Sakai Toshihiko

Sakai Toshihiko 

(pen name Karegawa). Born Feb. 25, 1870, in Fukuoka Prefecture; died Jan. 23, 1933, in Tokyo. Japanese public figure and publicist.

Sakai began studying the ideas of scientific socialism in the 1890’s. On the eve of the Russo-Japanese War of 1904–05 and during the war, Sakai, Kotoku, and others published the newspaper Heimin shimbun (Commoner’s Newspaper), which played an important role in spreading socialist ideas and in organizing the antiwar movement. In 1904, Sakai and Kotoku translated The Communist Manifesto into Japanese.

During the years of reaction following the provocation of the Kotoku affair (1911), Sakai founded the bookselling society Baibunsha, which was a legal center for socialists. After the October revolution in Russia, Sakai publicly propagandized the ideas of socialism through his journal Shinshakai (New Society). He participated in the creation of the Communist Party of Japan (CPJ) in 1922. In 1923 he was arrested. After his release from prison (1924), he left the CPJ and espoused Social Democratic views. In 1930, Sakai helped create the centrist Social Democratic Japan Mass Party, and he became a councillor and chairman of the party’s antiwar committee.

P. P. TOPEKHA