Labor Thanksgiving Day

November 23rd, marks the holiday in Japan of Labor Thanksgiving Day or kinrō kansha no hi (勤労感謝の日). Like Labor Day in the US, this day is intended to take time and give appreciation to everyone’s hard work this year.

The holiday is actually based on the ancient rice harvest festival of 新嘗祭 (niinamesai), which even the Emperor would take part to give thanks to the gods and eat the first bowl of rice from the harvest. Rice was, and continues to be, the main staple crop for Japan, and a good harvest made all the difference in those days, so it was important to take time to give thanks to the gods, the people who farmed the rice and so on.

As the Wikipedia article above states, the holiday became a more Western-style holiday commemorating labor after World War II to help give more awareness to labor issues, human rights and so on. As I read about this led to a train of thought regarding the socialist movement in Japan, which I knew little about. The Japan Communist Party has existed since 1922 and is still one of the largest and most intact Marxist parties in the world. According to Wikipedia though, the party is somewhat unusual in that it did not ally itself with the Soviet Union, nor does it advocate violent revolution.

The Meiji Period all the way up to the end of World War II saw an active effort to get rid of leftist groups who were seen as an impediment to Japan’s imperialist govt. I mentioned briefly the story of one such man in a book I read, and how he had been jailed in the northern island of Hokkaido for his political involvement. Before and during World War II, the JCP, along with other activist groups¹ fought and opposed the war in Asia and Japan’s military expansion. Such a thing would never happen in any industrialized country today, but things were different in our grandparents’ time.

Even today, like many industrialized countries, there are struggles between labor-oriented leftist groups and nationalist conservative groups.

But, I realized long ago, that politics and political groups tend to inflame and inflate problems, and that for the silent majority, Labor Thanksgiving Day really is just a nice time to sit back, spend time with family, and appreciate one’s own hard work and that of others.

So if you’re in Japan on this day, take a break. You earned it.

¹ Buddhist-activist groups and Christian-activist groups are other examples.