My Escapes from Japan

On December 11， 1922， Osugi Sakae snuck out of his house in Tokyo， ducking the watchful eyes of the police， to begin a journey to Europe to attend an international anarchist congress. This final work by Osugi， published in October 1923， is a collection of his writings about that trip (interspersed with memories of an earlier “escape” from Japan). The trip takes him first to Shanghai and then on to Lyon and Paris. Along the way， he meets Russian emigrees， Chinese and Korean nationalists， French bureaucrats， prostitutes， and midinettes， prison guards and inmates， and a cabaret dancer named Dolly. It was Osugi’s last fling， just a few months before his life was cut short at the age of thirty-eight by the military police in Tokyo on September 16， 1923.