Social Relations
Chinese Socialists
Activities
At the time of Bronisław Piłsudski’s stay in Tokyo, there were about 10,000 boys and girls sent to study in Japan from China ruled by the Manchurian Qing dynasty. The revolutionary ferment among foreign youth, mainly Chinese but also Korean, was a phenomenon noted and closely tracked by the authorities. The young socialist community was particularly strong in Tokyo, and Bronisław Piłsudski made contacts with them early during his stay.
Song Jiaoren
Piłsudski’s first contact was with Song Jiaoren, then a fugitive from China because of his anti-Manchurian political activities.
Together with Sun Yat-Sen, Son Jiaoren founded an organization aimed at China’s independence from the Manchurian rule, called the Union League. The Union League was formed as a result of several smaller republican organizations joining the Chinese Renaissance Union (Xingzhonghui). The founding congress was held in Tokyo on 20 August 1905; Sun Yat-sen, later the president of a revived China, was then elected as the leader of the League. The main political objective of the Union League was to overthrow the Manchurian Qing dynasty and turn China into a republic.
Sun Yat Sen
It is known from Bronisław Piłsudski’s letter to American journalist George Kennan, a prominent expert on Russia, especially its Asian territories, that Piłsudski not only met personally with Sun Yat Sen, but maintained friendly relations with him.
However, it is also known that Bronisław Piłsudski spoke and exchanged correspondence with Sun’s young secretary, Wu Ruo-nan, and her sister, Wu Ya-nan. The young lady was eighteen when she and her sister came to study in Tokyo; she studied English at Waseda University, but had been a devoted socialist at the time of her arrival from China. Ruo-nan met with Piłsudski on 3 April, and immediately afterwards, she sent him a photo of herself and her sister along with a copy of the text she had written titled “The Twentieth-Century Liberty Bell”.
Tōten Miyazaki
Piłsudski also met an exceptionally colorful figure, the thinker and activist Tōten Miyazaki, who helped Sun Yat-sen in Japan. Not knowing Chinese, Miyazaki communicated with Sun Yat-sen in writing using Chinese characters, which are common in both languages, albeit read quite differently. In 1900, in an attempt to help Miyazaki, who was arrested in Singapore, Sun Yat-sen was himself caught and imprisoned. However, he soon got out of prison, returned to Japan in Miyazaki’s footsteps, and that is when he met with Piłsudski.
Piłsudski visited the office of the “Minbao” (People’s News) newspaper in March 1906, and the participants of the meeting took a commemorative photo.
In the first row, 3rd from the left: Tamizo Miyazaki, then: Toshihiko Sakai, Bronisław Piłsudski, and Huang Xing; in the second row, 2nd from the left: Toten Miyazaki
Piłsudski also met with socialists from the Christian current. Abe ...
From the very beginning of his stay in Japan in ...