The merit assessment work was not limited to the military; the cadre school established in Xuzhou also participated in the excavation projects. There were over a dozen Japanese comrades in the cadre school, along with one genuine "extra-personnel" member. This was Kita Ikki, who was there to "observe."

By the time the merit assessment concluded before the Spring Festival, Kita Ikki had also received his share of the rewards. Two knitted towels, two toothbrushes, an enamel mug printed with the hammer and sickle emblem, and four bars of light yellow soap with a fine texture that looked quite appealing. Kita Ikki lay on his bunk, holding the soap up to his nose to take a deep whiff. The scent, mixed with a pungent chemical smell, was invigorating. Putting down the soap, Kita Ikki sat up, feeling a bit irritable.

Recent news had left Kita Ikki extremely upset. He had just received word that shortly before, on January 24, 1912, Kōtoku Shūsui and 11 others had been executed by hanging. The "High Treason Incident" that had caused a sensation in Japan had finally drawn to a close.

In late May 1910, a worker at a lumber mill in Akashina, Nagano Prefecture, was found carrying a bomb. The Katsura Tarō cabinet used this as a pretext to suppress the socialist movement in Japan. In June of the same year, Japanese authorities began a massive arrest of socialists nationwide, shut down all trade unions, and banned the publication of all left-wing literature. From late 1910 to January 1911, hundreds of arrested socialists were subjected to secret trials. Japan's socialist pioneer Kōtoku Shūsui and 25 others were falsely accused of "high treason, plotting to assassinate the Emperor, creating riots, and committing the crime of attempted assassination of the Emperor." After a special single-instance trial by the Great Court of Cassation, Kōtoku Shūsui and 23 others were sentenced to death on January 18, 1911, while two others received prison terms.

In this era, executing political prisoners was widely recognized as a political atrocity. Left-wing masses in Paris, London, San Francisco, New York, and other places held protest rallies and wrote letters of protest to Japanese embassies. Under the condemnation and pressure of domestic and world opinion, the Great Court of Cassation was forced to commute the death sentences of twelve of them to life imprisonment in the name of the Emperor. However, the sentences of Kōtoku Shūsui and the other twelve remained unchanged.

The United States was quite opposed to this action by Japan. Daring not to offend its largest export market, the Japanese government played a trick by deliberately delaying for a year. Americans' attention could not remain on Japanese political prisoners forever. Once the external outcry had subsided, the Japanese government quietly executed Kōtoku Shūsui and the other eleven by hanging.

Kita Ikki was also a nominal "dissident" in the eyes of the Japanese government. Although his relationship with the socialists was not particularly close, and he was not in Japan at the time, effectively dodging this bullet, there was no doubt that between the Japanese government and these socialists, Kita Ikki supported the socialists. Upon learning that Kōtoku Shūsui and the others had been killed, Kita Ikki's mood plummeted.

"I will make these people pay this blood debt!" he thought with hatred.

But acting fierce here was useless. Kita Ikki pinned all his hopes on the Chinese revolution. Having completely lost faith in the Meiji Restoration, Kita Ikki expected the Chinese revolution to blaze a brand-new trail. After the Chinese revolution achieved total victory, Kita Ikki, as a "guide," would lead this powerful revolutionary force to overthrow the current corrupt oligarchic rule in Japan and establish a truly fair and just Japanese state. For this reason, Kita Ikki firmly supported the Tongmenghui's revolution, hoping that after completing the Chinese revolution, they would proceed to liberate Japan and build an Asian alliance to counter the Europeans.

Even though the Tongmenghui, which he had initially favored, now seemed to have no future, Kita Ikki did not lose confidence. He attempted to learn the revolutionary path from the more powerful People's Party. Up to now, Kita Ikki could not say he was disappointed, but he did feel a sense of anxiety.

The People's Party's revolutionary philosophy contained the core program of "anti-imperialism and anti-feudalism" that Kita Ikki highly approved of, as well as a steadfast line pursuing social justice. None of this was wrong, but on the practical level, the People's Party had a style of saying one thing and doing another. According to Kita Ikki's observations, all of the People's Party's energy, or at least the vast majority of it, was focused on the practical level of building a stronger base area. As the standard-bearer of the Chinese revolution, the People's Party emphasized practice over rhetoric. Externally, they exhibited strong utilitarianism rather than a strong revolutionary attitude. This surprised Kita Ikki greatly.

What was even more stimulating was the internal education of the People's Party. "The state is a tool of class rule," "Law is the manifestation of the will of the ruling class," "The ruling class in the base area is the broad masses of laborers." In Kita Ikki's view, these concepts, repeated like brainwashing, were not about overthrowing a despotic government, but about replacing the existing despotic government with an even more despotic one. This was something he found very hard to accept.

