I'm doing a paper on the Japanese Communist Party and I'm finding lots of secondary but very few primary so I got to wondering if a secondary could be used as primary. My topic is analyzing the relevance of the JCP in a number of ways. Could a book on the party written 50 years ago be used as Primary or is my best luck finding old newspaper articles and government documents?
A secondary source will very rarely become a primary source unless that secondary source somehow became entangled with the subject of focus. This is very niche as you’d imagine, and I genuinely can’t think of a real world example at this point.
Your best bet is certainly to find newspaper articles, party releases and government documents.
Out of curiosity, what are the categories of relevance you’re tying the JCP to?