(March 15, 1943)





Comrade Lin Zhe[1]:

Today I read the article commemorating March 15th[2], which deeply moved me. I am quite unfamiliar with the history of the Japanese revolution, yet I am very eager to learn about it. I believe that it is also necessary for cadres and members of the Chinese Communist Party to become acquainted with the facts of the Japanese revolutionary movement. Therefore, I suggest that you write more historical materials on the Japanese revolution and publish them in Jiefang[3]. Please give this your consideration.

I enjoy reading all of your articles, and I encourage our comrades to emulate your objective approach to analyzing matters.[4] Very few of our people are capable of producing analytical writings; instead, we are inundated with subjective, bombastic rhetoric. We are currently working hard to combat this deeply entrenched and extremely harmful practice, and I would greatly appreciate your assistance in this effort.  With highest respect!





March 15th










Notes:

* This letter, together with “To Nosaka Sanzo (May 28, 1945),” was discovered in July 2003 by Professor Tetsuro Kato of Hitotsubashi University among documents personally kept by Tsuna Mizuno, a female archivist at the Japanese Communist Party Central Archives—specifically, within the “Tsuna Mizuno Collection” housed at the Ueno-Senkawa-Muramura Center for Social Movement Studies under the care of Takushi Inui. The present text has been compiled based on the version published in Wang Jian’s “Mao Zedong and Nosaka Sanzo during the Yan’an Period” (Xiangyuan, No. 3, 2008, hereafter referred to as “Yan’an”), with reference to photographs of the original manuscript.


[1] “Lin Zhe” is Nosaka Sanzo’s pseudonym.


[2] Namely, the article titled “Commemorating March 15th at the Japanese Workers’ and Peasants’ School,” written by Nosaka Sanzo under the pseudonym “Lin Zhe” and published in the Liberation Daily on March 15, 1943. On March 15, 1928, the reactionary Japanese government carried out a crackdown on the Japanese Communist Party, arresting its members and supporters; this event is known as the “March 15 Incident.”


[3] As it appears in the original text, referring to the Liberation Daily.


[4] Here, the period in “Yan’an” is a comma; it has been corrected according to the photograph of the manuscript.


[5] The character “做” in “Yan’an” is rendered as “作”; it has been revised to match the manuscript photograph.