period of only mild inflation. In the past few years, membership of organizations under the JCP's control (notably its Youth League, Minseidō) has also risen rapidly.*

More importantly, the improvement in the party's fortunes is beginning to be reflected in election balloting, especially in the main cities. In the July 1965 elections to the House of Councillors (the upper house of the bicameral National Diet), the votes cast for Communist candidates in the Tokyo constituency exceeded those cast, respectively, for the Socialists, the Kōmeitō," and the Democratic Socialist Party (DSP). A similar pattern was evident in the Tokyo Metropolitan Assembly election held the same month, in which charges of corruption greatly reduced the share of the vote received by the conservative LDP. The JCP on this occasion polled 10.1 percent of the vote, as compared with only 4.3 percent in the previous Assembly election of 1963.

Various Perspectives

An analysis of the Japanese Communist Party needs to be conducted at three levels: first, intraparty factional disputes; second, the party's position in Japanese politics; and, finally, its international orientation, especially in relation to other Communist parties.

Factionalism is a fundamental consideration in the study of any Japanese political party (or, for that matter, of other types of organization in Japan) because of the traditional Japanese tendency to form cohesive groups around particular leaders, with strong reciprocal obligations and loyalties between the leader and his followers. Ideological factionalism is, of course, a well-known characteristic of left-wing parties throughout the world, although in Communist parties it has usually been curbed by a rigid chain of command designed to prevent independent horizontal contacts. This is

The information in this paragraph is compiled from the following sources: Kyosuke Hirotsu, "Kyosanto buryoku kakumei e no michi" (The Communist Party's Road to Violent Revolution), Jiyū, April 1966, pp. 89-95; articles by K. Murata in the Japan Times (English), July 15, Aug. 12, and Oct. 15, 1965, and Jan. 18, 1966; Report of the Public Security Investigation Agency cited in the Asahi Shimbun (Tokyo) Dec. 21, 1965, p. 2.

5 A political-religious party backed by the neo-Buddhist sect Soka Gakkai.

6 The distribution of votes was: Conservatives, 21.8 percent; JCP, 18.7 percent; Independents, 18.7 percent; JSP, 17.3 percent; Kōmeito, 16.2 percent; and DSP, 9.9 percent.

as true of the JCP as of its fellow parties abroad, but in spite of its efforts to maintain strong discipline, including repeated use of the ultimate weapon of expulsion, the Japanese party has not been conspicuously successful in suppressing factionalism in its ranks, reinforced as this factionalism is by deeply-ingrained social characteristics.

The effectiveness of the JCP in Japanese politics has generally depended on its relationship with the JSP-in particular, on whether the two parties are able to cooperate, and on their relative strengths. Cooperation has usually reflected the presence of common issues on which both parties temporarily agree, and a simultaneous lack of serious points of friction. Opposition to American "imperialism" has long been common to both the JCP and JSP, but mutual suspicion and ideological differences have inhibited cooperation except where some particularly "iniquitous" action or policy on the part of the United States or the Japanese government has impelled the two parties to launch a common campaign. Such was the case in 1960 in connection with the revision of the US-Japan Mutual Security Treaty. Such has again been the case in 1965-66 as a result of antagonism to US policy in Viet-Nam. The question of Japanese policy towards China has also provided a common ground of JCP-JSP agreement, as both parties have consistently advocated normalization of Sino-Japanese relations. The Sino-Soviet split, however, forced them apart, with the Socialists inclined towards the Soviet position and the JCP-until very recently-squarely backing the Chinese.

The relative strengths of the JCP and JSP at any particular time are also important. When the Communists have been weak and discredited, as in the mid-1950's, the Socialists could ignore them if they wished. On the other hand, the recent improvement in Communist organization and support has meant that the Socialists, weak at the local level, have an incentive to cooperate with JCP-controlled bodies in order to stage protest demonstrations. (Within the Diet the Communists are still too weak to matter.) Against this must be set Communist weakness in the trade union movement. Most unions still owe allegiance either to the JSP or to the right-wing Socialist DSP. The Socialist-controlled General Council of Trade Unions (Sohyo) has recently been markedly less willing to cooperate with the Communists than the leadership of the JSP itself has been.

