PS: There was something wrong with the computer yesterday, and now it's using my wife's computer codeword, and I'll make it up tomorrow......

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Osaka, Japan.

Located in the region of western Japan, Osaka is the metropolis of western Japan, second in importance to the capital city of Tokyo (Yokohama was not yet developed at this time).

Osaka was often referred to as "Osaka" in ancient times, and since the Nara period, Osaka has been a trading port due to its seaside location. Toyotomi Hideyoshi built Osaka Castle and made Osaka the core city of the Toyotomi regime. During the Edo period, Osaka, along with Kyoto and Edo, was the most economically active commercial city in Japan.

From the end of the 19th century, with the development of heavy industry and textile industry, Osaka gradually transformed from a commercial city to an industrial city full of factories. In the latter part of the Sino-Japanese War, the city was targeted because it was closer to the mainland than Tokyo, and not only airships, but also heavy bombers taking off from North Korea. As a result, it has received a lot of "letters" from China, ranging from shrapnel to incendiary bombs, from 50 kg to 500 kg.

Eighty percent of the local factories were destroyed in the air raids, and the achievements of the decades after the Meiji Restoration were reduced to rubble. Soon after, World War I broke out, and Japan, which had been tossed to the point of only half a life, actually took this good opportunity to develop again.

Britain and France, who were forced to be anxious by Erdezi, in order to draw Japan as cannon fodder, did a lot of blood, not only forgiving most of the debts, but also successively providing 400 million pounds of interest-free loans, about 50 million pounds of "free aid" (in fact, life money), and hundreds of millions of pounds of labor fees (wages for labor and special services). The most important thing is that Britain and France have opened up a lot of important technologies to Japan in order to give Japan more strength, provided a large amount of materials, such as shipbuilding, metal smelting and heat treatment, engines, and so on, and also sold or assisted Japan with a large number of machine tools and production machines (some of which were resold to the United States).

Under such circumstances, Japanese industry has not only recovered rapidly, but has also made more progress than before. In the past, the Japanese had no experience, and there were many irrational industrial layouts, and the equipment and technology were not very good. In addition, except for a few key enterprises, most of the enterprises are not large, and most of them are small family-style workshops. Now that these old factories have been blown up by China, they can instead devote their energies to the construction of new ones. Coupled with the fact that it had made a lot of money in Italy, Japanese industry swelled rapidly in World War I, and its industrial strength had greatly exceeded that of the same period in the history of the original time and space.

Osaka, an important industrial town, has also recovered and become more prosperous in the spring breeze of the First World War.

However, this prosperity seems to have only stopped at a certain level, and although Japan's economic situation was better at the same time in the same period of time, and it acquired Mozambique, a new territory twice the size of the Japanese mainland, Japan's social contradictions have not been alleviated for these reasons.

According to these elites, as long as Japan can benefit from the war, everyone's life will be better. It is precisely because of the deception and propaganda of the elites at the top that the vast number of low-level civilians in Japan will be so willing to sell their lives for this war. However, this is not the case, and if Japan wants to say that it has gained a lot of benefits, in this protracted world war, I am afraid that China, the United States, and Japan can be called the winners. Japan has gained benefits second only to China and the United States, but it is a pity that all these war dividends have been swallowed up by the elites, and the low-level people have not received a single hair.

Japan is a country that combines the remnants of monopoly capitalism and feudalism. Throughout history, we can find that from the Meiji Restoration to the First World War, Japan's monopoly capitalism has developed by leaps and bounds in every war. This is how the Japanese elite and wealthy families are fed by war, and their wealth is stained with blood.

The vast majority of domestic industry is in the hands of a very small number of big monopoly capitalists. For example, Mitsui, Mitsubishi, Yasuda, Sumitomo and other big chaebols play a great dominant role in Japan's economic life. On the other hand, in the rural areas, the landlords own about half of the country's land, while 70 percent of the peasants have no land at all, or have very little land. Japanese landlords levied land rent from the peasants, using the most backward form of rent in kind. Regardless of whether the harvest is good or bad, the peasants have to pay rent to the landlord for half or even three-quarters of the annual harvest. Due to the high land rent and the backward production technology, Japanese farmers could usually only rent small plots of land from landlords for farming. As a result, Japan's agricultural productive forces have not been developed, and the broad masses of peasants have no choice but to struggle on the hunger line for a long time

This brutal exploitation is also deeply entrenched in urban industry, for example, in the factories where wages in kind and the system of repayment of debts through labour are still preserved, and the brutal exploitation of women and child labourers is the main means by which the capitalists reduce costs and obtain high profits. Particularly cruel was the widespread use of servile contract labor in industry.

