Maoism in the Developed World

By 1975, the Japan Communist Party (Left) was credited with a membership of “500 with a possible 1,500 supporters” and was said to have 22 local organizations. It published two twice-weekly organs, People’s Star and Choshu Shinbun. John Emmerson noted in that year that The JCP (Left) is given frequent publicity in the Peking Press, often because of anti-Soviet articles which appear in People’s Star.”[528]

As was true of Maoist parties in many countries, shifting Chinese foreign and domestic policies were disconcerting factors in the Japan Communist Party (Left). John Emmerson noted that in 1975 the JCP (Left) “split into two factions over the present direction of Chinese policy. The division within the party, which had been growing for some time, came to a climax at the 26th meeting of its Central Committee on 20 March. The Central, or mainstream faction, disagrees with the diplomatic line being taken by Peking, which encourages Japanese-U.S. relations and bases diplomatic policy on confrontation with the USSR. The opposing group, Kanto-ha (Eastern Japan faction) supports the Japan-China Friendship Association (Orthodox), in its acceptance of Chinese policy and describes the Central faction as leftist opportunists, exclusionists, and sectist. The party’s publication, People’s Star, accused the Kanto-ha of factionism, ignoring party’s administration.” Appeals by both sides to the Chinese found the Chinese unwilling to take sides in the dispute.[529]

By 1976, the Japanese Maoists were further split, into four different groups. These were two with the JCP (L) name—the “Yamaguchi faction” and the “Kanto faction,” which we have already noted, plus two new groups; the Japan Labor Party (Nihon Rodosha-ha), which “also attracted some attention from the Chinese,” and the Japan Workers Party. Peking Review published messages of condolence from the Yamaguchi faction and the Japan Workers Party at the time of the death of Chou En-lai early in 1976.[530]

One faction of the JCP (L), presumably the Kanto faction, sent a message of support to the Communist Party of New Zealand when that party in 1973 announced its support of the Albanians in their split with the Chinese. It also joined in the denunciation of Mao Tse-tung’s Three Worlds Theory.[531]

Meanwhile, the other JCP (L) faction, which called itself the Japan Communist Party (Left) Provisional Central Committee,[532] had been negotiating for some time for unity with another Maoist group, the Japan Communist Party (Marxist-Leninist), which had been established “in the 1960s,” and published Proletariat[533] Tentative agreement on such unity was achieved in May 1979,[534] but it was not until January 1980 that the two groups held a joint meeting in Tokyo and decided to merge.[535] They took the name Japan Communist Party Left (Marxist-Leninist). This party endorsed the Three Worlds Theory.[536]

The Workers Party of Japan and Japan Labor Party

Another Maoist group, which we have already noted as having had some contact with the Chinese, was the Workers Party of Japan. It was headed by General Secretary Shosaku Itai, and was founded in 1973.

In an interview with the U.S. Maoist newspaper Unity in October 1979, Itai, after noting the “revolt” against the JCP in 1966 over, among other things, “whether to defend the Chinese Communist Party,” said that “Seven years passed since that open revolt to the founding of our party in 1973. Like in the U.S. at that time, there was great uprising of the mass movement in Japan. … There were three questions at this time in the process of party building. The first was to break ideologically from revisionism. The second was to construct the party in the mass movement, and the third, to fight for the unity of Marxist-Leninists. In the process, we prepared for the founding of the party politically and organizationally. Five to six years have passed since the founding of our party and still we cannot say our influence among the masses is large enough. Our forces are still small.”[537]

Shosaku Itai was reported by Peking Review to have sent a telegram to Hua Kuo-feng, congratulating him on being the successor to Mao, and on the defeat of the Gang of Four.[538]

The Japan Labor Party was founded “by pro-Chinese dissident elements” in 1974. It was reported in 1977 to have about 400 members and, as we have noted, “to have attracted some attention from the Chinese.”[539] In 1981, it was said that the JLP “has irritated the JCP in recent months.” Unlike other Japanese Maoist groups, it ran candidates in the 1979 parliamentary elections, having 25 nominees and receiving “over 50,000 votes.”[540]