ABSTRACT
Sōhyō’s first five years, until mid-1955, were marked to a significant extent by the defining role played by its leader Takano Minoru (1901–74). Takano considered the grassroots initiative in the labour movement to be of particular importance and his ideas, which shared a significant commonality with those of low-ranking workplace activists, did much to stimulate and promote ordinary workers’ participation in union, peace and other activities. In this chapter, Takano’s views about the kind of labour movement he thought should be promoted will be discussed in order to better understand the context of the overall situation surrounding ordinary workers, who took up various workplace and non-union activities.
