The All-Japan Trade Union Congress (), better known by its Japanese abbreviation Zenrō) was a

national trade union federation Organizers within trade unions have sought to increase the bargaining power of workers in regards to collective bargaining by acting in collaboration with other trade unions. Multi-union organizing can take place on an informal basis, or on a ...

that existed in

Japan Japan is an island country in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean off the northeast coast of the Asia, Asian mainland, it is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan and extends from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea ...

from 1954 to 1964.

History

Zenrō was established in 1954 by a number of unions on the right-wing of the trade union movement, who had become unhappy with the increasingly left-wing political stance of the

General Council of Trade Unions of Japan A general officer is an officer of high rank in the armies, and in some nations' air and space forces, marines or naval infantry. In some usages, the term "general officer" refers to a rank above colonel."general, adj. and n.". OED Online. Ma ...

(Sōhyō) under the leadership of its militant secretary-general Minoru Takano. Politically speaking, Zenrō was tied closely to the Right Socialist Party (RSP), to whom it provided electoral support, and following the reunification of the

Japan Socialist Party The was a major socialist and progressive political party in Japan which existed from 1945 to 1996. The party was the primary representative of the Japanese left and main opponent of the right-wing Liberal Democratic Party for most of its ex ...

(JSP) in 1955, supported the former RSP factions in the new party, especially the far-right faction led by

Suehiro Nishio was a Japanese labor activist and party politician whose career extended across the prewar and postwar periods. A long-serving member of the National Diet (15 terms in total), he was a power broker in the Japan Socialist Party and one of the main ...

. Although Zenrō generally shied away from political actions and even purely economic strikes, preferring a more conciliatory relationship with management, the federation did participate in the successful struggle in 1958 to defeat the revision of the Police Duties Bill proposed by conservative 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, ...

, which opponents were able to portray as less of a left-right issue and more of a basic threat to Japanese democracy and civil rights. However, Zenrō was less enthusiastic about supporting the 1960 Anpo protests against the US-Japan Security Treaty, and ultimately pulled out of the movement when the JSP insisted that the

Japan Communist Party The is a communist party in Japan. Founded in 1922, it is the oldest List of political parties in Japan, political party in the country. It has 250,000 members as of January 2024, making it one of the largest List of communist parties#Modern n ...

be allowed to participate. This controversial decision also caused Nishio and the other right socialists to bolt the JSP and form the new Democratic Socialist Party, which Zenrō thereafter supported. Not that the left socialists and Sōhyō were necessarily sorry to see Zenrō and Nishio gone, as Zenrō had purchased Sōhyō's enmity by repeatedly attempting to hive off Zenrō-affiliated "second unions" within Sōhyō-controlled shop floors. In 1964, Zenrō merged with the National Council of Government and Public Workers' Unions (Zenkankō) and the

Japanese Federation of Labour The , or Sōdōmei for short, was a national trade union federation in Japan during the early post-World War II era. Re-established in 1946 based on its pre-war predecessor founded in 1919, Sōdōmei represented the cooperative wing of the Japa ...

(Sōdōmei), to form the

Japanese Confederation of Labour The Japanese Confederation of Labour (Dōmei; ) was a national trade union federation in Japan. The federation was founded in 1964, with the merger of the All-Japan Trade Union Congress, the National Council of Government and Public Workers' Uni ...

, better known as Dōmei.

Affiliates

The following unions were affiliated in 1956.

Leadership

:President: Minoru Takita :General Secretary: Haruo Wada

References

Citations

Works cited

*{{cite book , last = Kapur , first = Nick , year = 2018 , title = Japan at the Crossroads: Conflict and Compromise after Anpo , publisher = Harvard University Press , location = Cambridge, MA , isbn = 978-0674984424 , url = https://books.google.com/books?id=Re5hDwAAQBAJ National trade union centers of Japan Trade unions established in 1954 Trade unions disestablished in 1964