Miike Struggle
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The was a year-long struggle in Japan in 1960 between the organized labor movement, backed by a variety of
left wing Left-wing politics describes the range of political ideologies that support and seek to achieve social equality and egalitarianism, often in opposition to social hierarchy either as a whole or of certain social hierarchies. Left-wing politic ...
groups, and big business organizations, backed by the Japanese
right Rights are law, legal, social, or ethics, ethical principles of freedom or Entitlement (fair division), entitlement; that is, rights are the fundamental normative rules about what is allowed of people or owed to people according to some legal sy ...
, centering around a lengthy
labor dispute A labor dispute is a disagreement between an employer and employees regarding the terms of employment. This could include disputes regarding conditions of employment, fringe benefits, hours of work, tenure, and wages to be negotiated during ...
at the
Miike coal mine , also known as the , was the largest coal mine in Japan,Karan, P.P. & Stapleton, K.E. (1997) ''The Japanese city'p.181University Press of Kentucky Retrieved January 2012. located in the area of the city of Ōmuta, Fukuoka and Arao, Kumamoto ...
on the west coast of
Kyushu is the third-largest island of Japan's Japanese archipelago, four main islands and the most southerly of the four largest islands (i.e. excluding Okinawa Island, Okinawa and the other Ryukyu Islands, Ryukyu (''Nansei'') Ryukyu Islands, Islands ...
in southern Japan. Occurring at the climax of a long series of escalating strikes and other militant labor actions in 1950s Japan, the Miike Struggle was the largest labor-management dispute in Japanese history. Ultimately, the labor movement in Japan was defeated at Miike, dealing a significant blow to its prospects going forward.


Background

The
Miike coal mine , also known as the , was the largest coal mine in Japan,Karan, P.P. & Stapleton, K.E. (1997) ''The Japanese city'p.181University Press of Kentucky Retrieved January 2012. located in the area of the city of Ōmuta, Fukuoka and Arao, Kumamoto ...
in northern Kyushu had long been one of Japan's largest and most productive coal mines, dating back to its earliest exploitation by the Tachibana samurai clan in the early 1700s during the
Edo Period The , also known as the , is the period between 1600 or 1603 and 1868 in the history of Japan, when the country was under the rule of the Tokugawa shogunate and some 300 regional ''daimyo'', or feudal lords. Emerging from the chaos of the Sengok ...
. The mine was nationalized by the
Meiji Meiji, the romanization of the Japanese characters 明治, may refer to: Japanese history * Emperor Meiji, Emperor of Japan between 1867 and 1912 ** Meiji era, the name given to that period in Japanese history *** Meiji Restoration, the revolution ...
government in 1873, and was privatized and sold to the
Mitsui is a Japanese corporate group and '' keiretsu'' that traces its roots to the ''zaibatsu'' groups that were dissolved after World War II. Unlike the ''zaibatsu'' of the pre-war period, there is no controlling company with regulatory power. Ins ...
zaibatsu is a Japanese language, Japanese term referring to industrial and financial vertical integration, vertically integrated business conglomerate (company), conglomerates in the Empire of Japan, whose influence and size allowed control over signifi ...
in 1889. Like all other industrialized nations, Japan and its wartime empire had been largely powered by coal. This made the Miike mine immensely profitable and one of the crown jewels of the Mitsui conglomerate's holdings. However, in the immediate postwar years, the discovery and exploitation of cheap and plentiful Middle Eastern oil led to an "energy revolution" as industries increasingly shifted to oil, reducing demand for coal. At the same time, the 1950s in Japan saw a great wave of mechanization and "workplace rationalization" that saw a reduction in demand for large numbers of manual laborers, including coal miners. In addition, the
Income Doubling Plan The was a long-term economic development plan initiated by Japanese prime minister Hayato Ikeda in the fall of 1960. The plan called for doubling the size of Japan's economy in ten years through a combination of tax breaks, targeted investment, ...
, first formulated in 1959 and formally introduced in 1960, explicitly called for shifting government support away from "sunset" industries like coal mining in favor of "growth" industries such as oil refining and petrochemical manufacturing.


