Sanzo Nosaka
Encyclopedia
was the co-founder of the Japanese Communist Party
(JCP) in 1922. He co-founded the party in 1922 but was much later expelled from it after being indicted on charges of being an informant for the Soviets. He was outspoken about Chinese
Communism and Mao Zedong
, and often argued with Japanese Prime Minister
Shigeru Yoshida
over political matters.
Nosaka joined the faculty of Keio University
, and was one of many prominent communist intellectuals active in Japanese academic institutions in his time. He was notable for organizing riots. In 1958 Nosaka became Chairman of the JCP, a position he held until retirement at the age of 90, after which he was declared Honorary Chairman. He was one of the main theoreticians of the JCP, and professed a desire to work towards a communist government through peaceful means. Outside of the Party, Nosaka was generally well-liked for his gentle demeanor, good manners, and conservative sense of style, "just like a British gentleman". He was widely idolized among left-wing intellectuals before the fall of the USSR exposed unsavory aspects of his relationship with Stalin's regime.
Nosaka was deported from Britain in 1921, and travelled to the newly formed Soviet Union
. In Russia, with the help of friendly contacts in the communist hierarchy, Nosaka became very influential within the Communist Party. Nosaka was suspected of being either a British or Japanese agent; but, because of of his contacts among high-ranking Finnish and Russian leaders, Nosaka was never purged.
Nosaka returned to Japan and helped to found the Japanese Communist Party in 1922. After returning to Japan, Nosaka worked as a trade unionist and editor of the JPA's official newspaper, Musansha Shimbun. Although he was a confirmed communist, Nosaka supported the Japanese imperial family. He advised Joseph Stalin
to replace Emperor Hirohito
with Crown Prince Akihito
if Soviet forces were ever able to occupy Japan.
Because of his political agitation, Nosaka (like many communists in Japan) was arrested twice, interrogated, and tortured by the Japanese kempeitai
, but he was released after short periods both times. The short lengths of Nosaka's arrests aroused suspicion among other Japanese communists that Nosaka had given important information to the Japanese secret police, but these suspicions were never acted upon.
Nosaka was first arrested in 1923, and released within a year. After his release, Nosaka became more active within the Japanese labour movement. In March 1928, the Japanese police began a campaign to harass and destroy the JCP, beginning with the May 15 Incident
. After his second arrest, in 1929, Nosaka spent two years in jail. He was released in 1931, on the grounds of "illness", and put on probation.
as an executive member. Most of his colleagues active in the JCP, who were not able to go abroad, were subsequently arrested by the kempeitai.
One of Nosaka's friends was Kenzo Yamamoto, a "legendary" Japanese spy who had been in the Soviet Union with his common-law wife, Matsu, since 1928. Yamamoto had a reputation as a great womanizer; and, when rumors circulated that Yamamoto was engaged in an affair with Nosaka's wife, Ryu, Nosaka wrote a confidential letter to the KGB
(dated February 22, 1939) indicating that he believed Yamamoto and his wife were likely Japanese spies in the pay of the kempeitai
. On Stalin's orders, both Yamamoto and Matsu were arrested as spies. A firing squad executed Yamamoto, and Matsu died in a gulag. Both Yamamoto and his wife were formally rehabilitated after their deaths by Khrushchev on May 23, 1956, recognizing the lack of any evidence that the two were actually spies. In his autobiography, Nosaka later wrote that he had tried to save Yamamoto's life.
In 1934, Nosaka secretly traveled to the West Coast of the United States, where he became involved in intelligence work on behalf of the Comintern against the Imperial Japanese government. Nosaka's activities included disseminating information to communists still active in Japan, infiltrating and making contact with the Japanese communities active in the United States, and establishing a number of communist front organizations in Seattle, Los Angeles
, and other cities on the West Coast. Nosaka worked to gain funding from the Comintern International Liaison Department for his activities, and attempted to have other Japanese Communists secretly relocated to America. He planned to recruit American and Japanese agents, and to send them to Yokohama
to establish a shop which would then operate as a communist front organization. Because the records from this period are incomplete, historians cannot be certain to what extent Nosaka's efforts in America were successful. Nosaka worked as a Comintern agent in America until 1938, when he returned to Moscow. In 1940, the Comintern ordered Nosaka to to aid communist forces in China.
