Written on 2019-05-28.
This chapter examines the Soviet-Comintern plan for a Japanese “defeat revolution,” brought to light by the release of the Venona papers, and the efforts of Emperor Showa, Shigeru Yoshida, Tanzan Ishibashi, and other conservative liberals to resist it.
It argues that the period immediately after Japan’s surrender was the nation’s greatest crisis and asks what modern Japan must prepare in diplomacy, military affairs, intelligence, and economics.

2019-05-28
The chapter I published on 2018-12-25 under the title, “For Shigeru Yoshida, Mamoru Shigemitsu, and other ‘conservative liberals,’ ‘preserving the national polity’ meant protecting liberalism and constitutional monarchy, the national principles upheld since the Meiji Restoration,” is now in the real-time top 10.
The chapter I posted on Ameba on 2018-10-20 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-Comintern…” is also ranking high in search numbers.
It is surely a chapter that all Japanese people should reread.
The following is a continuation of the previous chapter.
The Soviet Union and the Comintern intended to trigger a defeat revolution in Japan, which they had driven into war with the United States, and they had carefully prepared for it.
Where, and by whose hands, was that preparation carried out?
With the Soviet Union serving as the command center, plans for Japan’s defeat revolution and the training of its “carriers of revolution” were being conducted in two places, the United States and China.
After its defeat, Japan was forced by the GHQ centered on the United States to undergo sweeping occupation reforms, including constitutional revision.
Research into the process by which occupation policy toward Japan was formed had advanced rapidly since the 1980s.
In 1995, an event occurred that completely overturned that research.
Classified documents, commonly known as the “Venona Papers,” were released.
These were secret communications intercepted and deciphered between Soviet spies in the United States and the Soviet homeland before and during the Second World War.
In 1989, the Berlin Wall in Germany, a symbol of the East-West Cold War, collapsed, and the countries of Eastern Europe one after another changed from communist states into liberal states.
The Soviet Union 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 “classified documents” related to diplomacy during the Second World War, especially secret activities.
The release of the “Venona Papers” was one such example.
The release of these “Venona Papers” made clear that numerous Soviet-Comintern spies and operatives had infiltrated Roosevelt’s Democratic administration in the United States and had exerted major influence on American foreign policy.
Until then, it had been said that “victorious America planned its occupation policy toward Japan in order to democratize Japan,” but as a result of the release of the Venona Papers and the research based on them, the aspect is now coming to light that “Comintern operatives who had infiltrated Roosevelt’s Democratic administration had drafted plans for a Japanese ‘defeat revolution.’”
Moreover, exerting tremendous influence on this Japanese “defeat revolution” plan were the Chinese Communist Party, which had based itself in Yan’an during the Second World War, and Nosaka Sanzo.
This book also touches on how the Chinese Communist Party’s psychological warfare against Japan has distorted Japan-China relations down to the present day.
While preparations for a Japanese “defeat revolution” were thus carefully advanced in the United States and China, the Japanese government and military leadership, guided by “right-wing totalitarians,” were promoting a pro-Soviet, anti-American policy under the name of “preserving the national polity,” and were willingly moving toward coming under Soviet influence.
What Japan clung to at the end of the war was “preserving the national polity.”
Astonishingly, for these “right-wing totalitarians,” “preserving the national polity” meant that even establishing a socialist government under the Emperor system that maintained friendly relations with the Soviet Union was within the acceptable range.
That meant becoming an “ally” of the Soviet Union and the Chinese Communist Party (this terrifying inversion is also detailed in this book).
On the other hand, for “conservative liberals” such as Shigeru Yoshida and Mamoru Shigemitsu, who later became prime minister, “preserving the national polity” meant protecting liberalism and constitutional monarchy, the national principles upheld since the Meiji Restoration, and blocking Soviet-Comintern efforts at “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 totalitarians” and the “conservative liberals.”
However, because few people clearly understood that difference, the end-of-war negotiations were needlessly thrown into confusion (and regrettably, even now few people clearly understand that difference).
Fortunately for Japan, Emperor Showa clearly understood the difference between these two positions.