The international orientation of the JCP is the third level at which the party has to be studied. Here, ideological questions are most evident. Al

though differences reflecting the divergent revolutionary strategies of Moscow and Peking were noticeable in the party during the 1950's, a choice of loyalties did not have to be made until the early 1960's. After a period of internal dissension which ended in the expulsion of a pro-Soviet faction in 1964, the JCP closely aligned itself with the Chinese party and continued on this course until just a short time ago. As recently as last March, the JCP acted in concert with the Communist parties of China, Albania, and New Zealand' in declining to send a delegation to the 23rd Soviet Party Congress in Moscow. As will be pointed out later, however, the party has since veered back towards a more neutral and independent stand.

At first sight, it appears strange that the JCP should ever have committed itself to the Chinese side inasmuch as the connection would appear unattractive on the following general counts: 1) The appropriate strategy of revolution: Japan and China are at completely different levels of economic development, Japan being an already advanced industrial country while China's is an agrarian economy in the early stages of industrialization and urbanization. From this it might be expected that the JCP would favor the strategies of European Communist parties rather than of the Chinese. The JCP is indeed unique in being the "only Communist party in a country with an “advanced" economy to have aligned itself with Peking.

2) The relative power positions of Japan and China: A strong case exists for arguing that the two countries are likely to become economically and politically competitive rather than complementary. It is difficult to conceive of even a Communist Japan permitting itself to become a Chinese "satellite."

3) Geography: Japan, while geographically close to China, is equally close to large tracts of Soviet territory.

4) Nuclear policy: The Japanese left wing, responding to a large and genuine body of opinion in the country at large, has a very strong tradition of nuclear pacifism and non-alignment, to which Chinese nuclear testing and belligerence in foreign policy would seem to be opposed.

On the other hand, alignment with China seems a more reasonable proposition for the JCP if certain other factors are taken into consideration, namely:

1) The appeal of China to Japanese public opinion: Japan's cultural debt to China, the factor of racial similarity, the prewar economic interdependence of

the two countries, and a sense of guilt arising from Japan's aggression against China-all these have combined to produce a large body of Japanese opinion in favor of restoring normal relations with the Peking regime. This has been advocated in recent years by all the left-wing Japanese parties and has also found support among conservative businessmen and within the LDP. Successive Japanese governments have traded with China "unofficially" while refusing political recognition. One of the main policy planks which the JCP and JSP have in common is opposition to American "containment" of China.

2) The "weakness" of Soviet policy: Since termination of the Mutual Security Treaty with the United States is the most important immediate aim of JCP policy, Peking's tough anti-American stand is more appealing to the party than the more cautious and restrained Soviet attitude.

3) Japanese nationalism: The last two or three years have seen a marked revival of self-confidence and national assertiveness among the Japanese people. From the viewpoint of those who believe that Japan's future lies in Asia, the importance of relations with China tends to loom larger than that of relations with the Soviet Union.

7

The writer has argued elsewhere that, apart from these general considerations, the JCP's decision in 1964 to align itself with the Chinese Communists resulted from three contingent factors: first, the triumph within the party of a "Chinese" faction over a "Soviet" faction; second, the consolidation within the JSP-the JCP's chief rival for the allegiance of working-class voters of a "proSoviet" leadership group; and third, vigorous Chinese lobbying for JCP support and a converse lack of Soviet interest in the Japanese party.

Since 1964, the political kaleidoscope has been shaken a number of times, and the present picture needs careful reappraisal. First, however, a brief review of the party's history seems in order."

7 "The Japan Communist Party in the Sino-Soviet Dispute-From Neutrality to Alignment?" in J. D. B. Miller and T. H. Rigby (eds.), The Disintegrating Monolith: Pluralist Trends in the Communist World, Canberra, Australian National University, 1965, pp. 137-48.

