of the company in Yotani and demanded the immediate discharge of employees who had beaten up the peasants, and compensation for eleven who had been wounded, together with the publication of an official apology in the press. If the company refused, the Suihei members threatened to destroy all the health-resort buildings.
The company’s officials and employees ran away.
The next evening fifty police arrived from Otsu, Kusanu and Moriyama, after the demonstrators had already left Yotani, and nothing was to be seen in the darkness but the white ruins of the office.
The police arrested all the eleven members of the local branch, and took them to Kusani, corded together.
Then the Shiga district committee of the Suihei organized a mass demonstration in Kusanu. The Kyoto committee sent a special section to the home of Igari Ihei, who had already managed to become a shareholder in the company.
Three of the eleven—Miesima, Kurose and Ozawa—were sentenced “under clause 216 of the criminal code” to ten months’ hard labour, after they had already spent two months in prison.
A year later, when the three turned up in Yotani, they found a garage and a new restaurant there. The sounds of the Samisen[1] floated to their ears. They sensed the spirit of a new town.
The eleven peasant homesteads crouching on the other side of the valley seemed to have been passed over by time.
- ↑ A three-stringed musical instrument.
