By Alex
Editor’s Note: All Japanese names are presented here with the last name first, followed by the first name, as is the style in Japanese.
The Japanese Communist Party is quite an interesting case in the world communist movement. As of 2021, it has about 300,000-350,000 members (1), making it the largest non-ruling Communist party in the world since 1991 (2). It is known for its peaceful and “lovable” quality. But what specifically has made it so successful? Can communism really be “lovable”?
A Brief History of the Japanese Communist Party
1895-1921: Humble Beginnings
Socialism came into Japan around 1895 and first took hold among intellectuals, mainly in socialist study groups. Industrialization and urbanization had just started to become noticeable to Japanese society, so these new ideas became quite relevant during this time. The fact that socialism came to Japan through an intellectual lens would have a wide impact on the Japanese socialist movement as a whole. (3)
When the movement began to develop in a more practical manner, it was greatly influenced by anarcho-syndicalism. However, with the success of the Russian Revolution in 1917, anarcho-syndicalism’s stranglehold on the Japanese socialist movement began to wane, and other alternatives, including Marxism-Leninism, became popular. (3)
1922-1944: Prewar Attempts and Constant Repression
The first Japanese Communist Party (JCP) was secretly and illegally organized in July 1922 as a branch of the Third Communist International, also known as the Comintern (3). From the beginning, and for most of its life, the JCP was bent on “abolishing the Emperor system, militarism, and capitalism” (2).
Shortly after its formation, in September of the same year, the JCP became active in the Kanto League of the Japan Peasant Union, showing its support for the peasants in rural Japan. However, its popularity with the peasants would soon wane, and would never recover. (3)
In November, the Fourth Comintern Congress recognized the Japanese Communist Party, lending it legitimacy. Not long after, however, its problems with the authorities began. In May 1923, there was a confrontation of leftist and right-wing students at Waseda University. Things soon got out of control, and the police was called in. During its investigation, the police found JCP party documents. This led to the arrest of 50 communists the following month, with 30 ultimately being sentenced to jail. (3)
In November of the same year, the communist leaders began to favour dissolving the party. In March 1924, the first Japanese Communist Party was dissolved at a meeting in Morigasaki. The following month, the Comintern expressed its disapproval of this decision. (3)
The whole of the Japanese Left took quite a beating in 1925. In April, the Peace Preservation Law was passed, expanding police powers when it came to repressing subversives. The following month, the Universal Manhood Suffrage Law was passed, greatly expanding voting rights for the Japanese male population. Although this was a great victory for the Left, it also took the wind out of its sails, because with this concession, the rest of the struggle seemed pointless to much of the Japanese public. (3)
Although the JCP was dissolved during this time, the influence of its leaders was still felt. A communist bureau was established to keep the communist work going. The same month the Universal Manhood Suffrage Act was passed, Hyogikai (Japan Labour Union Council), was established under communist influence, comprising 32 unions. In December of the same year, the All-Japan Proletarian Youth League, created by the communists, held its first national convention. (3)
Police repression continued that same month. The Farmer-Labour Party was banned immediately after its organization. The police also arrested 38 members of Gakuren (All-Japan Student Social Science Federation), another front for the JCP. Police repression was something that the Japanese communist movement would deal with a lot during the prewar years. (3)
In March 1926, the Labour-Farmer Party was established. They were denied membership to such communist-influenced organizations as Hyogikai and the All-Japan Proletarian Youth League, which was quite a blow to the communists. However, the communists were not deterred, and the following month, Hyogikai staged the Japan Musical Instrument Company strike, which lasted until August and used tactics learned from the Chinese communists. This was a bitterly fought strike, ending with the officials of the strike headquarters being arrested and the workers agreeing to arbitration. It was not an overall victory, but the communists saw this as important practical training for revolution. (3)
