International communist who founded the JCP, ran the Comintern's Pacific networks, and led the party for 24 years
On his arrival at JCP headquarters in January 1946, one newspaper reported that 'young girls in both kimonos and Western dress gathered like fans awaiting a star at the stage door.'
An international communist who helped found both the CPGB in London (1920) and the JCP in Tokyo (1922), he served on the Comintern Executive Committee and ran intelligence networks against Imperial Japan from the United States and China. From 1940 to 1945 in Yan'an, he led the Japanese People's Emancipation League, converting captured Japanese soldiers into communist forces, and after the war he crafted the JCP's 'lovable party' strategy of peaceful revolution, winning up to 35 Diet seats. As JCP Chairman from 1958 to 1982, he steered the party through the Anpo protests and the Sino-Soviet split, but in 1992 the discovery of his 1939 letter denouncing a comrade to the NKVD led to his expulsion from the party he had founded.
Activities and affiliations
Career Timeline
- 1915Joined Yuaikai (Friendly Society), editor of Labour and Industry
- 1920Founding member, Communist Party of Great Britain; London delegate
- 1922Co-founded the Japanese Communist Party; editor of Musansha Shimbun
- 1931–1940Comintern Executive Committee member; intelligence work in USSR, USA, China
- 1940–1945Led the Japanese People's Emancipation League in Yan'an; re-educated Japanese POWs
- 1946–1950Elected to House of Representatives; JCP Central Committee
- 1955–1958JCP First Secretary
- 1958–1982Chairman of the JCP Central Committee
Related historical events
Antiwar propaganda and Japanese organizations in Yan’an
Arriving in Yan’an in 1940, Nosaka joined the Chinese Communist war effort through research on Japan, education of Japanese prisoners of war, and the organization of Japanese antiwar groups. He directed the Eighth Route Army General Political Department’s Japan Research Society, which analyzed Japanese newspapers and broadcasts, and helped prepare research periodicals and an enemy-situation supplement for the Yan’an newspaper Jiefang Ribao. A China Social Sciences Network account states that the material informed the Chinese Communist Party’s understanding of Japan and policy-making. Nosaka also published the Japanese-language antiwar monthly Tomo of Soldiers and proposed a school for educating prisoners. The Japanese Workers’ and Peasants’ School opened in Yan’an in May 1941. As its principal, Nosaka taught about conditions in Japan, current affairs, and the history of the Soviet Communist Party. The account reports that more than 900 Japanese prisoners received instruction there between 1941 and 1945, and that many joined the Eighth Route Army, the New Fourth Army, or Japanese antiwar organizations.
In July 1940, with support from the Eighth Route Army’s General Political Department, Nosaka led the Yan’an branch of the Antiwar League of Japanese in China. He helped organize branches elsewhere; as some were reorganized as Liberation League branches from 1943, he chaired several representative meetings. Founded in Yan’an in 1944, the Japanese People’s Emancipation League brought together Japanese prisoners and antiwar activists. A reference account drawing on wartime reporting and studies describes its program as opposition to the war, overthrow of the militarists, and establishment of a democratic postwar government; it also reports that prisoners could choose between remaining in the Communist-held border region and returning to their units. Nosaka helped draft documents setting out the league’s work. At the Chinese Communist Party’s Seventh Congress in 1945, Zhu De publicly credited the league led by Nosaka with valuable assistance to the war against Japan. On September 9, 1945, Nosaka returned to Japan by way of northeast China and the Soviet Union.