Noro Eitaro

Born Apr. 30, 1900, in Hokkaido; died Feb. 19, 1934, in Tokyo. Figure in the Japanese workers’ movement.

Noro graduated from Keio University in Tokyo in 1925. Associated with the workers’ and trade union movement from his student years, he was arrested in 1926 and 1929. In 1926 he went to work for the Bureau for the Study of Industrial Labor Problems. From 1929 he took part in the work carried on by the Communist Party of Japan (CPJ) in the All-Japan Peasant Union, and later worked in the propaganda and agitation department of the Central Committee of the CPJ.

Noro struggled against rightist opportunism and leftist factionalism. After the mass arrests of Communists in the autumn of 1932, he did much to reestablish the central bodies and local organizations of the CPJ. From May 1933 he headed the Secretariat of the Central Committee of the CPJ. He was arrested in November 1933 and died in prison. He was the author of The History of the Development of Japanese Capitalism (1930).