What the future holds for the Japanese Communist Party

This month, Japan’s oldest opposition party underwent its first leadership change in 23 years.

After a decade of steadily declining seat counts in the Diet, the country's parliament, the Japanese Communist Party turned to its first-ever female leader, Tomoko Tamura, to take the helm. The JCP is hoping she will refresh the group’s image ahead of a general election that will occur sometime in the next year and a half and convince the public that they are something more than a fringe political group.

The JCP’s change in leadership is an inflection point for a party that has struggled to transcend anachronism and perform as an effective opposition force. With the Liberal Democratic Party floundering amid scandal and waning public support, will Tamura be able to lead the party in gaining ground from its current stature as a lower-ranked opposition party?

To answer that question, it is first key to look at what the JCP is and what it is not. For many, the term “communist party” likely evokes images of Josef Stalin, Mao Zedong, Che Guevarra or Kim Il Sung singing revolutionary songs and calling for armed revolution on behalf of the proletariat. While the JCP has its roots in the same Marxist-Leninist beliefs, the similarities cease when actually examining the origins and evolution.

The JCP emerged in the 1920s as the zaibatsu (conglomerates) were driving the economy and the Imperial Japanese military was becoming the dominant force in the government. The Communist Party emerged as an antithesis to this, calling for socioeconomic equality and anti-militarism. In response, the Japanese government passed legislation that labeled the party and its supporters as threats to peace, making the JCP a favorite target of the kempeitai (secret police).

When the Allied powers defeated Japan in World War II and initiated the occupation, they released all political prisoners and the JCP reestablished itself as a legal political entity. In fact, the party won five seats in the first parliamentary election under the new postwar Constitution.

But while the JCP shared its ideological roots with other communist parties in the region, major divergences emerged as early as the Korean War. Rather than serve as a rallying cry for Japanese communists, the Chinese- and Soviet-backed war against South Korea created a split between those who favored radical action and those advocating for peaceful transition to socialist society.

The JCP formalized its anti-radical stance in the late 1950s under the leadership of Kenji Miyamoto. Eventually, Japan’s left splintered off by sects and beliefs — some militant like the United Red Army — and continued to operate well into the 1970s. What now exists is as the JCP is relatively moderate compared to radical leftist groups in the country. However, because the JCP has not renounced Marxist-Leninist principles — as well as the notion of armed revolution — they remain under watch by the national police and public security elements.

The “deradicalized” JCP diverged further from regional communist parties and focused on growing its influence domestically. In doing so, the JCP began looking more like a standard Japanese political party focused on cultivating strong political personalities, using kōenkai (local support groups) and applying conventional approaches to recruitment and campaigning. The main distinguishing feature is the JCP's continued publication of its own newspaper, the Akahata (“Red Flag”), which focuses its reporting on issues closely related to the JCP's policy platforms.

What are those policies? In practice, they are not too different from what one might expect from progressive parties anywhere in the world. The JCP advocates for gender equality and policies that eliminate the gap between the rich and the poor. They are anti-nuclear power, with an aim of moving toward other forms of green energy. The party is staunchly anti-war and anti-militarist, denouncing any actions foreign or domestic that would further hegemonic ambitions. The JCP also advocates for labor rights and increased government control over large corporations.

Then there are policies that are specific to Japan. This includes a platform that opposes the U.S.-Japan relationship on the grounds that American influence undermines Japanese autonomy and exacerbates militarism and social conditions that are antithetical to the JCP's vision for the country. They also argue that the Self-Defense Forces should not be authorized to deploy overseas and that the government should implement measures aimed at reducing the SDF's armament. They further contend that the role of the emperor should be reduced in the near-term, with the future of the constitutional monarchy being put to a public referendum.

Under Tamura's leadership, the JCP is unlikely to change any of these fundamental policy positions. But the real question is whether they will shift their focus.

During the leadership of her predecessor, Kazuo Shii, the JCP dedicated much of its parliamentary energy toward targeting individual scandals and denouncing Japanese security policy and U.S. military activities throughout the country. Tamura was a standout among JCP parliamentarians who used her time during interpellations to focus on gender equality and workers’ rights — two issues that are more likely to resonate in the present political climate. If Tamura can get the rest of the party to focus more on the failure of the LDP's economic policies to improve the lives of the average Japanese citizen, the JCP may enjoy more success than it has over the past 10 years.

But even if Tamura succeeds in spearheading a shift in priorities, she still is faced with a significant branding problem. The term “communist” remains a pejorative in many minds, including among Japanese politicians. This creates a barrier to cooperation in elections as some opposition politicians have no interest in associating themselves with the JCP. Conversely, some of the more fervent supporters of the JCP are loath to align with centrist opposition parties out of fear of selling out their policy ideals.

However, history has shown that to overcome the LDP's vote-generating apparatus, cooperation among opposition parties is necessary. The JCP under Tamura will have to decide whether they are willing to take on less reform-minded platforms to gain alignment with other center to center-left parties.

These are big decisions that may have to come sooner than the JCP would prefer. Although the next general election is not required until October 2025, the LDP-led administration may opt for a snap election sooner than that to capitalize on discord within and among the opposition parties. This means that Tamura should not count on having too much time to carry out these policy-related decisions and affirm a new direction for the JCP.

How important is this new direction? The fall of the Japan Socialist Party offers an example of what can happen if a reform-oriented opposition party fails to adapt to the times.

While the JCP retains 21 seats in the Diet and a little more than 2,000 across prefectural and municipal assemblies nationwide, a poor showing in the next general election could hasten the party’s decline as voters look elsewhere for an alternative bastion of progressive policies.

The first indication of whether the JCP is changing under Tamura’s leadership will be the current parliamentary session and the topics that the party chooses to tackle. While one should expect heavy JCP scrutiny on the LDP “faction parties scandal,” the other issues they address will offer signals as to whether the change of leadership is having any sort of impact.

The JCP may have hung on for 23 years before accepting leadership change, but time is not on its side for revitalizing the party's image among the Japanese electorate. The choices the party's new leadership makes now will determine whether the JCP fades into the annals of Japan's political past or restores itself as a persistent challenger well into the future.