A Look at Communist Strategy to Survive in Japan

PRIOR to the July 2007 Upper House Election, the TIME Magazine has published an article titled “Communism is Alive and Well and Living in Japan”, spotlighting the Japanese Communist Party’s challenge to survive as a small-sized parliamentary opposition party.(1)

Two weeks later Kazuo Shii, the JCP’s Executive Committee Chairman, praised the article as an acknowledgment to the Communist Party.

“The title was “Communism Is Alive and Well and Living in Japan,” a welcome article for us. A researcher was quoted as saying, “The JCP is probably the most successful non-ruling communist party in Asia, if not the world.” The article depicts the JCP fairly accurately,” Kazuo Shii spoke in front of the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Japan, Tokyo.(2)

The article begins by describing Michiko Suzuki, a 19-year-old Japanese teenage communist who inherited her father and grandfather’s attachment and devotion to communism because Bolshevism ran in her family, and her belief in the communist party as the true “revolutionary vanguard of the class struggle.” The article sketches out the party’s characteristics, to some extent, as a significant opposition in the Diet.

Unarguably, there is a huge pessimistic, not to mention cynical, perception about the fate of communist’s movement all over the world following the fall of Communist Block at the beginning of 1990s, particularly in the post-Marxist and economically advanced societies such as Japan.(3)  In his study on the relationship between the Left and Japanese democracy, Junji Banno predicts that the Japanese Left group—the JCP and the Social Democratic Party—seems to be gradually turning into an object of study for historian, or simply speaking, will be vanished from the Japanese political map.(4)

TIME’s article illustrates that the idea of a communist party soldiering on in the world’s second-largest economy more than 15 years after the collapse of the Soviet Union may invite comparisons to the tale of Japanese soldiers who remained hidden on isolated Pacific islands just because they did not know that the World War II has ended. However, despite of any cynical perceptions, TIME continues the article saying that with the JCP’s some 400,000 members, and earned 7.3 percent or 4.36 million voters in the pervious 2005 election, the party is obviously still far from extinct.

Speaking in front of foreign correspondents’ club in Tokyo, on July 3, 2007, two days before the upper house ended its 166th session, Shii elaborates his party’s achievements: it is the only political party in Japan that has a strong grassroots organization; about 400,000 of its members are working at 24,000 branches; Akahata—the party’s propagandist—has a readership of about 1.6 million; it also has more than 3,100 local assembly members in which makes the party in first place in party strength in local politics. “We are proud of these huge grassroots networks that make it possible for the JCP to work strenuously in the interest of the people,” Shii addresses the floor.

As TIME underlines the JCP’s lack of corruption by saying that the communist politicians have repeatedly uncovered damaging financial scandals in government, Shii firmly says that his party is the only Japanese party that refuses the government subsidy as well as donations from companies or any other organizations. This position, he argues, emphasizes the party’s principled stance and enables the party to strictly condemn injustice and corruption.

Yet, the JCP is also widely known the only Japanese party who rejects any kind of coalition in government. When the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) lost its power in 1993, the JCP remained outside the coalition government formed by the Japan Social Party (JSP, the old name of DSP), Japan New Party (JNP), Democratic Social Party (DSP), Shinseito, Sakigake, and Komeito.(5)  For the reason that there are many differences among its members, the coalition had been shattered in the following year, and LDP again was able to take control over the parliament.

The JCP’s capability to demarcate and differentiate its national interests, agendas and policies from Moscow and Beijing has also been recognized in the article. Stressing this particular issue, Shii convinces that the JCP firmly stood for “sovereign independence”. He provides an example from the past time when the JCP strongly opposed Soviet hegemony that led to the aggression against Czechoslovakia and Afghanistan.

The 2007 Upper House Election has changed the political constellation in the Diet. For the first time in the post-war Japan, the LDP lost its parliamentary control with 83 seats. The Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) has replaced the LDP’s position with 102 seats. Meanwhile the JCP has succeeded its long-standing record as a small-sized parliamentary opposition party. It has achieved 4.4 million voters with 9 seats in the Diet, less than its goal of 6.5 million voters. However, “It is important that we basically maintained the positions we had previously established,” says Shii addressing the result.(6)

This paper describes the JCP’s effort, regardless of its small size, to survive in the economically advanced society, and its programs toward key issues in Japanese modern politics such as corruption and money politics; and the Japan-US Treaty and the Self Defense Forces deployment to the war zone in Iraq. Examining the party’s programs will be used to see its opportunity in the future of Japanese political contest.