Emperor Showa agreed with the version of “preserving the national polity” advocated by the conservative liberals and decided upon surrender.
Because of that 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 Showa had sought a path of cooperation with the Soviet Union at the end of the war, Japan would without question have gone down the same path as North Korea.
Thanks to the struggle of Emperor Showa 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 kind to give up because of that.
After the defeat, Soviet-Comintern operatives who had infiltrated the GHQ sought to provoke a defeat revolution in Japan, and to that end they not only weakened Japan’s political system, but also deliberately drove the Japanese people into economic hardship by imposing deflationary policies and forcing a decline in productive capacity, thereby stirring social unrest.
Many people think that the postwar privation and food crisis were caused by the destruction of production facilities in the air raids, but in fact Japan was intentionally driven into a food crisis.
Moreover, against the background of that food crisis, Soviet-Comintern operatives who had infiltrated the GHQ cooperated with Nosaka Sanzo and others returning from China to promote defeat-revolution operations.
Responding to these operations, “left-wing totalitarians” also formed labor unions one after another and organized large-scale anti-government groups.
After all, this was an era when the victorious Soviet Union and the GHQ were supporting the Japanese Communist Party.
Japan, by contrast, had neither a proper military nor a proper police force, nor laws capable of dealing with terrorism or insurrection.
The mass media had been deprived of freedom of speech by GHQ censorship, and many capable people had been purged from public office and barred from political activity.
Indeed, the period immediately after defeat was Japan’s greatest crisis.
As things stood, there was a possibility that events could move 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 Showa, Prime Minister Shigeru Yoshida, Finance Minister Tanzan Ishibashi, and other conservative liberals who tried to block such 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 full use of “economics” and “intelligence.”
If one loses a war, peace does not arrive automatically.
Even if one is defeated in “military” terms and deprived of diplomatic authority, the struggle in “intelligence” and “economics” continues, but not many people in Japan at the time were conscious of that.
Rather, the elites — politicians, military officers, and senior bureaucrats — who had cried out for “fight to the bitter end” during the war, when faced with the unprecedented defeat, did not merely panic and flee, but many of them also ingratiated themselves with the 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.
What it is saying is that, assuming Japan may be subjected in the near future to war or civil unrest, we must prepare the laws, political system, budget, and personnel so that we can respond to crises in such fields as “diplomacy,” “military,” “intelligence,” and “economics.”
The struggle against the communist threat that was the East-West Cold War may have ended in Europe, but in Asia it continues even now.
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 its missile and nuclear development aimed within Japan’s range, ignoring condemnation from the international community.
The Trump Republican administration in the United States is trying to block North Korea’s nuclear development and deter China’s military rise, but the United States is not monolithic either.
There are many politicians and bureaucrats in America who place importance on friendship with the Chinese Communist government, and it is also unclear whether North Korea’s nuclear development can in fact be stopped.
Who can guarantee that the crisis of war, occupation, and defeat revolution will not strike Japan again?
To prepare for the coming crisis, I hope that as many people as possible will come to know how their predecessors struggled, and the history of that hard-fought struggle.
In quoting reference works in the main text, I have changed old characters and old kana usage into modern characters and modern kana usage, and have also altered some notation by replacing certain kanji with kana.
I have also inserted line breaks where appropriate.
In the case of this book, this was done out of the judgment that the highest priority is for readers to know what was actually written and argued before, during, and after the war, while also making it easier for modern readers to read.
I ask for your understanding.
In publishing this book, I received exceptional support from Mr. Kawakami Tatsushi of PHP Institute and Ms. Yamauchi Chieko.
In particular, thanks to Ms. Yamauchi’s translations into Japanese of many books and papers 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.
Lastly, Professor Nakanishi Terumasa, following the previous volume, kindly contributed words of recommendation.
I would like to express my heartfelt respect and, taking this opportunity, my gratitude to Professor Nakanishi, who for more than 30 years has struggled to establish in Japan a new academic field called “intelligence history.”

An auspicious day in July, Heisei 30
Ezaki Michio