Ono Tozaburo

Ono Tozaburo (1903 - 1996) was an anarchist, poet and school principal.

Life

Ono was born in Osaka in 1903 as it was rapidly industrialising and the emergence of the young working class was accompanied by unrest and the spreading of radical ideas. Born into a wealthy family of merchants, he attended Tenojji Junior High School. He moved to Tokyo in 1921 and attended the Culture Department of Toyo University. However, like many other Japanese anarchist poets of the time, he dropped out after 8 months. He was an admirer of the fiery anarchist Ōsugi Sakae, and began contributing Aka to Kuro (Red and Black), but was soon shut down by police.

In 1926, he launched Dam-Dam (Trajectory), an anarcho-Dadaist publicatoin, but only one issue appeared. His first collection of poems was rejected by all the publishers he approached, and in the end he had to self-publish his Hanbun Hiraita Mado (A Half-Opened Window). In 1928 he translated and had published Reflections on Violence by Georges Sorel. He brought out a collection of American proletarian poetry, which he and others had translated, in 1931.

He returned to Osaka in 1933 and wrote poems about the industrial devastation he saw there and attempted to organise the workers' movement with the cultural anarchist movement as was soon arrested by police, but released due to lack of evidence. During World War II, he published anti-war poems and in 1954 opened the 'Osaka Literature School for Workers' and was its principal for 37 years, running courses on novels, poetry and children's literature, he also took a role in the anti-war movements of Japan.