Origins of the dispute

Noticing these shifts and anticipating future threats to the profitability of its coal mines, the Mitsui Corporation in 1959 announced that it would be laying off thousands of workers at its mines, including 1,462 layoffs at the Miike mine. With mechanization of mine functions proceeding at a rapid pace, this was seen to be the first in what might be many future rounds of layoffs. The Miike miners union was incredibly strong, and responded with massive protests and work stoppages by more than 30,000 miners and their families. Mitsui decided to take the opportunity to break the powerful and militant Miike union once and for all. The Union was associated with the powerful, left-leaning
Sōhyō The , often abbreviated to , was a left-leaning union confederation. Founded in 1950, it was the largest labor federation in Japan for several decades. Origins In the immediate aftermath of Japan's defeat in World War II, the United States-led Oc ...
labor federation, and had long been a thorn in Miike's side, launching several workplace actions including undertaking a major strike in 1953. On January 25, 1960, Mitsui locked the miners out of the mine, and immediately launched a concerted effort to split off some of the miners to form a more pliable "second union" and resume production at the mine.


The struggle escalates

Although Miike was a very large mine, and the Miike union was an important union within the Sōhyō federation, the Miike Struggle quickly escalated far out of proportion to the actual number of jobs at stake, as both sides decided that Miike would be the time and place to make a decisive stand. Donations began pouring into the Miike miners union not just from other Sōhyō-affiliated unions, but even from unions in more moderate labor federations, such as
Zenrō The All-Japan Trade Union Congress (), better known by its Japanese abbreviation Zenrō) was a national trade union federation that existed in Japan from 1954 to 1964. History Zenrō was established in 1954 by a number of unions on the right-wing ...
, and from labor unions and federations in the United States and Europe. Likewise, the Japanese business world (''Zaikai'') made virtually unlimited financial resources available to Mitsui for the purpose of breaking the strike, including contributions from corporations and industries entirely unrelated to coal mining. Accordingly, the conflict rapidly assumed the feeling of an apocalyptic “all-management vs. all-labor” battle (''sōshihon tai sōrōdō no tatakai'') from which neither side felt it could back down. Much of these funds were used to hire thousands of right-wing and
yakuza , also known as , are members of transnational organized crime syndicates originating in Japan. The Japanese police and media (by request of the police) call them , while the yakuza call themselves . The English equivalent for the term ''yak ...
thugs to beat up or otherwise intimidate and harass the locked-out miners. Bloody battles for control of the mine became an almost daily occurrence, especially after Mitsui finally succeeded in persuading some of the miners to form a second union on March 17. On March 29, one of the first-union miners, Kiyoshi Kubo, was stabbed to death by a yakuza gangster. Because the striking first-union miners were blocking access to the mine by land, Mitsui attempted to land second-union miners and mining supplies by boat from the sea. The first union responded by chartering a boat of its own and constantly shadowing the company's boat while attacking it with water cannons, hurled rocks, and ramming, in the so-called "Battle of the Ariake Sea."


Further escalation

By May, with desertions to the second union increasing, the first union's cause was looking increasingly hopeless and support from the other unions began to waver. However on May 19, Japanese Prime Minister
Nobusuke Kishi was a Japanese bureaucrat and politician who served as Prime Minister of Japan, prime minister of Japan from 1957 to 1960. He is remembered for his exploitative economic management of the Japanese puppet state of Manchukuo in China in the 1930s, ...
had police drag opposition lawmakers out of the
National Diet , transcription_name = ''Kokkai'' , legislature = 215th Session of the National Diet , coa_pic = Flag of Japan.svg , house_type = Bicameral , houses = , foundation=29 November 1890(), leader1_type ...
and rammed through an unpopular revision to the U.S.-Japan Security Treaty (called "Anpo" in Japanese) with only members of his own party present. Kishi's actions led to outrage around the nation and a massive upsurge in the Anpo protests against the Treaty. Sympathy was extended to the striking miners, whom Kishi had opposed, and the Japanese labor movement became enamored of the idea of possibly "linking up Anpo and Miike," leading to a new surge in support for the striking miners. Once the new treaty took effect on June 19, the Anpo protests came to an end, freeing up thousands of left-wing activists who had previously been busy protesting the treaty. Many of these activists then travelled down to Kyushu to support the miners at Miike. However, the end of the Anpo protests also freed up thousands of right-wing counter-protesters as well, who also traveled to Miike to fight for the other side, leading to a dramatic upsurge in violent clashes in late June and July. Big business was growing tired of funding the endless conflict, and pressure mounted on Kishi to bring the strike to an end, so he dispatched 10,000 riot police to quell the violence, and a decisive battle (''kessen'') between the police and the miners seemed imminent. However, Kishi was forced to resign on July 15 to take responsibility for his mishandling of the treaty issue, leading to a pause in strikebreaking operations at Miike.