Communism in Advanced Society
The relationship between economic development and communist party’s strength in one society, according to Roger W. Benjamin and John H. Kautsky (1968), is somehow curvilinear; as the development process in one society at certain level is becoming more advanced the communist party then will experience a setback.(7)  The challenge that communist party has to answer in economically advanced societies such as Japan is the assumption of inverse relation between economics development with the communist party’s power to influence the society. It is commonly theorized that the more advanced the society, the weaker the communist party and its influence in the society.

Nevertheless, at the initial development of underdeveloped societies the communist party is primarily considered as one of the modernizing movements to respond the impact of Western industrialism. Therefore, following the economics development progress, communist party begins to develop its organization and attract more intellectuals to strength the party. However the party’s size remains small. In the next step, following the further progress of economic development and social mobilization, the modernizing movements, including communist party, may grow and attract support not only from the intellectuals but also from other group or organization, such as labor movements and peasants that has been alienated from the development.

As time goes by and the process of social mobilization and development progress to the higher level keeps moving on, the peasants, benefited from the development process, are “absorbed by the advanced industrial economy, either to disappear or to be converted into farmers or small businessmen”, and the labors become “integrated into the society” and are no longer marginalized and alienated. This is the time when the communist party lost its influence.(8)  The society may think that the party’s goal is fulfilled and accomplished, even though the communist party always considers that the alienation and false consciousness are still there and exist.

If this approach is being used to study Japan’s context, one will arrive to the study proceed by Stockwin (1968), saying that in the 1920s Japan was a fertile ground for Marxism. It had “an organized and politically conscious society, a literate proletariat and peasantry, and an intelligentsia concern with social criticism. Thus the emergence of a militant working class, allied with section of peasantry and organized under the leadership of Marxist intelligentsia, must have seemed at that time to be very real possibility.”

Moreover, in the post-Marxist Japanese society, where the communist party has no brighter future, the communist party has been predicted will excluded even from the alternative coalition to defeat the incumbent LDP. Stockwin’s prediction came to the reality during the short period of 1993-1994 when LDP lost its power. Following this success, the opposition parties in the Diet formed a coalition government. The JCP rejected the coalition and insisted with its “anti-mainstream” approach in Japanese politics. Despite of its small-sized and de-radicalization, the JCP set the anti US-Japan Treaty and Japanese monopolistic capitalism, among others subjects, as its major enemies.

Communist De-radicalization in Japan
Founded in 1922 as a branch of Comintern, the international organization of workers’ parties controlled by the Soviet Union, the Japanese Communist Party was an underground party until the fall of Japanese Emperor following the end of Second World War. It soon attracted the public’s attention and claimed a significant victory in the 1949 Lower House Election with 35 seats and nearly three million voters.

The JCP’s success story at the end of 1940s had shattered at the beginning of 1950 soon after the party followed the Moscow and Peking 1951 Thesis, asking the JCP to apply a new strategy of militancy and outright violence, such as subversive activities and terrorism. After the 1951 Thesis the party lost all of its seats in the Diet, and its supporters went down drastically to 897,000 in 1952 Election.(9)  The sporadic terrorist activities of the JCP during this period alienated the party from the society and its supporters. In addition the party became a symbol of extremism that can be harm the Japanese development process. Many of the JCP’s leaderships, including Kyuichi Tokuda and Sanzo Nosaka who ironically in the previous decade introduced “peaceful path to revolution”, went underground. Tokuda moved to China until he died in 1953.

