Hyōgikai

Nihon Rōdō Kumiai Hyōgikai (日本労働組合評議会^?, 'Council of Labour Unions of Japan') was a trade union centre in Japan which operated from 1920.

Hyōgikai was founded at a conference in Kobe on May 24–27, 1925. As of late 1925, Hyōgikai had 59 affiliated trade unions and around 35,000 members. The organization was affiliated with the Pan Pacific Trade Union Secretariat. When the organization was crushed in a government crackdown in the spring of 1928, it had 11 regional councils, 82 affiliated unions and around 23,000 members.

Hyōgikai was founded as a continuation of the Reform Alliance, a group of 25 trade unions which merged out of the Eastern Local Council (a body that had separated itself from the Eastern Federation of the Sodomei trade union centre, but retained a direct affiliation to Sodomei. The Eastern Local Council had been dissolved by Sodomei, accused of being a communist plot), and on May 16, 1925 the Reform Alliance unions were expelled from Sodomei. The expelled Reform Alliance unions were joined by seven other unions in forming Hyōgikai. At the time of its foundation Hyōgikai counted with 32 trade unions and 10,778 members.

Ritsuta Noda was elected Hyōgikai chairman at the Kobe meeting. A 17-member Central Committee was formed. Noda was not a communist, but communists played a dominant role in the Central Committee. Prominent communist Central Committee members were Nabeyama, Yamamoto, Taniguchi and Mitamuro Shiro.Hyōgikai appealed to Sodomei to unite all trade unions in a single national federation, a proposal which Sodomei rejected. In response, Hyōgikai denounced the Sodomei leadership as 'bureaucratic' and 'right wing'.

Both Hyōgikai and Sodomei took part in the discussions on the formation of a joint legal proletarian party. The two sides submitted their own drafts for a party platform. On November 29, 1925, Sodomei withdrew from the party-building process, stating that it would not be part of any party which included Hyōgikai. In response Hyōgikai also pulled out of the party-building process the following day, in order not to obstruct the creation of a broad-based proletarian party. In the end, the short-lived Farmer-Labour Party was founded in December 1925.

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