Political dissidence in the Empire of Japan

After government persecution pushed the socialist and anti-war movements in Japan underground, Gudō visited Kōtoku Shūsui in Tokyo in 1908. He purchased equipment that would be used to set up a secret press in his temple. Gudō used the printing equipment to turn out popular socialist tracts and pamphlets, some of which were his own works.[8] Uchiyama was executed, along with Kotoku, for their involvement with the attempted assassination of Emperor Meiji.^[9] Uchiyama's priesthood was revoked when he was convicted, but it was restored in 1993 by the Soto Zen sect.^[10]

Another Soto Zen critic of Japanese imperialism and militarism was Inoue Shūten. He is known for advocating Buddhist pacifism and for criticizing D.T. Suzuki's stance of Buddhism and war.^[11]

Among other notable individuals were the Zen masters Kōdō Sawaki, who expressed sentiments critical of war and its futility,^[12] and Sawaki's student Taisen Deshimaru, who was jailed for aiding the resistance efforts of Bangka Islanders against Japanese colonialists.^[13]

Attempted assassination of Hirohito

The Osaka Incident sought to overthrow the Meiji government via simultaneous open revolt in various parts of Japan.[18]^{: 232–233} Part of the plan also included assisting Korean independence activists in a coup against conservatives in the Korean monarchy.^[18]: 232 Before the plan was able to be implemented, the police arrested the conspirators and confiscated the weapons before they could leave Japan for Korea.^[19] Other participants in the plan included Oi Kentaro, another major figure of the Freedom and People's Rights Movement.^[20] The outlaw brotherhood Gen'yōsha was also a major participant.^[18]: 44

Liberal and moderate resistance

There were some critics of militarism among more mainstream socio-political circles, such as classical liberals and moderate conservatives.

The American West Coast, which had a large Japanese population, was a haven for Japanese political dissidents in the early 20th century. Many were refugees from the "Freedom and People's Rights Movement." San Francisco, and Oakland in particular, were teeming with such people. In 1907, an open letter addressed to "Mutsuhito, Emperor of Japan from Anarchists-Terrorists" was posted at the Consulate General of Japan in San Francisco. As Mutsuhito was the personal name of Emperor Meiji, and it was considered rude to call the emperor by his personal name, this was quite an insult. The letter began with, "We demand the implementation of the principle of assassination." The letter also claimed that the emperor was not a god. The letter concluded with, "Hey you, miserable Mutsuhito. Bombs are all around you, about to explode. Farewell to you." This incident changed the Japanese government's attitude of leftist movements.

Early Shōwa era and the rise of militarism

Ikuo Oyama

Ikuo Oyama was a member of the left-leaning Labour-Farmer Party, which advocated universal suffrage, minimum wages, and women's rights. Yamamoto Senji, a colleague of his, was assassinated on February 29, on the same day as he had presented testimony in the Diet regarding torture of prisoners. The Labour-Farmer Party was banned in 1928 due to accusations of having links to communism. Oyama fled Japan in 1933 to the United States as a result. He got a job at Northwestern University at its library and political science department. During his exile, he worked closely with the U.S. Government against the Empire of Japan. Oyama happily shook hands with Zhou Enlai, who fought the Japanese in the Second Sino-Japanese War. Oyama was given a Stalin Award prize on December 20, 1951. However, his colleagues begged him not to accept the award for fear that he would become a Soviet puppet. Some of his oldest friends abandoned him when he accepted it.^{[citation needed]}

Modern girls

The Salon de thé François was a western-style café established in Kyoto on 1934 by Shoichi Tateno, who participated in labour movements, and anti-war movements.^[25] The cafe was a secret source of funds for the then-banned Japanese Communist Party.^[26] The anti-fascist newspaper Doyōbi was edited and distributed from the café.^[27]

The Takigawa Incident

In March 1933, the Japanese parliament attempted to control various education groups and circles. The Interior Ministry banned two textbooks on criminal laws written by Takigawa Yukitoki of Kyoto Imperial University. The following month, Konishi Shigenao, president of Kyoto University, was requested to dismiss Professor Takigawa. Konishi rejected the request, but due to pressure from the military and nationalist groups, Takigawa was fired from the university. This led to all 39 faculty members of Kyoto Imperial University's law faculty resigning. Furthermore, students boycotted classes and communist sympathizers organized protests. The Ministry of Education was able to suppress the movement by firing Konishi. In addition to this attempt by the Japanese government to control educational institutions, during the term of the education minister, Ichirō Hatoyama, a number of elementary school teachers were also dismissed for having what were considered "dangerous thoughts".^[28]

