In The Pacific War by Saburo Ienaga, he writes that the "ultimate objective of the war, including the fighting in China, remained the destruction of communism. In military and diplomatic moves, in the implicit assumptions behind policies, always the overriding goal was to eradicate communism." (84) He argues that Japan's neutrality pact with the Soviet Union was out of strategic necessity, with Japanese leaders considering the USSR as the ultimate "absolute enemy".
Was Communism truly such an anxiety for Japan's wartime and prewar leaders? Was it a danger domestically? Was international communism considered a viable threat against Japanese ambitions? Never have I heard of anticommunism as a driving force in Japanese policy.
Greetings! This is certainly a rather interesting query about Japan's motives for war, and probably also (spoiler alert) the one which has a fair bit less going for it than most of the other cases for war. For more information, consider this previous response of mine where I delve into the longer road to war with Japan's turbulent interwar politics, including a section in Part 1 about the arrival of Communism to the Land of the Rising Sun. I have adapted bits of this response from that longer thread. Additionally, with regards to the question of the Soviet Union being "the ultimate enemy" of Japan, u/Lubyak has conducted a thorough discussion here of why Japan ultimately chose to go to war against America in 1941, when the Soviets were also a potential target for Japanese expansion. This comment will focus more on the political significance and antagonising of Communism in Taisho era Japan, as well as how anticommunism may have factored in a more...subtle manner to the Japanese descent into the 'Dark Valley' of the 1930s. Let's begin.
Taisho and the Revolution
Even before Communism formally arrived in Japan, the government had shown itself to be a staunch anti-communist body in the postwar years. Most notably, in the Siberian Intervention of 1918-1922. As part of the Allied intervention effort to stop the Bolsheviks from coming to power over all of Russia, US President Wilson had asked Gensui Count Terauchi Masatake (then Prime Minister of Japan) for the assistance of seven thousand troops in the Far East of Russia. In an act of immense diplomatic trickery, the Japanese ended up dispatching around seventy thousand troops to the region, almost ten times more than what they had initially promised. Even after the British, French, and American forces had withdrawn from Russia in 1920, the Japanese remained in and around Vladivostok all the way up until 1922, supporting a small counterrevolutionary movement.
Under international criticism and mounting domestic backlash, the government withdrew its troops later that year, having suffered 3,000 casualties in the entire affair. Rather ironically, in an effort to halt the spread of Communism in Russia, the Japanese government of 1918 had heralded its arrival to their own shores. During the reign of the Taisho Emperor (r. 1912 - 1926), the tumultuous period of "imperial democracy" was already straining under the growing influence of right-wing nationalists and the military. Communism added to all of these fears, but it stood out amongst all the others as a group which was wholly incompatible with the "emperor-state" nature of post-Meiji Japan. Historian Richard H. Mitchell framed this radical ideology as the gravest threat to Japan’s socio political status, writing:
“Communism arrived in Japan as this rebellious ferment neared its peak, sweeping throughout the intellectual world with the speed of a sudden typhoon. Among its converts were famous university professors, labor leaders, intellectuals, and students. Government officials were alarmed by this illegal, revolutionary group, the first since the early Meiji period to call for the abolition of the Emperor system.”
As Communism began to rise in the ranks of Japanese farmers and academics, the democratic parties feared that allowing this anti-monarchy rhetoric to grow further would undermine their power, and possibly lead to full scale revolution. In light of these fears, it is no surprise that in the aftermath of the devastating 1923 Great Kanto Earthquake, rumors spread that left-wing radicals and Koreans were actually responsible for the fires, poisoning of wells, and even the earthquake itself. In 1925, the government under PM Kato Takaaki passed the notorious Peace Preservation Law, a repressive bit of legislature which targeted political parties and individuals dissenting against the Chrysanthemum Throne. Here the first article (translated) of the Law, which clearly has elements of authoritarian governance in it:
“Anyone who organizes a group for the purpose of changing the national polity (kokutai) or of denying the private property system, or anyone who knowingly participates in said group, shall be sentenced to penal servitude or imprisonment not exceeding ten years. An offense not actually carried out shall also be subject to punishment.
Aside from the Peace Preservation Laws, when the Japanese Communist Party (JCP) was formed by intellectuals in 1922, it was never allowed to participate in party politics until 1945 (ironically when the American occupation forces lifted this ban). As a result, the party often suffered from internal divisions on ideological paths to achieve the revolution, and a sort of "proto-nationalist-socialism" was also more popular amongst the philosophers of the Taisho era. Amongst the more well-known members of the Japanese communist movement were Yamakawa Hitoshi, who argued that the path to revolution could be achieved by a broad coalition of the JCP with other left-wing organisations across Japan. He was challenged in this regard by Fukumoto Kazuo, who emphasised the JCP taking the initiative in spearheading the revolution. In other words, whilst the JCP in general agreed on following a Bolshevik-style revolution (with a "vanguard proletariat" leading the rest of the working class), but how to bring about the revolution was a contentious topic.
Then there was that interesting mix of nationalist values and Communist ideals. Perhaps the most famous philosopher/writer in this area was Kita Ikki, whose 1923 work An Outline Plan for the Reorganization of Japan (Nihon Kaizō Hōan Taikō) outlined several interesting (and seemingly conflicting) reforms;
Another prominent figure for such a rhetoric was Takabatake Motuyuki, who had argued for such a combination in his doctrine of Marxian national or state socialism (kokka shakai-shuggi). He was not the only one for certain, but his work stands out as a key contributor to the tenko (conversion) movement of the 1930s, when many Communist members of Japanese society began to shift their stances towards more ultranationalistic and anti-western groups of the Showa era.
Part 1 of 2