COMMUNISM IN JAPAN

Source: Advocate of Peace through Justice, Vol. 90, No. 6 (JUNE, 1928), p. 352
Published by: Sage Publications, Inc.
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 352 ADVOCATE OF PEACE June
foreign lives and property. If, therefore, the
were invited to combat dangerous ideas,
measure in question were to be revived, or if and capitalists and workers exhorted to
other measures were introduced which in
work harmoniously for better social con
their view presented similarly dangerous ditions.
features, His Majesty's Government would
Mr. Oyama, leader of the Eonoto, was
again be obliged to intervene, as in the mobbed at Tokyo Station on his return
present instance, to prevent their enactment.
from a speech-making tour. The secre
3. His Majesty's Government can enter into tary of the Eonoto visited the Home
no discussion respecting the declaration of Office and asked the officials to state in
February, 1922. One of the consequences
what respect the party's program or con
of that instrument was to entail upon His
Majesty's Government the responsibility for
duct during the election campaign was
illegal. According to newspaper reports,
the protection of foreign interests in Egypt.
the Minister replied that the Eonoto was
It will be clear from the preceding para
suppressed because it had come under
graph that His Majesty's Government are Communist control.
resolved at all times to insist upon a precise
discharge of its terms. This declaration em Later, in addressing the Diet, the Prime
Minister stated that evidence in the
bodies the conditions subject to which inde
pendence was accorded to Egypt; and His hands of the police revealed a plot for
Majesty's Government will not permit it to the subversion of the Constitution by a
program which aimed at violent revolu
be either modified or disregarded. tion.
The educational authorities are con
COMMUNISM IN JAPAN cerned over the evidence of students be
ing attracted by Communism, and they
ON APEIL 10 the
ment ordered thedissolution
Japanese Govern
of three
are considering means to remedy the evil.
Communist organizations, the Bonoto
(Labor-Farmer Party), the Japan Labor Five Years of Communist Effort in Japan
Council, and the League of Proletarian The Communist movement in Japan
Youth. A large number of persons were had been making persistent efforts to
arrested, although most of them were later establish itself during the past five years.
released, while the remainder were held A small Communist Party was formed
under the Peace Preservation Act. Thus
in 1923, but it was dissolved by the po
the Japanese police began a systematic lice. The party was secretly reorganized
campaign against the Communists, whose in December, 1926. When the original
activities they had been watching very Labor Party broke up soon afterward, the
closely since the last election, when 40 Communists permeated its Left wing,
Left candidates conducted an extensive known as the Eonoto.
electoral campaign with funds which, ac The Communist Party worked so en
cording to the police, came from Moscow. ergetically that its membership, which at
Prime Minister Tanaka's Statement
the beginning was only 125, increased to
In a statement to the Japanese people, 400 in March, 1927, and a campaign was
issued in connection with the arrests* in progress to enroll 10,000 before the
Prime Minister Tanaka said that the end of the year. Communists have been
Communists tried to subvert Japan's na placed on the governing bodies of the
tional system and to set up a dictatorship Tokyo and Yokohama trades council, the
of workmen and peasants. He laid much Farmer Labor Party, and the League of
stress on disloyal references to the Em Youth of all Japan.
peror found in Communist literature. The Communist platform included the
The Prime Minister said he knows that abolition of the monarchy, the establish
changing conditions must bring about ment of a Soviet Socialist Bepublic, the
new ideas, and sympathizes with Labor's replacement of the bourgeois Parliament
aspirations, but when the Imperial House by a peasant-labor dictatorship, the con
is attacked, he will leave no doubt of the fiscation of the property of the Imperial
government's determination and power to House, and of capitalists and land-owners,
suppress the disloyal movements. Eeli and support for Soviet Eussia and the
gious, educational, and political leaders Chinese Nationalists.

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