, Nosaka resided at the Chinese Red Army base in Yan'an
, in Shaanxi
Province, where he headed the Japanese People's Emancipation League (JPEL). The JPEL engaged in the "re-education" of numerous Japanese prisoners of war and created propaganda
on behalf of the Chinese Communists. Japanese troops captured by the Communists would then be used by the Communists in various civilian and military roles, and were especially valued because their level of technical expertise was generally greater than that of most Chinese soldiers. "Re-educated" Japanese troops were instrumental in a number of Communist victories after World War II, including the 1949 Pingjin Campaign
, in which most of the artillery fielded by the Communists was manned by Japanese gunners. In general, the method of "re-education" devised and employed by Nosaka was highly effective.
Initially, the CCP was a purely guerilla force without the facilities to imprison POWs. The policy of the Eighth Route Army
was to interrogate prisoners and then release them. After reports surfaced that the Japanese were punishing Japanese prisoners after they returned, the CCP policy gradually changed to one of retraining POWs, and the Red Army began to implement this policy after Nosaka arrived in Yan'an.
By the time of its war with China, the Japanese army was educating its officers and common soldiers to die rather than surrender. Injured soldiers were easily captured, and made up the bulk of CCP POWs. Captured Japanese believed that they would be killed, but were instead fed and clothed, and began to develop a rapport with their captors.
Besides Sanzo's regimen of psychological indoctrination, there were several reasons that Japanese POWs chose to join the CCP. CCP guerillas took care to develop an early rapport with their prisoners by treating them well. Captured Japanese soldiers were generally moved when they learned of the terrible conditions the war inflicted on the Chinese people, a perspective that they had not been exposed to before their capture. Closer to the end of the war, the growing possibility of defeat created anxiety among the Japanese army. Because of the Japanese military's policy to never surrender, Japanese soldiers never received any training about how to act as POWs: upon returning to Japanese ranks, many would face disgrace, punishment, and starvation. Many Japanese soldiers committed suicide after their capture, but those who chose to live generally came to sympathize with the Chinese. The Japanese army was aware of the existence of Nosaka's Communist Japanese soldiers, and feared the phenomena out of proportion to their actual threat.
An American who met Nosaka in Yan'an wrote that Nosaka was "the Japanese national who undoubtedly contributed the most in the war against Japanese militarism". The Japanese army attempted to use numerous spies and assassins in order to eliminate Nosaka (who used the name "Okano Susumu" for the duration of the war), but were unsuccessful. Nosaka maintained a network of agents throughout Japanese-occupied China, which he used to gather information about events within the Japanese Empire and about the war.
Nosaka's Japanese "prisoner converts" fought freely for the Chinese communists once their re-education was complete. In Yan'an, the Japanese lived normal lives without guards, owned a cooperative store, and printed their own news bulletins and propaganda. Visiting American officers used Nosaka's Japanese soldiers to critique and improve their own methods of anti-Japanese psychological warfare.
Shortly after Japan's surrender in 1945, Nosaka began to march with approximately 200 other Japanese Communists across northern China. They arrived at the coast after picking up hundreds of other Japanese along the way. Demanding immediate repatriation from the first Americans they found, they declared their intention to return and work "for the democratization of Japan and the establishment of peace in the Far East". Although there are no records of the exact number of Japanese "re-educated" by Nosaka who elected to remain in Communist-occupied China after 1945, it is estimated that "the number must have been considerable".
Nosaka's contributions to the CCP were not forgotten by the leaders he had worked with in China. In 1965, on the twentieth anniversary of Japan's defeat, Nosaka was publicly praised by name by the highest-ranking general in China at the time, Lin Biao
.
, and enjoyed the informal recognition as a "roving ambassador" for Japanese communism. After his return to Japan, Nosaka worked to organize Japanese communists. In the general elections of 1946, he and four other members of the JCP were elected to the Diet
, and the party received 4% of the popular vote. The JCP made progress infiltrating Japanese labour associations and socialist parties; and, in the general elections of 1949, the JCP gained 10% of the popular vote. In May 1950, shortly after the United States entered the Korean War
with the support of the United Nations
, the Cominform
criticized the JCP's gradualist policies, and directed the party to actively disrupt the American occupation.
