The Tokyo Imperial University Settlement House: Challenging Social Inequality in Interwar Japan

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In 1923, a group of left-wing students and progressive professors from Tokyo Imperial University banded together to form the university’s Settlement House in a workers’ district in downtown Tokyo. This house contained rooms for students to live among the proletariat, and its activities included a labour school for factory workers providing night classes taught by professors and students, which produced several prominent labor leaders and future Diet members. The settlement programme further included courses for adults and children, child care, a consumer cooperative, and a free medical clinic administered by university doctors. It also offered legal counseling, supervised by two of Japan’s most influential law professors. Due to the prominence of its founders and the range of its activities, the settlement was the most impactful example of a broader effort among progressives during this period to empower workers to seize leadership of the labour movement and overcome what was perceived to be a fundamentally unequal socio-economic system. The goal of this project is to reconstruct the theoretical conception and the practical work of the Tokyo Imperial University Settlement House. In order to do so, the project is divided into three subprojects: 1) labour movement, 2) welfare, 3) social science and higher education. Firstly, the Settlement was shaped by the labour movement, but it also contributed to shaping the labour movement of interwar and post-war Japan. This connection between the theoretical work of progressives including Marxists on the one hand and practical efforts on the other has not been studied sufficiently for interwar Japan. Secondly, through offering health and legal services as well as childcare, the Settlement became a provider of welfare services. Given that research on the history of welfare in Japan has been heavily slanted towards the state, the role of civil society actors in directly confronting inequality and the effect these efforts had on their thought deserves greater scholarly attention. Lastly, the activities of the Settlement were informed by the ascent of the social sciences in interwar Japan, and in turn affected new pedagogic ideas in the realm of higher education and the interaction between university professors and students.By situating the Tokyo Imperial University Settlement House in the larger histories of the labour movement, welfare policy and social science and higher education in Japan during the first half of the twentieth century, we hope to shed light on the interconnection of these areas, on the international connections at work in these contexts, and on the relationship between theory and practice in progressive social movements. Ultimately, this project will serve as an important building block within a larger and more ambitious monographic history of equality and inequality in modern Japan.