Where is true solidarity?: Seeking of Black-Japanese Anti-Racist Solidarity across the Pacific

• In Event: Solidarities of the Weak

Abstract

This paper looks at the effort of building solidarity between Japanese and African Americans against global color line. Trans-Pacific anti-racist struggles had (at least) two strands around 1920s and 1930s. One is communism, which recognizes the intersection of race and class and sought for proletarian anti-racism. Its advocates were aware that colored workers, on one hand, were rejected in most of the labor unions in the U.S. (such as AFL) and on the other were blamed for taking whites' jobs and being scabs at their strikes. The other strand is Nationalist Socialist one, which was eventually oriented to right-wing rebellion and functioned as counterrevolutionary force. However the intellectuals and activists of that time saw them as mixed possibilities. While the intellectuals and activists of African diaspora including W.E.B. Du Bois and Marcus Garvey looked at Japanese ascendancy in international political economy as a proof of illogic of white supremacy, it took Du Bois and African American press long time to realize that Japanese cause of challenge to white supremacy and liberation of Asia from Western colonial powers had made them underestimate its imperialist invasions. But it is also true that there was much gray zone, where anti-racist solidarity was sought out in many ways. Japanese intellectuals such as Shumei Okawa, Kametaro Mitsukawa, and others paid much attention to how racism had underpinned Western colonialism in Asia and the anti-Chinese and anti-Japanese movement in the U.S., thereby resonating with Garveyist notion of 'race war.' A Japanese immigrant allegedly affiliated with right-wing Black Dragon Society, Naka Nakane, was organizing African Americans in Detroit in late 1930s. With all these ideological variations and ambiguities in between, this paper tries to tease out the solidarity-seeking efforts (including Yasuichi Hikida's translation of 'Lift Ev'ry Voice and Sing' written by James Weldon Johnson in 1930s Japanese magazine, among others) in the trans-Pacific sphere.

Author

• Yamazaki Yushi, University of Southern California