Japanese Communist Party

The JCP is one of the largest non-ruling communist parties in the world, with approximately 270,000 members belonging to 18,000 branches.[15] In the wake of the Sino-Soviet split, the party began to distance itself from the Eastern Bloc, especially from the Soviet Union. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the JCP released a press statement titled: "We welcome the end of a party which embodied the historical evil of great power chauvinism and hegemonism" (「大国主義・覇権主義の歴史的巨悪の党の終焉を歓迎する」), while at the same time criticizing Eastern European countries for abandoning socialism, describing it as a "reversal of history".[16]

Consequently, the party has not suffered an internal crisis as a result of the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, nor has it considered disbanding or changing its name or fundamental objectives, as many other Communist parties have done. It polled 11.3% of the vote in 2000, 8.2% in 2003, 7.3% in 2005, 7.0% in the August 2009 election and 6.2% in 2012. In recent years its support has accrued, but as of the 2014 General Election it won 21 seats, up from eight in the previous general election. The JCP took 7,040,130 votes (13.3%) in the constituency section and 6,062,962 (11.37%) in the party lists. This continues a new wave of support that was also evident in the 2013 Tokyo metropolitan election where the party doubled its representation. Fighting on a platform directly opposed to neoliberalism, the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), attempts to rewrite the constitution, U.S. military bases on Japanese soil and nuclear power, the JCP tapped into a minority current that seeks an alternative to Japan's rightward direction.[17]

In January 2014, the JCP had approximately 320,000 members. Following the party's advancement in the 2013 Tokyo prefectural election, there had been an increase in membership growth, with over 1,000 people joining in each of the final three months of 2013.[18] Approximately 20% of new members during this period were aged 20–40, showing a higher ratio of young people joining the party than in the past.[18] More recently membership numbers have declined, with membership number around 300,000 in 2017, and 270,000 in 2020.[19][20]

Kenji Miyamoto, held the party's leadership position from 1958 to 1982

The Japanese Communist Party was founded in Tokyo on 15 July 1922.[2] Its early leadership was drawn from the anarcho-syndicalist and Christian socialist movements that developed around the turn of the century. From the former came Yamakawa Hitoshi, Sakai Toshihiko, and Arahata Kanson, who had all been supporters of Kōtoku Shūsui, an anarchist executed in 1911. Katayama Sen, another early leader, had been a Christian socialist for much of his political life. The three former anarchists were reluctant to found the JCP, with Yamakawa shortly after arguing that Japan was not ready for a communist party and calling for work to be done solely within labor unions. Katayama's theoretical understanding of Marxism also remained low.[21]

The JCP was founded as an underground political association. Outlawed in 1925 with the passage of the Peace Preservation Law, the JCP was subjected to repression and persecution by the Special Higher Police (Tokkō), nicknamed the "Thought Police."[22] JCP members and sympathizers were imprisoned and pressured to "convert" (tenkō suru) to anti-communist nationalism.[22] Many of those who refused to convert remained imprisoned for the duration of the Pacific War. The Japanese Communist Party member Hotsumi Ozaki, who was part of the Richard Sorge spy ring for the Kremlin, was the only Japanese person hanged for treason under the Peace Preservation Law.

The Japan Communist Party was legalized in 1945 by the American military occupation of Japan and since then has been a legal political party able to contest elections. In the aftermath of the war, under the guidance of charismatic party chairman Sanzō Nosaka, the party pursued a policy of portraying itself as "lovable."[23] In particular, the party was successful in winning acceptance of the notion that communists had been the only ones to resist Japanese wartime militarism.[22] This propaganda effort won the party thousands of new members and an even larger number of sympathizers, especially among artists and intellectuals.[23]

In 1949, the party made unprecedented gains by winning 10 percent of the vote and sent 35 representatives to the Diet, but early in 1950 the Soviet Union sharply criticized the JCP's parliamentary strategy. Stalin insisted that the JCP pursue more militant, even violent, actions. The Supreme Commander of the Allied Powers (SCAP) seized this occasion to engineer the Red Purge, which forced the party leaders underground. Then after the Korean War broke out, the party adopted the 1951 Platform and staged some acts of terrorism or sabotage, which resulted in a loss of popular confidence.[24][25] Through the end of the decade, it never won more than three percent of the votes or two seats in the Diet. Even so, its strong support among many intellectuals gave it a relatively greater importance than these numbers suggest.

