Sen Katayama (1860-1933) was a Japanese labor and Socialist leader who, influenced by the Christian social gospel and increasingly radical ideas, founded Japan's first modern settlement house, trade union movement, labor newspaper, and Socialist party.

Born on Jan. 8, 1860, as Sugataro Yabuki, the future Sen Katayama was the second son of an adopted (yoshi) father who four years later left the locally prominent Yabukis to become a monk. When he was 18, to circumvent military conscription, Sugataro was nominally adopted into the peasant household of Ikutaro Katayama, thereby obtaining his permanent name of Sen Katayama.

Katayama acquired a classical Confucian education in Okayama and then Tokyo, where he arrived at 21 at the height of the "people's rights" movement. His Confucian idealism got a populist twist; he never lost an unshakable faith in individual and social perfectibility.

With a warm, outgoing personality, Katayama made devoted friends, though a streak of irascibility...