The author of this study, a professor emeritus from Kyoto University, may not be well known in Western Sinology, but he is probably somewhat better known among scholars in China. Part of the reason might be the declining interest among Western scholars in the early Chinese Communist movement. A generation or more ago, there was considerable attention paid to the origins of Chinese Marxism and its earliest articulations, which produced works by Maurice Meisner, Paul Pickowicz, Gregor Benton, and others. Perhaps as Mao’s star has faded, maybe as communism itself has proven more disaster than wholesale solution, or for some other cause, younger scholars have bypassed this era—or at least this specific topic. We have had biographical studies of Chen Duxiu, though in my view no one has yet paid Chen his full due. The other major reason Western scholars of the late Qing and early Republic may not have come across Eda’s work is the appalling decline of Japanese-language training for scholars who focus on this period at most elite institutions where Chinese history is taught. Even where several years of Japanese is required, jumping off to actually engage with Japanese scholarship remains a serious desideratum.

The volume under review is Eda’s first major work, which may seem odd for someone who was a senior professor at one of Japan’s leading institutions of higher education. In 1992 he did author a short monograph entitled Goshi undō no Shanhai rōdō undō 五四運動の上海労働運動 (The Shanghai labor movement during the May Fourth Movement) (Kyoto: Dōbōsha). That book was the product, like so much coming out of Kyoto University, of his participation in a joint research project based there. Japanese scholarship has long been much more an article-based academic culture than a book one. While we in the Western academy are compelled to get our book(s) out to gain tenure and promotion, in Japan scholars tend to produce articles and build a résumé accordingly, only later (often, years later) putting it all together as either a monograph or a collection of linked essays.

The articles Eda has published over the last few decades include:

He has also been involved with others in preparing several volumes of translations from the writings of Chen Duxiu, including Chin Dokushū bunshū 3 陳独秀文集3 (Chen Duxiu writings, vol. 3 [1930–1942]), edited and translated by Edo Kenji and Nagahori Yūzō 長堀裕造 (Tokyo: Heibonsha, Tōyō bunko, 2017).

As the title of the book under review indicates, Eda is concerned with the relationship between democracy and the space for democratic thinking, on the one hand, and socialism, on the other—all within the context of pre-1949 CCP history. Although the term geming 革命 (revolution) appears virtually a million times in early communist (and even nationalist) history, it had, needless to say, no single or clear definition. It is well known that Mao Zedong (1893–1976) played fast and loose with the term and its opposite, anti- or counter-revolution, depending on the time period and his personal circumstances within the Party. He held power far longer than anyone in the movement before the founding of the PRC (and after 1949, of course, but that goes beyond the contours of this study).

The one essay on Mao that centers around this volume’s principal themes of democracy and socialism derives from Eda’s 2020 piece on the formation of Mao’s “On New Democracy.” How, Eda asks, did this document become “sacred scripture” (seiten 聖典)? Answering this question involves going back to writings by Mao (and others of his brain trust, such as Ai Siqi 艾思奇 and Chen Boda 陳伯達) from the late 1930s, which lauded the May Fourth era and (at least rhetorically) its values. This was, of course, the period of the Second United Front and making nice with the Nationalists. However, all of this discursive posturing must have been transparent to those whose vision was unimpaired. As Eda concludes this essay:

By the same token, Qu Qiubai (1899–1935) was at the helm of the CCP for a short period before his capture and execution at the hands of the Nationalist regime. Although Eda has one substantial chapter on Qu and somewhat more on Mao, the central figure in this volume is Chen Duxiu (1879–1942).

I, for one, have always thought that there was something profoundly tragic about Chen’s life. He did everything he was supposed to do and listened to the commands voiced through the Comintern out of Moscow. The result was utter disaster in 1927, and he found all the blame laid squarely at his doorstep. A victim of Stalinist scapegoating at precisely the time when Stalin was decimating Leon Trotsky and others within the Soviet Politburo (c. 1927), Chen migrated to the small Chinese Trotskyist group, which in turn led to his expulsion in 1929 from the very CCP that he had cofounded eight years earlier. Before that, he had gone from passing the first level of the civil service examinations (keju 科舉) in the late 1890s to some years later serving as founding editor of New Youth (Xin qingnian 新青年), which skewered virtually everything about the examination system with virulent invective—and went through countless other changes in between. New Youth became the central serial of the New Culture Movement and the call for numerous reforms in the early Chinese Republic, especially advocacy of vernacular writing. Late in life, Chen receded from the spotlight, returned to his initial interests in traditional Chinese culture, and focused attention ever more on democracy. Although Eda’s book does not provide it, nor was it intended to, we still need a serious study of Chen that addresses all these transitions as well as his short period as a student in Japan from whence he was expelled. Eda’s book and some of his other article-length works will be useful to that end.

Although I have known Eda for almost half a century, I cannot say for certain that he has a soft spot for Chen Duxiu. But I suspect that he sincerely does. The final chapter of the book looks at the last years of Chen’s life: as leader of the Chinese Trotskyists (Shanghai, March 1930–October 1932), his slightly later thinking and political stances (Nanjing, November 1932–August 1937), his public pronouncements after his release from prison (Wuhan, Chongqing, and Jiangjin, September 1937–October 1938), and his subsequent arguments with the Trotskyists and his final endeavors (November 1938–May 1942). In Chen’s final essay, “The Future of the Oppressed Nations” (Bei yapo minzu zhi qiantu 被壓迫民族之前途), Eda argues that Chen criticized not only the old Bolsheviks, including Lenin and obviously Stalin, but also Trotsky himself; as Chen put it, he saw himself as “a Trotskyist criticizing Trotsky.” For Chen, socialism had to be rooted in democracy (just as fungible a term as “revolution”), as if they were two sides of the same coin, inseparable. Eda sees this as a stream of thought that Chen had possessed throughout his entire life. Interested readers can find Gregor Benton’s translation of this last essay by Chen in his collection Chen Duxiu’s Last Articles and Letters, 1937–1942 (Richmond: Curzon, 1998).