Chapter 2

From Communist Group to Communist Party, 1920-1922

The Comintern made its first attempt to establish direct contact with Japanese leftists late in the summer of 1920. Its agents in Shanghai sent a Korean, Yi Ch’un-suk, a recent graduate of Chuo University in Tokyo and former vice-minister of military affairs in the Korean provisional government of Shanghai, to meet with Japanese bolshevists and anarcho-syndicalists and to extend an invitation to several of them to attend a conference of “Far Eastern revolutionaries” to be held in the fall in Shanghai.¹ Yi arrived just at the time that the leading left-wing radicals in Japan had agreed, despite their ideological differences, to join forces in the creation of the Socialist League. Sakai and Yamakawa listened politely to Yi’s overtures but declined his invitation. Not only were they reluctant to trust him, but they also worried about arousing the suspicions of the police. The less cautious Osugi was willing to run risks in order to establish contacts with revolutionaries abroad, and though he was still outspokenly critical of the Soviet regime, he accepted Yi’s invitation and secretly left Japan for Shanghai in October.

At Shanghai, Osugi conferred for several days with Comintern agents and Chinese and Korean revolutionaries. The central theme of these discussions was the feasibility of establishing a league of Far Eastern revolutionary parties to be directed by the Comintern. True to his convictions as an anarcho-syndicalist, Osugi argued for the autonomy of each national movement and would agree only to the creation of an international liaison committee. He did, however, want Comintern financial support for his publishing activities, and asked for 10,000 yen for a half year. The Comintern agents gave him 2,000 yen and promised additional funds later, provided that he cooperate with the Japanese bolshevists and visit Soviet Russia.² They evidently hoped to make a convert of him.

Osugi returned to Japan in November, apparently willing to make common cause with the bolshevists, at least to the extent of attacking capitalism through the publication of a new weekly. But he was willing to cooperate with them only as long as he remained free to criticize their ideas and to act independently. When Sakai and Yamakawa did not respond favorably to his proposal for cooperation, he joined forces with Katayama’s protégé, Kondo Eizo, and student activist Takatsu Seido to resume publication of Labor Movement, which had been suspended the previous June. The first issue of the weekly appeared at the end of January 1921.

Osugi did not change his own ideological position, but Kondo and Takatsu were allowed to use the magazine to write in support of communism and the Soviet regime. Osugi continued to hammer away at the theme that the emancipation of the workers had to be achieved by the workers themselves, because the intellectual leadership of the labor movement could not be trusted. Moreover, he remained convinced that the bolshevists represented a greater threat to the labor movement than did the social democrats. He wrote numerous editorials and articles in Labor Movement attacking both groups, but his bitterest barbs were directed at Sakai and Yamakawa. He was also sharply critical of the Russian communists, and called for the overthrow of the Soviet regime. In sum, he was an unlikely candidate for conversion to the communist cause, and the Comintern soon gave up on him. Osugi was forced to borrow money to continue publication of Labor Movement because the Comintern’s Shanghai agents did not send additional funds, and he canceled the proposed trip to Russia because of illness.³

The Comintern sent another Korean, Yi Chung-rim, to Japan in April 1921, in a second attempt to establish contact with left-wing leaders. Yi, who had been a student at Meiji University, first approached Osugi, but was put off by his intransigence. He then turned to Yamakawa, probably on the advice of Kondo, and found him receptive to the Comintern’s overtures for cooperation. Yamakawa, disillusioned by the failure of the Socialist League and urged by Kondo to organize a communist party, was ready to accept Soviet support and was agreeable to the establishment of “a Japanese branch of the Comintern.” To impress the Shanghai bureau with his sincerity, he collaborated with Kondo, who along with Takatsu was ready to break with Osugi, in drafting regulations and a platform for a “communist preparatory committee.” Yamakawa and Kondo quickly completed their work and showed it to Sakai, who expressed his approval. (Kondo later stated that he approached Yamakawa rather than Sakai or Arahata because Sakai still had social democratic tendencies, and Arahata was under the influence of anarcho-syndicalism. “I saw,” Kondo said, “that Yamakawa was a complete bolshevik.”)⁴

The first step toward the establishment of a Japanese communist party was taken when Yamakawa and Sakai joined with three other veteran socialists—Arahata, Hashiura Tokio, and Yoshikawa Morikuni—and with Kondo, Takatsu, and Watanabe Mitsuzo of the Watchmakers Union to organize a so-called “communist group.” (Whether or not Osugi was asked to participate is doubtful; however, one of his followers, Kondo Kenji, was invited and refused.) Sakai was elected chairman of the group, and the others became members of its “executive committee.” Yamakawa explained the regulations and platform that he had worked out with Kondo, and the committee adopted them unanimously. It should be emphasized that, notwithstanding these activities, the group had no intention of forming a political party at this time. As Arahata has made clear, decisions were confined to the matter of “establishing a communist propaganda group.”⁵ The group was interested not in political activity but in spreading ideas. Nevertheless, Sakai and the executive committee members overcame their reluctance to establish direct relations with the Comintern: they responded to the Comintern’s overtures by dispatching Kondo as their representative to a meeting at Shanghai. (He made the trip under the alias of George Tani, a Nisei merchant born in Los Angeles who owned a shop in New York.)

