Japanese resistance to the Empire of Japan in World War II

Japanese resistance to the Empire of Japan in World War II covers individual Japanese people, and Japanese organizations who were resisters to the militarist Empire of Japan during World War II. Although there were Japanese resisters in Japan during WWII, organized resistance in Japan was absent during WWII, which contrasts starkly with German Resistance to Nazism, and the Italian resistance movement.

Labour-Farmer Party
The Labour-Farmer Party was a political party that advocated universal suffrage, minimum wages, and women's rights. In February 1929, Senji Yamamoto, who spoke in the Imperial Diet, inquiring about the torture and illegal detention of prisoners by the police, was killed by a right-wing assassin. When the Labour-Farmer Party was banned in 1928, Ikuo Oyama, another member, fled Japan in 1933 to the United States. He got a job at Northwestern University. During his exile, he worked closely with the U.S Government.

Government suppression of academia
In May 1933 The Interior Ministry, Shigenao Konishi, president of Kyoto University, was requested by the government to dismiss Professor Yukitoki Takigawa, who was a critic of his country's judicial systems Konishi rejected the request, but due to pressure from the military, and nationalists, Takigawa was fired from the university. This lead to mass protests in Kyoto University.

During Ichirō Hatoyama's term as education minister, a number of elementary school teachers were also dismissed for having "dangerous thoughts".

Tadao Yanaihara, a Japanese educator, who was a noted critic of Japan's expansionist policies, was forced to resign from his university by right-wing scholars in 1937.

Salon de thé François
The Salon de thé François was a western-style café established in Kyoto in1934 by Shoichi Tateno, who participated in labour movements, and anti-war movements. The cafe was a secret source of funds for the then banned Japanese Communist Party. The anti-fascist newspaper Doyōbi was edited and distributed from the Salon de thé François before the newspaper was disbanded by the government.

Japanese resistance during World War II
Due to the Tokubetsu Kōtō Keisatsu (Special Higher Police), and the Peace Preservation Law, any sign of resistance to the Kokutai was met with arrest, torture, or political conversion thru Tenkō. When World War II started, some resisters found themselves working with the Empire's enemies to overthrow the Empire.

Japanese Resistance Groups in China


The League to Raise the Political Consciousness of Japanese Troops (日本兵士覚醒同盟|Nihon Heishi Kakusei Dōmei) was the first Japanese resistance organization made up of Japanese prisoners of war (POWs) in the Communist areas, and was made up of small groups of Japanese soldiers taken prisoner by the Eighth Route Army.

The Japanese People's Anti-war Alliance (Hansen Domei), led by proletarian writer Kaji Wataru. in the Kuomintang provisional capital of Chongqing, and the Communist Japanese People's Emancipation League, led by the controversial Comintern agent Sanzo Nosaka   were both Japanese resistance groups aligned with the Chinese resistance during the Second Sino-Japanese War. They engaged in a psychological warfare campaign against the Imperial Japanese army on the front lines in order to weaken their morale. Using "megaphone propaganda", leaflets, and propaganda broadcasts aimed at the Imperial Japanese Army. These resistance groups were also involved with the reeducation of Japanese POWs. During the war, there were reports of Japanese Imperial Soldiers defecting to these Japanese resistance groups.

Sorge spy ring
The Sorge Spy Ring was headed by Soviet Spy Richard Sorge. Hotsumi Ozaki, a Japanese journalist who was critical of Japan's war with China, was part of the Sorge spy ring. Hotsumi was able to gather intelligence on Japanese Prime Minister Fumimaro Konoe, who at the time Hotsumi was working for as an adviser. Communist Party USA had many active Japanese members in 1932-1933, and some of those members were recruited by the Sorge spy ring. CPUSA members, Yoshisaburo, and his wife Tomo Kitabayashi were members of the Sorge spy ring. Yotoku Miyagi, an Okinawan artist and a CPUSA member who resented the exploitation of Okinawa by the Japanese, and the discrimination of Asians on the American West Coast,  was also recruited. He would translate Japanese reports and newspaper articles into English for Richard.