It was Kenji Miyamoto who saved the party from the disgraceful and even shameful situation. In 1961 Congress he was appointed the party’s secretary general. He then again introduced the “parliamentary path to revolution” instead of the “strategy of violent revolution”. He openly and widely pronounced his position to support all kind of peaceful means in pursuing the party’s goal and condemned all kinds of violence. He believed the JCP need to protect its national goal from the influences of other communist blocks, especially Moscow and Beijing. Moreover, Miyamoto repeatedly opposed Moscow’s policies. In 1963 Miyamoto and the JCP countered Moscow’s partial nuclear test-ban treaty with the US and United Kingdom, and accused it as “modern revisionism” of Marxism. Following the Czechoslovakia occupation in 1968, the JCP elevated its opposition toward Moscow and charged Moscow as a “big power chauvinist”.

Miyamoto also rejected Beijing’s effort to re-dictate and control the JCP. Before the 1966 Congress, Miyamoto expelled the “Maoist Cliques” and denounced the clique as anti-Marxism and anti-Leninism. Thus, in the 1966 Congress, Miyamoto strengthened his power in the JCP and affirmed the Congress to fully acknowledge the policy of “self-reliance and independence in dealing with other communist parties abroad.” The 1966 Congress stated that the party embraces “the functioning of opposition parties so long they did not attempt to destroy the democratic system by violence” instead of the idea of one-party dictatorship even if the JCP won the election.

In 1970s in order to draw more support the party introduced new terminologies to replace the old-style jargons. For instance, the word “branch” placed the word “cell”, one of the most famous words in communist parties all over the world; “administration of the proletariat” placed “dictatorship of the proletariat”; and the less provocative idiom of “revolution by coercive force” placed “violent revolution”.

In the future, the party’s strict position toward Moscow and Beijing is proven and helps the JCP save from the bad impression following the Beijing’s 1989 Tiananmen Massacre and the fall of communist block at the beginning of 1990s.(10)

Beside its effort to de-radicalize its movements by differentiating its policies from Russia and China and maintaining its attachment to the peaceful parliamentary opposition, the JCP has built and supported “traditional” mass organizations, particularly medical cooperatives (co-ops), consumer co-ops, and personal candidate support organization known as koenkai, to draw political supports.

As an illustration, in the mid-1970s the pro-JCP medical co-ops has around 11,000 doctors, nurses, surgeons, and hospital workers, from 350 hospitals and clinics with more than 8,000 hospital beds for patients serving 50,000 patients per day and 15 million patients per year. These figures have provided relatively significant support for the party. In the 1972 Lower House Election the JCP won 40 seats with 5.7 million voters or equivalent to 10.9 percent, and in the 1979 Lower House Election won 41 seats with 5.76 million voters or 10.7 percent. Unfortunately, in the 1980s the JCP gradually lost significant support from the co-ops in which it has started to turn its focus on the koenkai.

Nowadays, the CJP claims the koenkai organization is one of keywords to keep its presence in the Diet. It is somehow an ironic situation as in one hand the JCP claims itself as modern party, and in anotaher hand koenkei represents traditional approach based on personal affection in Japanese politics. The JCP has adopted koenkai because it cannot win elections by relying only on party organization. In 1996, Fuwa Tetsuzo, one of prominent JCP’s leaderships, stated that the party’s koenkai membership was around 55.8 percent of Akahata readership or 1.5 million, more than three times larger than the party membership.

Responding the koenkai controversy, the JCP utilizes Friedrich Engels’ thought as a Marxist justification, saying that the communist party needs trying to find mass support beyond the working-class. “Since the JCP pursues a peaceful, parliamentary path to socialism—ballots instead of bullets—the party required koenkai in workplaces, residential areas and within other mass organizations such as labor unions and co-ops,” says Fuwa Tetsuzo reckoning the JCP option to develop koenkai.

Epilog and Conclusion
The Japanese Communist Party realizes that it has to adjust its strategy to maintain its presence in Japanese politics realm. Since the 1960s, the party consistently has kept its path in parliamentary opposition, rejected any kind of violence and devoted to peaceful means. Like his predecessors, Kazuo Shii promotes parliamentary revolution, this time by stressing his core programs to end the widening economic disparities and growing poverty rate, and to banish the Japan-US security agreement together with its consequences such as the deployment of the Self Defense Force to Iraq as a supporting unit.