KONDO EIZO AND THE ENLIGHTENED PEOPLE’S COMMUNIST PARTY

Kondo met with Korean and Chinese revolutionaries and Comintern representatives at Shanghai in May 1921, and gave them an analysis of the left-wing movement in Japan. Like many of the left-wing Japanese, he tended to exaggerate the prospects of the movement. Osugi was discussed, and according to Kondo, Pak Chin-sun, a Korean who was the conference leader and a Comintern representative sent from Moscow, ruled out the possibility of further cooperation with him. Pak was opposed to Osugi because the latter had not only retained his anarcho-syndicalist views, but had asserted that if there were outside interference in Japanese affairs, he would not accept financial aid.⁶ The possibility of Yamakawa attending the forthcoming Third Congress of the Comintern scheduled for the summer of 1921 at Moscow was also discussed. Kondo reported that Yamakawa was hardly strong enough to go to Shanghai, let alone to undertake an arduous journey across Siberia. He promised to suggest to the Japanese group that he himself and another delegate attend the congress. Finally, Kondo asked the Comintern agents for 20,000 yen a month to finance the communist group’s organizational and propaganda activities, but they replied that they would first have to take up the matter with Moscow. However, he did receive 6,500 yen (5,000 in American currency and 1,500 in Japanese) shortly before his departure for Japan. This sum was to be divided as follows: 5,000 yen for expenses in connection with the communist movement, 1,000 yen for Kondo’s personal expenses, and 500 yen as a gift for Osugi for medical expenses.⁷ The money for Osugi was presumably to keep the relations between him and Kondo smooth, and to terminate the Comintern ties with him gracefully.⁰⁸

Kondo’s mission came to an unexpected and abrupt end. After his disembarkation at Shimonoseki, he missed his train, and weary of waiting for the night express, he got drunk and became involved with a prostitute. His conduct aroused the suspicion of the police, and he was arrested and jailed when he could not account for the large amount of money that he was carrying. Through Kondo’s cellmate, the police learned of Kondo’s activities at Shanghai, and of his association with Sakai and Yamakawa. Kondo insisted, however, that he was acting alone. Ultimately, the police were forced to release him, and he was allowed to take the funds with him simply because there was no specific law to apply to the case.⁹ According to Kondo’s account of the affair, he had to promise not to use the money for secret political activities.¹⁰

After Kondo was released by the police in July, he became obsessed with a desire to organize a communist party. He first approached Sakai and Yamakawa with the idea of transforming the “communist group” into a political party, but they rejected the notion. Having recently suffered through the experience of the dissolution of the Socialist League in May, they were understandably cautious. They adopted a wait-and-see attitude, and were content for the time being to remain members of a “propaganda group.” Moreover, they did not want to have much contact with Kondo in view of his arrest and detention, and would not touch the funds that he had brought from Shanghai.

Deciding to strike out on his own, Kondo turned to a group of young militant intellectuals, for the most part Waseda University graduates and members of the Society of Enlightened People who were impatient with what they regarded as the tendency of Yamakawa and Sakai to be content with mere theorizing. They formed the core around which Kondo organized the Enlightened People’s Communist Party (Gyomin Kyosanto). At a secret meeting in Tokyo on August 20, a small group of these radical intellectuals adopted a party constitution and platform, elected Kondo chairman of an executive committee, and established committees for propaganda, publication, investigation, and finance, under Takatsu, Takase Kiyoshi (Sakai’s son-in-law), Hirata Shinsaku, and Nakasone Genwa, respectively. Within a month the party began distributing handbills and tracts that were designed to incite workers, students, soldiers, and peasants in and around Tokyo, Osaka, Kyoto, and Kobe to join the class struggle. Meanwhile, to strengthen his ties with the Comintern and to get more funds,¹¹ Kondo dispatched Shigeta Yoichi, a young Waseda University student, to Shanghai with a detailed report of the party’s activities and some “theses” (which Kondo later claimed were written by Yamakawa) concerning the party’s future plans.¹²

In the “official history” of the Japanese Communist Party, the Enlightened People’s Communist Party is not recognized as a legitimate predecessor.¹³ The party’s career was short-lived, largely because its central leadership was so committed to immediate and drastic revolutionary action. Party propaganda posters appeared in early October,¹⁴ and the police began to investigate soon after, even sending a detective to Shanghai. They made their first arrests on October 12, when they caught six party members distributing revolutionary materials on the streets, but the fatal blow fell a month later. After party members had distributed antimilitary and antiwar handbills among soldiers assembled for large-scale army maneuvers in the Tokyo area, the police again went into action. On November 25 they arrested Kondo’s envoy, Shigeta, and a Comintern agent traveling with him under the name of B. Grey on their arrival at Yokohama from Shanghai.¹⁵ Grey was carrying 7,000 yen for Kondo from the Comintern, and had a notebook with the names of his Japanese contacts. Under questioning, the two men admitted the purpose of their trip. Shigeta was held for trial, while Grey’s funds were confiscated and he was expelled from the country on December 4. The police also arrested Kondo on November 25 and discovered additional information relating to the party. The complete collapse of the party came within a week, when the police rounded up some 40 of its members and supporters and charged them with violating the Publications Law and the Public Peace Police Law.¹⁶ Among those ultimately tried and convicted were Kondo, who was sentenced to ten months in jail, and Takatsu, who was sentenced to eight months. Sakai and Yamakawa were also among those arrested, but they denied any complicity and were released.

THE THIRD CONGRESS OF THE COMINTERN

Kondo was unable to keep his promise to attend the Third Congress of the Comintern held at Moscow from June 22 to July 12, but there were two Japanese present—Yoshiwara Gen taro and Taguchi Unzo. Yoshiwara, a participant in the Japanese socialist group in the United States and a member of the American branch of the Industrial Workers of the World, had taken part in the Congress of the Peoples of the East held at Baku in September 1920. Taguchi was also from the United States; he had been designated by Katayama Sen, in accordance with Comintern instructions, to attend as the representative of the Japanese group in America.

The Third Congress of the Comintern convened in an atmosphere of disappointment, largely because the communist revolutionary movement had failed to achieve success outside Russia. The Comintern leadership was cautious and emphasized the need for communist parties to make serious preparations before attempting to seize power. It had been the purpose of the Second Congress to create communist parties that would join the international communist movement. The hope had been to break existing parties away from their reformist leaders with the result that the laboring masses would flock to the new and purified leadership. However, this expectation was not fulfilled: the Third Congress’s theses on “The World Situation and Our Tasks” admitted that the greater part of the working class still stood outside the sphere of communist influence.

