Author

Jung Jin Park, Institute for Japanese Studies, Seoul National University

Abstract

Tokuda Kyuichi emerged in the post-war era of reform when a new style of leadership was needed. He exercised a robust charisma whenever in public or in parliament which was rarely present in Japan’s traditionally austere leadership. However, he quickly disappeared into history as an incomplete revolutionary leader. Tokuda’s patriarchal, despotic leadership resulted in the Japanese Communist Party pulling away from his legacy as the leader of the militant, left-wing movement.

However patriarchal, radical movements were not uncommon in socialist nations with successful reform records. Tokuda’s revolutionary leadership was limited primarily because he lacked a creative ideology or theory exhibited by leaders such as Joseph Stalin and Mao Zeodong. This deficiency exposed global communist movements’ vulnerability to ideological authority. This deficiency can be attributed to Tokuda’s inherent limitations as he came from a remote region and his experiences as a political prisoner in imperial Japan.

Tokuda cannot be entirely to blame for the failure of his revolutionary leadership. The fact that the Japanese Communist Party labeled Tokuda’s revolutionary leadership as incomplete upon his death implies a recognition that early post-war Japan was far from a revolutionary environment. Could this realization have interfered with the completion of revolutionary leadership through the establishment of indigenous communism and an internationalism based on an original ideological theory? The answer to this question remains unanswered.

The full text in Korean is available here