Japanese Communist Party
The Japanese Communist Party (JCP; , "Nihon Kyōsan-tō") is a political party in Japan and one of the largest non-governing communist parties in the world. The JCP advocates for the establishment of a society based on scientific socialism, communism, democracy, peace, and antimilitarism. It proposes to achieve its objectives by working within a democratic framework while struggling against what it describes as "imperialism and its subordinate ally, monopoly capital". The party does not advocate violent revolution, instead, it proposes a "democratic revolution" to achieve "democratic change in politics and the economy" and "the complete restoration of  Japan's national sovereignty", which it sees as being infringed upon by Japan's security alliance with the United States, although it firmly defends Article 9 of the Japanese Constitution and aims to dissolve the Japan Self-Defense Forces, which it considers unconstitutional, due to its opposition of the re-militarization of Japan. The JCP is one of the largest non-ruling communist parties in the world, with approximately 270,000 members belonging to 18,000 branches. 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  dissolution 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", while at the same time criticizing Eastern European countries for abandoning socialism, describing it as a "reversal of history". Consequently, the party did not suffer an internal crisis as a result of the Soviet Union's collapse in 1991, nor has it considered disbanding or changing its name or fundamental objectives, as many other communist parties have done. The JCP polled 11.3% of the vote in 2000, 8.2% in 2003 , 7.3% in 2005, 7.0% in 2009, and 6.2% in 2012. These results seemed to indicate a trend of declining support, but the party won 21 seats in 2014, up from eight in the previous general election, as the JCP received 7,040,130 votes (13.3%) in the constituency section and 6,062,962 (11.37%) in the party lists. This continued a new wave of support that was also evident in the 2013 Tokyo prefectural election in which the party doubled its representation. Fighting on a platform directly opposed to neoliberalism, the Trans-Pacific Partnership, attempts to rewrite the constitution, United States Forces Japan, and  nuclear power, the JCP tapped into a minority current that seeks an alternative to Japan's rightward direction. Following the 2016 Japanese House of Councillors election, the party holds 13 seats in the House of Councillors. After the 2017 Japanese general election, the party held 12 seats in the House of Representatives, and since the 2021 Japanese general election, it holds 10 seats. Membership. 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. 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. More recently, membership numbers have declined, with membership at around 300,000 in 2017 and 270,000 in 2020. History. Prewar roots. The Japanese Communist Party was founded in Tokyo on 15 July 1922. 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. Outlawed and persecuted. 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". JCP members and sympathizers were imprisoned and pressured to "convert" ("tenkō suru") to anti-communist nationalism. 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. Postwar reemergence. The Japan Communist Party was legalized in 1945 by the Allied 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". Nosaka's strategy involved avoiding open calls for violent revolution and taking advantage of the seemingly pro-labor stance of the Occupation to organize the urban working classes and win power at the ballot box and through propaganda. In particular, the party was successful in winning acceptance of the notion that communists had been the only ones to resist Japanese wartime militarism. This propaganda effort won the party thousands of new members  and an even larger number of sympathizers, especially among artists and intellectuals. The party rapidly built up its strength and in 1949, made unprecedented gains by winning 10 percent of the vote and sending 35 representatives to the Diet. Red Purge and turn to violence. Beginning in the fall of 1949, in reaction to the JCP's electoral success and as part of the "Reverse Course" in Occupation policy amid rising Cold War tensions, the U.S.-led occupation authorities and the Japanese government carried out a sweeping Red Purge, firing tens of thousands of communists and suspected communists from government posts , teaching positions at universities, high schools, and primary schools, as well as from private corporations. The purge was further intensified in response to the outbreak of the Korean War. Against this backdrop in January 1950, the Soviet-led Cominform, at the behest of Soviet premier Joseph Stalin, issued a blistering criticism of the JCP's peaceful line as "opportunism" and "glorifying American imperialism". It also demanded that the JCP carry out an immediate violent revolution along Maoist lines. This devastating "Cominform Criticism" led rival JCP factions to compete for the Cominform's approval, and ultimately led to the militant which  declared that "it would be a serious mistake to think that