Between Anticommunism and Progressive Identity: Japanese Rightist Socialists’ Policy on the Question of China

Historians of the Japan Socialist Party have paid much attention to the foreign policy of the party’s leftist faction. However, only a few have discussed the position of the rightists, particularly about the question of China. This paper deals with the China policy of the so-called Rightist Socialist Party (1951-55) and reveals that their socialist ideology was unique, but their anti-communist and anti-conservative stance put them in a dilemma.

As followers of the positions of the Socialist International, which was established by European social democratic parties, Japanese rightist socialists pursued an international order centered around the United Nations. Additionally, they were as staunchly anti-communist as the mainstream of West European democratic socialists.

Based on these positions, they did not support the immediate recognition of the People’s Republic of China (PRC), which was at war against the “UN Army” in the Korean War. They viewed the PRC as a regime of oppressive communists and had special personal connections with the Chinese Kuomintang in Taiwan. At the same time, being part of the progressive camp, they were required to provide alternatives to the policy of Yoshida Shigeru’s conservative government, resulting in their policy of non-recognition of either the PRC or Taiwan.

When they agreed with the leftists on the merger of Japanese socialist parties in 1955, they declared to support the recognition of the PRC. It was partly because of their compromise with leftists and the adjustment to the transformation of the international environment especially after the armistice of the Korean and Indochina Wars in 1953-54. It was also because the Sino-Japanese rapprochement was essential in their new policy for regional order in East Asia, aiming to construct the so-called “New Locarno System,” which is hard to be understood in the binary pro/ anti-U.S. context.