What's Left of the Right: Nabeyama Sadachika and Anti-communism in Transwar Japan, 1930–1960

This article examines the thought and career of Nabeyama Sadachika (1901–79) from communist militant in 1920s Japan to his conversion to the emperor system in the 1930s and, finally, to his role in shaping the postwar anti-communist movement. Using Nabeyama's recently released private papers, the article shows how he brokered his anti-communist expertise to a range of postwar actors and institutions—the police, the Self-Defense Forces, business circles, politicians—as well as to foreign states, especially the Republic of China (Taiwan). These networks indicate that important sections of Japan's postwar establishment rallied behind anti-communism in the face of reforms that threatened their power at home and their vision for Japan in the world order after 1945. As a transwar history, this article adds to our understanding of Japan's transition from the age of empire to that of liberal democracy by qualifying narratives about the “progressive” nature of postwar Japanese politics. It argues that the vitality of anti-communism is symptomatic of the durability of particular political traditions, and reveals that, despite the significant reforms that Japan underwent after 1945, the Right was able to claim a space in the country's political culture that has been neglected by historians.

A Post-War Japanese Intellectual Journal: Shisō no kagaku and Self-Publishing

In 1996, the Institute for the Science of Thought decided to cease publication of its journal Shisō no kagaku (Science of thought). Launched in May 1946, the journal had not only survived the turbulent immediate postwar era, but also oversight by five different publishing companies within the space of less than twenty years. In 1962 the Institute broke away from commercial publishers, and established a new company especially to publish the journal. Self-publishing was prompted by the decision by the journal’s current publisher to cancel a forthcoming special issue on the ‘emperor system’. This was a pivotal moment in the history of Shisō no kagaku. In this essay, I outline the chronology of the “Shisō no kagaku Incident,” examine aspects of the contemporary ideological context such as the emergence of the so-called “chrysanthemum taboo,” and explore its legacy for the new publisher’s treatment of topics to do with the emperor.