Throughout the 1950s, Nosaka's efforts were challenged by American occupying forces, as part of a broader effort to suppress leftists. In 1949, a Communist-led general railroad strike led to several attempted derailments, and Sadanori Shimoyama, the president of Japanese National Railways
, was found lying across a set of train tracks in Tokyo with his arms and legs cut off. These and other incidents of "terrorism" were received poorly by the Japanese public, and cost the JCP most of its popular support. The American commander of occupied Japan, Douglas MacArthur
, declined to to outlaw the JCP, but held the Party's leaders responsible, and, in June 1950, ejected Nosaka and the other Communist legislators who were elected in 1946. After losing his seat in the Diet, Nosaka disappeared from public life and was forced to work underground.
After Nosaka went underground, the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency
reported that he had temporarily returned to China. His strategy of "peaceful revolution" was criticized by the Cominform, and the Party temporarily endorsed violent revolution until 1952. After working covertly for several years, Nosaka re-emerged in 1955 as the First Secretary of the JCP. Nosaka was briefly arrested after he resurfaced, but quickly released.
In 1958, Nosaka became the chairman of the Central Committee. He played a part in organizing a series of riots that lasted from May–June 1960 in opposition to the US-Japan Security Treaty
. These demonstrations forced the American President, Dwight Eisenhower, to cancel a visit to Japan, and forced the Japanese Premier, Nobusuke Kishi
, to resign, but failed to achieve their main goal of seriously disrupting US-Japan relations. In Japanese public opinion, the demonstrations were received as a national embarrassment, and the JCP received only 3% of the popular vote in the 1960 elections.
The US-Japan Security Treaty was opposed by both ultra-rightists as well as ultra-leftists. In an attempt to stop the bill from being passed, an ultra-nationalist member of the Diet, Otoya Yamaguchi
, rushed the stage and stabbed a wakizashi
into the stomach of the leader of the Japanese Socialist Party
, Inejiro Asanuma
, as Asanuma was giving a speech in support of the bill. After his arrest, Yamaguchi told police that he had hoped to assassinate Nosaka as well.
Nosaka attempted to keep the JCP neutral during the Sino-Soviet Split
of the 1960s, though the CIA interpreted that Sanzo's party remained somewhat more friendly with the Chinese. On Nosaka's seventieth birthday party in 1962, Nosaka received extravagant praise from Beijing. Deng Xiaoping
praised Nosaka as an "outstanding fighter of the Japanese people and comrade-in-arms of the Chinese people". The Soviets sent Nosaka a matter-of-fact confirmation of his status within the JCP, and within a month sent the JCP another letter scolding the Party for not adequately supporting Soviet positions. The Soviets' cool praise of Nosaka was consistent with earlier Cominform
criticism of Nosaka's political theories, which advocated a peaceful transition into communism.
After his re-entry into public life in 1955, Nosaka was elected as a member of the House of Councilors, a post that he held until 1977. Nosaka remained the JCP's chairman until 1982, when he stepped down at the age of 90, taking the role of "Honorary Chairman".
. Among these documents was the letter that Nosaka had written in 1939 denouncing Yamamoto and his wife.
The revelations of Nosaka's involvement in Yamamoto's death shocked the JCP, already reduced to six seats in the Diet after the 1991 elections. Akahata ("Red Flag"), a prominent communist newspaper, sent a team of journalists to Moscow to investigate the allegations, and they confirmed the authenticity of the documents.
After the allegations against Nosaka became widely known, he checked himself into Yoyogi Hospital in Tokyo (a common tactic of Japanese politicians facing scandal). When a team of investigators sent by the JCP visited him, Nosaka confessed that the letter was his, but refused to discuss the matter further. The JCP ordered Nosaka to be present for a general Party meeting on December 27, 1992. After some deliberation, the party that Nosaka helped found expelled him by unanimous vote. Nosaka, when asked if he had any reply to the charges against him, would only state: "I have nothing to say".
One year after being expelled from the Japanese Communist Party, Sanzo Nosaka died in his home of old age. He was 101 years old.
Japanese Communist Party
The Japanese Communist Party is a left-wing political party in Japan.The JCP advocates the establishment of a society based on socialism, democracy and peace, and opposition to militarism...
(JCP) in 1922. He co-founded the party in 1922 but was much later expelled from it after being indicted on charges of being an informant for the Soviets. He was outspoken about Chinese
People's Republic of China
China , officially the People's Republic of China , is the most populous country in the world, with over 1.3 billion citizens. Located in East Asia, the country covers approximately 9.6 million square kilometres...