Dissidence during World War II

Japanese working with the Chinese resistance

Kaji Wataru was a Japanese proletarian writer who lived in Shanghai. His wife, Yuki Ikeda, suffered through torture at the hands of the Imperial Japanese. She fled Japan when she was very young, working as a ballroom dancer in Shanghai to earn a living. They were friends with Chinese cultural leader Guo Moruo. Kaji and Yuki would escape Shanghai when the Japanese invaded the city. Kaji, along with his wife, were involved with the re-education of captured Japanese soldiers for the Kuomintang in Chongqing during the Second Sino-Japanese War.^[29]

His relationship with Chiang Kai-shek was troubled due to his anticommunism.^[30] Kaji would work with the Office of Strategic Services in the later stages of the war.^[31]

Sanzō Nosaka, a founder of the Japanese Communist Party, worked with the Chinese Communists in Yan'an during the Second Sino-Japanese war. He was in charge of the re-education of captured Japanese troops. Japanese Intelligence in China were desperate to eliminate him, but they always failed in their attempts. Sanzo went by the name "Susumu Okano" during the war.^[32] Today, Sanzō Nosaka is considered a disgraced figure to the Japanese Communist Party, when it was discovered that he falsely accused Kenzō Yamamoto, a Japanese communist, of spying for Japan.^[33] Joseph Stalin executed Yamamoto in 1939.^[34]

Sato Takeo was a Japanese doctor who was a member of Norman Bethune's medical team in the Second-Sino Japanese War. Norman's team was responsible for giving medical care to soldiers of the Chinese Eighth Route Army.^[35]

Japanese working with the United States

Eitaro Ishigaki was an issei painter who immigrated to America from Taiji, Wakayama, in Japan. At the outbreak of the Second Sino-Japanese War, and the Pacific War, he painted anti-war, and anti-fascist artwork.^[38] His painting Man on the Horse (1932) depicted a plain-clothed Chinese guerrilla confronting the Japanese army, heavily equipped with airplanes and warships. It became the cover of New Masses, an American communist journal. Flight (1937) was a painting that depicted two Chinese women escaping Japanese bombing, running with three children past one man lying dead on the ground.^[39] During the war, he worked for the United States Office of War Information along with his wife, Ayako.^[40]

Yasuo Kuniyoshi was an issei (first-generation Japanese immigrant) anti-fascist painter based in New York. In 1942, he raised funds for the United China Relief to provide humanitarian aid to China when it was still at war with Japan.^[41] Time magazine ran an article featuring Yasuo Kuniyoshi, George Grosz, a German anti-Nazi painter, and Jon Corbino, an Italian painter, standing behind large unflattering caricatures of Hirohito, Hitler, and Mussolini.^[42] Yasuo Kuniyoshi showed opposition to Tsuguharu Foujita's art show at the Kennedy Galleries. During WWII, Tsuguharu Foujita painted propaganda artwork for the Empire of Japan. Yasuo called Foujita a fascist, an imperialist, and an expansionist.^[43] Yasuo Kuniyoshi would work for the Office of War Information during WWII, creating artwork that depicted atrocities committed by the Empire of Japan, even though he was himself labeled an "enemy alien" in the aftermath of Pearl Harbor.^[44]

Japanese working with the British

Richard Sorge was a Soviet military intelligence officer who conducted surveillance in both Germany and Japan, working under the identity of a Japanese correspondent for the German newspaper Frankfurter Zeitung. He arrived in Yokohama in 1933 and recruited two journalists: Asahi Shimbun journalist Hotsumi Ozaki, who wanted successful communist revolutions in both China and Japan;^[49] and Yotoku Miyagi in 1932 who translated Japanese newspaper articles and reports into English and created a diverse network of informants.

