Sakae Osugi. Anarchiste Japonais

Katja Stuke & Oliver Sieber.
Sakae Osugi. Anarchiste Japonais.
with a text by Marie Tesson
240 pages, 10,8 x 15 cm,
110 photographs
Ed. of 500 copies.

published by Nouveau Palais
supported by CNAP
Centre national des arts plastiques.

You can order here:
https://www.nouveaupalais.eu/en/livres/sakae-osugi

Sakae Ōsugi (*1885, †1923) was a Japanese anarchist; an important socialist, later anarcho-syndicalist activist, publicist and theoretician of the Taishō period. On 20 Nov 1922 he got an invitation to attend the 2nd International Anarchist Congress in Berlin in Feb 1923. After borrowing the necessary 1.000 Yen in travel expenses from the writer Arishima Takeo and others, he travelled to Shanghai on 13 Dec. where comrades helped him obtain a false Chinese passport on the names Chin Chen aka Tong Chin Tangle. He landed in Marseille on 13 Feb on a French ship. He didn’t get the necessary foreigner‘s identity card issued in Lyon.
Nevertheless, he travelled to Paris. He canceled his plans to travel to Berlin instead he stayed in Paris and gave a May Day speech in the north Parisian suburb of Saint-Denis. There he was arrested by civilian police who knew about his presence in Europe. He was sentenced to three weeks in prison and deportation for passport offences. On 2 June he was sent back to Japan where he later was murdered – together with his second wife feminist and anarchist Itō Noe and a nephew – in Tokyo on 16 Sept 1923 by military police. The police used the chaotic situation during the great Kantō earthquake to cover up several murders of political prisoners. Sakaes murder is known as the Amakasu Incident.

In his book »My escapes from Japan« he mentiones a »workers’ hall« near the Basilica in Saint-Denis. Most likely he refers to the »Bourse du Travail« of Saint-Denis which was located in the Hotel de Ville at that time.
In April 1892 a workers union was created for the first time in Saint-Denis initially in the premises of the Hotel de Ville opposite of the Basilica. In April 1895, several local trade unions formed a »Bourse du Travail« which was first located on rue Saulger, later on rue des Ursulines and rue Suger. The current »Bourse du Travail« on Rue Génin was designed by architect Roland Castro. Since the 1980s the architect has been working on the idea of a Grand Paris (he is at the origin of the »Banlieue 89« think tank with the urban architect Michel Cantal-Dupart). In Feb 2023, almost 100 years after Sakae Ōsugi’s experiences in Saint-Denis, Katja Stuke and Oliver Sieber walked from Hotel de Ville past Passage Saulger, rue des Ursulines and rue Suger until they finally reached Rue Génin.

For more info please copy and paste:
https://boehmkobayashi.de/sakae-osugi/