The Japanese Communist Party was reestablished in December 1926 in a meeting at Goshiki spa. With this came the problem that a party with a history of intellectualism would have to face sooner or later: intellectual purity. This came in the form of Fukumotoism. Fukumoto Kazuo was an influential left-wing writer and intellectual around that time, and became greatly influential in the JCP. According to him, write scholars Beckmann and Okubo, “The key issue of the political struggle… was the problem of establishing a correct, unified theoretical basis for the proletarian movement”. He first called for the separation of “genuine Marxists” from “false Marxists and reformists”. Secondly, he urged “theoretical struggles” to be the JCP’s major activity. This was not looked upon favourably by the Comintern. In the 1927 Theses, they accused Fukumoto of isolating the party from “the mass organizations of the proletariat”. In the end, Fukumoto himself saw the errors of his ways. In a March 1928 article of Marxism, he admitted that his former emphasis on “theoretical struggles” was wrong. (3)
In 1928, the JCP participated in its first general election campaign. 11 communists ran as Labour-Farmer Party Candidates. However, this was not very successful. In April, to add insult to injury, the Labour-Farmer Party, Hyogikai, and the All-Japan Proletarian Youth League were banned by the government. (3)
In July 1930, the Party suffered a great blow as the police arrested most of its leaders. However, these leaders fought hard and won the right to make their trial public, so that they could express their views to the Japanese people. The public trial of the communist leaders began in June 1931, and express their views they did, benefitting from a sympathetic and overly lenient judge. Even when the judge tried to put a stop to their rhetoric, they continued, hoping to make a big mark on society with their speeches. The trial concluded in October 1932, with all communist leaders being sentenced to long jail terms. No significant influence was won from making the trial public. (3)
That same month, financial backing from the Comintern grew scarce, making the overall finances of the JCP grow thin. Things grew so desperate that a small group from inside the party decided to rob Kawasaki Daiichi Bank in Omori. While they originally got away, it did not take the police long to find them and arrest them. This led to another series of mass arrests, including most Central Committee members, which dissolved the party once again. (3)
Between 1933 and 1944, there was no unified Japanese Communist Party, only small communist groups vying for power. The only notable thing that happened was the defection of Sano Manabu and Nabeyama from the party while in jail in June 1933. They announced that they no longer supported abolishing the Emperor, and were willing to build socialism under him. This led to decreased jail sentences from them along with expulsion from what was left of the party. (3)
1946-1968: Becoming “Lovable” and “Independent”
The Japanese Communist Party was officially revived, again, on December 1, 1945, after General Douglas MacArthur, the American general in charge of Japan after WW2, released the communist political prisoners from jail. Under the leadership of Nosaka, an attempt was made to make the Party “lovable” and to seize power through parliamentary means. In April 1946, during the first postwar election, the JCP was able to elect 6 members to the 464-seat House of Representatives. (2)
This all changed in 1950, when the Communist Information Bureau (Cominform) forced the JCP to adopt a more militant line. From 1950-1955, the party used explicitly violent means of protest, such as guerilla warfare. This was an absolute failure, being heavily repressed by the police. (4)
After this, the JCP went back to the idea of the peaceful, parliamentary revolution, which was adopted by its Central Committee during the party’s 7th Plenary meeting in June 1956. The Mainstream of the Party defined the revolution necessary in Japan as “a people’s democratic revolution for national liberation and democracy”. This put to rest a debate that had been going on since the inception of the party: what kind of society was Japan and therefore, what kind of revolution was necessary to lead it to socialism? There were two camps in this debate: one that said that Japan was a fully capitalist society and therefore required a socialist revolution from below, and another one that said that Japan was a capitalist society with feudal remnants, and therefore first needed a bourgeois democratic revolution to fully implement capitalism. It was finally decided in this period that the former was the case. (4)
The JCP identified two main enemies: U.S. imperialism and Japanese monopoly capitalism, with the first being the most important. It sought to capture as many seats in parliament as possible using the united front approach, so that parliament could be transformed “from a tool of reaction to an instrument of the people”. (4)
