Originally published on July 8, 2019.
Based on Ezaki Michio’s historically important work, this essay examines how Herbert Norman brought the Comintern view of history into policy toward Japan and profoundly influenced GHQ occupation policy and the shaping of postwar views of Japan.
Through his connections with the IPR, Amerasia, and the Kōza-ha group, it reveals the reality of the ideological operations that helped define postwar Japan.

2019-07-08
There is a history behind this whereby MacArthur himself was an avid reader of this dissertation and therefore brought the Canadian Norman into GHQ as a staff member.
When I was a high school student, I was ordered to contribute a piece to LIBRARIA, the splendid booklet published by my alma mater’s library.
My classmates were all brilliant young people who would go on to represent Japan, so the essays, whose purpose was to be submitted to the Miyagi Prefecture book review and reflection contest, were all superb.
Among them was “Andō Shōeki” by Herbert Norman.
That was the first time I ever saw the name Herbert Norman.
The following is an excerpt from Ezaki Michio’s historically important masterpiece.
The emphasis in the text, other than the headings, is mine.
Herbert Norman, a Propagator of the Comintern View of History.
Among those connected with the IPR, another key person alongside Bisson was Herbert Norman.
Norman was a Canadian, born in Karuizawa in 1909 as the son of a Canadian Methodist minister who had been assigned to Japan, and he was raised in Japan until the age of seventeen.
After that, he studied at the University of Toronto, Cambridge University, and Harvard University.
His specialty was Japanese historical studies.
Norman joined the British Communist Party while enrolled at Cambridge University.
Looking at his subsequent activities, Norman had various connections with Communist front organizations in Canada, with Amerasia, and with the IPR.
In 1936, he became secretary of the Canadian Friends of the Chinese People Association, and when he visited New York at the end of that year, he wrote in a letter to his wife that “at the Phillipses’ place I was introduced to several people, including a Chinese couple who were editors of China Today.”
As mentioned earlier, China Today was the journal of the American Friends of the Chinese People Association, a front organization of the American Communist Party, which was an outpost organ of the Comintern.
And Amerasia, the sister organization of the IPR, was also a propaganda and operational organ of the Soviet Union and the Comintern.
In a letter dated April 18, Norman wrote that he had contributed an article to Amerasia.
Norman entered the Canadian Department of External Affairs in 1939, and after receiving his doctorate in May of the following year, he was immediately posted to Japan as a language officer before the outbreak of war between Japan and the United States.
Norman’s doctoral dissertation, Japan’s Emergence as a Modern State, was published in February 1940 as part of the IPR’s “Inquiry Series.”
In this dissertation, Norman argues as follows.
Japan’s post-Meiji Restoration ruling system was formed through the union of the absolutist emperor system with landlords, great merchants, and han clique forces, and there was no room for liberalism in the ideology of the ruling class.
Because the Meiji Restoration did not put the emperor on the guillotine as in the English Revolution or the French Revolution, and because Japan did not experience a bourgeois revolution, the emperor and the feudal ruling classes remained in collusion, the ordinary people continued to be oppressed, and Japan became a fascist state.
This dissertation was widely read by government and military leaders involved in occupation policy toward Japan.
There is a history behind this whereby MacArthur himself was an avid reader of this dissertation and therefore brought the Canadian Norman into GHQ as a staff member.
The framework of Norman’s claims almost completely coincides with the “1932 Thesis” adopted by the Comintern in 1932 and with the arguments of the Kōza-ha, the theoretical group of Japanese Communist Party members.
In fact, later, from July to September 1941, Norman received one-on-one lectures directly from Hani Gorō himself in order to study more deeply Hani Gorō’s analysis of the Meiji Restoration in Iwanami Kōza Japanese History.
Having thus sharpened the theories of the Kōza-ha, Norman attended the Eighth IPR Conference held in Mont Tremblant, Quebec, Canada, from December 4 to 14, 1942.
The nonfiction writer Kudō Miyoko has stated, “From around the time of this conference, Norman came to occupy what might be described as the position of the ‘face’ of the Canadian Department of External Affairs whenever it spoke in international settings about matters concerning Japan, and the image of Japan meaning Norman, and Norman meaning Japan, was becoming established both inside and outside the country.”
Thus, the young scholar who came into the spotlight as the leading authority on “Japan” studies in international society was in fact an operative of the Comintern.
The left is still adept at making use of such personnel even now, so we should remain on guard.
To be continued.