Shu Yabe, a secretary to an Imperial Army general named Issei Ugaki, was also recruited. All members of the Sorge spy ring were rounded up, and made confessions. Hotsumi and Sorge were hanged in 1944. Tomo Kitabayashi was arrested in 1941 in connection with Richard Sorge and sentenced to five years in prison. She died soon after her parole in February 1945. Yotoku Miyagi died in a Japanese prison on August 2, 1943, before his sentencing. In postwar Japan, the Japanese viewed Hotsumi Ozaki as a patriot.

Japanese-American Community
First generation Japanese-Americans (issei) who fled their homeland to avoid political persecution worked for the U.S during WWII. Political exiles Ayako Ishigaki, a feminist, and journalist, worked for the OWI as a translator and writer, painter Taro Yashima (real name Atsushi Iwamatsu) produced leaflets urging Japanese troops to surrender, and his wife, painter Mitsu Yashima (real name Tomoe Sasako) broadcast propaganda to the Empire of Japan's female citizens in order to weaken their wartime morale.

Karl Yoneda,a second generation Japanese-American (nisei) member of Communist Party USA who spent his pre-war years protesting Japanese imperialism, joined the United States Military Intelligence Service in the war. Eitaro Ishigaki, the issei husband of Ayako Ishigaki, a John Reed Clubs member, and a painter who glorified the Chinese resistance thru his paintings, also joined the United States Office of War Information.

The Japanese American Committee for Democracy a New York based anti-fascist organization made up of issei, and nisei, organized bond rallies, and blood drives to prove their loyalty to America. Its members also volunteered for the OWI's Foreign Language Division as translators or writers. The JACD consisted of such Japanese anti-fascists as Taro Yashima, and Yasuo Kuniyoshi. The JACD is a controversial organization due to it sending a letter to the government supporting the "military necessity" of interning Japanese Americans in the West Coast following President Franklin Delano Roosevelt's Executive Order 9066.

Pacifist resistance


Toyohiko Kagawa was a Japanese Christian pacifist. In 1940, he was arrested for apologizing to the Republic of China for Japan's occupation of China. After his release, he went back to the United States in a futile attempt to prevent war between that nation and Japan. He then returned to Japan to continue his attempts to win women's suffrage. After Japan's surrender, Kagawa was an adviser to the transitional Japanese government.

George Ohsawa was a pacifist who actively opposed the ultra nationalism, militarism, and expansionism in his country, while increasing his efforts as president of the Shoku-yo (food and nourishment, which he later called "macrobiotics") group. In 1939, however, he was asked to resign because of conflicts largely caused by his antigovernmental political activities, but also by his personality and philosophy. His antiwar activities continued and in January 1945 he was imprisoned, questioned, and severely mistreated. He believed he would die, but finally, one month after the Atomic Bombing of Hiroshima, he was released gaunt, crippled, and 80% blind.

There were also incidents in the Japanese military of Jehova's Witnesses refusing to bear arms, throwing their weapons down despite the shame, humiliation and punishment that insubordination implied. In 1940, there were 1,023 deserters, and in 1941, there were 1,085.

Buddhist resistance
Taisen Deshimaru was a Japanese Soto Buddhist, and a follower of the Soto master Kodo Sawaki. During WWII, Deshimaru was sent to Japanese controlled Indonesia to direct a copper mine. He found himself on the island of Bangka. He was thrown into prison, and sentenced to execution as a resistance fighter for taking up the Bangka people's cause. Directly before the mass execution was to take place, word arrived from the highest military authorities in Japan, and Deshimaru, along with all those awaiting execution with him, was set free. After the war, Deshimaru was taken prisoner by the Americans and incarcerated in a prisoner-of-war camp in Singapore. After his release from a POW camp, he founded the Association Zen Internationale in 1970.