The Concept of the "Farmer’s Self-government" Thought and its Development

:Focusing on Magazines Nōmin-Jichi and Nōmin in the late 1920s in Japan

Abstract

　　　In 1925, Japan implemented universal manhood suffrage, which motivated the creation of "Farmer’s Self-government" (Nōmin-Jichi) concept for anti-parliamentary democracy movement. This thesis reveals essential part of the concept, by analyzing the usage and the difference of definition between each advocate. First, Yasaburō Shimonaka proposed the words "Farmer’s Self-government" with reference to Non-Partisan League (NPL) in United States. His purpose was criticizing intellectualistic and capitalistic parliamentary democracy, and to find alternative way of the democracy. The members of Nōmin-Jichi, such as Shimonaka, Tēsuke Shibuya, Inosuke Nakanishi and Aikoku Takeuchi emphasized that the constitution of "Farmer’s Self-government" was brought from double antagonism. One is between the city and the village, the other is between the government and self-government. They aimed the self-government for/by the farmers in the village, instead of universal suffrage. Second, in Nōmin, Ken'ichi Yarita inherited the concept from Nōmin-Jichi. His anarcho-communism argumentation, referring Leo Tolstoy, idealized the new society which everyone has land ownership and becomes farmer. For Yarita, "Farmer’s Self-Government" became the key concept of leading whole proletariat, not only farmers, forward his ideology. Finally, Shigeru Inuta, a member of Nōmin, made the concept the new socialism theory for revolution. He designed the "World Union" of "Autonomous Rural Communities" as the ideal society, which was suitable for Japanese rural area. He also showed how to start the revolution toward "Farmer’s Self-government". However, Inuta's idea was suppressed in 1933, thus the development of the thought of "Farmer’s Self-government" had ended up without any demonstration. In conclusion, this research proves that "Farmer’s Self-government", from antiparliamentary democracy to "Autonomous Rural Community", was an equivalent substantial thought to anarchism or agriculturalism in the same era; against previous research analyses which show "Farmer’s Self-government" is the ambiguous concept. Moreover, changing the thought of "Farmer’s Self-government" had been led by a lot of advocates. That shows the self-governmental way of making a thought without authoritarian theory.