Japan's liberation can be achieved through peaceful, democratic means" and called for an immediate violent revolution. The result was a campaign of violence in which JCP activists threw Molotov cocktails at police boxes and cadres were sent up into the mountains with instructions to organize oppressed farmers into "mountain guerrilla squads". The backlash to the JCP's new militant line was swift and severe. Militants were rounded up, tried, and sentenced to lengthy prison terms, and in the 1952 general election, Japanese voters vented their ire at the  JCP by stripping the party of every single one of its 35 Diet seats, a blow from which it would take two decades to recover. Stunned, the JCP gradually began to pull back from its militant line, a process facilitated by the death of Stalin in 1953. At the 6th Party Congress in 1955, the JCP renounced the militant line completely, returning to its old "peaceful line" of gradually pursuing socialist revolution through peaceful, democratic means. Anpo protests. In 1960, the JCP played a central role in organizing the massive Anpo protests against the U.S.–Japan Security Treaty, which were the  largest protests in Japan's history. The JCP took a different line than the Japan Socialist Party, Sohyo labor federation, and other groups who argued that the main target of the protest movement was Japanese monopoly capitalism. Instead, the JCP argued that the main enemy was American imperialism, and along with affiliated groups, focused its protests around the U.S. Embassy in Tokyo. Accordingly, JCP-linked groups were the driving force behind the "Hagerty Incident" in which the car carrying U.S. President Eisenhower's press secretary James Hagerty was mobbed outside of Tokyo's Haneda Airport on 10 June 1960, provoking  a major international incident and helping to precipitate the downfall of the Nobusuke Kishi cabinet. The Anpo protests were a turning point in the JCP's ongoing attempts to revive its political fortunes after the disastrous turn toward violent revolution in the early 1950s. Although the Maoists had been purged from the party following the earlier disaster, the JCP was still riven by the age-old rivalry between the Rōnō Ha (Worker-Farmer Faction) and the Kōza Ha (Lecture Faction), which dated back to the prewar era. Among other disagreements, the two factions disagreed over which stage of Marxist development  Japan was currently in; the Rōnō Ha believed that Japan had already achieved full capitalism, which meant that an immediate socialist revolution was possible, whereas the Kōza Ha argued that Japan's transition to capitalism was not yet complete and that therefore what was needed was a "two-stage" revolutionfirst a "democratic revolution" that would overthrow American imperialism and establish true democracy, and then a "socialist revolution" that would establish communism. Although the "mainstream" of the JCP, led by Kenji Miyamoto, favored the Kōza Ha interpretation, as late as the 7th Party Congress in 1958 the "anti-mainstream" Rōnō Ha  faction, led by Shōjirō Kasuga, still controlled around 40 percent of the delegates. The Anpo protests greatly strengthened the hand of the Kōza Ha faction. During the protest, the JCP, still scarred by the backlash to its violent line in the 1950s, consistently advocated peaceful, orderly, and restrained protests. This stance was highly unpopular with the radical student activists of the Zengakuren student federation, who broke decisively with the JCP as a result and began to build a New Left student movement. However, the movement proved unpopular with the broader public, and the JCP was able to use its image  as a "peaceful" and "positive" force during the protests as a recruitment tool. Membership in the party soared during the course of the protests, doubling from 40,000 to 80,000, and most of the new recruits wound up supporting the Kōza Ha line. Over the remainder of the 1960s, the Kōza Ha was able to purge many members from the Rōnō Ha faction, and others, dissatisfied with JCP policies, quit the party of their own accord. Miyamoto was able to cement his control over the party and reigned as party chairman all the way until 1982. Meanwhile, the party's membership  continued to grow rapidly, and the party began to make steady gains at the ballot box, winning more and more seats in the National Diet. By the mid-1960s, the United States Department of State estimated party membership to be approximately 120,000 (0.2% of the working-age population), and the party had acquired around 300,000 members by 1970. Sino-Soviet split. The party did not take sides during the Sino-Soviet split of the 1960s. Its politics were independent of the Soviet Union. Reflecting this, the party chairman Miyamoto announced the JCP's opposition to the 1968 Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia . At the same time, the party had distanced itself from Mao and Maoism, which allowed it to avoid being associated with China's Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution once they started coming more fully to light in the 1970s. In July 1969, the JCP declared that if it ever came to power, it would permit the free functioning of opposition parties, in an effort to distinguish itself from the one-party states in the Soviet Union and China. These efforts proved popular, and in the 1972 general election, the JCP won an astonishing 38 seats in the Diet, surpassing  its 1949 high of 35 and signalling the party's full recovery from the disastrous militant line of the early 1950s. Party membership continued to grow in the 1970s, albeit at a slower rate than in the 1960s, reaching approximately 500,000 members by 1980. 