8 The only full-scale study of the JCP in English is now very much out of date but still a useful source: R. Swearingen and P. F. Langer, Red Flag in Japan Cambridge, Mass., 1952. For further material see T. G. Tsukahira, The Postwar Evolution of Communist Strategy in Japan, Cambridge, Mass., Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press, 1954; P. F. Langer, "Independence or Subordination? The Japanese Communist Party between Moscow and Peking," loc. cit.; F. Noda (ed.) "The Left-Wing Movement in Japan: 1945-1964," Journal of Social and Political Ideas in Japan, April 1965, passim.

A Look Backward

Prewar conditions in Japan were extremely unfavorable to the development of an articulate Communist movement. Despite sporadic attempts after 1922 to organize an underground party, little headway was made until 1945 because of constant police repression. The "party" thus remained little more than a small band of theoreticians, most of them in prison. They were, however, the men who founded the JCP after the post-surrender release of political prisoners, and it is therefore important to note, if only briefly, the gist of their pre-1945 doctrinal thinking. Generally speaking, they had obediently followed most of the prewar shifts of Kremlin policy. They had also held more or less consistently to two basic views: first, that the party should be a disciplined, elite group rather than a broad party of the masses; and second, that Japan was not yet ripe for a proletarian-socialist revolution since this must first be preceded by a bourgeoisdemocratic revolution.

During the first three postwar years, the Allied occupation authorities set out to implement a drastic policy of democratization, and the Communists to a large extent cooperated with this policy on the ground that it served in effect to further the bourgeois-democratic revolution they hoped for. Able to operate openly and freely for the first time, the party decided to abandon its earlier elitist principles and instead, under the slogan of "a lovable Communist Party," sought to project a moderate image and thereby win broad mass support. This was a chaotic and potentially revolutionary period which gave Japan's Communists the best chance they have had, before or since, of coming to power. For success, two things were essential-control of the trade unions and a united front with the JSP. Attempts to dominate the rapidly expanding trade union movement led, however, to an anti-Communist reaction, and proposals for a united front with the Socialists likewise failed.

The JCP nevertheless won an unprecedented total of 35 seats in the January 1949 elections to the House of Representatives, though their success was mainly due to the fact that the rival Socialists had discredited themselves by participating in a highly unsuccessful coalition government in 194748. Meanwhile, the aims of occupation policy were shifting toward grooming Japan for the role of a Western ally in the gathering storms of the Cold War. This involved stabilizing the economy with. a strong dose of deflation, cracking down on the

newly-won trade-union freedoms, and restrengthening the positions of industrial managers and conservative politicians. With the outbreak of the Korean War in June 1950, General MacArthur encouraged the revival of Japanese military forces on a moderate scale, although the legality of such forces was in doubt under the "anti-war" proviso (Art. 9) of the 1946 Constitution.

This situation gave the Japanese Communists, along with other left-wing groups, a weapon which they had never before possessed: the chance to pose as champions of nationalism. Before the war, those who had set the pace for nationalism had been members of the ultra-right wing. Although a substantial proportion of Japanese Socialists had gone along with the militaristic ideas of the 1930's, some in the forlorn hope of capturing the leadership of the nationalist movement themselves, the Communists had remained firmly anti-nationalist. This was, in fact, one of the reasons-apart from police repression-why the party had made such little headway before the war. Now, however, the situation was reversed. was reversed. Conservative Japanese governments were open to charges by both Communists and Socialists of subordinating Japan's interests to those of the United States, and the Left could preach not only peace and socialism, but also nationalist struggle against American "imperialism."

