This chapter describes how the Soviet Union and the Comintern had carefully prepared to trigger a “defeat revolution” in Japan after the war, and how Emperor Shōwa, Shigeru Yoshida, Tanzan Ishibashi, and other conservative liberals tried to block it through the two fields of intelligence and economics.
By drawing on the implications of the Venona papers and by clarifying the decisive difference between right-wing totalists and conservative liberals over the meaning of preserving the national polity, it compels readers to reconsider the true starting point of postwar Japan.
It is a highly suggestive discussion of how Japan, even after being stripped of military and diplomatic means, still managed to survive as a nation.

2019-05-28
It was Emperor Shōwa, together with conservative liberals such as Prime Minister Shigeru Yoshida and Finance Minister Tanzan Ishibashi, who tried to block these movements in the two fields of “intelligence” and “economics.”

The chapter I published on December 25, 2018, under the title, “For conservative liberals such as Shigeru Yoshida and Mamoru Shigemitsu, ‘preserving the national polity’ meant safeguarding the liberalism and constitutional monarchy that had been the national principle since the Meiji Restoration,” is now among the real-time top ten.
The chapter I posted on Ameba on October 20, 2018, under the title, “With the release of the ‘Venona Papers,’ it became clear that inside Roosevelt’s Democratic administration in the United States there were Soviet and Comintern…,” is also ranking high in search numbers.
It is probably a chapter that all Japanese citizens ought to reread.
What follows is a continuation of the previous chapter.
The Soviet Union and the Comintern intended to provoke a defeat revolution in Japan, a country that had been driven into war with the United States, and they advanced their preparations with the utmost care.
Where, and by whose hands, were those preparations being made?
With the Soviet Union revered as the command tower, plans for Japan’s defeat revolution and the training of the “bearers of the revolution” were being carried out in two places, the United States and China.
After Japan’s defeat, it was forced by GHQ, centered on the United States, to undergo comprehensive occupation reforms, including constitutional revision.
Research on the process by which occupation policy toward Japan was formed had advanced rapidly from the 1980s onward.
An event occurred in 1995 that completely overturned those studies.
Highly classified documents, commonly known as the “Venona Papers,” consisting of intercepted and decoded secret communications between Soviet spies in the United States and the Soviet homeland from before and during the Second World War, were released.
In 1989, the Berlin Wall in Germany, the very symbol of the East-West Cold War, collapsed, and one after another the countries of Eastern Europe changed from communist states into liberal states.
The Soviet Union itself also collapsed in 1991, abandoned the communist system, and became Russia.
As if in response to the collapse of the Soviet Union, countries around the world began disclosing to the public what were called “classified documents” concerning wartime diplomacy, especially secret activities, during the Second World War.
The release of the “Venona Papers” was one of those disclosures.
Through the release of these “Venona Papers,” it became clear that within Roosevelt’s Democratic administration in the United States, a large number of Soviet and Comintern spies and operatives had infiltrated the government and had exerted major influence on American foreign policy.
Until then it had been said that “victorious America devised occupation policy toward Japan in order to democratize Japan,” but as a result of the release of the Venona Papers and the studies based on them, the aspect is beginning to come to light that “Comintern operatives who had infiltrated Roosevelt’s Democratic administration had been drafting a plan for a Japanese ‘defeat revolution.’”
Moreover, what exerted enormous influence on this plan for a Japanese “defeat revolution” were the Chinese Communist Party, which during the Second World War had its base in Yan’an, and Sanzo Nosaka.
This book also touches on the question of how the Chinese Communist Party’s psychological warfare against Japan has distorted Sino-Japanese relations down to the present.
While preparations for a Japanese “defeat revolution” were thus being carefully advanced in America and China, the Japanese government and military leadership, guided by “right-wing totalists,” were promoting an anti-American, pro-Soviet policy in the name of “preserving the national polity,” and were willingly seeking to enter under Soviet influence.
What Japan clung to at the end of the war was “preserving the national polity.”
Astonishingly, for these “right-wing totalists,” “preserving the national polity” meant that even under the imperial system, the establishment of a socialist government that would maintain friendly relations with the Soviet Union fell within the acceptable range.
That meant becoming an “ally” of the Soviet Union and the Chinese Communist Party.
This book also explains this terrifying inversion in detail.
By contrast, for “conservative liberals” such as Shigeru Yoshida and Mamoru Shigemitsu, who would later become prime minister, “preserving the national polity” meant defending the liberalism and constitutional monarchy that had been the national principle since the Meiji Restoration, and blocking the Soviet-Comintern operation for a “defeat revolution.”
That meant entering the liberal camp led by the United States.
In short, the meaning of “preserving the national polity” was completely different for the “right-wing totalists” and the “conservative liberals.”
However, the fact that few people clearly understood this difference served only to needlessly confuse the end-of-war negotiations.
Unfortunately, even now, few clearly understand this difference.
What was fortunate for Japan was that Emperor Shōwa clearly understood the difference between these two positions.