Communism and Mao Zedong
Mao Zedong
Mao Zedong, also transliterated as Mao Tse-tung , and commonly referred to as Chairman Mao , was a Chinese Communist revolutionary, guerrilla warfare strategist, Marxist political philosopher, and leader of the Chinese Revolution...
, and often argued with Japanese Prime Minister
Prime Minister of Japan
The is the head of government of Japan. He is appointed by the Emperor of Japan after being designated by the Diet from among its members, and must enjoy the confidence of the House of Representatives to remain in office...
Shigeru Yoshida
Shigeru Yoshida
, KCVO was a Japanese diplomat and politician who served as Prime Minister of Japan from 1946 to 1947 and from 1948 to 1954.-Early life:...
over political matters.
Nosaka joined the faculty of Keio University
Keio University
,abbreviated as Keio or Keidai , is a Japanese university located in Minato, Tokyo. It is known as the oldest institute of higher education in Japan. Founder Fukuzawa Yukichi originally established it as a school for Western studies in 1858 in Edo . It has eleven campuses in Tokyo and Kanagawa...
, and was one of many prominent communist intellectuals active in Japanese academic institutions in his time. He was notable for organizing riots. In 1958 Nosaka became Chairman of the JCP, a position he held until retirement at the age of 90, after which he was declared Honorary Chairman. He was one of the main theoreticians of the JCP, and professed a desire to work towards a communist government through peaceful means. Outside of the Party, Nosaka was generally well-liked for his gentle demeanor, good manners, and conservative sense of style, "just like a British gentleman". He was widely idolized among left-wing intellectuals before the fall of the USSR exposed unsavory aspects of his relationship with Stalin's regime.
Early life
As a young man, Nosaka first became interested in communism after the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution, the same year that he graduated from Keio University. As a student he had joined the labour organization "Yuaikai" ("The Friendly Society"), founded by Suzuki Bunji. After his graduation, he studied political economy abroad, at London University. Like many British intellectuals at the time, Nosaka was introduced to Marxism, was indoctrinated, and became a confirmed communist at the university. While in London he became active in communist circles, and helped to found the British Communist Party in 1920.Nosaka was deported from Britain in 1921, and travelled to the newly formed Soviet Union
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
. In Russia, with the help of friendly contacts in the communist hierarchy, Nosaka became very influential within the Communist Party. Nosaka was suspected of being either a British or Japanese agent; but, because of of his contacts among high-ranking Finnish and Russian leaders, Nosaka was never purged.
Nosaka returned to Japan and helped to found the Japanese Communist Party in 1922. After returning to Japan, Nosaka worked as a trade unionist and editor of the JPA's official newspaper, Musansha Shimbun. Although he was a confirmed communist, Nosaka supported the Japanese imperial family. He advised Joseph Stalin
Joseph Stalin
Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin was the Premier of the Soviet Union from 6 May 1941 to 5 March 1953. He was among the Bolshevik revolutionaries who brought about the October Revolution and had held the position of first General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union's Central Committee...
to replace Emperor Hirohito
Hirohito
, posthumously in Japan officially called Emperor Shōwa or , was the 124th Emperor of Japan according to the traditional order, reigning from December 25, 1926, until his death in 1989. Although better known outside of Japan by his personal name Hirohito, in Japan he is now referred to...
with Crown Prince Akihito
Akihito
is the current , the 125th emperor of his line according to Japan's traditional order of succession. He acceded to the throne in 1989.-Name:In Japan, the emperor is never referred to by his given name, but rather is referred to as "His Imperial Majesty the Emperor" which may be shortened to . In...
if Soviet forces were ever able to occupy Japan.
Because of his political agitation, Nosaka (like many communists in Japan) was arrested twice, interrogated, and tortured by the Japanese kempeitai
Kempeitai
The was the military police arm of the Imperial Japanese Army from 1881 to 1945. It was not an English-style military police, but a French-style gendarmerie...
, but he was released after short periods both times. The short lengths of Nosaka's arrests aroused suspicion among other Japanese communists that Nosaka had given important information to the Japanese secret police, but these suspicions were never acted upon.
