Japanese Communist Party: history, factions and political role today

The Japanese Communist Party is one of the world's oldest surviving communist parties. Founded in 1922, it weathered imperial repression, American occupation, the Cold War, and continues to exist in today's Japan as a force of institutional opposition. A hundred-year journey that very few texts in French seriously document.

1922: the clandestine founding of the Japanese Communist Party

In April 1921, in Tokyo, a handful of socialist activists met secretly near Omori station. They formed the Preparatory Committee of the Japanese Communist Party with the intention of joining the Comintern, the Communist International in Moscow. Fifteen months later, on July 15, 1922, the Nihon Kyosanto was officially formed under the leadership of Katayama Sen, a figure of the Japanese left and representative to the Comintern.

The party was born in total illegality. The Japanese imperial regime, supported by the Peacekeeping Law of 1925, systematically tracks down any left-wing movement. PCJ members are arrested, tortured, sometimes executed. In 1923, the Tokyo earthquake gave rise to a wave of violence against socialist and Korean activists. The PCJ was dissolved for the first time in 1924, re-founded clandestinely, then dissolved again. Between 1928 and 1933, repression reached its peak: all known leaders were imprisoned or forced to renounce their beliefs (“tenko”, forced renunciation, affected thousands of activists).

The party survives despite everything, in a semi-clandestinity maintained by a few residual cells and by its members in exile in the Soviet Union or China. It is from this underground that its historical legitimacy is born.

The ideology of the PCJ: from armed struggle to reformist pacifism

The ideological trajectory of the PCJ is one of the most complex in world communist history. In the 1920s and 1930s, the party followed the line of the Comintern: proletarian revolution, dictatorship of the proletariat, armed struggle if necessary. The Comintern's "theses of 1932" assigned a two-stage program to the PCJ: first a bourgeois democratic revolution (overthrowing the imperial system), then a socialist revolution.

After the surrender of Japan in 1945 and the American occupation, the PCJ was legalized for the first time. He took part in the elections and obtained up to 10% of the votes in 1949. But the Cold War complicated everything: in 1950, the Cominform (Soviet successor to the Comintern) severely criticized the "peaceful" line of the PCJ and imposed a more militant orientation on it. Result: armed factions appear, attacks take place, and the party is put under surveillance by the Americans. In 1952, in a context of repression, several hundred activists were excluded from public office.

The turning point came in 1955. The 6th Congress of the party made a historic decision: the PCJ definitively renounced revolutionary violence and adopted the parliamentary path. This position was reaffirmed in 1961 with a three-pronged program: peaceful national and democratic revolution, independence from the USSR and China, construction of an open mass party. The PCJ thus became one of the first communist parties in a developed capitalist country to officially break with armed struggle.

Internal factions: a party divided by history

One of the least known aspects of the PCJ is the multiplicity of its splits. If the official party has maintained a reformist line since 1955, several currents have refused this development and have formed parallel organizations.

The Marxist-Leninist faction (Marxist-Leninist PCJ, 1974-1999) was born from the refusal of de-Stalinization and revisionism. She advocated a return to strict Leninist orthodoxy and rejected parliamentarism. Dissolved in 1999 due to lack of members, it represented the most radical wing of the PCJ tradition.

The Maoist faction emerged in the 1960s, aligned with Beijing in the Sino-Soviet dispute. The official PCJ positioned itself as independent of the two blocs in 1961, a courageous choice which earned it a simultaneous break with Moscow and Beijing. The Maoists who refused this independence formed distinct small groups, particularly active in the student movements of the years 1968-1972.

The New Left (Zengakuren) is more of a parallel current than a direct faction. The students of the Revolutionary Communist League and the Japanese Red Army claimed to be Marxists but rejected the “reformist and gentrified” PCJ. It was from this movement that the Japanese Red Army was born in the 1970s, which no longer had much to do with the official PCJ.

Today, the official PCJ remains the only recognized heir of the Japanese communist tradition of 1922. The historical factions have either disappeared or integrated other formations.

Kazuo Shii and the contemporary leadership of the PCJ

Kazuo Shii has led the Japanese Communist Party since 2000. Born in 1954, graduated in physics from the University of Tokyo, he entered politics through student movements before climbing the party ladder. His public personality is the polar opposite of the stereotype of the revolutionary activist: calm, methodical, a good communicator, he has made the PCJ a respectable player in Japanese parliamentary life.

Under his leadership, the PCJ refined its positions on several sensitive points. He defends the maintenance of article 9 of the Japanese Constitution (which prohibits Japan from equipping itself with an offensive army) in the face of attempts at revision made by the Liberal Democratic Partymissed. He opposes the security alliance with the United States and campaigns for the withdrawal of American bases from Okinawa. On the economy, the PCJ advocates stronger tax redistribution and the reform of precarious employment contracts.

In 2023, Shii left the presidency to Tomoko Tamura, making the PCJ one of the few major Japanese parties led by a woman. He himself remains active as general secretary. This handover illustrates an effort to renew the party in the face of the challenge of the aging of its activist base.

The CCP in current Japanese politics

The PCJ regularly obtains between 6 and 8% of the votes in legislative elections, which places it as the 4th or 5th political force in the country. This score may seem modest, but in a majoritarian electoral system like Japan's, it represents a significant parliamentary presence.

Its main line of opposition focuses on constitutional pacifism and the defense of social rights against the conservatism of the PLD (Liberal Democratic Party), in power almost without interruption since 1955. On the international scene, the PCJ maintains distant relations with communist China (it had broken with Beijing in the 1960s) and has no longer had links with Moscow since the dissolution of the USSR.

The Akahata (Red Flag) newspaper remains an instrument of movement cohesion. Its daily circulation of around 100,000 copies in 2024, in a country where the general paper press is collapsing, is remarkable. It is financed by activist subscriptions and represents a stable source of income for the party.

For those interested in the tradition of Asian communism, our collection of communist posters offers historical propaganda visuals from around the world. The communist flags and t-shirts bearing the image of Mao Zedong complete a range dedicated to fans of 20th century political history.

If you are interested in Japan in the broader context of Asian communism, our article on Communist China and the CCP offers an instructive counterpoint: two great Asian powers, two radically different communist trajectories. The communist t-shirts from our general collection are aimed at those who carry this political heritage with conviction.