Emperor Shōwa agreed with the “preserving the national polity” advocated by the conservative liberals and made the decision to end the war.
Because of this decision, Japan was able to belong not to the communist camp led by the Soviet Union, but to the liberal camp led by the United States.
If Emperor Shōwa had, at the time of the war’s end, sought a path of coordination with the Soviet Union, then Japan would without question have gone down the same path as North Korea.
Thanks to the struggle of Emperor Shōwa and the conservative liberals, Japan barely managed to reach the end of the war through acceptance of the Potsdam Declaration, but the Soviet Union and the Comintern were not the sort to give up because of that.
After the defeat, Soviet and Comintern operatives who had infiltrated GHQ, in order to trigger a defeat revolution in Japan, not only weakened Japan’s political system, but also deliberately drove the Japanese people into economic hardship by imposing deflationary policies and a decline in productive capacity, thereby stirring social unrest.
Many people think that the destitution and food crisis after the defeat were caused by the destruction of production facilities through air raids, but in reality Japan had been intentionally driven into a food crisis.
Moreover, against the backdrop of this food crisis, Soviet and Comintern operatives who had infiltrated GHQ cooperated with Sanzo Nosaka and others who had returned from China in order to advance defeat-revolution operations.
Responding to this operation, the “left-wing totalists” likewise successively formed labor unions and organized large-scale anti-government groups.
After all, this was an age in which the victorious Soviet Union and GHQ were supporting the Japanese Communist Party.
Japan, for its part, had neither a military nor a proper police force, nor laws to deal with terrorism or insurrection.
The mass media, through GHQ censorship, had been deprived of freedom of speech, and many capable people had been purged from public office and prohibited from engaging in political activity.
Truly, the period immediately after the defeat was Japan’s greatest crisis.
At this rate, events might have developed all at once from a general strike to the establishment of a popular-front cabinet and then to a defeat revolution, but it was Emperor Shōwa and conservative liberals such as Prime Minister Shigeru Yoshida and Finance Minister Tanzan Ishibashi who tried to block these movements in the two fields of “intelligence” and “economics.”
Postwar Japan was deprived of the two means of “military” and “diplomacy,” but it can be said that it somehow managed to block a “defeat revolution” by making use of “economics” and “intelligence.”
Peace does not automatically arrive simply because one has lost a war.
Even if one is defeated in “military” terms and stripped of diplomatic authority, the struggle in “intelligence” and “economics” continues, but there were by no means many people in Japan at the time who were conscious of that.
Rather, the elites who had ridden the tide of the times and cried out for “decisive resistance” during the war, politicians, military men, and high-ranking bureaucrats, when faced with an unprecedented defeat, not only panicked and fled, but many of them also accommodated themselves to GHQ.
Of course, I do not mean to condemn the prewar elites as worthless.
The purpose of this book is not to denounce the past.
Rather, it is saying that, assuming Japan may in the near future be subjected to war or internal upheaval, it should prepare its laws, political system, budget, and personnel so that it can respond to crises in such fields as “diplomacy,” “military,” “intelligence,” and “economics.”
The struggle against the threat of communism that was the East-West Cold War may have ended in Europe, but in Asia it still continues.
Even while this book is being written, China is dispatching warships and fighter aircraft to the Nansei Islands, including the Senkaku Islands, threatening the safety of local residents, and buying up Japanese land and private companies.
North Korea too continues missile and nuclear development aimed within range of Japan, ignoring the criticism of the international community.
The Trump Republican administration in the United States is trying to stop North Korea’s nuclear development and deter China’s military rise, but America too is not of one mind.
In the United States there are also many politicians and bureaucrats who place importance on friendship with the Chinese Communist government, and it is unclear whether North Korea’s nuclear development can in fact be stopped.
Who can guarantee that the crises of war, occupation, and defeat revolution will not strike Japan again?
In order to prepare for the coming crisis, I hope that as many people as possible will learn how our predecessors struggled and what hardships they endured.
As for quotations from the references in the main text, I have modernized old orthography into new orthography and changed some kanji into kana.
I have also inserted line breaks where appropriate.
In the case of this book, based on the judgment that the highest priority is to understand what was actually written and argued before, during, and after the war, I made these adjustments so that modern readers could read it more easily.
I ask for your understanding.
In publishing this book, I received exceptional support from Mr. Tatsushi Kawakami of PHP Institute and Ms. Chieko Yamauchi.
In particular, thanks to Ms. Yamauchi’s translations into Japanese of many books and articles on the latest American historical research, beginning with studies of the “Venona Papers,” I was able in this book as well to introduce the latest findings of American scholarship.
Finally, Professor Terumasa Nakanishi kindly offered words of recommendation, following on from my previous book.
I would like to express my heartfelt respect to Professor Nakanishi, who for more than 30 years has struggled to establish in Japan a new academic field called “Intelligence History,” and I would also like to take this opportunity to offer my thanks.

A fortunate day in July, Heisei 30
Ezaki Michio