Even at the 22nd Congress of the CPSU, where the Soviet leadership openly broke with the Albanians (and by proxy, virtually with the Chinese), the Japanese leadership sought to maintain its neutrality. Sanzio Nosaka, who led the Japanese fraternal delegation to that meeting, refused to condemn Albania and “urged unity within the Communist movement.”[517]
Japanese Communist Party Alignment with China
The end of Japanese neutrality in the Sino-Soviet dispute came, for the time being at least, in connection with the signing in July 1963 of a partial test-ban treaty between the United States and the USSR, open to the signatures of other countries. The Chinese denounced this treaty as “the greatest deception, designed to dupe the people of the whole world.”[518] The Japan Communist Party supported the Chinese position on the document.
Yoshio Shiga, who led those within the JCP who favored the treaty, wrote about what followed after the Central Committee strongly denounced the treaty. He wrote that “The ‘campaign to study the Seventh Plenum decisions’ started shortly thereafter has been used for slanderous attacks on the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. There was talk of ‘Khrushchev revisionism of the ‘Soviet Union acting in compact with the United States to betray the people,’ and so on and so forth. … Comrades who, in this atmosphere, resolutely support the treaty, or question the correctness of Central Committee views and assessments, are immediately branded as ‘revisionists,’ as ‘persons openly challenging party policy.’”[519]
When the test ban treaty came up for adoption in the Japanese Diet, Yoshio Shiga, one of the five JCP members of the lower house, and Ichizo Suzuki, a Communist member of the upper house, voted in favor of it. They were promptly expelled from the JCP, and established their own pro-Soviet Communist group, known as Voice of Japan.[520]
The defection of Shiga was of some historical significance. Before 1945 he had been jailed for eighteen years by the Japanese Imperial regime, and was so severely mistreated that he emerged from prison (to become Secretary of the JCP Central Committee) deaf and half blind.[521] However, in spite of these disabilities, he was reputed during the postwar period to be “one of the … triumvirate that headed the party.”[522]
The shift of the JCP towards a pro-Chinese position brought a strong reaction from the Soviet Party. This was reflected in a letter from the CC of the Chinese Party to that of the CPSU in June 1964, which claimed that “Recently you unilaterally published your letters to the Central Committee of the Japanese Communists Party and unscrupulously launched open attacks on the valiant Japanese Party which is standing in the forefront of the struggle against U.S. imperialism and domestic reaction. You work hand in glove with the U.S. and Japanese reactionaries and support Yoshio Shiga, Ichizo Suzuki and other renegades from the Japanese Communist Party in your efforts to subvert the Japanese Party and to undermine the revolutionary movement in Japan.”[523]
The JCP’s Return to Neutralism
The Japan Communist Party’s flirtation with the Chinese lasted only about two years. One U.S. State Department source noted that “During 1966, the JCP broke away from its uncompromising pro-Peking stance and adopted an independent line, espousing opposition to both ‘modern revisionism’ and left-wing dogmatism. The break with Peking hardened in 1967 with both sides directly attacking each other’s leadership in the most scathing terms. The last two JCP representatives left Peking in August, and were reportedly so severely beaten by the Red Guards on their departure that they had to recuperate for several weeks in North Korea. The Chinese Communists retaliated to the change in the JCP line by shifting financial support away from the JCP to those Communists who remained loyal to Peking and to the far-left of the Japan Socialist Party, and by splitting Communist front organizations into pro-JCP and pro-Peking groups.”
This same source noted that “Despite overtures from the USSR, the JCP remains wary of returning to the Soviet camp, partly in view of past Soviet interference in internal JCP affairs and Moscow’s support for dissident ‘revisionist’ elements.”[524] Even the dispatch of the chief “ideologist” of the Soviet Party, Suslov, to Japan did not win over the Japanese party to alliance with CPSU. In 1968, the JCP denounced the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia.[525]
Throughout the duration of the Sino-Soviet dispute, the Japanese party maintained its neutral position in that conflict.