Nosaka was first arrested in 1923, and released within a year. After his release, Nosaka became more active within the Japanese labour movement. In March 1928, the Japanese police began a campaign to harass and destroy the JCP, beginning with the May 15 Incident
May 15 Incident
The ' was an attempted coup d'état in Japan, on May 15, 1932, launched by radical elements of the Imperial Japanese Navy, aided by cadets in the Imperial Japanese Army and civilian remnants of the League of Blood Incident. Prime Minister Inukai Tsuyoshi was assassinated by 11 young naval officers...
. After his second arrest, in 1929, Nosaka spent two years in jail. He was released in 1931, on the grounds of "illness", and put on probation.
Comintern agent
Upon his release, Nosaka secretly returned to the Soviet Union as a representative of the JCP, where he served in the CominternComintern
The Communist International, abbreviated as Comintern, also known as the Third International, was an international communist organization initiated in Moscow during March 1919...
as an executive member. Most of his colleagues active in the JCP, who were not able to go abroad, were subsequently arrested by the kempeitai.
One of Nosaka's friends was Kenzo Yamamoto, a "legendary" Japanese spy who had been in the Soviet Union with his common-law wife, Matsu, since 1928. Yamamoto had a reputation as a great womanizer; and, when rumors circulated that Yamamoto was engaged in an affair with Nosaka's wife, Ryu, Nosaka wrote a confidential letter to the KGB
KGB
The KGB was the commonly used acronym for the . It was the national security agency of the Soviet Union from 1954 until 1991, and was the premier internal security, intelligence, and secret police organization during that time.The State Security Agency of the Republic of Belarus currently uses the...
(dated February 22, 1939) indicating that he believed Yamamoto and his wife were likely Japanese spies in the pay of the kempeitai
Kempeitai
The was the military police arm of the Imperial Japanese Army from 1881 to 1945. It was not an English-style military police, but a French-style gendarmerie...
. On Stalin's orders, both Yamamoto and Matsu were arrested as spies. A firing squad executed Yamamoto, and Matsu died in a gulag. Both Yamamoto and his wife were formally rehabilitated after their deaths by Khrushchev on May 23, 1956, recognizing the lack of any evidence that the two were actually spies. In his autobiography, Nosaka later wrote that he had tried to save Yamamoto's life.
In 1934, Nosaka secretly traveled to the West Coast of the United States, where he became involved in intelligence work on behalf of the Comintern against the Imperial Japanese government. Nosaka's activities included disseminating information to communists still active in Japan, infiltrating and making contact with the Japanese communities active in the United States, and establishing a number of communist front organizations in Seattle, Los Angeles
Los Ángeles
Los Ángeles is the capital of the province of Biobío, in the commune of the same name, in Region VIII , in the center-south of Chile. It is located between the Laja and Biobío rivers. The population is 123,445 inhabitants...
, and other cities on the West Coast. Nosaka worked to gain funding from the Comintern International Liaison Department for his activities, and attempted to have other Japanese Communists secretly relocated to America. He planned to recruit American and Japanese agents, and to send them to Yokohama
Yokohama
is the capital city of Kanagawa Prefecture and the second largest city in Japan by population after Tokyo and most populous municipality of Japan. It lies on Tokyo Bay, south of Tokyo, in the Kantō region of the main island of Honshu...
to establish a shop which would then operate as a communist front organization. Because the records from this period are incomplete, historians cannot be certain to what extent Nosaka's efforts in America were successful. Nosaka worked as a Comintern agent in America until 1938, when he returned to Moscow. In 1940, the Comintern ordered Nosaka to to aid communist forces in China.
Activities in China
From March 1940 to the end of 1945, during the Second Sino-Japanese WarSecond Sino-Japanese War
The Second Sino-Japanese War was a military conflict fought primarily between the Republic of China and the Empire of Japan. From 1937 to 1941, China fought Japan with some economic help from Germany , the Soviet Union and the United States...
, Nosaka resided at the Chinese Red Army base in Yan'an
Yan'an
Yan'an , is a prefecture-level city in the Shanbei region of Shaanxi province in China, administering several counties, including Zhidan County , which served as the Chinese communist capital before the city of Yan'an proper took that role....
, in Shaanxi
Shaanxi
' is a province in the central part of Mainland China, and it includes portions of the Loess Plateau on the middle reaches of the Yellow River in addition to the Qinling Mountains across the southern part of this province...
