The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1933-07-07
HUNGRY FARMERS
in JAP AN ARE
DRIVEN TO RIOT
Whole Village Starves
For Five Months
Of the Year
"A Letter from Japanese village,
giving the life of the peasants)

giving the life of the peasants)
Every day our village is visited by
important guests 1t is not at all
unusual to see on the streets of our
village expensive automobiles from
the capital, Toxic But most often
our village is visited by the 'Buddtl
carriage the police wagon This is
a large black automobile with steel
bars on its small, rag covered win
dowS. The Buddu wagon never leaves
our village empty. Usually five or
six persons, with baskets over their
heads, 1.-THE japanese police put a
basket over the head of arrested
persons with the idea of preventing
passersby from identifying the pris-
oner and warning possible colleaguesI
are taken to the city.
Our village consists entirely of
peasants who rc-1t land from land
lords living in Toxic. For the last
four consecutive years rental price
has been going up at the rate of Is
per cent over the previous year The
burden of taxation grows unceaSing-
~. Recently new tax was put into
effect to cover the expense of the
village gendarmerie. But what is
even worse than this is the fact that
our landlords refuse to take our prod
uctS in payment for the rental of the
land They demand cash payments.
Every peasant home gathers from
the field a maximum of eight koku
of rice. This income is distributed
as follows. Land rental, koku; vii
1age gendarmerie tax, not less than
2 koku; state taxes, 2 koku. An aver
age family in our village consists of
five persons. To feed a whole family
on two remaining koku of rice is i'm
possible. Besides, there are a number
Of other necessities: kerosene, sugar,
tea, clothing. tobacco. These are
goods of which we can only dream,
but which We cannot get.
One koku of rice costs ON the
market from IL to Is yen. 1t costs
us to produce it, countink seeds and
fertilizer, 25 yen. OF course, we dare
not count the value of our labor.
1--WE distribute these two kokus so
as to last Us for several months, but
just the same we starve four or five
months Of the year. In these days
of nightmare our whole village
trampS over the fields collecting
scattered seeds. Children and the
aged gather various grasses and roots.
Our village has now been without
light for a long time.
Recently there was a hunger riot
in our village. Hundreds of peasants
gathered around the gandarmerie
building and demanded the return
of the gendarnerie tax. Instead, the
gendarmeS arrested the crowd and
drove it to the city. There, many of
the peasants were thrown in Jail.
But the protest movement did not
cease. A group of peasants caught a
gendarme d an official of the tax
bureau, and drowned them both in
the neighboripg lake.
Since then our village is visited
almost 9rily by the 'Buddu wagon.
and by the various agitators of self
claimed peasant unions, who come
to us in expensive automobiles. The
wagon carries away the rioting peas
ants, while the agitators promise
those who remain, help and an ex-
cellent life. These persons, with good
clothes and well-fed mugs, explain
al our miseries by the noble ma
tional war for the salvation Of the
peoples of Asia which is now going
on in China, But no one wants to
save us, who are dying of hunger and
sicknesses. Yet somewhere across
the sea our government is Saving
peoples For us peasants, and for
workers, too, this only leads to the
worsening of our conditions; for us it
means more taxes, which condemn
us to certain death.
Our only consolation is that we
are still able to walk and are still
capable Of any kind of work, which
we cannot find yet. But in the
northern procedures, such as 40
mort, the peasants can no longer
walk; they are hardly able to move
their legs and are dying from star
walton. There is not only hunger
there, but punitive expeditions of
troops afainst the peasants. In Aa-
mort we have regular battles be-
tween the lsasants and the military
troops.
ut is hard to believe that we shall
be able TO stand such life any longer
Our village is in the same position
as the villages in the Aomori pre-
lecture. Every day the eendarmerie
arrest the rioters. But every day
TOO, some gendsrme disappears.
"tsiFned) Eickei Hsman,atsus