Kanno Suga (1881-1911)
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Kanno Suga, also called Sugako, was born in 1881 in Osaka, where her father was an itinerant mining engineer. Her mother Nobu died when Suga was twelve, to be replaced by a wicked stepmother who abused her (according to some accounts, having her raped and spreading rumors of her bad behavior); at age nineteen, she was married off to support the family’s failing finances. Shortly divorced, she returned home and helped support her younger sister and brother.
She studied writing with the author Udagawa Bunkai, joined Yajima Kajiko’s WCTU, and thereby developed an interest in socialism and pacifism through her acquaintance with the writer, editor, and all-around good guy Sakai Toshihiko [to whose daughter Magara Suga willed her best kimono], then running the Heimin Shimbun left-wing newspaper. She was apparently particularly moved by an article in which Sakai argued that women who had been raped should bear no more responsibility for it than women bitten by mad dogs.
Suga addressed woman’s issues from her own earliest days as a journalist, working for the Osaka Morning News: she criticized the plan to have geisha dance at the Fifth National Industrial Exhibition held in 1903, calling them “women of low repute,” a daring move given how many high governmental officials were then married to ex-geisha (she later regretted this stance, shifting to criticize the social structure in general rather than the women involved in it.) In 1906, with help from Sakai, she moved to Wakayama to edit a newspaper there while its original editor was in prison; she subsequently married her colleague Arahata Kanson and moved to Tokyo with him, although this marriage likewise did not last more than a year. Her articles continued to call on women to stand up for themselves against men’s double standards and perfidy.
In 1908, she was arrested as part of the so-called Red Flag Incident, in which anarchists including Arahata, Osugi Sakae, and Kotoku Shusui waved red flags marked with anarchist and socialist slogans when welcoming a comrade back from prison, clashed with police, and were arrested in large numbers. Shortly after the incident, Suga and Kotoku began to live together (he was technically still married, but his wife Chiyo had stayed home when he came to Tokyo. Arahata, Suga’s ex-lover, did not hesitate to use this and other points to blacken Suga’s name in later years; he famously described her as “not at all pretty, but very sexy” or words to that effect, implying that she had slept with almost every man she met). Along with Kotoku, Suga became editor of the journal Liberal Thought, which was promptly banned.
In 1910, Suga, Kotoku, and a number of their comrades were arrested in what became the High Treason Incident, on suspicion of plotting to assassinate the Meiji Emperor. Even at the time it was widely known that most of the charges were entirely falsified (in part by chief prosecutor Hiranuma Kiichiro), as part of the increasing crackdown on the left wing. According to some accounts, Suga, who was already suffering from tuberculosis, knew herself not to be long for this world in any case, and decided to die with her comrades rather than plead her innocence; others have her a central part of the conspiracy, considering herself a latter-day Sofia Perovskaya. Regardless, she was hanged for treason in January of 1911, at the age of thirty.
Buried in a Tokyo temple, her remains disappeared during the war. While it was originally thought that they had been ravaged by the wartime military, a postwar survey found that they had been taken by comrades for safe reinterment in Okayama; her grave is still with her sister's in Tokyo.
Sources
Nakae, Ishii, Mori 1996, Tanaka
https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/kanno-sugako-reflections-on-the-way-to-the-gallows (English; translator unknown) Suga’s record of her sentencing and thereafter. A LOT.
She studied writing with the author Udagawa Bunkai, joined Yajima Kajiko’s WCTU, and thereby developed an interest in socialism and pacifism through her acquaintance with the writer, editor, and all-around good guy Sakai Toshihiko [to whose daughter Magara Suga willed her best kimono], then running the Heimin Shimbun left-wing newspaper. She was apparently particularly moved by an article in which Sakai argued that women who had been raped should bear no more responsibility for it than women bitten by mad dogs.
Suga addressed woman’s issues from her own earliest days as a journalist, working for the Osaka Morning News: she criticized the plan to have geisha dance at the Fifth National Industrial Exhibition held in 1903, calling them “women of low repute,” a daring move given how many high governmental officials were then married to ex-geisha (she later regretted this stance, shifting to criticize the social structure in general rather than the women involved in it.) In 1906, with help from Sakai, she moved to Wakayama to edit a newspaper there while its original editor was in prison; she subsequently married her colleague Arahata Kanson and moved to Tokyo with him, although this marriage likewise did not last more than a year. Her articles continued to call on women to stand up for themselves against men’s double standards and perfidy.
In 1908, she was arrested as part of the so-called Red Flag Incident, in which anarchists including Arahata, Osugi Sakae, and Kotoku Shusui waved red flags marked with anarchist and socialist slogans when welcoming a comrade back from prison, clashed with police, and were arrested in large numbers. Shortly after the incident, Suga and Kotoku began to live together (he was technically still married, but his wife Chiyo had stayed home when he came to Tokyo. Arahata, Suga’s ex-lover, did not hesitate to use this and other points to blacken Suga’s name in later years; he famously described her as “not at all pretty, but very sexy” or words to that effect, implying that she had slept with almost every man she met). Along with Kotoku, Suga became editor of the journal Liberal Thought, which was promptly banned.
In 1910, Suga, Kotoku, and a number of their comrades were arrested in what became the High Treason Incident, on suspicion of plotting to assassinate the Meiji Emperor. Even at the time it was widely known that most of the charges were entirely falsified (in part by chief prosecutor Hiranuma Kiichiro), as part of the increasing crackdown on the left wing. According to some accounts, Suga, who was already suffering from tuberculosis, knew herself not to be long for this world in any case, and decided to die with her comrades rather than plead her innocence; others have her a central part of the conspiracy, considering herself a latter-day Sofia Perovskaya. Regardless, she was hanged for treason in January of 1911, at the age of thirty.
Buried in a Tokyo temple, her remains disappeared during the war. While it was originally thought that they had been ravaged by the wartime military, a postwar survey found that they had been taken by comrades for safe reinterment in Okayama; her grave is still with her sister's in Tokyo.
Sources
Nakae, Ishii, Mori 1996, Tanaka
https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/kanno-sugako-reflections-on-the-way-to-the-gallows (English; translator unknown) Suga’s record of her sentencing and thereafter. A LOT.