at the Japan Railway Company successfully struck for improvement of status and higher wages. In the same year, ships' carpenters in Tokyo and Yokohama formed a union, and a dispute followed with demands for higher wages. 1907 saw the greatest number of disputes in a decade, with large-scale riots at Japan's two leading copper mines, Ashio and Besshi, which were only suppressed by the use of troops. None of these early unions were large (the metalworkers union had 3,000 members, only 5% of workers employed in the industry), or lasted longer than three or four years, largely due to strong opposition from employers and the government's anti-union policies, notably the Public Order and Police Provisions Law (1900). With the influence of western coalitions and their mission to implement work insurance in Britain, a multitude of Japanese citizens ignited countless riots, labor revolts, and unionization in order to counter the insufferable conditions. At the beginning of the 20th century, Bunji Suzuki, founder of the inspirational, self-help group, established a 13-member organization, but soon it rose into a powerful resisting unionization incorporating numerous artisans and factory workers. One labour organization that did survive was the Friendly Society (Yuaikai), formed in 1912 by Bunji Suzuki, which became Japan's first durable union and was renamed the Japan Federation of Labour (Nihon Rōdō Sodomei or Sōdōmei) in 1921. Two years later it had a membership of 100,000 in 300 unions. From 1918 to 1921, a wave of major industrial disputes marked the peak of organized labour power. A prolonged economic slump that followed brought cutbacks in employment in heavy industry. In the early 1920s, ultra-cooperative unionists proposed the fusion of labour and management interests, heightening political divisions within the labour movement and precipitating the departure of left wing unions from Sōdōmei in 1925. The union movement has remained divided between right wing (“cooperative”) unions and left wing unions ever since. After the First World War, there were many attempts to establish a trade union law to protect the rights of workers to organize themselves, including a Department of Home Affairs bill in 1925, which would have prevented employers from discharging workers for belonging to a union, or requiring workers to quit (or not join) a union. But these bills never became law. Hampered by their weak legal status, the absence of a right to bargain collectively with employers, and the setting up of management-organized factory