One of the ways to take advantage of the united front came with the revised Mutual Security Treaty in 1960, which created an opposing struggle that was one of the most significant united fronts in Japanese history. The JCP took part in this united front, which signed petitions and engaged in street demonstrations and work stoppages. However, with the resignation of the Kishi government, the antitreaty movement had the wind knocked out of it, and the Japanese Left were unable to make the treaty issue a significant one during the November 1960 elections. As well, the Japanese Communist Party did not play a commanding role in this movement. Furthermore, it did not gain any strength as a result of this movement, either. (4)
An important united front the JCP did take a commanding role in, however, was the anti-nuclear weapons movement. This was done through Gensuikyo (Japanese Council Against Atomic and Hydrogen Bombs), a united front between the JCP, the Japanese Socialist Party (JSP), Sohyo (General Council of Trade Unions), and Zengakuren (National Federation of Student Self-Government Associations), along with many others. Although initially brought to heel under the Communist Party, a big rupture began to form between the Communists and the Socialists when the Soviet Union decided to resume nuclear tests on August 31, 1961. The Socialists were vehemently opposed to this, while the Communists defended it, saying it was necessary to forestall nuclear war. By 1962, this united front was split wide open, with no chance of healing. (4)
This Socialist-Communist split also happened in the labour and student movements. The majority of Sohyo in the mid-fifties to early sixties held the left Socialist Ota-Iwai line, although the Communists were definitely still influential and strategically placed enough to prove to be a significant threat to the Sohyo leadership. Soon after the 8th Gensuikyo Conference in 1962, however, this united front fell apart. The student movement around that time did not fare much better. Zengakuren, the National Federation of Student Self-Government Associations, was established in September 1948 under the leadership of the JCP, for the purposes of “defending peace and democracy” and improving student livelihood. This organization unfortunately came into the hands of anti-JCP forces in June 1958. By 1962, Zengakuren was so fragmented that it became essentially useless. (4)
Another issue that became important to the JCP was independence and autonomy. This idea first came to prominence with the development of the Sino-Soviet split. The 22nd Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) was held in October 1961 in Moscow. By then, the split between Moscow and Peking had become obvious, with members from both sides viciously attacking each other in fierce debates during the Congress. After this, the Mainstream leaders of the JCP tried to pursue the tactic of neutralism, publicly downplaying the gravity of the dispute, discouraging discussion of the dispute both inside and outside the party, and taking turns praising both parties. (4)
This all came to a head with the Soviet Union’s signing of the limited test ban treaty alongside the US and Great Britain. Peking saw this as proof of Khrushchev’s revisionist and capitulationist tendencies, whereas the Russians accused the Chinese of a commitment to nuclear war. After this, the JCP slowly but surely swung towards Peking. In the fall of 1962, the JCP headquarters began to restrict and prohibit the dissemination of Russian propaganda in its country. During the 7th Plenum meeting of the Central Committee, held in October of the same year, the Japanese Communist Party formally charged the CPSU with “the crimes of modern revisionism, ‘split-tism,’ and interference in the internal affairs of fraternal parties”. (4)
The JCP also formally defined what they meant by “independence”. According to Scalapino, they said that, “Each party, as an independent and equal entity, had the responsibility for the revolutionary movement in its own country. It had to formulate its own policies, successfully integrating the actual situation with the principles of Marxism-Leninism.” (4)
The JCP went further, expelling the pro-Soviet members Shiga and Suzuki from the party on May 21, 1964. The CPSU was furious, and supported these two men as they formed the “Voice of Japan Comrades Society” on June 30, which would go on to become the Japanese Communist Party (Voice of Japan). The original Japanese Communist Party, offended by this affront, officially split with the Soviet Union soon after. (4)
Why did the JCP choose Peking over Moscow? Firstly, Japan and China were closer to each other when it came both to proximity and culture. Second, the Chinese Communist Party offered a lot of aid and assistance to the JCP. Finally, the Japanese Communists began to disagree more and more with Soviet policies and methods of operation. (4)
However, this friendship with Peking was short-lived. In the fall of 1965 and the spring of 1966, the JCP worked with the Korean Workers’ Party on a proposal for the Chinese to join a united front with the Soviet Union to aid Vietnam. Peking rejected this proposal. The JCP not only held this as an affront, but also blamed Peking for the abortive coup by the Communist Party of Indonesia (PKI) on September 30, 1965. The Chinese Communist Party still demanded militancy as the key concept and tactic for other Communists around the world, and in the JCP’s eyes, this had led directly to the destruction of the PKI. Not to mention that the JCP had its own failure with so-called “left adventurism” in the 1950-1955 era. Around 1966-7, the JCP split with Peking. (4)