In 1941, he relayed to the Soviet Union that Prime minister

Pacifism was one of the many ideologies targeted by the Tokko.

Anti-fascist bulletins

The journalist Kiryū Yūyū published an anti-fascist bulletin, Tazan no ishi, but it was heavily censored and ceased publication with Kiryū's death at the end of 1941.

A lawyer named Masaki Hiroshi had more success with his independent bulletin called Chikaki yori. Masaki's main technique against the censors was simply masking his critiques of the government in thinly veiled sarcasm. This was apparently unnoticed by the censors, and he was able to continue publishing fierce attacks on the government through the end of the war. His magazine had many intellectual readers such as Hasegawa Nyozekan, Hyakken Uchida, Rash Behari Bose and Saneatsu Mushanokōji. After the war, Masaki became an idiosyncratic defense lawyer, successfully forcing many recognitions of police malpractice at great risk to his life.

A lesser known bulletin was Kojin konjin, a monthly critique of the army published by the humorist Ubukata Toshirō. Again, the use of satire without explicit call to political action allowed Ubukata to avoid prosecution through the end of the war, although two issues were banned. He ceased publication in 1968.^[53]

A Diary of Darkness

Kiyosawa Kiyoshi was an American-educated commentator on politics and foreign affairs who lived in a time when Japanese militarists rose to power. He wrote a diary as notes for a history of the war, but it soon became a refuge for him to criticize the Japanese government, and to express opinions he had to repress publicly. It chronicles growing bureaucratic control over everything from the press to people's clothing. Kiyosawa showed scorn towards Tojo and Koiso, lamenting the rise of hysterical propaganda, and related his own and his friends' struggles to avoid arrest. He also recorded the increasing poverty, crime, and disorder, tracing the gradual disintegration of Japan's war effort and the looming certainty of defeat. His diary was published under the name A Diary of Darkness: The Wartime Diary of Kiyosawa Kiyoshi, in 1948. It is today regarded as a classic.^[54]

Antiwar film

Fumio Kamei was arrested under the Peace Preservation Law after releasing two state-funded documentaries that, while purporting to be celebrations of Japan and its army, portrayed civilian victims of Japanese war crimes and mocked the "sacred war" message and "beautiful Japan" propaganda. He was released after the war and continued to make anti-establishment films.

Nisei involvement in Japanese resistance

Tsunesaburo Makiguchi, founder of the japanese controversial Soka Gakkai organization, is sometimes considered as a political dissident.^{[60]: 14–15}

As the war progressed, the Japanese government ordered that a shinto talisman (object of devotion) should be placed in every home and temple. Makiguchi and the Soka Gakkai leadership openly refused. Makiguchi, his disciple Josei Toda, and 19 other leaders of the Soka Kyoiku Gakkai (Value Creating Education Society) were arrested on July 6, 1943, on charges of breaking the Peace Preservation Law and lèse-majesté: for "denying the Emperor's divinity" and "slandering" the Ise Grand Shrine.

On November 18, 1944, Makiguchi died of malnutrition in prison, at the age of 73.

Conservative, centrist, and classical liberal resistance

Saitō Takao caused a stir in his time for delivering a fiery speech against the Sino-Japanese War, leading to his expulsion from the Diet.^[61] Kan Abe, the paternal grandfather of later Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, was elected to the Diet in 1942 on an anti-Hideki Tojo platform along with future Prime Minister Takeo Miki, who also secured election to the Diet in 1942 on an anti-Tojo platform through mutual assistance with Abe.^[62] Another future prime minister who opposed militarism was Tanzan Ishibashi, who spearheaded numerous articles and organisations before and during the war that opposed Japanese colonialism and illiberal authoritarian policies, being aided in his efforts by thinkers such as Kiyoshi Kiyosawa and Kisaburo Yokota.^[63]

See also

• Japanese in the Chinese resistance to the Empire of Japan
• Japanese Resistance to the Imperial House of Japan
• Dissent in the Armed Forces of the Empire of Japan
• Relations between Japanese Revolutionaries and the Comintern and the Soviet Union
• List of Japanese dissidents in Imperial Japan
• Assassination attempts on Hirohito
• Popular Front Incident
• Japanese American service in World War II
• German resistance to Nazism
• Italian resistance

References