The JCP focus on the decreasing of social refugees in Japan, as Shii says that even though Japan is the world’s second largest economy the word ‘refugee’ is everywhere.(11)  For instance, the numbers of people who are excluded from public medical service because they fail to pay the unaffordable National Health Insurance premiums are now getting higher. There are also elderly people who are barred from public nursing services because they are unable to pay the costs. Thus, the people who cannot afford to pay housing rents even though they are working hard every day.

Under the slogan “End Poverty”, the JCP requests the LDP-Komeito government to revoke the residential tax, the consumption tax increase, and to stop the regressive tax system that forces working people to pay more. Another way to end the poverty, according to the JCP is by increasing the state’s responsibility for costs the National Health Insurance premiums, the nursing care insurance premiums, child medical services, welfare services for the handicapped, and public assistance to low-income households and mother-child households. The last point to eradicate the poverty is to force the law in workplace. The party calls for an end to lawlessness in the workplace, such as unpaid overtime work and the use of temporary workers disguised as contract workers, demands to end discrimination against temps and part-time workers, and call for the minimum wage to be raised to at least 1,000 yen an hour.

In the parliament the JCP opposes the LDP-Komeito’s proposal to amend the Constitution, particularly the Article 9, which gives no authority to the state to use the army forces as “means in settling international disputes.” Takes a lesson from Japanese Imperial Army in the past, the article strongly says, “the right of belligerency of the state will not be recognized.”

The JCP accuses the LDP-Komeito program as an effort to turn Japan into a country that will fight wars side by side with the United States. The supporters of constitutional revision, according to the party, is led by the pro-Yasukuni Shrine forces, who glorify the past Japanese aggression as a “war for liberating Asia,” and as war for self-existence and self-defense.

The success of the JCP in maintaining its presence in Japanese political realm is depending on its ability to keep its non-violent parliamentary opposition path and its effort to deliver its message, program and agenda to the public. Likely that many Japanese will simply agree with the party’s “End Poverty” campaign. But, it is not easy to find common agreement about the use of power under Japanese-US security accord. Simply because the terrorism threat either in international or regional arena, including the threat from North Korea, is now in the first place of global and national awareness.

Notes:
1. http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1636115,00.html, retrieved May 2, 2008.

2. http://www.jcp.or.jp/english/jps_weekly07/20070705_speech_shii.html, retrieved May 2, 2008.

3. Stockwin, J.A.A. (1968). Is Japan a Pos-Marxist Society?, Pacific Affairs, Vol. 41, No. 2, (Summer, 1968), pp. 184-198.

4. Banno, Junji. (2006). The Left in the Shaping of Japanese Democracy, in Kersten, Rikki and Williams, David (Eds.). (2006). The Left in the Shaping of Japanese Democracy. London: Routledge. Curtis’ genealogy tree on Japanese political parties helps to understand the development of left and right parties in Japan from 1955 to 1999. Curtis, Gerald L. (1999). The Logic of Japanese Politics, New York: Columbia University Press.

5. Scheiner, Ethan. (2006). Democracy without Competition in Japan: Opposition Failure in a One-Party Dominant State. New York: Cambridge University Press.

6. Japan Press Weekly’s Special Issue October 2007. Taken from http://www.japan-press.co.jp/special%20issue.html, as retrieved at May 3, 2008.

7. Benjamin, Roger W., and Kautsky, John H. (1968). Communism and Economic Development, The American Political Science Review, Vol. 62, No. 1 (Mar., 1968), pp. 110-123.

8. Benjamin and Kautsky. (1968).

9. Kim, Hong N. (1976). Deradicalization of the Japanese Communist Party under Kenji Miyamoto, World Politics, Vol. 28, No. 2. (Jan., 1976), pp. 273-299.

10. Peng-Er, Lam. (1996). The Japanese Communist Party: Organization and Resilience in the Midst of Adversity, Pacific Affairs, Vol. 69, No. 3. (Autumn, 1996), pp. 361-379.

11. http://www.jcp.or.jp/english/jps_weekly07/20070705_speech_shii.html, retrieved May 2, 2008.