The Japan Communist Party (Left)
When the Japan Communist Party shifted back toward a neutralist position in the Sino-Soviet dispute, a clearly Maoist group began to emerge in 1966. The Chinese Hsinhua news agency noted that “The Japanese proletarian revolutionaries and the broad masses of revolutionary people in Japan have risen in rebellion against and broken with the Miyamoto revisionist clique of the Japanese Communist party since the Miyamoto revisionist clique betrayed the revolution, emasculated and attacked with all its efforts great Marxism-Leninism-Mao Tse-tung Thought and opposed violent revolution and advocated the revisionist ‘parliamentary road.’” Hsinhua noted that “left revolutionary organizations or groups” had been formed, that were “studying and learning Mao Tse-tung Thought.”
Finally, on November 30, 1969 the National Council of the Japan Communist Party (Left), which Hsinhua said was “one of these left revolutionary organizations,” held a congress that formally announced the establishment of a new party, the Japan Communist Party (Left). The new party issued a manifesto which proclaimed that “Comrade Mao Tse-tung has analyzed all the contradictions in the present-day world and pointed out With regard to the question of world war there are but two possibilities: one is that the war will give rise to revolution and the other is that revolution will prevent the war.’”[526]
The new party was centered on what had been the Yamaguchi Prefecture Committee of the JCP. In 1973, John Emmerson wrote that “As a fraternal party of the CCP, the JCP (Left) benefited from the strong ‘China mood’ which prevailed in Japan during much of 1972.” By that time the JCP (L) claimed to have committees in eleven prefectures with a total membership estimated at 2,000. The chairman of the JCP (L) was Fuduka Masayoshi. The JCP (L) strongly influenced the Japan China Friendship Association (Orthodox).[527]
By 1975, the Japan Communist Party (Left) was credited with a membership of “500 with a possible 1,500 supporters” and was said to have 22 local organizations. It published two twice-weekly organs, People’s Star and Choshu Shinbun. John Emmerson noted in that year that The JCP (Left) is given frequent publicity in the Peking Press, often because of anti-Soviet articles which appear in People’s Star.”[528]
As was true of Maoist parties in many countries, shifting Chinese foreign and domestic policies were disconcerting factors in the Japan Communist Party (Left). John Emmerson noted that in 1975 the JCP (Left) “split into two factions over the present direction of Chinese policy. The division within the party, which had been growing for some time, came to a climax at the 26th meeting of its Central Committee on 20 March. The Central, or mainstream faction, disagrees with the diplomatic line being taken by Peking, which encourages Japanese-U.S. relations and bases diplomatic policy on confrontation with the USSR. The opposing group, Kanto-ha (Eastern Japan faction) supports the Japan-China Friendship Association (Orthodox), in its acceptance of Chinese policy and describes the Central faction as leftist opportunists, exclusionists, and sectist. The party’s publication, People’s Star, accused the Kanto-ha of factionism, ignoring party’s administration.” Appeals by both sides to the Chinese found the Chinese unwilling to take sides in the dispute.[529]
518
Yoshio Shiga, “The Communist Party of Japan and My Convictions,” New Times, Moscow, July 15, 1964, page 8.
521
Daily Worker, newspaper of Communist Party of United States, New York, December 9, 1945.
522
International Socialist Review, organ of Socialist Workers Party, New York, Fall 1964, page 121.
523
Letter of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China in Reply to the Letter of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union Dated June 15, 1964, Foreign Language Press, Peking, 1964, pages 18—19.
524
World Strength of the Communist Party Organizations, Bureau of Intelligence and Research, State Department, Washington, DC, 1968 edition, page 85.
525
World Strength of the Communist Party Organizations, Bureau of Intelligence and Research, State Department, Washington, DC, 1969 edition, pages 83—84.
526
Quoted in Intercontinental Press, organ of Socialist Workers Party, New York, February 9, 1970, page 105.
527
John Emmerson, in Yearbook on International Communist Affairs, 1973, Hoover Institution, Stanford, Calif., pages 492—493.
528
John Emmerson, in Yearbook on International Communist Affairs, 1975, Hoover Institution, Stanford, Calif., pages 363—364.
529
John Emmerson, in Yearbook on International Communist Affairs, 1976, Hoover Institution, Stanford, Calif., page 314.