The party did not take sides during the Sino-Soviet split of the 1960s. In the mid-1960s, the United States Department of State estimated the party membership to be approximately 120,000 (0.2% of the working age population).[26] Its politics were independent of the Soviet Union. Reflecting this, its leader from 1958 to 1982, Kenji Miyamoto, opposed the 1968 invasion of Czechoslovakia.

Lam Peng Er argued in Pacific Affairs in 1996 that "the JCP's viability is crucial to the health of Japanese democracy" and says this is because:

It is the only established party in parliament that has not been coopted by the conservative parties. It performs the watchdog role against the ruling parties without fear or favor. More importantly, the JCP often offers the only opposition candidate in prefectural governorship, city mayoral and other local elections. Despite the ostensible differences between the non-Communist parties at the national level, they often support a joint candidate for governor or mayor so that all parties are assured of being part of the ruling coalition. If the JCP did not offer a candidate, there would be a walkover and Japanese voters would be offered a fait accompli without an electoral avenue of protest. Promoting women candidates in elections to win women's votes is another characteristic of the party. More women are elected under the Communist label than other political parties in Japan.[27]

In 2008, foreign media recorded an increase in support for the party due to the effect of the global financial crisis on Japanese workers.[28][29] However, the party failed to increase its number of seats in the 2009 general election. Subsequently, the projected decline of the party was halted, with the JCP becoming the third largest party in the Tokyo Metropolitan Assembly[30][31] and making gains in the House of Councillors, moving from six to 11 seats. They surged forward in the 2014 elections, receiving 7,040,130 votes (13.3%) in the constituency section and 6,062,962 (11.37%) in the party lists.

During the nomination period of the July 2016 House of Councillors election, the party signed an agreement with the Democratic, Social Democratic and People's Life parties to field a jointly-endorsed candidate in each of the 32 districts in which only one seat is contested, uniting in an attempt to take control of the House from the LDP/Komeito coalition.[32] JCP leaders have expressed willingness to enter into a coalition with the Democratic Party, a notion which was rejected by Democratic Party President Katsuya Okada as being "impossible" in the near future due to some of the "extreme leftist policies" promoted by the JCP.[33] The party has three Councillors up for re-election and is fielding a total of 56 candidates in the election, down from 63 candidates in the 2013 election, but still the second-most behind the LDP.[34] However, only 14 of those candidates are contesting single- and multi-member districts, while 42 will contest the 48-seat national proportional representation block.[34]

One of the JCP's main objectives is terminating the Japan–United States military alliance and the dismantling of all American military bases in Japan.[35] It wants to make Japan a non-aligned and neutral country, in accordance with its principles of self-determination and national sovereignty. There are about 130 American military bases and other related facilities in Japan, with Okinawa having the largest American military base in Asia. The JCP has also traditionally championed pacifism.[36]

With regards to Japan's own military forces, the JCP's current policy is that it is not principally opposed to its existence (in 2000 it decided that it will agree to its use should Japan ever be attacked), but that it will seek to abolish it in the long term, international situation permitting.

The JCP also opposes possession of nuclear weapons by any country or the concept of military blocs and opposes any attempt to revise Article 9 of the Constitution of Japan, which says that "never again [...] [Japan] be visited with the horrors of war through the action of government". Regarding the resolution of disputes, it argues that priority must be given to peaceful means through negotiations, not to military solutions. The JCP says that Japan must adhere to the United Nations Charter.

The JCP has traditionally been opposed to the existence of the Imperial House since the pre-war days. From 2004,[16] it has acknowledged the Emperor as Japan's head of state as long as he remains a figurehead. The JCP has stated that it supports the establishment of a democratic republic, but that "its [the monarchy] continuation or discontinuation should be decided by the will of the majority of the people in future, when the time is ripe to do so".[37] It is also against Japan's use of its national flag and national anthem which it sees as a relic of Japan's militarist past.

The JCP also strives to change the nation's economic policy of what it sees as serving the interests of large corporations and banks to one of "defending the interests of the people," and to establish "democratic rules" that will check the activities of large corporations and "protect the lives and basic rights of the people".