1969-present: Miyamoto’s Hegemony and Capitalist Capitulation
From the mid-1950s to the mid-1990s, the Japanese Communist Party was under the rule of one man: Miyamoto Kenji. In his iron grip the party took the soft, “lovable” line of participation in parliamentary politics and united front work. Because of his failing health in 1997, at age 89, he was forced to retire as head of the party. Shii Kazuo became the head of the party in 2000, and continues Miyamoto’s soft line into the present day. (2)
The party began its slow move towards capitalist capitulation in July 1976, by dropping the phrase “dictatorship of the proletariat” in favour of “working-class power” in its documents. In 1970, any references of “Marxism-Leninism” were replaced by “scientific socialism”. This, while not a full capitulation to capitalism, was a sign of things to come. In June 2003, the JCP reversed its opposition on the Emperor and announced its full support of the Imperial structure. Not only that, but they also began to support “democratic reforms” within the capitalist system. (2)
The JCP tried many times after its split from the USSR to reestablish relations, but without much success. There were renormalization talks in December 1979, but shortly after their lukewarm success, the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan, causing relations to again fall apart. Things proved more favourable with China, however. After the final renormalization talks between the two parties on June 8-10, 1998, friendly relations were restored, although the JCP still held on to its independence. (2)
The economic crash of 2008 caused the Japanese media to look more favourably on the JCP and give them more exposure. The Japanese economy had been having problems since the late 1980s, when the real-estate bubble burst. As well, rapid globalization caused companies to view lifetime employment as inefficient, meaning more than one third of Japanese workers became temporary, without the benefits that permanent workers had enjoyed for decades. The crash of 2008 further aggravated the Japanese labour market. In this period, the Japanese Communist Party was perfectly positioned to provide an alternative to many frustrated workers. However, despite what official JCP sources reported, the party was unable to capitalize on this opportunity. Its membership actually declined in this period, and has continued declining, with most of its members being the radical students that joined the party in the ‘60s and ‘70s and who have become elderly. (2)
Despite its many concessions to capitalism in the past two decades, the JCP still holds strongly to opposing both American imperialism and Japanese monopoly capitalism, with the former of course being the greater threat. They have consistently and correctly condemned Japan’s militaristic colonial rule in Korea and the atrocities committed by the country’s military in China and Southeast Asia during the Pacific War. The JCP also strongly condemned the Nanjing massacre. They were also against the visits by Japanese politicians to Yasukuni Shrine, which has enshrined such war criminals as General Tojo, causing protests in China and Korea. Berton and Atherton go on to call the JCP a “moral compass” for Japanese society because of these views. (2)
Electoral Record
The electoral record of the Japanese Communist Party was briefly discussed in the previous section, but its detailed discussion merits a whole section of its own.
The party has gained some surprising successes in the House of Representatives, also known as the lower house, over the years. In the 1972 elections, the JCP had almost 11% of the vote, with 5.7 million votes being cast for them. There was then a downturn until the October 1996 election, where the party garnered a record 7.3 million votes in the single-seat constituency, representing 13% of the electorate. The upswing continued until the June 2000 election, when its contingent was reduced from 26 to 20. (2)
In the House of Councilors, the upper house, the JCP’s popular vote grew steadily from 1.6 million in 1959 to 6.8 million in 1974 in the local constituency, representing 12.8% of votes cast. That same year, they garnered 4.9 million votes or 9.4% of votes in the national constituency, and had 19 members in the upper house. The vote then began to drop, until in 1995 it was only 4.3 million. However, this rebounded in 1998, around the time of their great success in the House of Representatives, when they obtained 8.2 million votes (14.6%) in the proportional representation, more than doubling its vote total of 3.9 million in 1995. As well, in the single-seat constituencies, the party obtained 8.8 million votes (15.7%), which also more than doubled the previous vote. It ended up winning 15 seats in both categories. In the April 1999 local elections, the JCP reached its peak, with the total number of assembly members going up to 4,421. (2)