1980s to 21st century. During the 1980s, party membership began to decline, falling to 370,000 by 1997. Owing to a significant loss in electoral support, the party revised its policies in the 1990s and became a more traditional democratic socialist party. Lam Peng Er argued in the "Pacific Affairs" in 1996 that "the JCP's viability  is crucial to the health of Japanese democracy" because "[i]t 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." In 2008, foreign media recorded an increase in support for the party due to the effect of the global financial crisis on Japanese workers. 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 and making gains in the House of Councillors, going from six to 11 seats. The party surged 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 was contested, uniting in an attempt to  take control of the House from the LDP/Komeito coalition. JCP leaders expressed willingness to enter into a coalition with the Democratic Party, a notion which was rejected by then-Democratic Party President Katsuya Okada as being "impossible" in the near future due to what he viewed as some of the "extreme leftist policies" promoted by the JCP. The party had three Councillors up for re-election and fielded a total of 56 candidates in the election, down from 63 candidates in the 2013 election, but still the second-highest number after the LDP. However, only 14 of those candidates  contested single- and multi-member districts, while 42 contested the 48-seat national proportional representation block. Policies. Pacifism and Security policy. 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. 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 Prefecture having the largest American military base in Asia. The JCP has also traditionally championed pacifism. With  regards to Japan Self-Defence Forces (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 Japanese Constitution, 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. Economic policy. The JCP 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. Social policy. The Japanese Communist Party is generally known as the most (especially socially) progressive party in Japanese politics. The JCP has traditionally been opposed to the existence of the Imperial House since the pre-war days. From 2004, 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". 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. LGBT rights and feminism. The JCP jointly supports 'LGBT equality Law' with Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan, Social Democratic Party and Reiwa Shinsengumi. The JCP supports the legalization of same-sex marriage. The JCP has maintained a friendly relationship with the Japanese  feminist camp since its inception, and is still the most active in women's rights issues among major Japanese political parties. The JCP supports eliminating the wage gap between men and women. It also advocates for more women in politics and political life. Foreign policy. The JCP adheres to the idea that Japan as an Asian country must stop putting emphasis on diplomacy centering on relations with the United States and the G8 Summit and put Asian diplomacy at the center of its foreign relations. It supports establishing an "independent foreign policy in the interests of the Japanese people" and  rejects "uncritically following any foreign power". The JCP advocates that Japan issue further apologies for its actions during World War II and has condemned prime ministerial visits to Yasukuni Shrine. In the 1930s, while the JCP was still illegal, it was the only political party to actively oppose Japan's war with China and World War II. However, the JCP supports Japanese territorial claims over the Kuril and Senkaku Islands and Liancourt Rocks. Furthermore, the JCP has condemned North Korea's nuclear-weapons testing, calling for effective sanctions, but opposing the prospect of a military response. In 2020, the JCP  revised its platform for the first time since 2004. The new platform criticized the Communist Party of China, denouncing China's "great-power chauvinism and hegemonism" as "an adverse current to world peace and progress". The JCP also removed a line from its platform which described China as a country "that is beginning a new quest for socialism". JCP members have stated that this was due to human rights conditions in China. