Kanno Sugako (1881–1911), was a Japanese radical anarcho-feminist.
She was the first woman to be executed in modern Japan for political reasons, at the age of 29, for having led a plot to overthrow the government - which was building a new economy on the backs of girls sold in slavery to textile factories during the Meiji period.
Later, when the judge asked Kanno if she wished to make a final statement, she stated her only regret was that the plot failed.
I learned about her from a book called “Flowers in Salt” by Sharon Sievers about the modern beginnings of feminism in Japan.
It’s a heartbreaking book.
Japan wanted to modernize after seeing the threat of US technology in the late 1800s. The government was able to create a trade economy due to the literal enslavement of women and girls in textile factories.
Companies visited rural towns promising a better life for young women. Farming parents believed their daughters would have more opportunities if they could support themselves, and the government created propaganda to this aim.
Girls as young as 6 walked through the mountains to the factories with no shoes, so it was eventually called a trail of blood.
Later, towns caught on, and when a company came to collect girls, they protested, and were met with violence.
(Resistance to company collection of girls actually sparked one of the first modern labor protests in Japan.)
Female workers were locked in, and the dorms were a prison. The invention of lamps meant that working hours extended to as much as 36 hours at a time. Their handwoven textiles were exported for company profit, and male overseers raped them.
There are anecdotes of men finding women’s bodies near the factories, where they had escaped just long enough to kill themselves.
Kanno lived at a time when this was happening, and had been raped herself when she was fifteen. She wanted to stop the government expansion which was coming at the expense of human rights.
The modern economy of Japan was created through enslaving and selling women and girls.
And as radical feminists know, that hasn’t ended. All economies are built on women’s slavery in one way or another.
germansingergirl
gummygunk
jacobvanloon
yousharknotpass
tangentwithtanner
theartofmadeline
origamiaround
snowghoul
