Figures from Japanese History: Kyuichi Tokuda

By Tom Wilkinson-Gamble

Born in Nago in Okinawa in 1894, Kyuichu Tokuda is most famous for his chairmanship of the Japanese Communist Party in the 1940s and 1950s. After graduating as a lawyer from the Nihon University, he participated in formation of the party in 1922 and became a key member of its central committee. By the late 1920s, Japanese society had become increasingly right-wing and started to become dominated by the military. The 1925 Peace Preservation Law expanded police powers and allowed the Imperial government to more effectively silence political dissidents. In 1928, Tokuda was arrested by the Tokkō, the 'Special Higher Police', and imprisoned. He spent time in two different prisons across Japan: Abashiri Prison in Hokkaido and Fuchū Prison in Tokyo. He was, however, imprisoned alongside fellow communist Yoshio Shiga. Together they wrote Eighteen Years in Prison (1948), an autobiography about their experiences in prison. 

After their release from prison in October 1945, Tokuda and Shiga were joined by another communist leader who had been away in China, Senzo Nosaka. Nosaka had been leading Japanese People's Emancipation League, a Japanese resistance movement that re-educated captured Japanese soldiers in anti-fascist and socialist ideology. Together, the three men made up the core of the Japanese Communist Party and led them to relative electoral success in the post-war era. The JCP won 9.8% of the votes in the 1949 election, earning them 35 seats in the diet. 

This success, however, would not last. By the 1950s, the United States was becoming more and more engulfed in Cold War-fuelled anti-communist hysteria. Towards the end of the their occupation, the Americans introduced a new policy of 'reverse course'; communists and anyone believed to harbour communist sympathies, were purged from the Japanese administration. This led to a split in the JCP. One faction, led by Tokuda, wanted to pursue Maoist-inspired guerrilla war that would eventually end in revolution, whilst the other faction, under Nosaka, was happy to continue with more peaceful and democratic tactics. Nosaka continued in his role as the head of the party, guiding it in a peaceful direction, until 1958, when he was replaced by Kenji Miyamoto. 

Tokuda, meanwhile, fled to the newly formed People's Republic of China in October 1950, after surviving an assassination attempt. Though in exile, Tokuda was by no means powerless as he still remained in close contact with the party's more militant faction. Japanese communists, alongside Zainichi Korean and the Zengakuren, a left-leaning anarchist students union, rioted on May Day 1952 in protest against the first Japan-US Security Treaty. Tokuda's faction even attempted to emulate the rural Chinese guerilla movements of the 1930s and 1940s. The Mountain Village Operation Unit, though unsuccessful, attempted to wage a guerrilla war in the Japanese countryside in the hope of finally bringing about their revolution. Members of the unit are reported to have attacked police officers, bombed trains and committed acts of arson. The unit also published the pamphlet, 'How to Raise Flower Bulbs', which contained important information on guerrilla warfare tactics and how to do things such as build improvised explosives and make molotov-cocktails. This pamphlet was used as a template by a later Japanese communist group in the 1970s, the East Asia Anti-Japan Armed Front, and their own bomb-making manual Hara hara Tokei. Tokuda passed away in 1953, his time in charge leaving a dark stain on what was otherwise a relatively peaceful and progressive political party.