The JCP, however, soon compromised its own chances of success by submitting to foreign dictation. In January 1950 the party was subjected to sweeping criticism in the official organ of the Cominform, which urged it to switch to militant methods of struggle aimed at eliminating American influence from Japan. With patent surprise and reluctance, the JCP leaders concurred. The image of a "lovable" Communist Party was shed, and violent methods of overthrowing the government were advocated and, to a minor extent, practiced. US "imperialism" replaced the Japanese "feudal" order as the main enemy. Japan was claimed to be a "semi-colonial dependent nation," suggesting that it was Chinese Communist revolutionary doctrine which the party had been ordered to take as its model.9

As a result of this switch in tactics, the occupation authorities' purge edict was extended to the leaders of the JCP, and the party temporarily went

For elaboration of this point, see the present writer's "The Japan Communist Party in the Sino-Soviet Dispute-From Neutrality to Alignment?", loc. cit., pp. 141-43.

underground (though it was never actually banned). Moreover, its leaders immediately became embroiled in factional strife. A "mainstream" faction led by Kyuichi Tokuda (who died in 1953) and Sanzo Nozaka (the present party Chairman) wanted to go slowly in implementing the new policy so as not to destroy the moderate image painfully built up since 1945. Ranged against them was the so-called "internationalist" faction led by Yoshio Shiga (later expelled) and Kenji Miyamoto (new Secretary-General), who wanted to apply the new militant line to the full. These two men had shared the experience of long periods of detention in Japanese prisons before 1945. On the other hand, Nozaka, who still rates as Japan's best known and most widely respected Communist,10 was exceptional in having spent the pre-1945 period abroad. From 1931 to 1940, he had served as a member of the Comintern Presidium in Moscow, and from 1940 to 1946 had worked with Mao Tse-tung in the caves of Yenan. His writings show that his Chinese experiences influenced him more profoundly than his years in the Soviet Union.

The

he factional disputes of 1950-51 disrupted the party, but the issue was finally resolved by a compromise which left the "mainstream" faction in control while making some concessions to the “internationalist" strategy. Somewhat chastened, the JCP resumed open activity from about 1954 and gradually moderated its line, especially after destalinization gathered momentum in the Soviet Union. Despite this, the party's electoral support, which had largely evaporated in 1950, was slow to recover, and although the late 1950's saw Miyamoto's rise to a position of real power in the JCP leadership, factional differences continued to disturb party unity. The party's national convention in 1958 witnessed the emergence of a new opposition grouping which advocated an "advanced country" strategy derived from the Italian party leader, Palmiro Togliatti. The leader of this new

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faction, Shojiro Kasuga, though himself a former "internationalist," attacked Miyamoto for putting forward strategies which, he claimed, were irrelevant to an advanced industrial country with a strong labor movement.

Subsequently the JCP leadership also came under fire from radical student organizations on charges of "bureaucratism," which the party leaders countered by calling the students "Trotskyites". Consequently, it was no surprise that during the spectacular but ultimately unsuccessful demonstrations against revision of the Mutual Security Treaty in mid-1960 the JCP proved itself quite incapable of controlling the activities of the students as a whole. In the aftermath of this episode, the Kasuga faction momentarily gained some ground but was finally expelled from the party in 1961. A party convention held the same year confirmed the "internationalist" strategy of a two-stage revolution, the first and most vital stage aimed at freeing Japan from domination by "US imperialism," and the second at overthrowing the hegemony of domestic monopoly capital.11

With the expulsion of Kasuga, the JCP appeared to be united at last under the Miyamoto leadership, but the deepening rift between China and the Soviet Union soon brought fresh problems. Internally divided over the position it should take toward the dispute, the party managed for a time to maintain a precarious facade of neutrality. This facade, however, was shattered in May 1964 when Shiga, one of the five Communist members of the House of Representatives, voted in favor of a Diet motion supporting the partial nuclear test-ban treaty, which Peking had violently denounced. As a consequence of this action, Shiga and a Communist member of the upper house (House of Councillors) who had supported him were expelled shortly afterward from the party, which now came out openly on the Chinese side.12 Shiga's defection seems to have stemmed partly from his habitual loyalty to the Soviet Communist line, and partly from personal rivalry with Miyamoto.13

After leaving the JCP, Shiga founded a new Communist splinter party calling itself the "Voice of Japan" (Nihon no koe), which immediately attracted substantial Soviet support. This and two other Communist splinter groups which had already formed after the 1961 expulsion of Kasuga and his faction have since joined forces in organizing a "Preparatory Committee for a New Party," but the fact that the committee's efforts have not yet produced any concrete result suggests that the dissident groups have found little common ground other than their opposition to the present leadership of the JCP.11

JCP-JSP Relations

As previously pointed out, relations between the JCP and JSP have always been a vital factor in the politics of both parties. It is therefore necessary to examine more closely the record of these relations and the impact thereon of various factors, including the Sino-Soviet dispute.

