Ruffians, Yakuza, Nationalists: The Violent Politics of Modern Japan, 1860-1960 (review)

Eiko Maruko Siniawer looks at Japanese modern history through an unusual lens: the role of physical violence and violence specialists in the development of democracy. She borrows the term "violence specialists" from Charles Tilly's sociological work on the historical development of social movements in Europe, defining it for this study as "nonstate actors who made careers out of wielding physical force in the political sphere, or who received compensation for performing acts of political violence" (p. 5). The focus on "nonstate actors" is particularly important: she is not talking about physical violence by the military or the police but rather about violence in the messy realm of politics.

The issue of conflict has become a normal aspect of scholarship about Japan in recent decades, but violence per se does not usually get star treatment, nor do professional purveyors of violence. Aside from studies of yakuza, the existing work on violence generally examines events or protest movements in a particular time period, with only passing attention to what came before or after. By contrast, Siniawer looks at developments in political violence over a century that brought enormous social and political changes to Japan. To grasp this huge and largely understudied phenomenon, she focuses on five case studies: the role of shishi and bakuto in the formation of the Meiji state and the Freedom and Popular Rights Movement; the place of sōshi or political "ruffians" in the birth of parliamentary politics in the 1880s; the institutionalization of political "ruffians" as ingaidan in political parties and the role of yakuza in Diet politics in the first few decades of the twentieth century; how fascist violence during the 1930s altered the existing culture of political violence; and finally, the role of violence in early postwar Japanese politics. Each chapter stands alone, but the full power of the analysis only comes through as we see how the cases are intertwined and have left indelible marks on contemporary Japanese politics.

In the first case study, Siniawer begins with the role of lower samurai shishi rebels in the tumultuous bakumatsu period. While acknowledging that they are better characterized as legitimate political rebels than professional violence specialists, she points to their use of assassination as a favored weapon of political violence. Shishi are significant for the later thread of her story because of the strong association of patriotism with violent rebellion. Even though the shishi themselves did not survive into Meiji-era politics, ex-shishi were involved in a series of early Meiji rebellions under the banner of violent but patriotic resistance.

Subsequently rising to prominence in her narrative of early Meiji political violence were the bakuto, Tokugawa-era gambling groups that managed to transform themselves into political violence specialists through their role as local notables with a reputation for violence. She acknowledges that other scholars may not view some of her colorful protagonists as bakuto, but I will leave that argument to Meiji historians. She traces their involvement in the Freedom and Popular Rights Movement as mobilizers of small armies that participated in several rebellions. Her point is that when a weak government relied on them for assistance in maintaining local order, it also tacitly accepted their use of violence, which they then used to confront the state. As the government consolidated its power in the mid-1880s, it tried to bring bakuto under control by criminalizing their activities. Siniawer draws in the Italian and French cases to show that this problem of dealing with violence specialists in an early modernizing state is not unique to Japan, carefully pointing out the similarities and differences among the three cases.

Bakuto were of course not the only violent actors in the Freedom and Popular Rights Movement. Siniawer's second case focuses on violent young men who were sometimes still thought of as shishi but over time came to be known under the new name of sōshi. While in the early 1880s...