Background
Fusataro Takano was born born in Nagasaki Prefecture and moved to Tokyo in 1877. His younger brother Takano Iw'asaburo was a statistician and professor of Tokyo Imperial University.
Fusataro Takano was born born in Nagasaki Prefecture and moved to Tokyo in 1877. His younger brother Takano Iw'asaburo was a statistician and professor of Tokyo Imperial University.
He graduated from Yokohama Commercial School and in 1886 went to America.
He remained in America for ten years, supporting himself by operating a small general store in San Francisco and by doing various other types of jobs, and pursuing his studies, often under very difficult conditions.
Upon returning to Japan in 1896, he became a reporter for the Japan Advertiser. In 1897 he joined with Katayama Sen, Jo Tsunetaro, Sawada Hannosuke, and others in setting up an organization called the Rodokumiai Kiseikai as a preliminary step toward the formation of labor unions.
In 1899 he took the initiative in the management of the Consumers Cooperative Union, a workers’ organization. In 1900, when the government set up a system of security police and outlawed strikes, the labor movement went into decline. Takano, apparently out of despair for the future of the movement, went to Tsingtao in China and died there in 1904.