Kobunsha Labor-Management Disputes and the Era of Criminalization: Cracks in the Labor Movement in 1975

Kobunsha Labor-Management Disputes and the Era of Criminalization: Cracks in the Labor Movement in 1975

In 1975, Japan was suffering from recession and inflation due to the end of rapid economic growth and the oil crisis, and labor-management relations were becoming increasingly tense. In the publishing industry, opposition to worsening working conditions grew stronger, and a labor-management dispute at Kobunsha lasted more than two years. In the process, a situation arose in which gangsters took control of the labor union, and eventually the Metropolitan Police Department's Public Safety Division 2 and Otsuka Police Station intervened, arresting thirteen executives of the Hikari Labor Union, including its chairman Fukuyama, simultaneously on charges of violent behavior and assault. The arrests, which took place just before the conciliation at the Central Labor Relations Commission, appeared as if the judiciary had acted as a means of resolving the dispute, and symbolized the transformation of an internal company problem into a criminal case. Motoo Ichikawa criticized the arres
t as "unusual" and called for a negotiated settlement, but Tokusaburo Shimizu justified the arrest on the grounds of inconvenience. Such a split was indicative of the conflicting lines within the labor movement. Kobunsha was a general publisher founded in the postwar period that published popular magazines such as "Josei Jishin" and had great cultural influence, but the labor-management conflict became serious amid the publishing recession. The incident shared the same historical background as the Zenko dispute and the Mitsubishi Heavy Industries bombing incident, highlighting the ease with which the labor movement could be linked to public safety issues. The criminalization of the cultural industry was a symbol of the social contradictions of the mid-1970s and a mirror of the legitimacy and limitations of the Japanese labor movement.