Resolution

New Prime Minister
Hayato Ikeda was a Japanese politician who served as prime minister of Japan from 1960 to 1964. He is best known for his Income Doubling Plan, which promised to double the size of Japan's economy in 10 years, and for presiding over the 1964 Tokyo Olympics. ...
, a former member of the
Ministry of Finance A ministry of finance is a ministry or other government agency in charge of government finance, fiscal policy, and financial regulation. It is headed by a finance minister, an executive or cabinet position . A ministry of finance's portfoli ...
and a close ally of the business world, made finding a peaceful resolution to the strike his first priority upon taking office. To accomplish this, he took the very unusual step of appointing a member of a rival faction within the ruling
Liberal Democratic Party Several political parties from around the world have been called the Liberal Democratic Party, Democratic Liberal Party or Liberal Democrats. These parties have usually followed liberalism as ideology, although they can vary widely from very progr ...
,
Hirohide Ishida was a Japanese politician who served in the cabinets of multiple conservative administrations. In the 1980s, it was revealed that the KGB considered him to be an agent of the Soviet Union. Early life Born in Noshiro, Akita, Ishida entered Wased ...
, as Labor Minister, because Ishida was seen as more sympathetic to labor unions, and dispatched Ishida to negotiate a solution. With both the business world and the labor movement having become exhausted by the lengthy battle, Ishida was successful in getting both sides to submit to binding arbitration by the Central Labour Relations Commission (CLRC). The miners calculated that they had shown their determination, and that they could always go on strike again, and thus that the CLRC would have to grant them some concessions. However, when the CLRC issued its decision on August 10, it sided almost entirely with Mitsui, granting the miners the rather meaningless gesture of having the company formally "rescind" the layoffs while still insisting that those same miners "voluntarily retire." The first union was outraged and immediately announced a resumption of their strike, but after weeks of debate the Sōhyō labor federation announced that it was withdrawing its support for the strike. Completely isolated, the first union held on for a little longer but was ultimately forced to capitulate. On December 1, 1960, the first union-miners returned to work, ending an unprecedented 312-day lockout.


Legacy

The Miike Struggle is widely regarded as the high point of postwar labor militancy in Japan, when the Japanese labor movement was at the height of its power. After the labor movement was defeated at Miike, it gradually retreated from militancy, leading to a more cooperative culture with more open lines of communication between management and labor in Japan. Sōhyō in particular was weakened by the Miike Struggle, and thereafter increasingly lost ground to more moderate labor federations such as Zenrō. Mitsui's near-total victory in the Miike Struggle allowed the company to replace the militant first union with the much more cooperative second union. This in turn allowed Mitsui to lay off more miners and significantly relax safety standards in the mine. By 1963, the number of miners working at Miike had fallen by one third, from around 15,000 in 1960 to just 10,000, yet in the same period, coal production was accelerated from 8,000 tons to 15,000 tons per day. On November 9, 1963, the worst mining disaster in Japan's postwar era occurred at Miike when coal dust ignited and exploded 500 feet below the surface, collapsing tunnels and spreading deadly carbon monoxide throughout the mine. As a result, 458 miners were killed and 555 were injured.


References


Further reading

*{{cite book , last = Kapur , first = Nick , year = 2018 , title = Japan at the Crossroads: Conflict and Compromise after Anpo , publisher =
Harvard University Press Harvard University Press (HUP) is an academic publishing house established on January 13, 1913, as a division of Harvard University. It is a member of the Association of University Presses. Its director since 2017 is George Andreou. The pres ...
, location = Cambridge, MA , isbn = 978-0674984424 , url = https://books.google.com/books?id=Re5hDwAAQBAJ Labour movement in Japan Labor disputes in Japan 1959 labor disputes and strikes 1960 labor disputes and strikes 1960s in Japan 1960 in Japan
Mitsui is a Japanese corporate group and '' keiretsu'' that traces its roots to the ''zaibatsu'' groups that were dissolved after World War II. Unlike the ''zaibatsu'' of the pre-war period, there is no controlling company with regulatory power. Ins ...
Miners' labor disputes Yakuza