The Third Congress defined the major tasks of the Comintern as winning the “exclusive support of the majority of the working classes” and drawing the most active part of that majority into a direct struggle against the bourgeoisie. The congress resolution on tactics spoke directly to these points:

From the first day of its foundation the Communist International made it clearly and unequivocally its task not to create small communist sects that would strive to establish their influence over the working masses only through agitation and propaganda, but to participate directly in the struggle of the working masses, to establish communist leadership in this struggle, and to create in the process of struggle large, revolutionary, communist mass parties.¹⁷

Karl Radek, one of the leading members of the Comintern, proclaimed the watchword of the congress: “First and foremost, to the masses, by every means.” (His injunction was not a novel one; the Second Congress had proclaimed the slogans “Penetrate the Masses” and “A Closer Link With the Masses.”) Radek called for the utilization of all the bourgeois freedoms and institutions, however limited they might be, to reach the masses. The two major slogans adopted by the congress were “Advance Into the Masses” and “Advance Toward a Political Struggle.”¹⁸

The Comintern sought to strengthen the bonds of organization and discipline between it and the national parties: Chapter VII of the theses entitled “Organizational Structure of the Communist Parties—The Methods and Contents of Their Work” emphasized that a communist party “is under the leadership of the Communist International,” and that the “directives and decisions of the International are binding upon the party, and also, it is evident, upon each member of the party.” However, this emphasis by the Comintern on discipline was in conflict with its recommendation of policies having mass appeal: increased discipline would require greater centralization of authority at a time when the national parties needed more autonomy, not less.¹⁹

The major concerns of the congress were still quite clearly related to Europe. It devoted little time to consideration of the situation in Asia. There was only one session on Asia during the congress, a hurried one on the last afternoon, when the delegates from Asian countries made brief speeches limited to five minutes each. The delegates from China, Korea, and Japan devoted themselves in the main to the denunciation of Japanese imperialism. Furthermore, an immense report by Comintern chairman Gregory Zinoviev on the work of the Comintern’s executive committee during the year—a report that takes up some 60 pages of the printed record of the congress proceedings—contains only three elliptical sentences on the subject: “In the Near East the council of propaganda created by the Baku Congress is working. From the point of view of organization, however, much remains to be done. In the Far East the situation is similar.”⁰²⁰

Though Asian affairs were barely discussed at the congress, the Comintern established committees that held meetings on Asian matters. Taguchi served as a member of a subcommittee that met under the chairmanship of Radek to discuss a number of East Asian questions. During a session on Japan, the two men clashed over policy for the Japanese labor movement. Radek argued that the Japanese labor movement was in an early stage of development and should increase the political consciousness of the masses through a moderate campaign for universal suffrage, while Taguchi contended that the movement was developing rapidly, forcing it into revolutionary actions. (Taguchi, like many left-wing Japanese, tended to exaggerate in order to impress Comintern officials.) In the end, the subcommittee took the position that the Japanese labor movement was still strongly influenced by anarcho-syndicalism and was weak in political consciousness. The Japanese “comrades” were urged to strengthen the movement’s political consciousness and, “on the basis of a mass foundation,” to prepare it for a political struggle, or “a political change of direction.”²¹

In addition to participating in the Third Congress of the Comintern, Taguchi and Yoshiwara took part in the inaugural congress of the Red International of Labor Unions, commonly called the Profintem , which was held in July 1921. The Comintern organized this new body in order to pursue the objective of winning national unions away from the International Federation of Trade Unions, which had been reorganized in 1919 at a conference in Amsterdam and was led by European social democrats. At the Third Congress, Zinoviev had attacked the IFTU as “the last barricade of the international bourgeoisie” and had suggested the tasks to be considered by the First Congress of the Profintem: “To organize better the struggle against the yellow Amsterdam International,” “to define in a practical way the relations between the revolutionary labor unions and parties in each country,” and “to formulate precisely the relation between the Red Labor Union Council and the Communist International.”²² The Profintern congress, attended by 380 delegates from 41 countries, approved Zinoviev’s suggestions, and, despite the opposition of syndicalist delegates, called for “the closest possible link with the Third International.” This link was to be secured by an interchange of delegates between the Profintern council and the executive committee of the Comintern, and by joint sessions of the two bodies. The congress also called for a “revolutionary unity” between the Red labor unions and communist parties in all countries.²³ The main business of the Profintem congress was essentially European, as was to be expected; however, some attention was paid to Asia. The congress adopted a resolution urging “the workers of the Near and Far East” to “enter the ranks of the Red International of Labor Unions.”²⁴ The interest of the Profintern in Asia, which contrasted with the exclusive European orientation of the IFTU, or Amsterdam International, proved to be important later.

THE FAR EASTERN PEOPLES’ CONGRESS

The Comintern was forced to take greater interest in the Far East when the American government announced that a conference of nine powers, not including Soviet Russia, would be held in Washington to discuss naval disarmament and Far Eastern questions in general. The initial Soviet reaction was to call an “East Asian Conference of China, Mongolia, the Siberian Far Eastern Republic and the Soviet Republic.” This did not prove practicable, however, especially in view of China’s acceptance of the American invitation,²⁵ so the Soviet leadership fell back on a Comintern plan, formulated after the Baku Congress, to hold a “Congress of Peoples of the Far East” in a Siberian city. The Comintern’s executive committee declared that it would convene at Irkutsk a “simultaneous conference of representatives of Eastern revolutionary movements and thus indicate the strength of Eastern opposition to imperialist plans in the East.” It defined the right of participation as follows: “Every national-revolutionary socialist or communist organization has the right to be represented at the Congress of the Peoples of the Far East.”²⁶ The invitation, drafted by Chang T’ai-lei, a young Chinese professor, read as follows:

Comrades of Korea, China, Japan, and Mongolia! The last word is with you. Join your forces with the world struggle of liberation that was started in the never-to-be-forgotten days of four years ago by the Russian proletariat… On November 11, 1921, a surgical operation, known as the Washington Conference, will be performed upon the peoples of the Far East. It is on that day that we will convene a Congress of the Toilers of the Far East in Irkutsk, the purpose of which is to unite the toilers of the East in the face of a new danger. Our slogans are: “Peace and Independence of the Country,” “Land to Those Who Till It,” “Factories to the Workers.”²⁷