Province, where he headed the Japanese People's Emancipation League (JPEL). The JPEL engaged in the "re-education" of numerous Japanese prisoners of war and created propaganda
Propaganda
Propaganda is a form of communication that is aimed at influencing the attitude of a community toward some cause or position so as to benefit oneself or one's group....
on behalf of the Chinese Communists. Japanese troops captured by the Communists would then be used by the Communists in various civilian and military roles, and were especially valued because their level of technical expertise was generally greater than that of most Chinese soldiers. "Re-educated" Japanese troops were instrumental in a number of Communist victories after World War II, including the 1949 Pingjin Campaign
Pingjin Campaign
Pingjin Campaign , known as the Battle of Pingjin to the Nationalist Government, was part of the three major campaigns launched by the People's Liberation Army during the late stage of the Chinese Civil War. It began on November 29, 1948, and ended on January 31, 1949, lasted a total of 64 days...
, in which most of the artillery fielded by the Communists was manned by Japanese gunners. In general, the method of "re-education" devised and employed by Nosaka was highly effective.
Initially, the CCP was a purely guerilla force without the facilities to imprison POWs. The policy of the Eighth Route Army
Eighth Route Army
The Eighth Route Army was the larger of the two major Chinese communist forces that formed a unit of the National Revolutionary Army of the Republic of China which fought the Japanese from 1937 to 1945. In contrast to most of the National Revolutionary Army, it was controlled by the Communist...
was to interrogate prisoners and then release them. After reports surfaced that the Japanese were punishing Japanese prisoners after they returned, the CCP policy gradually changed to one of retraining POWs, and the Red Army began to implement this policy after Nosaka arrived in Yan'an.
By the time of its war with China, the Japanese army was educating its officers and common soldiers to die rather than surrender. Injured soldiers were easily captured, and made up the bulk of CCP POWs. Captured Japanese believed that they would be killed, but were instead fed and clothed, and began to develop a rapport with their captors.
Besides Sanzo's regimen of psychological indoctrination, there were several reasons that Japanese POWs chose to join the CCP. CCP guerillas took care to develop an early rapport with their prisoners by treating them well. Captured Japanese soldiers were generally moved when they learned of the terrible conditions the war inflicted on the Chinese people, a perspective that they had not been exposed to before their capture. Closer to the end of the war, the growing possibility of defeat created anxiety among the Japanese army. Because of the Japanese military's policy to never surrender, Japanese soldiers never received any training about how to act as POWs: upon returning to Japanese ranks, many would face disgrace, punishment, and starvation. Many Japanese soldiers committed suicide after their capture, but those who chose to live generally came to sympathize with the Chinese. The Japanese army was aware of the existence of Nosaka's Communist Japanese soldiers, and feared the phenomena out of proportion to their actual threat.
An American who met Nosaka in Yan'an wrote that Nosaka was "the Japanese national who undoubtedly contributed the most in the war against Japanese militarism". The Japanese army attempted to use numerous spies and assassins in order to eliminate Nosaka (who used the name "Okano Susumu" for the duration of the war), but were unsuccessful. Nosaka maintained a network of agents throughout Japanese-occupied China, which he used to gather information about events within the Japanese Empire and about the war.
Nosaka's Japanese "prisoner converts" fought freely for the Chinese communists once their re-education was complete. In Yan'an, the Japanese lived normal lives without guards, owned a cooperative store, and printed their own news bulletins and propaganda. Visiting American officers used Nosaka's Japanese soldiers to critique and improve their own methods of anti-Japanese psychological warfare.
Shortly after Japan's surrender in 1945, Nosaka began to march with approximately 200 other Japanese Communists across northern China. They arrived at the coast after picking up hundreds of other Japanese along the way. Demanding immediate repatriation from the first Americans they found, they declared their intention to return and work "for the democratization of Japan and the establishment of peace in the Far East". Although there are no records of the exact number of Japanese "re-educated" by Nosaka who elected to remain in Communist-occupied China after 1945, it is estimated that "the number must have been considerable".
Nosaka's contributions to the CCP were not forgotten by the leaders he had worked with in China. In 1965, on the twentieth anniversary of Japan's defeat, Nosaka was publicly praised by name by the highest-ranking general in China at the time, Lin Biao
Lin Biao
Lin Biao was a major Chinese Communist military leader who was pivotal in the communist victory in the Chinese Civil War, especially in Northeastern China...
.