In this contract-based system, the capitalists recruit the children of poor families in the countryside, take them to the mines or factories to do hard labor, and pay the parents of the recruits a little money according to the contract, which is then deducted from their wages later. The worker under the contract labor system is tantamount to the slave of the capitalist. Around their dormitories, high walls were built like prisons, and the doorways were constantly guarded by guards for years. The workers were not allowed to go out, and the letters written by their parents had to be read by the capitalists. In the dormitory, there is only one mat for each person to sleep in, and day and night workers are grouped together and sleep in turns. The hired workers can barely survive for five years at most in this kind of prison-like dormitory. According to a survey of textile enterprises in 1919, 70 percent of female workers left due to illness and 20 percent ran away.

Since the Meiji Restoration, the struggle between the Japanese working class and the exploiters who oppressed them has intensified. In 1897, Katayama founded the Preparatory Union of Trade Unions, which later organized hardware workers, drivers, printers, and trade unions. The trade union movement of the Japanese working class began to develop under the leadership of Ken Katayama. At the same time, Japanese peasants spontaneously organized tenant farmers' associations and launched a struggle to reduce rents.

After the Russo-Japanese War, class contradictions in Japan became more acute. In 1910, in order to stifle the growing workers' and peasants' movement, the Japanese government fabricated the so-called "Great Rebellion" of the assassination of the emperor, arresting a large number of socialists and anarchists, and executing hundreds of them.

In the brutal repression, the high-ranking elites became even more arrogant and exploited the working people more wantonly. During the First World War, the working class in Japan generally worked 12 to 14 hours, even 16 hours, but their wages were extremely low. In 1918, the average daily wage for female workers in Japan was only 4 jiao 8 cents, and that for men it was only 9 jiao 2 cents, but the price per liter of rice at that time was 5 jiao 3 cents. Even a very small amount of wages is not paid to the workers, and a portion of the wages is often swallowed up by fines. For example, in 1914-1918 fines accounted for 20 to 50 per cent of wages in the textile sector.

The peasants suffered more than the workers. The peasants who owned small plots of land not only had to bear heavy taxes of more than 30 per cent of their income, but were also exploited by the capitalists for "scissors" (exchanging high-priced industrial products for cheap agricultural products and raw materials), and as a result, they were constantly losing their land and had to go into exile to the cities or become tenants of the landlords. As for the vast number of peasants who lease land from landlords, they are exploited even more and their situation is naturally more difficult. At the end of the First World War, it was no longer news that Japanese peasants gnawed tree bark and ate grass roots, and it was even more common to see children and girls being sold.

Therefore, during the course of World War I, a large-scale "rice riot" broke out in Japan. The reason for this was that in June 1919, Japan announced that it would increase its military presence in Europe and Africa, and the price of rice began to skyrocket. In May, the price of rice rose from 1 jiao 6 cents per liter to 3 jiao 8 cents on June 5, and then increased every day, until on June 11, the price of rice rose to 5 jiao 5 cents per liter.

The reason for this phenomenon is mainly the structure of the Japanese economy, which is a combination of highly developed capitalism and the remnants of feudalism. On the one hand, due to the development of capitalist industry, the demand for grain and other agricultural products is constantly increasing, but on the other hand, because of the maintenance of feudal land ownership in the country, the harshness of exploitation, the fragmented division of land, and the backwardness of technology, agriculture is unable to supply urban industry with sufficient food and raw materials. In addition, during the war, the large increase in the size of factories, the expansion of the number of troops, and the dispatch of civilian workers to Europe also led to a decrease in the domestic rural labor force, which led to the fact that Japan's grain production in 1919 was still low before the war, while on the other hand, the population in need of food in cities and armies increased significantly.

However, in fact, although Japan's grain consumption increased and grain production decreased at that time, it was not short of grain, at least not to this extent. Because their expenses were paid by Britain and France, and they also used this huge "life money" to import a lot of grain from China, only in 1918, 7.3 million tons of grain were imported from China, and in the first half of 1919, another 4.2 million tons were imported. At that time, Japan's food deficit was less than 3 million tons.