After completing his work in Moscow, Taguchi went to Irkutsk to join the planning committee for the Far Eastern Congress. (What happened to Yoshiwara is not known; he may have remained at Moscow as the Japanese representative to the Profintern.)²⁸ Some preliminary meetings of Asian radicals were convened in November, but the response to the Comintern’s invitation was so great that the site of the congress, known popularly as the Far Eastern Peoples’ Congress, was shifted to Moscow and rescheduled for January 1922. Meanwhile, the Comintern had renewed its contact with the bolshevists and anarcho-syndicalists in Japan. Early in the autumn of 1921, Voitinsky sent Chang T’ai-lei to Tokyo to persuade the various left-wing groups to send delegates to the Far Eastern Peoples’ Congress. The persuasive young professor was successful in his mission. Yamakawa and his close associates selected Tokuda Kyuichi, an energetic member of the Wednesday Society, to represent them. (Tokuda later claimed he was selected because of the dangers involved; Watanabe Haruo states that Sakai and Yamakawa chose Tokuda because they did not want to send a close associate.)²⁹ Kondo and the Enlightened People’s Communist Party elected to send Takase, the chairman of the party’s publication committee. Two anarchists—Yoshida Hajime and Wada Kiichiro—and three “revolutionary” printing workers completed the group. Osugi has claimed that he was invited but declined.³⁰

The small party of Japanese delegates proceeded first to Shanghai and then to Irkutsk, where they joined other Far Eastern national groups in the preliminary conference in November. The conference was divided into Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and Mongolian sections, but the general tone was created at the single plenary session, when Chang T’ai-lei delivered the keynote address, stating: “Our union is not measured by the strength of the fleet or of imperialist armies, but by the fact that in the country where the landlord and capitalist have been overthrown, the representatives of the toilers of the East have gathered to protest against the mean comedy known as the Washington Conference, and also to work out a plan for joint struggle.”³¹

From Irkutsk, the Japanese group journeyed to Moscow and then to Petrograd, where they joined the Japanese representatives from the United States—Watanabe Haruo, Maniwa Suekichi, Nonaka Masayuki, Nikaido Umekichi, and Suzuki Mosaburo—to constitute the full Japanese delegation to the congress. Katayama arrived from Mexico in December, and he and Taguchi were designated conference officers. Katayama, along with Lenin, Trotsky, Zinoviev, and Stalin, received the title of honorary chairman; it was soon apparent that the Russian leaders expected him to be useful in advancing the communist cause in Asia. Also in Moscow at the time were Nosaka Sanzo, who had come from Paris to attend a meeting sponsored by the Profintem;³² Morito Tatsuo, a young socialist intellectual, and Kushida Tamizo of the Ohara Research Institute on Social Problems, both of whom had been invited by the director of the Marx-Lenin Institute; and Oba Kako, a Yomiuri Shinbun correspondent and promoter of the defunct Socialist League.³³ Evidently, the qualifications committee of the congress recognized all the Japanese, except Nosaka, Morito, and Kushida, as delegates with the right to vote, and it granted Oba, who served as interpreter, the right to participate in discussions.³⁴

The congress, which met from January 21 to January 27, gave the Comintern its best opportunity to date to explain its attitude toward Asian nationalist movements, since the approximately 150 delegates included many noncommunist revolutionaries. Zinoviev emphasized in his opening speech that the need for communist cooperation with Asian revolutionary nationals was even more pressing than before:

The Communist International is continually taking into account the fact that the revolution of the toilers can be victorious under the present circumstances only as a world revolution… We know that final victory will be assured only if the struggle is not confined to the European continent alone, in which case our struggle will rouse the hundreds of thousands, the hundreds of millions of the toiling and oppressed masses in the East.

Zinoviev also spoke of the Comintern’s inadequate knowledge of conditions in the Far East, and promised that the executive committee of the Communist International would listen “with the greatest attention” to the reports and information of the delegates. He admitted that “we know very little of what is happening in such a country as Japan.”³⁵

The congress heard reports from the representatives of China, Korea, Japan, and Java, each speaker giving a description of the political and economic situation in his country together with an estimate of the country’s revolutionary potential. Katayama spoke at length on the political and economic problems of Japan in a report that provided the basis for discussion by a special committee on Japan. Takase, Yoshida, and probably Watanabe spoke very briefly on Japan, with Katayama translating into English for them.³⁶ Takase stated that a Japanese communist party had already been formed, and he went on to describe it as being comprised of older intellectuals who were more interested in theory than in action, and younger men who were not satisfied with an academic communist movement, but were active among factory workers and peasants. He reported that the party was handicapped by a lack of experience and suffered from oppression. Yoshida, who exaggerated the strength of the revolutionary labor movement, dramatically announced his conversion from anarcho-syndicalism to communism. He appears to have been overwhelmed by the conference and motivated by nothing more than a desire to please his hosts, for upon his return to Japan, he returned to the anarcho-syndicalist fold.

The Far Eastern Peoples’ Congress satisfied the expectations of the Soviet leaders by endorsing the “Theses on the National and Colonial Question” adopted by the Second Congress of the Comintern, and by issuing its own manifesto, approved at the closing session, declaring, “We desire to become the masters of our own fate and to stop being the playthings of the imperialists’ cupidity and greedy appetites—We have met in the Red capitals of the Soviet republic—Moscow and Petrograd—in order to raise our voices from this world tribune against the world executioners and against the Washington union of the four bloodsuckers.”³⁷

Though the congress tended to concentrate upon China and the colonial areas, the Russian hosts did pay some special attention to Japan. According to an account by one of the Japanese delegates, Lenin met with Katayama, Taguchi, and Yoshida on the day before the opening of the congress, telling them, “The Japanese bourgeois rulers are not as ignorant as those of Tsarist Russia. Having seen the success of the Russian revolution and the failure of revolution in Germany and Hungary, they have learned how to suppress the emergence of the proletariat. In this sense, the task of the Japanese comrades is really important.”³⁸ Zinoviev also put special emphasis on the role of the Japanese proletariat in the solution of the “Far Eastern problem.” He expressed pleasure that a workers’ movement had been launched, but he recognized that it was still very weak and suffered from the “infantile sickness” of anarcho-syndicalism. “The bourgeoisie,” he pointed out, “does not yet see the clenched fists of the Japanese workers.” He then linked the situation in Japan to a theme that underlay the whole conference:

