Word: natsukawa
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Troubles Begin. As the strike went on, Japan learned more about Natsukawa's kindly ways. For example, any Ohmi girl who married despite all the difficulties had her wages cut "because of decrease in efficiency." Such stories put public opinion behind the strikers. Natsukawa countered by offering strikebreakers a handsome $1.25 a day, plus cigarettes and sake. He sent a fleet of light planes to shower Tokyo and Osaka with 10 million leaflets, distributed thousands of matchboxes, floated huge balloons over Osaka with his message: "The All-Japan Textile Workers Union is destroying Japan's industry through Communist...
...picket lines, Natsukawa was stoned and mauled when he tried to drive through in his Cadillac. Contributions poured in from sympathizers abroad ($1,000 from the C.I.O. Textile Workers, $2,800 from the British textile workers). Britain's touring Laborites visited the strikers, hailed their "epochmaking fight," indicated firmly that however hopeful they might feel about coexistence with China, there could be none with Japan if the Japanese reverted to a prewar policy of sweated labor and "cheap goods." The conservative government of Premier Yoshida took alarm...
Then the strikers hit on a labor practice strictly in a Japanese tradition: they committed suicide. "I take to my grave the memory of your cruelty," 19-year-old Zengoro Nakamura wrote Natsukawa, and threw herself under a train. Three other Ohmi girls also killed themselves...
Strike's End. Last week, under pressure from an outraged public and an alarmed government. Natsukawa gave up, wanly signed an agreement ending the 106-day strike. Natsukawa promised to observe union working hours, and to "decide rationally" the problems of mail censorship, dormitory restrictions and compulsory Buddhist ceremonies...
...also agreed to pay the Ohmi union $133,000 in lost wages, a like amount (at the insistence of fellow manufacturers) to the All-Japan Textile Workers Union to make up for the trouble he had caused. "My friendship was misunderstood," wailed Natsukawa. "I seem to have lacked that modern way of thinking...