As mentioned earlier, the war dividends obtained by Japan did not benefit the lower classes, and the powerful and wealthy and capitalist landlords have always relied on famine and war to grab new profits. They are engaged in speculative business, and the less rice they have, the more they hoard it. Even with grain imported from China, they also claim that there is a shortage of food, and the price of rice naturally skyrockets.

The sharp rise in rice prices has seriously threatened the livelihood of working people in urban and rural areas. Not to mention ordinary workers and peasants, even prison guards and city policemen have complained about the high prices of prices, especially rice, and making it impossible to live. In short, the soaring price of rice has made it even more difficult for the Japanese lower class people, who are already very hard-working. The broad masses of the Japanese people have shouted loudly and demanded that the hoarding of landlords and capitalists be stopped immediately, that foreign rice be quickly imported, and that the price of rice be lowered. However, the Japanese government, whose first duty is to protect the interests of the landlords and capitalists, is to serve the elites, where will it take the demands of the people to heart. On the contrary, it says that the national mind has deteriorated, and that it is necessary to popularize religious concepts and develop a sense of morality, and so on.

As it turned out, this approach made the Japanese fart even more indignant. In this way, the class contradictions in Japan have developed sharply to a very acute level. It was in this situation of struggle that the "rice riots" broke out.

This mass riot began with the women of the fishing village snatching rice, and it is common for rice to break out in various places, so it is customary to call it the "rice riot" in Japanese history.

The "rice riots" developed from rice grabbing to face-to-face struggles with the landlords and capitalists, against the reactionary military and police, and openly raised among the masses the slogan of "Down with the temple cabinet." The scale of the mass uprising was enormous, and in the space of nearly two months, the wave of mass struggle hit three-quarters of the entire country, including Tokyo, Osaka, Kyoto, and other metropolises, in three prefectures and 32 prefectures, and more than 10 million people from all walks of life in Japan were involved in the struggle. The Japanese government was particularly shocked by the fact that in the riots in Kure Harbor, naval soldiers also participated. Among them, several sailors stood in front and commanded the crowd, carrying in their arms a guarantee that they were going to force the rice merchant to confess to selling at 2 jiao and 2 cents per liter of rice, and attacked the rice merchant and other shops.

Since the Middle Ages in Japan, although there have often been peasant rice riots, under the feudal situation, it is only a local and regional event. Such a large-scale campaign that shook the whole country was carried out on such a large scale and for a long time, and this was the first time that the "rice riot" had been launched.

Such a large-scale mass uprising really frightened the Japanese government. In the face of the powerful people's revolutionary movement, the Japanese ruling class adopted hypocritical means to allocate 3 million yen in the name of the emperor to "help the small people", and asked Mitsui, Mitsubishi and other chaebols to also contribute several million yen, in an attempt to lure the masses out of the struggle with this small favor. On the other hand, all armed forces were mobilized to suppress the insurrectionary masses by bloody means. The Japanese government has arrested tens of thousands of people nationwide, and in addition to those killed at the scene, tens of thousands of people have been sentenced to death, life imprisonment, and other hard labor for various crimes. It was with great difficulty that Japan was able to reluctantly suppress the uprising.

"White Dragon Rice Ball, Delicious White Dragon Rice Ball!" Authentic Tang style cuisine, White Dragon Rice Ball, 19 flavors ......"

Near Osaka Park, a hawker is shouting loudly, and his cart has a small flag that reads "Authentic Tang Style White Dragon Rice Balls". It seems that in the past few years, this type of "white dragon rice ball" has begun to appear in Japan, and you can see shops and vendors selling this type of "white dragon rice ball" in many cities and villages.

At this time, a man carrying a wooden box walked over and asked the vendor, "Is there a white dragon rice ball with happiness filling?"

The peddler glanced at him vigilantly, and the man hurriedly made a gesture, and the peddler whispered: "Yes, yes, but the price is relatively expensive, asking for 10 yuan each." ”

"Is it sold for 3 yuan and 30 yuan?"

"Isn't it too expensive?" asked the vendor.

"It's not expensive, it's not expensive, as long as it can make the Japanese people happy, it's not expensive at all......," he said.

The peddler looked left and right, quickly took out a small note from the mezzanine of the cart, and handed it to him: "I don't have happiness stuffing here, you have to go there to find ......"

"Thank you......" The visitor quickly put away the note, bought another squid rice ball, and turned to leave.

"White Dragon Rice Ball, Delicious White Dragon Rice Ball!" Authentic Tang style cuisine, White Dragon Rice Ball, 19 flavors ......" The vendor began to sell casually again.