The fate of the Japanese revolutionary movement is acquiring an enormous international importance. The alliance of the four bloodsuckers formed in Washington for the purpose of crushing, torturing, and partitioning the oppressed peoples of the Far East with even greater savagery than hitherto… cannot postpone the hour of the inevitable war in the Pacific Ocean. As sure as morning follows night, so will the first imperialist war, which ended in 1918, be followed by a second war that will center around the Far East and the problem of the Pacific. This war can be avoided… only if the young working class of Japan rapidly becomes sufficiently strong to seize the Japanese bourgeoisie by the throat, and if parallel with that there is a victorious revolutionary movement in America.³⁹

Georgy Safarov, considered by the Comintern to be its specialist on East Asia, also stressed the importance of Japan. Like Zinoviev, he was cautious in his estimate of the existing revolutionary potential of the Japanese labor movement. On this point, he took issue with Yoshida, claiming that “Comrade Kato (Yoshida’s pseudonym) paints too rosy a picture and represents the Japanese working masses as fully awakened.” It was Safarov who first began to formulate revolutionary strategy for the Japanese proletariat. He asserted that the Japanese working class could not “throw off the weight of oppression and make the proletarian social revolution directly,” but would first of all have to overcome the combined strength of the bourgeoisie and the landlords. He called on the proletariat to demand “a democratic republic, land nationalization, and the nationalization of large industry with the provision of workers’ control of production.” He also pointed out the need for the proletariat to ally itself with the peasantry in the struggle against oppression, but was careful to emphasize that the revolutionary role of the proletariat was a leading and independent one: the working class would have “the principal position in the common revolutionary struggle for a completely democratic political regime” and play “the leading role in the socialist proletarian revolution.”⁴⁰

Following the plenary sessions of the congress, a special committee met to discuss the situation in Japan. Its Japanese members were Katayama, who presided over the meeting, Nonaka, Watanabe, Maniwa, Tokuda, Takase, and Yoshida; Zinoviev, Bukharin, Safarov, and Bela Kun represented the Comintern. Katayama gave a brief report based upon his speech to the congress, in which he described the Japanese state as a constitutional monarchy in which the bourgeoisie (represented by the Seiyukai Party) held political power, but whose administration was in the hands of a bureaucracy. He emphasized the repressive nature of the Japanese government, especially its use of police power against the people. He also outlined Japan’s economic progress since the Meiji Restoration in 1868, particularly the development of industry and the increase in the size of the labor force. He analyzed both the exploitative nature of capitalism and worker reaction to it, pointing out that Japan’s workers, lacking the right to strike, found sabotage the “strongest and safest means of fighting against the employers.” It was abundantly clear, he stated, that “the demands of the workers have been becoming more and more radical every day.” As an example, he cited worker demands for “the abolition of capitalism” and “industrial control by the labor unions.” Finally, he compared the situation in Japan to Europe and the United States:

I think that the Japanese worker has made as much progress in the last half century as the worker of Europe has made during the last two or three centuries; and so I am sure that the Japanese proletariat will soon learn how to fight against the capitalist oppressors more successfully than the workers of America or Europe, where the capitalist system is fully developed and established… In Japan… capitalism is still in its primitive stage.⁴¹

Zinoviev and Safarov in turn suggested that the proletarian movement in Japan was still primitive and “unscientific,” and that it should be transformed into a genuine communist movement. They urged the Japanese delegates to establish a communist party, and explained such organizational principles as the operation of cells and party relationships with labor unions and other bodies. They also discussed strategy, instructing the Japanese delegates to lead the workers and peasants in a common struggle for a completely democratic political regime, rather than to seek to establish a dictatorship of the proletariat and a soviet government immediately. They insisted that this did not mean compromising with the bourgeois political parties: they were not asking the working class “to give up playing an independent role.” They conceded that although the two stages of revolution in Russia had been of seven months’ duration, the period in Japan might be as brief as two or three months.⁴²

There was evidently also some discussion of the Japanese imperial system at the committee meeting. Bukharin, who was working on a draft of a program for the Japanese Communist Party, put forward the slogan “Abolition of the Emperor.” Katayama voiced no opposition, but the other Japanese in attendance felt very uneasy about a direct attack upon that august institution.⁴³

After the committee meeting, Takase and Tokuda consulted with Comintern representatives on a number of matters relating to the formation of the Japanese Communist Party and the determination of basic policies for it. The Comintern took every step possible to help the Japanese rid themselves of unorthodox influences, including having Stalin lecture the Japanese delegates on the differences between Leninism, anarchism, and menshevism. (Yamabe contends that Stalin did not give a lecture at the congress, but the other Japanese delegates claim he did. Watanabe even maintains Stalin’s speech was delivered in fluent English and had to be translated by Taguchi.)⁴⁴

Most of the Japanese who attended the congress returned to Japan shortly thereafter, but a small number remained in Russia. Katayama went to Berlin to attend an unsuccessful Conference on the International Union of Socialist Parties from April 2 to April 5, and returned to Moscow in May, where he remained as Asian representative to the Comintern. However, his defects were apparent to the Comintern leaders: he was no help as a theorist and, being out of touch with the Japanese scene, he was hardly useful as a source of information. His position in the Comintern proved to be largely a symbolic one; he did not exert much influence, and his contribution to the Japanese communist movement was minimal. Among the other Japanese in Moscow were Wada Kiichiro, who taught Japanese in the School of Far Eastern Languages, and two new arrivals from Japan, Kitaura Sentaro and Mizunuma Kuma, who entered the Eastern Workers Communist University, or KUTV (called “Kutobe” by the Japanese), to study Marxism-Leninism.⁴⁵ They were the first of a large number of Japanese who undertook similar study in subsequent years. One of the Japanese delegates from the United States, Maniwa, also remained, and was stationed in Vladivostok as a contact man for the Japanese communists.

