JAPAN: Sitting Printer; Bean Soup

Six months ago Kiyoshi Tanabe won fame and a strike for fellow factory employes by sitting grimly on a factory chimney for 129 hours, disregarding all the blandishments of the Tokyo Police Force to coax him down (TIME, Dec. 1). Last week 200 employes of Japan Dyeing & Weaving Works went out on strike because of the discharge of a fellow workman. The dyers and weavers remembered the November success of Chimney Sitter Tanabe, determined to emulate him. However, not a single striking dyer could be found who would volunteer to sit on the Weaving Works high chimney. This difficulty was solved when a sympathetic, bespectacled young man from the Amalgamated Printers’ Union swarmed up the stack, sat on the chimney as proxy. The 200 weavers and dyers immediately locked themselves in a warehouse, went on a hunger strike.

Days and nights passed. The striking weavers starved in their warehouse, the Amalgamated Printer sat on his chimney. Chimney Sitter Tanabe’s 129 hour record was passed. Still the hardhearted owners of Japan Dyeing & Weaving Works did not relent. The strikers had forgotten that the real reason Chimney Sitter Tanabe won his case in November was that the Emperor, the Son of Heaven, was scheduled to pass beneath that particular chimney. It is illegal, it is sacrilege for any Japanese to look down on the Son of Heaven.

Emperor Hirohito showed no desire to go anywhere near the Weaving Works last week. Three score of the self starved strikers dropped from exhaustion, were carried to a hospital. Hunger striking was not in the contract of the chimney sitting printer. Sympathizers threw him rice balls, hard boiled eggs and apples. Then he was provided with a rope and a bucket, hauled up plentiful nutriment hand over hand.

At the end of 150 hours the weavers in the barn modified their hunger strike, announced that they would eat bean soup, but nothing else. Cauldrons of bean soup were rushed to their aid. A reporter of the Tokyo Asahi Shimbun scaled the chimney sitter’s stack, asked his name. This the sitting printer refused to give. Said he, his spectacles flashing in the setting sun:

“I am doing this for the workmen of the Japan Dyeing & Weaving Works, my brothers. I do not want admiration for my humble self.”