As mentioned earlier, a serious attempt was made in Japan soon after the war to bring about a Communist-Socialist united front. This initial effort proved abortive, in large part because of the heterogeneous nature of the JSP, but during the 1950's the center of gravity in the Socialist Party gradually shifted to the left, with the result that the Communists and Socialists were able to achieve a substantial degree of cooperation during the 1960 demonstrations against the Mutual Security Treaty. The JSP is generally regarded as standing well to the left of most Social-Democratic parties in Europe and in the older countries of the British Commonwealth, especially in matters of foreign policy. Like the JCP, it campaigns for termination of the Mutual Security Treaty, for much closer Japanese relations with the Communist and nonaligned countries, and for a type of neutralism not backed by armed force.

Ideologically, many members of the JSP lean quite heavily on Marxist thought and terminology. Even so, few of them would qualify as Marxist

14 See Asahi Shimbun, March 25, 1966, p. 1. The dissidents expelled from the JCP in 1961 subsequently divided into Kasuga's own group, the Toitsu Shakaishugi Dōmei (United Socialist League), which formed links with the JSP and apparently sought to reform all Japanese left-wing parties along "Italian" lines, and the Shakaishugi Kakushin Undō (Socialist Reform Movement), which from the start wanted to form a separate Communist Party. Neither group was of much significance in terms of numbers.

Leninists, and their views have consistently differed from those of the JCP in at least two important respects. First, the Socialists have never sought to impose in their own party the tight discipline which is a feature of the JCP. Although postwar Japanese Communist leaders have generally leaned more toward the concept of a "broad, mass party” than toward the prewar idea of a “disciplined elite," the JCP still demands of its members a far greater degree of discipline than does the JSP. Secondly, the Socialists have generally denied the necessity of a "revolution of national liberation" preceding the achievement of power by the proletariat. This is not to say that they have been laggard in fighting against "imperialism," but for them the struggle does not have quite the ideological importance that it has for the JCP. Both pacifist and neutralist in its foreign outlook, the JSP has put much of its energies into campaigns against Japanese rearmament, the maintenance of US military bases in Japan and Okinawa, and alleged American plans to introduce nuclear weapons into Japan. At the same time, it has consistently opposed nuclear testing by any country, whether capitalist or Com

munist.

Significantly enough, it is this last issue which has provoked the bitterest exchanges between the JCP and the JSP. Ever since 1961, Gensuikyō (The Japanese Council Against Atomic and Hydrogen Weapons) has been a battleground between the two parties, the Socialists demanding a blanket condemnation of nuclear testing while the Communists supported first Soviet and later Chinese testing as having a "different character" from tests carried out by the "imperialists." In 1964, after several years of mutual recrimination at its annual congresses, the Gensuikyō movement finally split over the issue of the nuclear test-ban treaty. Its JCP adherents followed the Chinese Communist line in rejecting the treaty, while the Socialists backed the Soviet position.

For a time, it looked as if Peking and Moscow were playing out their quarrel on Japanese soil with the JCP and the JSP, where Soviet influence had made considerable gains, as their respective tools. With the fall of Khrushchev, however, Moscow shifted its tactics in Japan and scaled down its cultivation of the JSP in favor of strengthening its ties with Shiga's dissident Communist group. At the same time, while consolidating their influence in the JCP, the Chinese sought to gain a foothold in the JSP by backing an opposition faction led by Kozo Sasaki. Statements emanating from this faction took on a distinctly "Chinese"