Regarding the issue of the international economy, the JCP has advocated establishing a new international democratic economic order on the basis of respect for the economic sovereignty of each country and strongly opposes the participation to the TPP. The JCP sees the United States, transnational corporations and international financial capital as pushing globalization, which it says is seriously affecting the global economy, including the monetary and financial problems as well as North–South and environmental problems. The JCP advocates "democratic regulation of activities by transnational corporations and international financial capital on an international scale".

In September 2015 after the passage of the 2015 Japanese military legislation, the JCP called for cooperation from other opposition parties to form an interim government to abolish the bills. It was the first time the party had called for such cooperation with other parties.[38][39][40][41]

The JCP supports the legalization of civil unions for same-sex couples.[42] It also advocates for more women in politics and political life.[35]

• Appeal to the People
• Democracy in Marxism
• Democratic Youth League of Japan
• Japanese dissidence during the early Shōwa period
• List of foreign delegations at the 21st Japanese Communist Party Congress
• List of foreign delegations at the 22nd Japanese Communist Party Congress
• Relations between Japanese Revolutionaries and the Comintern and the Soviet Union
• Socialist thought in Imperial Japan
• Zengakuren

• Sen Katayama, The Labor Movement in Japan. Chicago, IL: Charles H. Kerr & Co., 1918.
• Roth, Andrew (1945). Dilemma in Japan. Little, Brown.
• R. Swearingen and P. Langer, Red Flag in Japan: International Communism in Action, 1919–1951. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1952.
• T.E. Durkee, The Communist Party of Japan, 1919–1932. PhD dissertation. Stanford University, 1953.
• Robert A. Scalapino, The Japanese Communist Movement: 1920–1966. London: Cambridge University Press. 1967.
• George M. Beckmann and Genji Okubo. The Japanese Communist Party, 1922–1945. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1969.
• Hong M. Kim, Deradicalization of the Japanese Communist Party Under Kenji Miyamoto. Cambridge University Press, 1976.
• Stephen S. Large, The Romance of Revolution in Japanese Anarchism and Communism during the Taishō Period. Cambridge University Press, 1977.
• G.A. Hoston, Marxism and the Crisis of Development in Prewar Japan. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1986.
• Uno, Shun'ichi (1991). Nihon zenshi: Japan chronik (in Japanese). Tokyo: Kodansha Ltd. ISBN 4-06-203994-X.
• Tim Rees and Andrew Thorpe, International Communism and the Communist International, 1919–43. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1998.
• Louise Young (1999). Japan's Total Empire: Manchuria and the Culture of Wartime Imperialism. University of California Press.
• Sandra Wilson (27 August 2003). The Manchurian Crisis and Japanese Society, 1931–33. Routledge.
• Takemae, Eiji (2003). Allied Occupation of Japan. A&C Black. p. 240.
• Josephine Fowler, Japanese and Chinese Immigrant Activists: Organizing in American and International Communist Movements, 1919–1933. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2007.

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Japanese Communist Party.

• Official website
• "Anti-Russian Organization Rises in Japan; Red Liaison Officer Says That American Occupation Too Soft". Times Daily. 9 October 1945.
• "Military Oblivion Is Japs' Fate". The Evening Independent. 15 October 1945.
• "Jap Communists Ask United Front Against Shidehara". The Evening Independent. 19 October 1945.
• "Japanese Reds Enjoy Freedom For First Time". Berkeley Daily Gazette. 15 December 1945.
• Members of the Communist Party march and protest in Tokyo (in Japanese). NHK. 27 December 1945.
• Article on Japanese Communist Party from Japanese Press Translations 1945–46. Dartmouth Digital Library Collections.
• "Japanese Communist Party Asks End of Feudal System". Berkeley Daily Gazette. 23 February 1946.
• "5–12 The Red Purge". National Diet Library. Modern Japan Archives. 6 June 1950.
• "Red Parliament Members Fight Purge in Japan". The Owosso Argus-Press. 8 June 1950.
• "Japan's Eight Top Communists Still Missing Without Clue". Reading Eagle. 3 June 1951.
• "The Japanese Communist Party and Its Transformations". Japan Policy Research Institute. May 2000.
• Kazuo Shii: Comments from the Japanese Communist Party on the upcoming election. YouTube video (in English) of the JCP leader Kazuo Shii discussing the 2014 Japanese general election. Uploaded 8 December 2014.