Japanese political career
Nosaka returned to Japan in January 1946, and received a hero's welcome by the JCP. He returned to China as a recognized protege of Mao ZedongMao Zedong
Mao Zedong, also transliterated as Mao Tse-tung , and commonly referred to as Chairman Mao , was a Chinese Communist revolutionary, guerrilla warfare strategist, Marxist political philosopher, and leader of the Chinese Revolution...
, and enjoyed the informal recognition as a "roving ambassador" for Japanese communism. After his return to Japan, Nosaka worked to organize Japanese communists. In the general elections of 1946, he and four other members of the JCP were elected to the Diet
Diet of Japan
The is Japan's bicameral legislature. It is composed of a lower house, called the House of Representatives, and an upper house, called the House of Councillors. Both houses of the Diet are directly elected under a parallel voting system. In addition to passing laws, the Diet is formally...
, and the party received 4% of the popular vote. The JCP made progress infiltrating Japanese labour associations and socialist parties; and, in the general elections of 1949, the JCP gained 10% of the popular vote. In May 1950, shortly after the United States entered the Korean War
Korean War
The Korean War was a conventional war between South Korea, supported by the United Nations, and North Korea, supported by the People's Republic of China , with military material aid from the Soviet Union...
with the support of the United Nations
United Nations
The United Nations is an international organization whose stated aims are facilitating cooperation in international law, international security, economic development, social progress, human rights, and achievement of world peace...
, the Cominform
Cominform
Founded in 1947, Cominform is the common name for what was officially referred to as the Information Bureau of the Communist and Workers' Parties...
criticized the JCP's gradualist policies, and directed the party to actively disrupt the American occupation.
Throughout the 1950s, Nosaka's efforts were challenged by American occupying forces, as part of a broader effort to suppress leftists. In 1949, a Communist-led general railroad strike led to several attempted derailments, and Sadanori Shimoyama, the president of Japanese National Railways
Japanese National Railways
, abbreviated or "JNR", was the national railway network of Japan from 1949 to 1987.-History:The term Kokuyū Tetsudō "state-owned railway" originally referred to a network of railway lines operated by nationalized companies under the control of the Railway Institute following the nationalization...
, was found lying across a set of train tracks in Tokyo with his arms and legs cut off. These and other incidents of "terrorism" were received poorly by the Japanese public, and cost the JCP most of its popular support. The American commander of occupied Japan, Douglas MacArthur
Douglas MacArthur
General of the Army Douglas MacArthur was an American general and field marshal of the Philippine Army. He was a Chief of Staff of the United States Army during the 1930s and played a prominent role in the Pacific theater during World War II. He received the Medal of Honor for his service in the...
, declined to to outlaw the JCP, but held the Party's leaders responsible, and, in June 1950, ejected Nosaka and the other Communist legislators who were elected in 1946. After losing his seat in the Diet, Nosaka disappeared from public life and was forced to work underground.
After Nosaka went underground, the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency
Central Intelligence Agency
The Central Intelligence Agency is a civilian intelligence agency of the United States government. It is an executive agency and reports directly to the Director of National Intelligence, responsible for providing national security intelligence assessment to senior United States policymakers...
reported that he had temporarily returned to China. His strategy of "peaceful revolution" was criticized by the Cominform, and the Party temporarily endorsed violent revolution until 1952. After working covertly for several years, Nosaka re-emerged in 1955 as the First Secretary of the JCP. Nosaka was briefly arrested after he resurfaced, but quickly released.
In 1958, Nosaka became the chairman of the Central Committee. He played a part in organizing a series of riots that lasted from May–June 1960 in opposition to the US-Japan Security Treaty
Treaty of Mutual Cooperation and Security between the United States and Japan
The was signed between the United States and Japan in Washington, D.C. on January 19, 1960. It strengthened Japan's ties to the West during the Cold War era...
. These demonstrations forced the American President, Dwight Eisenhower, to cancel a visit to Japan, and forced the Japanese Premier, Nobusuke Kishi
Nobusuke Kishi
was a Japanese politician and the 56th and 57th Prime Minister of Japan from February 25, 1957 to June 12, 1958 and from then to July 19, 1960. He was often called Shōwa no yōkai .- Early life :...
, to resign, but failed to achieve their main goal of seriously disrupting US-Japan relations. In Japanese public opinion, the demonstrations were received as a national embarrassment, and the JCP received only 3% of the popular vote in the 1960 elections.