Of those who returned to Japan from the conference, only Tokuda, Takase, and Nosaka continued to play an active role in the communist movement. Though Suzuki, Nonaka, and Morito later became prominent as socialists, the others soon deserted the political arena: Watanabe engaged in trade with the Soviet Union and became a successful manufacturer of metal plates; Nikaido, finding it difficult to support himself in Japan, returned to the United States and disappeared; Taguchi, who suffered from tuberculosis, was active politically for a time, but was largely independent of the communist movement. Yoshida remained active as an anarcho-syndicalist, but he was wounded in a clash with a group of right-wing nationalists in June 1923, was arrested, and disappeared shortly thereafter.⁴⁶

BOLSHEVISM IN JAPAN

While the Far Eastern Peoples’ Congress was in session, the bolshevists in Japan stepped up the tempo of their propaganda activities. A group centering around Yamakawa, which included Tadokoro Teruaki, Nishi Masao, Ueda Shigeki, and Takahashi Sadaki, began to publish Vanguard (Zenei). Tadokoro set the tone of the new journal in an editorial postscript in the first issue, dated January 1, 1922:

All the pages of the new-born Vanguard must be full of the assertions, demands, and longings of the proletariat. Vanguard openly declares war on the bourgeoisie and its mouthpieces. It analyzes, criticizes, comments upon, and denounces all questions from a completely proletarian viewpoint. All phenomena arising in the capitalist world are taken up by Vanguard for discussion by the proletariat. Vanguard may be injured and fall, but it will stand up again and march on. But Vanguard cannot advance a step without relying upon the main force… Vanguard relies upon the power of the proletariat.⁴⁷

A group of Sakai’s followers, including Ichikawa Shoichi, Sano Fumio, and Aono Suekichi, founded The Proletariat (Musankaikyu) in April. Watanabe Masanosuke and other Marxist radicals in the labor movement began publishing Labor Union (Rodo Kumiai) in June.

Much of the bolshevist writing was directed against the anarcho-syndicalists, especially Osugi, who had resumed publication of Labor Movement in January 1922. (He had interrupted its publication for a second time the preceding June.) Sakai, for example, accused Osugi and his followers of being totally ignorant of the “necessary steps” required by “social realities.” The anarcho-syndicalists answered by criticizing the “realism” of the bolshevists, accusing them of seeking to enslave the people in the name of the “dictatorship of the proletariat.” They continued to attack the policies and practices of the Russian government, and asserted that only anarcho-syndicalists were capable of infusing society with a new spirit. Yet the split between the older bolshevists and the anarcho-syndicalists, though widening, was not quite complete: Yamakawa and Sakai published articles in Labor Movement, and Yamakawa, whose pieces constitute the clearest statement of the views of the bolshevists, was still strongly influenced by anarcho-syndicalism.

The fundamental difference between the bolshevists and the anarcho-syndicalists was to be found in their respective attitudes toward political action. The anarcho-syndicalists never wavered in their negative attitude toward such action, while the position of the bolshevists, especially as expressed by the increasingly influential Yamakawa, was somewhat ambivalent. Yamakawa addressed himself in the February issue of Vanguard to the key political issue facing all left-wing groups in Japan: whether or not the proletarian movement should make use of suffrage and the Diet in its struggle.⁴⁸ This same question had plagued Lenin for many years. Yamakawa’s answer was that the use of such political tools was a matter of strategy and tactics and had to be judged in accordance with conditions in Japanese society. He found it difficult to abandon the anarcho-syndicalist position that, given the nature of Japanese society, political action was a trap for the labor movement. He opposed universal suffrage on the ground that it created “the danger that the proletarian movement would be emasculated by parliamentarianism.” As a communist, he accepted the idea that the class struggle must be a political struggle, but he minimized the usefulness of the Diet, largely because of conditions peculiar to Japan. To Yamakawa, the crucial factor was the oppressive character of Japanese capitalism. He maintained that because the Japanese bourgeoisie had never been revolutionary, as had the bourgeoisie in Europe, what had replaced feudal, aristocratic government in Japan in the nineteenth century was not bourgeois democracy but government by bureaucratic and military cliques. According to Yamakawa’s analysis, Japanese capitalism had developed under the protection of these cliques, and only recently had the Japanese bourgeoisie become independent of them and “positively grasped political power.” He described government by the bourgeoisie as follows:

When the political power of the bourgeoisie was firmly established, Japanese capitalism had already reached the third stage—of imperialism and reaction—under the pressure of the world situation. The psychology of Japanese capitalism at the time that bourgeois political power was established was not that of freedom and democracy, but that of uneasiness and reaction characteristic of the final period of capitalism. It had an aggressive attitude toward the rising proletariat. The form of government that it needed was no longer democracy but the most undisguised type of dictatorship.

Yamakawa held that it would be a mistake to assume that a period of liberalism and democracy similar to that experienced by the advanced capitalist nations would come to Japan: “Whether universal suffrage is effected or not, the Japanese bourgeoisie will certainly get more reactionary and uneasy, and it will no doubt take a more aggressive attitude toward the proletarian movement.”

What then should the proletariat do? When Yamakawa answered that question, it was not without some equivocation. He suggested that for the present the Japanese proletarian movement should not put its faith in parliamentarianism. It should abstain from voting, and instead rely upon extra-parliamentary political actions—strikes and demonstrations. He added this word of caution: “If we are to abstain from voting, we must do so consciously and positively. Abstention will have no value from the standpoint of the class struggle unless it involves a popular movement of positive significance. It is an evasion of the class struggle to avoid voting out of political indifference and unconsciousness. This of course is not proletarian tactics.”⁴⁹

Quite clearly, Yamakawa saw the bourgeoisie as the oppressor of the proletariat. In his view, the political power of the bourgeoisie was firmly established; feudal, aristocratic government had been replaced by capitalist dictatorship. Japan had not passed through a stage of democratic government, nor was it likely to, so long as imperialistic and reactionary capitalists were dominant. There was no reason therefore for the proletariat to put faith in suffrage and the Diet; parliamentarianism would only assist the bourgeoisie. Yamakawa did not venture to devise a specific revolutionary strategy for Japan, but he seemed to imply that the proletariat would “perfect democracy” as part of the socialist revolt against capitalism.