In his confused state of mind, Kita Ikki once again lifted the soap to his nose and took a deep breath. The pungent smell of alkaline substances lifted his spirits slightly. He was not an inexperienced greenhorn; life in the base area could certainly not be called harsh. These rewards, along with meals that rivaled those of great Japanese oligarch families—leaving aside the salary—were comparable to the life of a Japanese naval officer.

However, this was vastly different from Kita Ikki's hopes. What he wanted to learn from the People's Party was how to build a powerful revolutionary party, but what he had learned most over the past few months was how to engage in practical work. For a base area that had already established political power, this might be feasible. The People's Party had expended enormous effort on "awakening the broad laboring masses." Chen Ke firmly believed that one of the characteristics of the ruling class itself was learning how to manage oneself and learning to recognize the essence of society.

One of the training aspects of the cadre school was, first of all, to enable cadres to recognize the current state of society and learn how to organize labor production. In this lake excavation project, the entire cadre school was mobilized. Kita Ikki had assumed that learning to organize labor production meant learning how to "organize the masses to engage in labor production." He never expected that this meant letting the cadre school students themselves learn how to organize production through their own labor.

Kita Ikki had not known how exhausting production could be. When he decided to join the revolution years ago, in order to raise funds, he did not throw himself into labor production. Instead, he joined a gang, relying on collecting protection fees and blackmailing the wealthy to get his startup capital. Kita Ikki had considered the People's Party's method of engaging in production, but he had rejected that slow-money approach at the time.

Since he wanted to learn the People's Party's organization, Kita Ikki had no choice but to learn to labor. So-called labor was not a group of people discussing how to do things better, but a group of people picking up tools and burying their heads in digging and moving earth. Hands would blister, the rubber soles of the liberation shoes would slip, and in the cold weather, one could get frostbite.

The solutions to many problems seemed simply "inhumane" to Kita Ikki. For example, the only way to deal with blood blisters on one's hands was to wait for them to burst and form calluses; that would solve the problem. The stinging pain when a blister first burst made Kita Ikki extremely unhappy. The comrades of the People's Party used "mutual encouragement" as the solution.

The even more magical part came later. The so-called learning to organize was not the Chinese style of clarifying status and hierarchy, nor was it the strict class system of Japan. The first rule of organization was actually to make everyone equal, to practice criticism and self-criticism. Everyone had to "speak the truth." Or to use a more colloquial Chinese saying, it was "knowing how many buns one can eat and how many bowls of soup one can drink."

Kita Ikki knew some Chinese culture. For instance, in the *Analects*, when Confucius talked about the "scholar" (shi), he said, "They are obstinate little men. Yet they may be reckoned in the next class."

The current education of the People's Party was not aimed at cultivating revolutionaries capable of overthrowing the old system, nor big shots capable of commanding a region. It was actually aiming to cultivate these "obstinate little men" (*keng keng ran xiao ren*). This truly surprised Kita Ikki.

However, Confucius at least listed these "obstinate little men" as the lowest class of "scholars." The *Analects* records that Zilu asked Confucius, "What of those who are in government today?" Confucius replied, "Pooh! They are merely people of bamboo baskets and wooden vessels (people of small capacity); they are not worth counting."

Even Confucius thought that "obstinate little men" were much better than those currently in power. In Kita Ikki's view, this evaluation hit the nail on the head regarding the current situation in Japan.

But this was just the beginning. The cadre school students learned to "know how many buns they can eat and how many bowls of soup they can drink" during labor, and next came labor scheduling. Based on the workload reported by each person, they began to calculate the daily collective workload. This was fatal. After surviving the first few days, many comrades, including Kita Ikki, thought they could complete a certain amount of work. What they didn't expect was that this work wasn't for ten days or half a month, but for consecutive months. After half a month, many people had used up every ounce of strength. Due to accumulated physical fatigue and injuries, their physical strength, energy, and willpower all showed signs of being unsustainable. The originally formulated plans could not be completed.

The teams formed by the cadre school students had to ask comrades every time if they could persist. Some comrades admitted early on that they couldn't go on, while others, unable to complete their tasks for several days in a row, were forced to admit their incompetence. Kita Ikki was also a man who cared about face; he gritted his teeth and held on for four weeks, but in the end, he also succumbed to his own body.

The cadre school students were all of the type who did not give up easily, but under the continuous high-intensity work, these comrades also couldn't hold up. Thus, "learning to organize production labor" meant first learning to labor oneself. One had to know not only what kind of tests the flesh would undergo during labor but also learn how to rest and how to entertain and relax oneself. The cadre school didn't talk about how to manage others at all; everyone truly discovered that managing oneself well was an incredibly difficult process.

Among the rewards issued by the People's Party, neither the knitted towels nor the soap were things ordinary families could afford to use. But after experiencing these few months of "labor learning," Kita Ikki felt that compared to the hardships he had endured and the "arduous" effort he had put in, this reward was truly insignificant.