The US-Japan Security Treaty was opposed by both ultra-rightists as well as ultra-leftists. In an attempt to stop the bill from being passed, an ultra-nationalist member of the Diet, Otoya Yamaguchi
Otoya Yamaguchi
was a Japanese ultranationalist, a member of a right-wing Uyoku dantai group, who assassinated Inejiro Asanuma by wakizashi on October 12, 1960 at Tokyo's Hibiya Hall during a political debate in advance of parliamentary elections...
, rushed the stage and stabbed a wakizashi
Wakizashi
The is one of the traditional Japanese swords worn by the samurai class in feudal Japan.-Description:...
into the stomach of the leader of the Japanese Socialist Party
Social Democratic Party (Japan)
The Social Democratic Party The Social Democratic Party The Social Democratic Party (社会民主党 Shakai Minshu-tō, often abbreviated to 社民党 Shamin-tō; also known as the Social Democratic Party of Japan (abbreviated to SDPJ or SDP in English) is a political party that advocates for the establishment of a...
, Inejiro Asanuma
Inejiro Asanuma
Inejiro Asanuma was a Japanese politician, and head of the Japanese Socialist Party. Asanuma was noted for speaking publicly about Socialism and economic and cultural opportunities...
, as Asanuma was giving a speech in support of the bill. After his arrest, Yamaguchi told police that he had hoped to assassinate Nosaka as well.
Nosaka attempted to keep the JCP neutral during the Sino-Soviet Split
Sino-Soviet split
In political science, the term Sino–Soviet split denotes the worsening of political and ideologic relations between the People's Republic of China and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics during the Cold War...
of the 1960s, though the CIA interpreted that Sanzo's party remained somewhat more friendly with the Chinese. On Nosaka's seventieth birthday party in 1962, Nosaka received extravagant praise from Beijing. Deng Xiaoping
Deng Xiaoping
Deng Xiaoping was a Chinese politician, statesman, and diplomat. As leader of the Communist Party of China, Deng was a reformer who led China towards a market economy...
praised Nosaka as an "outstanding fighter of the Japanese people and comrade-in-arms of the Chinese people". The Soviets sent Nosaka a matter-of-fact confirmation of his status within the JCP, and within a month sent the JCP another letter scolding the Party for not adequately supporting Soviet positions. The Soviets' cool praise of Nosaka was consistent with earlier Cominform
Cominform
Founded in 1947, Cominform is the common name for what was officially referred to as the Information Bureau of the Communist and Workers' Parties...
criticism of Nosaka's political theories, which advocated a peaceful transition into communism.
After his re-entry into public life in 1955, Nosaka was elected as a member of the House of Councilors, a post that he held until 1977. Nosaka remained the JCP's chairman until 1982, when he stepped down at the age of 90, taking the role of "Honorary Chairman".
Scandal
On September 27, 1992, two Journalists working for the magazine Shukan Banshun, Akira Kato and Shun-ichi Kobayashi, publicly revealed evidence of Nosaka's involvement in the deaths of Kenzo Yamamoto and his wife. On a trip to Moscow, Kobayashi and Kato had managed to purchase a number of KGB documents, which had been kept secret since the Stalinist eraStalinism
Stalinism refers to the ideology that Joseph Stalin conceived and implemented in the Soviet Union, and is generally considered a branch of Marxist–Leninist ideology but considered by some historians to be a significant deviation from this philosophy...
. Among these documents was the letter that Nosaka had written in 1939 denouncing Yamamoto and his wife.
The revelations of Nosaka's involvement in Yamamoto's death shocked the JCP, already reduced to six seats in the Diet after the 1991 elections. Akahata ("Red Flag"), a prominent communist newspaper, sent a team of journalists to Moscow to investigate the allegations, and they confirmed the authenticity of the documents.
After the allegations against Nosaka became widely known, he checked himself into Yoyogi Hospital in Tokyo (a common tactic of Japanese politicians facing scandal). When a team of investigators sent by the JCP visited him, Nosaka confessed that the letter was his, but refused to discuss the matter further. The JCP ordered Nosaka to be present for a general Party meeting on December 27, 1992. After some deliberation, the party that Nosaka helped found expelled him by unanimous vote. Nosaka, when asked if he had any reply to the charges against him, would only state: "I have nothing to say".
One year after being expelled from the Japanese Communist Party, Sanzo Nosaka died in his home of old age. He was 101 years old.