In The Ashio Riot of 1907, Nimura Kazuo explains why the workers at the Ashio copper mine - Japan's largest mining concern and one of the largest such operations in the world - joined together for three days of rioting against the Furukawa Company in February 1907. Exploring an event in labor history unprecedented in the Japan of that time, Nimura uses this riot as a launching point to analyze the social, economic, and political structure of early industrial Japan. As such, The Ashio Riot of 1907 functions as a powerful critique of Japanese scholarly approaches to labor economics and social history.