, so when discussing things, it is natural that there will sometimes be left-leaning arguments and right-leaning arguments. What we must guard against is fixing left<nowiki/> and right<nowiki/> and turning them into factions."
"Since graduating from Waseda, for over thirty years I have devoted myself to social movements, sacrificing myself to serve the masses, and have done what little I can, believing it to be my historical mission to fight for the realization of socialism. This inevitably means sacrificing family life. ... From a human perspective, social activism can sometimes seem cruel. I sometimes think: what is social activism without the liberation and establishment of family life?"
"The Yoshida Cabinet has driven post-independence Japanese politics into confusion and wandering. The people, having won independence six years after the end of the war, have regained the national awareness that was lost under occupation and are burning with enthusiasm to rebuild as a democratic nation. Yet the Yoshida Cabinet fails entirely to respond to this passion of the people. Instead, it blindly follows America in foreign policy while racing full speed ahead on a reactionary and reverse course in domestic policy. This is raising the specter of fascist reactionary politics that drives progressive citizens to despair, while on the other hand giving the Communist Party room to run wild, opening the path to totalitarianism of both the left and right, and placing the homeland and democracy in crisis."
"We must recognize that if a nation’s security is guaranteed by another country’s military for a long period, independence will turn into subordination."
"The fact that Japanese courts have no jurisdiction over those residing in Japan [U.S. forces and dependents] constitutes a form of extraterritoriality, and cannot be called complete independence."
"Moreover, when we look at the territorial issue: while it may be unavoidable that territories acquired by Japan during its period of expansion are returned to their respective countries, we have lost sovereignty over South Sakhalin and the Kuril Islands. The Habomai and Shikotan Islands, which administratively belong to Hokkaido, are occupied by the Soviet Union. Amami Ōshima, the Okinawa islands, the Ogasawara Islands, Iwo Jima, and others remain under continued special military occupation, with over a million compatriots living outside Japanese administration. This must truly be called a national tragedy. Moreover, these compatriots fervently desire an early return to Japan."
"Japan must develop an independent foreign policy based on the great principle of never intervening in war, aiming to become a bridge for peace connecting free Asia with the West."
"There can be no national independence without economic self-reliance."
"The Yoshida Cabinet’s agricultural policy suppresses rice prices through controls while selling fertilizer freely—selling expensive fertilizer to Japanese farmers, buying rice cheaply from them, and importing expensive rice while selling cheap fertilizer abroad. One wonders for whose sake this agricultural policy exists."
"A Prime Minister who arbitrarily interprets the Constitution and ignores its provisions is behaving like a despot."
"When people ask about my ancestors, I reply, ‘Most likely descendants of exiles.’ [...] Among these exiled notables, the greatest hero is undoubtedly Minamoto no Tametomo. My friend, the local historian Asanuma Eitarō, once told me, ‘The reason you are fighting so hard in the Diet is because you carry the blood of Tametomo.’ Being compared to the modern Tametomo felt a bit ticklish."
"The most memorable episode from my time on Miyake-jima was, I think, when I was in the fifth or sixth grade of elementary school, crossing a toi (wooden water trough) suspended over a cliff and being scolded by my mother. [...] Terrified, I ran outside, and later when I returned home, I hid inside a straw sack."
"In Taishō 5 [1916], after graduating from the Prefectural Third Middle School, I told my father, ‘I want to enter Waseda University and become a politician,’ but he scolded me severely. [...] My desire to attend Waseda only grew stronger, and in September of the same year I took the entrance examination for the second semester and entered Waseda University."
"We named this day ‘Bloody Friday.’ [...] Even after the incident, I was seized by members of the Yoko-Ou Club, taken to their lodging, and held captive all night where I was beaten, kicked, and punched until I was nearly unconscious from the lynching."
"On the one hand, while engaging in such student activism, I also rowed boats, wrestled sumo, and was active as a member of athletic clubs. In the inter-department boat races, I competed as a representative of the Political Economy Department and won. Still in my rowing outfit right after the boat race, I met Marquis Ōkuma. He patted my body and said, 'What a fine physique you have. That impression remains with me even now."