Jiichiro Matsumoto (18 June 1887-22 November 1966) was a Japanese politician and the founder of the Buraku Liberation League.
Biography[]
Jiichiro Matsumoto was born in Chikushi, Fukuoka Prefecture, Japan on 18 June 1887 to burakumin parents. He founded his own civil engineering and construction company in 1911, and he became a prominent civil rights activist during the 1920s, advocating for the rights of the oppressed burakumin class. He was imprisoned in 1927 and 1929, and he was elected to the House of Representatives in 1936. During World War II, he superficially supported the Japanese war effort, supporting the shattering of "the Anglo-Saxon domination of the world"; however, in a January 1953 speech in Rangoon, Burma as a representative of the Japan Socialist Party, he lamented the cost of Japan's economic growth, namely "the peril of imperial fascism". He continued his buraku liberation activism until his death in 1966.