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of China denounced the accusations of the JCP as "groundless and biased". Organization. Press. "Shimbun Akahata" (Japanese: "Red Flag Newspaper") is the daily  organ of the JCP in the form of a national newspaper. "Musansha Shinbun" (Japanese: "Proletarian News") was another publication of the party which was circulated between 1925 and 1929. Several other newspapers preceded and merged into "Red Flag", including "Daini Musansha Shinbun" (Japanese: "The Second Proletarian News"), which was merged into "Red Flag" in 1932. "Daini Musansha Shinbun" was itself the immediate successor to the original "The Proletarian News", which was banned by the government in September 1929. "Daini Musansha Shinbun" began publication immediately after the ban. In the past, the party published numerous other newspapers as well, including another  national paper called "Nihon Seiji Shinbun" (Japanese: "Japan Political News") and a theoretical journal called "Zenshin" (Japanese: "Forward"). The party also published several regional newspapers such as "Class War" in and around Kyoto, Osaka and Kobe, "Shinetsu Red Flag" in Nagano and "Hokkaido News" in Hokkaido. They also published numerous (the exact number is unknown) factory newspapers. Some regional newspapers, such as "Shin Kanagawa" (Japanese: "New Kanagawa") in Kanagawa, are still published. Affiliated organizations. The youth wing of JCP is the Democratic Youth League of Japan. In the 1920s and 1930s, the organization published several newspapers of its own, including  Rēnin Seinen (English: "Lenin Youth") and "Proletarian Youth". The party also has affiliate medical and consumer co-ops. The Japanese Consumers' Co-Operative Union (JCCU), the umbrella body of the co-operative movement in Japan, has a sizable number of communists in its ranks, although the exact numbers are difficult to verify. Another example of the JCP's prevalence in the co-operative movement is the Co-op Kanagawa in the Kanagawa Prefecture, which has 800,000 members and has historical ties to the JCP. It still advertises and occasionally is published in JCP newspapers such as "Red Flag" and "New  Kanagawa". The prevalence of house unions in Japan as opposed to enterprise unions has prompted much of the exceptional development of other organizations by the JCP, as well as causing the JCP to seek other external organizational support, including from kōenkai. The musical group , was founded in Kyoto in 2011 and directed by Tadao Yamamoto, composer, accordionist, choir director and an ordinary member of the National Council of / ). As of 2016, the choir is the only organization of Japanese musicians specializing in political support and in the cultural activity of the party, naming itself explicitly by the English official acronym  JCP. Its repertory and artistic activity are strongly linked in The Singing Voice of Japan, a musical movement of Japanese working class that dates back to 1948, when the was established. In various cultural events organized by the party, the Choir of JCP-fans appears as an element among the joined choirs of the volunteer singers of The Singing Voice of Japan. Popular support and electoral results. House of Representatives (Lower House). Prior to 1996, the entire House of Representatives was elected by majoritarian/"semi-proportional" voting systems with votes cast for individuals (1946: limited voting in multi-member districts, 1947  to 1993 SNTV in multi-member districts). Since 1996, the House of Representatives is elected in a parallel election system – essentially two separate elections only in the lower house complicated by the fact that a candidate may stand in both segments and the sekihairitsu system which ties proportional list ranking to FPTP results: only the majority of members the House of Representatives, 295 (initially 300) seats, are elected in a majoritarian system with voting for candidates (first-past-the-post in single-member districts), while the remaining 180 (initially 200) seats are elected by a proportional representation system (votes are  cast for party lists in regional multi-member districts, called "blocks" in the House of Representatives). The votes and vote percentages in the table below are the JCP candidates' vote totals for the whole election from before 1993 and just the votes for the party in the election to the 180 proportional seats after 1996. House of Councillors (Upper House). Elections to the House of Councillors are staggered. Every three years, half of the House is up for election to six-year terms. In addition, a parallel election system is used: the majority of members of the House of Councillors  (currently 146 of 242, or 73 in one regular election to one half of the House) are elected in 45 (formerly 46→47) prefectural districts, votes are cast for individual candidates by SNTV, but with both multi- and single-member districts used and in the latter SNTV becomes identical to FPTP (winner-takes-all). The remaining, currently 96 members (48 per regular election) are elected in one nationwide district. Until 1980, votes there were cast for individuals too by SNTV. Since 1983, votes are cast for party lists and the seats are allocated proportionally (d'Hondt) in the nationwide district. Unlike in  general elections to the lower house, a candidate may not be nominated in both segments of one regular election to the upper house. The seats totals show below are the JCP's overall post-election seat totals, not just their seats elected in that particular year. The votes shown are the votes in the election for the 48 (formerly 50) seats in the nationwide SNTV/PR segment.