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Japan Japan Communist Party
The Japan Communist Party was first organized in 1922,
in the
wake of the Bolshevik Revolution, and remained part of the
international, Moscow-controlled communist movement until
the early
1960s. Although the party won a large percentage of the
popular
vote in Diet elections in 1949, it became extremely
unpopular after
1950, when Moscow ordered it to cease being a "lovable
party" and
to engage in armed struggle. It was forced to go
underground, and
in the election it lost all its seats in the Diet. A
self-reliant
party line, stressing independence from both Moscow and
Beijing,
evolved during the 1960s. The party's chairman, Miyamoto
Kenji, a
tough veteran of prewar struggles and wartime prisons,
promoted the
"parliamentary road" of nonviolent, electoral politics.
Thereafter,
the fortunes of the Japan Communist Party gradually
revived.
Representation in the lower house reached a high point of
thirtynine in the 1979 election but declined to between
twenty-six and
twenty-nine seats in the 1980s and to fifteen in the July
1993
election. The party's program promoted unarmed neutrality,
the
severing of security ties with the United States, defense
of the
postwar constitution, and socialism. It also voiced
concern for
welfare and quality of life issues.
Both organizationally and financially, the party was
stronger
than its opposition rivals and even the LDP. Revenues from
its
publishing enterprises, especially the popular newspaper
Akahata (Red Flag), which had the eighth largest
circulation
in the country, provided adequate support for its
activities. As a
result, the Japan Communist Party was the party least
mired in
money politics. This fact earned it the reluctant respect
of
voters. But suspicions about its ultimate intentions
remains
strong. It is excluded from opposition party negotiations
on
coalitions.
Data as of January 1994
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