THE FORMATION OF THE JAPANESE COMMUNIST PARTY

After Tokuda and Takase returned to Japan in May, they tried to persuade Yamakawa, Sakai, and the younger and more m ilitant of their followers to form a communist party. They urged that a party be organized in time for recognition by the Fourth Congress of the Comintern, scheduled to convene in November 1922. Yamakawa and Sakai still questioned the feasibility of establishing a political party, but there was strong support for the idea among their younger followers, as well as among members of the defunct Enlightened People’s Communist Party who had been released on bail, and a small number of labor union leaders and members. When Arahata responded affirmatively, Yamakawa and Sakai acquiesced, though they continued to regard the move as premature. Arahata describes the situation in his memoirs:

As a result of the instructions that Tokuda and Takase brought on their return home, the desire to organize a communist party reached the point where it could not be put off for even a day. From the first, Sakai and other older leaders seemed to have taken the cautious position that a propaganda group should be organized to spread communist ideas widely among the labor unions before the formation of a party on a popular basis was begun. In addition, they may have entertained slight misgivings because of Rondo’s recent blunders. This may be why they were [later] criticized for favoring following the masses, which, even at that time, may have dissatisfied most of the inexperienced young comrades. This was natural, for the older veterans, who had survived many years of repression and persecution, were prudent, if not cowardly, about everything, while the younger men, under the illusion that revolution might occur the very next day, wanted to form a party quickly. Inevitably, there were cleavages.⁵⁰

The Japanese Communist Party was formally organized on July 15, 1922, at a secret meeting in Takase’s house in Tokyo. This meeting has come to be regarded as the first party convention, although only a small group was in attendance. Sakai was named party chairman, and Yamakawa, Arahata, Yoshikawa, Hashiura, Takatsu, and Kondo, members of an executive committee. (Tokuda has usually been included in lists of the executive committee members, but according to a recent account by Takase, Kondo was appointed instead of Tokuda. Arahata has also asserted that Tokuda was not on the executive committee.)⁵¹ The group adopted a tentative constitution based upon that of the British Communist Party; in fact, it was disguised to appear to be that of the British Communist Party in case copies should be confiscated by the authorities. The new party pledged “to act positively as a branch of the Comintern and as a leader of the revolutionary movement of the Japanese proletariat.”⁵²

The party membership in these early years rarely exceeded 50 in number.⁵³ It fell heir to much of the factionalism of the radical left-wing movement (a situation that was soon to cause many difficulties), and was, in fact, hardly a party at all, in the sense of a unified organization with an accepted platform and operational tactics. There was little solidarity, and no effective central leadership: the party members continued to work primarily in their own cliques, the most influential of which were the intellectual and publishing circles around Yamakawa and Sakai. Some of the party’s members held important positions in the labor movement and were able to spread communist influence in it. One was the youthful Nosaka, who returned from Russia in the spring of 1922, and was head of the international section of Sodomei (Nihon Rodo Sodomei, or Japan Federation of Labor, was the new name adopted by Yuaikai at its April 1921 convention). Others were Akamatsu, who worked in Sodomei’s research department; Sugiura Keiichi, who headed a communist cell in the Kanto Machine Workers Union; Yamamoto Kenzo, who was a leader in the Tokyo Steel Workers Union; and Tsujii Taminosuke, who was a Sodomei local leader in Kyoto. Perhaps the most effective of the communist labor leaders was Watanabe Masanosuke, who organized the Nankatsu Labor Society, comprising workers employed in small factories in the poorer eastern section of Tokyo.

Since the Japanese Communist Party was organized in secret, there were no public declarations associated with its name. But communists as individuals or members of small cliques actively contributed to various journals, which tended to serve as semi-official organs of the party. Among these were Vanguard and The Proletariat, which were quite similar and were devoted primarily to current affairs, and Studies in Socialism, which was generally more theoretical and concentrated on left-wing ideological developments abroad. In April 1923 these three journals merged to form Red Flag (Sekki), which was more like a true party organ.⁵⁴ Communist labor leaders like Nosaka, Akamatsu, and Tsujii published in such Sodomei journals as Labor and Workers News (Rodosha Shinburi).

YAMAWAKA’S ROLE

Yamakawa continued to be the most influential among the communist writers. His understanding of Marxism, which was matched only by that of Sakai, and his knowledge of European history, especially of the Russian Revolution, helped to place him in the position of leading theorist. His views came the closest to being the equivalent of party dogma. This was certainly true in the case of his treatise “Change of Direction in the Proletarian Movement,” which appeared in the July-August 1922 issue of Vanguard.⁵⁵

In this treatise, Yamakawa called for a transformation of the Japanese proletarian movement from a movement based on the commitment of a small group into one based on the support of the masses. He argued that the Japanese proletarian movement, whose “two aspects” were the socialist movement and the labor movement, had clarified its principles and purified its ideology, but that its isolation from the masses was a high price to pay for this attention to ideology. Furthermore, he deplored what he termed the “passive attitude” of both the socialists and the labor leaders. Conceding that the socialist movement had had to grow in unfavorable circumstances “without parallel in the world,” and that its separation from the masses had been necessary, since the proletariat was under the influence of the capitalists, he nevertheless was harsh in his description of the movement:

Ten or twenty enthusiasts get together, dream about the next day of revolution, and make big talk… At best they would satisfy their “rebellious spirit” by taking “revolutionary action” against a policeman and spending a night under police detention. Although they reject the capitalist system, they actually do not lay even a finger upon it. As long as they adhere to such a passive attitude, they become more isolated from the proletarian masses.

His criticism of the labor movement was in a similar vein: while the vanguard’s attention to the perfection of its ideology was commendable and undoubtedly necessary, it was lamentable that the forerunners now found themselves “apart from the ordinary union members around them and even more so from the masses of the working class.”

In Yamakawa’s judgment, the small group of forerunners that represented the proletarian movement in Japan had already taken “its first step forward” by banding together, and was ready to enter a second stage with a new slogan, “Into the Masses!” He explained what the slogan meant:

We must unmistakably see what the masses actually demand, although we must at the same time keep the final goal of the proletarian movement in sight… Our goal is the destruction of capitalism. We know that any reform short of that can never liberate us. But if the proletarian masses demand the improvement of their immediate daily life, our present movement must be based on this popular demand… If the proletarian masses now demand only an increase by 10 sen a day in their wages instead of control of production, our present movement must be based on this concrete demand.

