労働者農民の無産者新聞を読め！Read the workers and farmers Proletarian Newspaper!

This 1929 poster designed by Yanase Masamu protests the ban the government had just enacted on Musansha Shinbun (Proletariat Newspaper). Musansha started in 1925 and ran for 238 issues. They advocated worker's rights and non-interference in China, among others, until the government banned the publication in August of 1929 following the government crackdown on left-wing publications and the mass arrest of communist party affiliates in the March 15 Incident of 1928.

The full text reads:

 発行禁止に絶対反対だ！
日刊基金壹万円募集に應ぜよ！
日刊新無産者新聞発刊万才！

We absolutely oppose the ban on publication!
Respond to the call for ten thousand yen in daily funds!
Long live the publication of the Daily New Proletarian Newspaper!

Yanase Masamu was born in 1900 in Ehime prefecture, Japan. 

At 15, his painting was chosen for the famous Inten exhibition and he gained fame as a young prodigy. After moving to Tokyo he worked as a newspaper cartoonist.  In 1925 , he participated in the formation of the Japan Proletarian Literary Federation , and contributed many designs to the Musansha Shinbun, which was founded in the same year.

He officially joined the Communist Party in 1931 and was arrested and tortured by the authorities in 1932 for violating the Peace Preservation Law 治安維持法, a law aimed at criminalizing any violation of kokutai (national spirit), in essence making it legal to prosecute anyone thought to be acting against increasingly fascist government ideals. Despite this, Yanase never recanted his anti-war socialist views and continued advocating for proletariat art. In 1945 he was killed in the Yamanote Line air raids at Shinjuku Station on his way to meet his daughter who had already evacuated. He is buried at the Yanase family grave at Enryuji Temple.