Great successes also followed them in the prefectural and local elections. In 1967, party history was made when a Communist was elected mayor of Shiojiri in Nagano Prefecture. The party mostly, however, participated in broad left-wing coalitions of “progressives” to elect more “radical” governors or mayors. One such success was the election of Governor Minobe in Tokyo in 1967. The JCP seemed to be firing on all cylinders in the years 1996-1999, because they also advanced in all categories during the July 1997 Tokyo Metropolitan Assembly election. The party doubled its seats from 13 to 26, becoming the largest opposition party. It garnered 800,000 votes (12.3%), which was 180,000 more than the previous election four years earlier. (2)
The JCP kept losing votes from 2000 until 2013. In the June 2013 Tokyo gubernatorial elections, they doubled their seats to 17 and captured 616,721 votes (13.6%). They also rebounded in the House of Councilors election the following month, increasing their seats from 3 to a whopping 11. Their votes increased to 5 million (over 10%). However, these gains were modest compared to those of 1996-1999. (2)
What was the reason for these upswings in 1996-1999 and 2013? The former one was caused by the massive exodus of people voting Socialist, because the Democratic Socialist Party joined the Liberal Democrats in that era to make a coalition government, greatly compromising many of their principles. In 2013, it happened because of the collapse of the vote for the Democratic Party, which ruled Japan from 2009 to December 2012. An influential newspaper, Asahi Shinbun, ran the headline “Voters critical of ‘Abenomics’ overwhelmingly chose the Japanese Communist Party over the Democratic Party of Japan in the Tokyo Metropolitan Assembly” during this period. The voter turnout for this election was extremely low: 41.5%, down 11% from the previous elections four years earlier. The article stated that, “The low voter turnout may have benefitted the JCP, which has a solid support base.” (2)
Analysis and Conclusion
The Japanese Communist Party today is, unfortunately, communist in name only. They are an electoralist, reformist, and opportunist party, compromising many of their main principles to secure greater popularity. Even if you agree that parties such as the CPSU and the Communist Party of China were/are truly communist (which I personally do not), the JCP split from both of these in the ‘60s, so it’s not even communist by that definition.
The JCP is a famous flip-flopper. It was against nuclear weapons, until the Soviet Union started using them. That was itself justified. It was for abolishing the Emperor for over 80 years, until completely reversing that stance in 2003. This is ironic, since it expelled two members for expressing these same views in 1933. It mostly focuses on parliamentary politics, because of its many failures with the united front in the student, labour, and anti-nuclear weapons movements. This struggle, while important, is nowhere near enough to create a socialist revolution, in Japan or elsewhere.
Perhaps its capitulation to capitalism after many, many failures has something to do with the way socialism started in Japan: through groups of intellectuals. This intellectualization of socialist concepts may have made their theory and tactics too abstract to be implemented. The fact that Fukomotoism took over the party for a while is no surprise, given this.
Ultimately, Berton and Atherton said it best: “The JCP occupies that awkward middle ground in which it is not revolutionary enough for the radical fringe and not trustworthy enough for the adherents of democratic socialism” (2). They may have become very popular, but it has come at the cost of their revolutionary principles. Despite their growing popularity, though, it is obvious that they will never take control of the Japanese government, not even as a coalition.
This is an important lesson to learn for revolutionary socialists. Popularity can come at the cost of your basic principles. In that case, what is even the point anymore? You have changed into a completely different party! So can communism be “lovable”? Hopefully it can, but not the way the JCP did it. They made it “lovable” by capitulating to the ruling class. After all, “electoral revolution” sounds much less threatening than just “revolution”.
Works Cited
- An interview with Gavin Walker, et al. “The Theory and Practice of Marxism in Japan.” Jacobin, 7 Mar. 2021, https://jacobin.com/2021/07/the-theory-and-practice-of-marxism-in-japan.
- Berton, Peter, and Atherton, Sam. Japanese Communist Party: Permanent Opposition, but Moral Compass. ROUTLEDGE, 2020.
- Beckmann, George M., and Okubo, Genji. The Japanese Communist Party 1922-1945. Stanford University Press, 1969.
- Scalapino, Robert Anthony. The Japanese Communist Movement, 1920-1966. English Book Store, 1968.