On this day in 1911, the Japanese government executed twelve anarchists, including radical journalists Kanno Sugako and Kōtoku Shūsui (shown), as part of a widespread crackdown on left-wing activism. Among those executed were Uchiyama Gudō, a Buddhist priest and socialist who spoke out against the Meiji government for its imperialism and advocated for conscripted soldiers to desert en masse.
The pretext for this crackdown was the “High Treason Incident”, a plot to assassinate the Emperor of Japan. The incident began when police searched the room of Miyashita Takichi, a young lumbermill employee, and found materials which could be used to construct bombs, concluding that there was a broader conspiracy to harm the imperial family.
On the basis of this plot, the Japanese government rounded up leftist activists from all over the country. 24 of the 26 defendants actually brought to trial were sentenced to death, despite the evidence against nearly all of them being circumstantial.
Among those executed anarcha-feminist journalist Kanno Sugako (some sources say she was executed on January 25th). At the age of 29, Kanno became the first woman with the status of political prisoner to be executed in the history of modern Japan.
Prior to his execution, Kōtoku Shūsui etched this message on the wall of his cell: “How has it come about that I have committed this grave crime? Today my trial is hidden from outside observers and I have even less liberty than previously to speak about these events. Perhaps in 100 years someone will speak out about them on my behalf.”
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Just finished this webcomic where a guy kidnapped and forced into a cult as a minor climbs the ranks of the cult to hopefully change it from the inside, but ends up brainwashing himself in the process. Still kinda processing it, but the art style is fucking incredible and super powerful.
Like he eventually escapes the cult, but his brain is fundamentally re-wired and his worldview is changed completely.
What’s wild is that fucking US senators had direct ties to this cult and gave them Godamn funding and unequivocal praise. Really makes you lose all faith in humanity, but of course, there is a clear class issue briefly mentioned but not directly addressed (if that makes sense)
My interpretation wasn’t that he had any hope to change the school but was just doing anything for tiny bits of more freedom/control
It has such significant shades of holocaust accounts I’ve read in the past. Don’t think It’s a stretch to call it a child concentration camp that had US institutional support , I’ll probably never be able to get that out of my head :/
Yeah child concentration camp comes really close. There are no words that could describe the severity and it really shows that money can just get you to do anything. Even if you’re abusing kids on a systemic level no one with any authority will do anything about it if you just throw enough money at them.
I finished reading the comic recently as well, especially the beginning is really tough to get through because of how horrible it is.
That school is real and they even filmed what went on in there. It was a pretty big deal when it broke out about twenty years ago. One of their former students was a Kennedy who bragged about raping and killing a girl. There’s a good video on it by Nexpo called, The Cult in a Boarding School
But it is my view that it’s also a broader conversation on
Really makes me second guess whether there is something to that whole “human nature” thing, but you also learn about it being directly tied to capitalist institutions.
It gets nauseating to keep blaming capital, but is that not what caused this to begin in the first place or was it power?
It’s the Stanley milgram experiment all over again
