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

1923年，一群来自东京帝国大学的左翼学生和进步教授联合起来，在东京市中心的一个工人区成立了该大学的和解之家。这所房子里有供学生在无产阶级中生活的房间，它的活动包括为工厂工人开设的劳工学校，提供由教授和学生授课的夜校，培养了几位杰出的劳工领袖和未来的国会议员。安置方案还包括成人和儿童课程、儿童保育、消费者合作社和由大学医生管理的免费医疗诊所。它还提供法律的咨询，由日本最有影响力的两位法学教授指导。由于其创始人的突出地位及其活动的范围，该解决方案是这一时期进步人士更广泛努力的最具影响力的例子，这些努力旨在赋予工人权力，以夺取劳工运动的领导权，并克服被认为是根本不平等的社会经济制度。本项目的目的是重建东京帝国大学宿舍的理论构想和实际工作。为此，该项目分为三个分项目：1）劳工运动; 2）福利; 3）社会科学和高等教育。首先，殖民地是由工人运动塑造的，但它也有助于塑造两次大战之间和战后日本的工人运动。包括马克思主义者在内的进步人士的理论工作与实际努力之间的这种联系，在两次世界大战之间的日本还没有得到充分的研究。第二，通过提供保健和法律的服务以及儿童保育，定居点成为福利服务的提供者。鉴于日本的福利史研究一直严重倾向于国家，民间社会行为者在直接应对不平等方面的作用以及这些努力对他们的思想产生的影响值得更多的学术关注。最后，殖民地的活动受到了两次世界大战之间日本社会科学兴起的影响，并反过来影响了高等教育领域的新教育思想和大学教授与学生之间的互动。通过将东京帝国大学殖民地置于更大的劳工运动历史中，通过对日本世纪上半叶的福利政策、社会科学和高等教育的研究，我们希望阐明这些领域之间的相互联系，以及在这些背景下起作用的国际联系，以及进步社会运动中理论与实践的关系。最终，该项目将成为现代日本更大和更雄心勃勃的平等和不平等专题历史的重要组成部分。

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.