“In other words,” he asserted, “our movement must become more practical.”

Yamakawa made it clear that the proletarian movement must also reject its “passive attitude” toward bourgeois government. “On any front where capitalism expresses authority and control, we must move on… to an attitude of positive struggle,” he stated. “The political front is the place where the authority and control of the bourgeoisie find their most naked and direct expression… To simply reject the existing system of bourgeois politics ideologically cannot bring the slightest injury to it. If the proletariat truly rejects bourgeois politics, it must not be simply passive… It must put up proletarian politics against bourgeois politics.” He did not specifically relate “proletarian politics” to suffrage or to political parties, however, though he did point out that some of the demands of the labor unions—for instance, their demands for recognition of “Workers’ and Peasants’ Russia,” for “rights of living,” and for settlement of the unemployment problem—were demands on the state and thus represented an existing political movement of the proletariat.

Yamakawa denied that his “change of direction” involved “a fall from the principle of revolution to reformism.” It was not a question of whether or not the demands of the masses were acceded to, he insisted, but of whether or not those demands were used to build a “concrete” movement for the achievement of the final goal. However, in concluding his treatise, he warned that if the small vanguard that had “taken the first step with so much difficulty,” were to take its ideology to the masses and allow itself to become “dissolved,” that would indeed be “a fall from revolutionary principles to reformism… and opportunism,” instead of a step forward.

The official lore of the Japanese Communist Party holds that Yamakawa wrote this treatise on party orders in order to explain the two slogans “Advance into the Masses” and “Advance Toward a Political Struggle,” which had been adopted by the Third Congress of the Comintern in 1921.⁵⁶ Yamakawa has denied that the party instructed him to prepare it, and Arahata, in his memoirs, supports Yamakawa’s contention.⁵⁷ The period of time that elapsed between the inaugural meeting of the party (July 15) and the publication of the treatise (July-August Vanguard) also tends to support Yamakawa.⁵⁸ However, it would be foolhardy to suppose that Yamakawa was not influenced by Comintern declarations, especially those that reinforced his deep concern about the course of development of the Japanese proletarian movement. He wrote later that he had the impression that the movement was largely one in which “those defeated in the competition of capitalist society, as well as stragglers, cynics, and malcontents, flocked together to reassure themselves with boastful words.”⁵⁹ Yamakawa strongly opposed this tendency, and like Osugi, he attacked the intellectual’s penchant for abstract theory. His emphasis upon the need to link the socialist and labor movements with the everyday demands of the masses influenced radical and moderate leftists alike. He was particularly anxious to free labor leaders from the hold of anarcho-syndicalism, and therefore began to put more emphasis on the political role to be played by the proletariat. He was not clear, however, about the nature of that role, as is evidenced by the fact that he continued to advise the proletariat to put no faith in parliamentarianism and to abstain from voting, should universal suffrage become a reality.

As for the Communist Party, Yamakawa thought that it should seek to develop a mass base by supporting the workers’ demands, at the same time imposing its leadership on the proletarian movement as the class consciousness of the working class deepened. The natural culmination of this process would be the revolution, led by the party vanguard, but based on a solid foundation of mass support.

Yamakawa was somewhat clearer concerning strategy in his article “The United Front of the Proletariat,” which appeared in the August issue of Emancipation.⁶⁰ In this article, his thinking had quite clearly been influenced by general Comintern instructions regarding the need to establish a united front among labor unions. (The executive committee of the Comintern had issued a set of 25 theses on “The United Workers’ Front” in December 1921, and the central executive committee of the Profintem followed with a declaration on united fronts in January 1922. In what was the equivalent of the Russian bolshevik policy of “unity from below,” these documents exhorted communist parties “to support the slogan of a united workers’ front and take the initiative in this question into their hands,” while maintaining their own organizational and ideological independence as well as the right “to express their opinions about the policy of all organizations of the working class without exception.”)⁶¹ Yamakawa was aware of the content of the Comintern and Profintem declarations; in fact, a summary of them had been translated into Japanese by Nishi Masao, and was published in the July 1922 issue of Studies in Socialism.

In the Emancipation article, Yamakawa urged the establishment of a united front in the labor movement as a means of mobilizing the working masses and developing their class consciousness. He insisted that this would not lead necessarily to compromise and alliance “with reformist, social democratic, or bureaucratic leaders of labor unions.” He argued that the Communist Party could and should preserve its independence, and explicitly called on it to criticize the policies of “reformist and bureaucratic labor leaders.” However, what Yamakawa was asking for would have been difficult, if not impossible, to achieve under almost any conditions, let alone the existing situation in the Japanese labor movement: hostility among the leaders and growing apathy among the workers were the hallmarks of the day.⁶²

Yamakawa’s ideas were the most influential ideological force in the newly established Japanese Communist Party, but they were often largely hortatory and not very helpful in developing a specific program for political action. His “Change of Direction” was hardly more than a call to arms for intellectuals. Yamakawa was more interested in spreading ideas than he was in political activity. Even his suggestion that the party reflect the actual demands of the masses and build on them was not thought out in terms of organizational techniques, nor did he indicate how the party was to implement his call for a united front from below. He appeared to believe that the dissemination of ideas would develop class consciousness in labor, and once that was achieved, labor would have sufficient strength to change Japanese so­ ciety. He felt that labor would generate the revolution on its own. In his view, the bourgeoisie already held political power, and the struggle of labor was a struggle against the bourgeoisie. Therefore, Japan was on the verge of a socialist revolution against capitalism—a revolution in which democracy would be perfected as part of the revolutionary process. Yamakawa did not seem to understand the role to be played by the Japanese Communist Party in mobilizing the masses for effective action; he regarded the party as an intellectual vanguard for spreading the truths of Marxism-Leninism, but not as an active political agent. Moreover, since he had experienced the repressive power of the state and was fearful of it, he tended to be cautious. Because of these ideas and attitudes—whether they fit the actual situation in Japan or not—Yamakawa was hardly the kind of leader that the Comintern would support.