THE TENKO PHENOMENON
Although they were criticized from numerous points of view, Marxist ideas conditioned the entire history of social thought in Japan. But as a political movement, Japanese Marxism "failed" doubly: in the attempt both to discover empirically and to actualize politically a social logic of revolution—that is, a theory of inevitable revolution stemming from the internal processes of Japanese society. Part of this failure stems from the fact that until 1945 Marxists were among the primary victims of political persecution. Indeed, the legitimacy of the Communist Party after 1945 stemmed from its claim to have resisted longer than any other organization had. At the same time, it is a fact that the majority of party members, to say nothing of their many sympathizers and others of varied leftist inclinations, performed what is termed tenko: an ideological reversal, renouncing the left and (in many but not all cases) embracing the "national community." Tenko was performed especially under duress, most often in police custody, and was a condition for release (although surveillance and harassment would continue in any case). But it was also a broader phenomenon, a kind of cultural reorientation in the face of national crisis, that did not always involve direct repression. For decades, the term served both narrowly as a moral litmus test in evaluating the careers of intellectuals active before and after the war and more broadly as a metaphor for the collective experience of an entire generation of Japanese. One of the most spectacular and consequential instances of tenko came in June 1933, when Sano Manabu (1892—1953) and Nabeyama Sadachika (1901—1979), top figures in the Communist Party leadership, renounced their allegiance to the Comintern and the policy of violent revolution, embracing instead a Japan-specific mode of revolutionary change under imperial auspices, in reaction to the Soviet Union's use of the Comintern for its own power pur­poses against Germany and Japan. Their proclamation was followed by a wave of defections by the party rank and file and essentially signaled the demise of the party organization, except in exile.

LETTER TO OUR FELLOW DEFENDANTS (KYODO HIKOKU DOSHI NI TSUGURU SHO)
    For four years now, we have been shut away in prison, and under the conditions that have been imposed on us, we have both continued to struggle with all our might and, at the risk of many discomforts and dangers, directed our attention to the general situation in the world outside. But recently we have found that there is much to ponder deeply concerning the destiny of the Japanese people and its relationship to that of the working class, as also to the relationship between the vanguard of the Japanese proletariat and the Comintern. At the end of our long meditations, we find ourselves at a point that we have resolved to make important changes in our previous opinions and with respect to our previous actions.
    Japan at present faces unheard of difficulties abroad, and unprecedented major changes are bearing down on it. In the face of a domestic and interna­tional situation filled with both war and reforms at home, all classes and factions are busy with preparations and countermeasures aimed at resolving the issues at hand. At this time, the Communist Party of Japan, which bears responsibility as the vanguard of the working class, is revealing numerous deficiencies. The foundations of the party have expanded dramatically in both fact and potential, but the social composition of the party's membership, the party's structure, and its activities are turning into the political instruments of the radical petite bour­geoisie. The party has been unable to guide the outrage of the masses in re­sponse to the economic panic of recent years and the decay of the capitalistic structure that-this has exposed. The party's formalistic policies in response to the Manchurian incident and the succession of war conditions that have fol­lowed have failed completely, and its antiwar struggle is limited to a display of demagogic articles in the China News (Shina shinbun) and the Comintern's agitational literature. The party has been unable either to exercise leadership in important strikes or to provide guidance in the ever more serious struggle of the farmers. At one point in time, the Communist Party of Japan issued calls for armed demonstrations and in fact even organized them, though on a small scale. This was a decisive error; even so, it was grounded in the conviction of mass support and was an expression of the notion of plunging directly into the masses. By comparison, the facts of last year-end appear as nothing but a col­lection of the bad elements of Blanquism, even seeming to indicate a decaying trend that bears no connection with the proletariat. Viewed objectively, one cannot say that the party itself is a party of the working class. We believe that from our prison cell we should be silent on most matters. Also, we know full well that individual party members are serious and working gallantly, that the struggle is extremely agonizing and serious, and that growing tension in general conditions is working in our favor.
    And yet, can one declare that the party is following its proper course of development as an organization, as a whole, and as the unified force of the proletarian vanguard? There have been frequent instances in the past of the intelligentsia, which, as the leading elements of the petite bourgeoisie does not participate directly in society's production system, treating the working class as a stepping-stone in seeking to give full play to its own will. Now, however, they are taking advantage of the weakness and fissures within the Communist Party produced by its ongoing oppression, entering the party through these gaps, and trying to treat the vanguard of the progressive elements within the working class as its stepping-stone as well. Of course, individual comrades probably could not even dream of committing such an outrage, but the matter of a class's pursuing its own goals determined independently of the will of individual persons is the same even when it's the petite bourgeoisie involved. Pursuing its own self-determined interests is the same even if it's the petite bourgeoisie involved. This is the reason why the direction of the party is being twisted, regardless of the ardor and bravery of the sincere comrades who refuse to bow to oppression. Even if the party is lauded by journalists, it is becoming removed from the concerns of those who matter—the working classes. Indispensable proletarian self-criticism has been abandoned. And the pure-hearted youthful comrades and worker members are not being trained amid mass struggle. We cannot but feel immense regret over the present situation. Of course, its root cause does not lie in the personal qualities and capabilities of the party's leadership of recent times. We fully believe that under the given conditions, most were per­sons of the greatest honesty and excellence. Nevertheless, the fundamental problem is that the party is unable to unite as the vanguard of the proletariat. As a result of our careful deliberations, we have realized that one of the fun­damental causes that made the present situation inevitable is to be found in the politics and organizational principles of the Comintern, in which we had placed our unlimited trust. . . .
    We acknowledged the need to turn criticism on the Comintern itself, an organization that has until now been accorded the highest authority. We believe that in recent years the Comintern has become conspicuously sectarian and bureaucratized. To an unacceptable extreme it has become the organ of one country, the Soviet Union. It has lost the spirit of strict unity among the pro­letarian vanguard required under the twenty-one articles of admission. In every country, we find that it is ingratiating itself with the petite bourgeoisie and exhibiting the worst inflammatory tendencies. With regard to the Communist Party of Japan, the Comintern has preferred to welcome petite bourgeoisie who hold forth on revolution more than workers with moral backbone. . . . The Comintern's theoretical criticisms regarding the international crisis of recent years and the ever more acute conditions that have obtained in its wake are extremely sharp as a matter of course and merit attention; however, under the circumstances the Comintern has exposed its almost complete inability as an international revolutionary organization to lead the practical struggle of workers in all countries.
These workers are engaged in a struggle with capitalism in each of their countries that has virtually no connection with either the Comintern or its local branches. The Comintern's branches are spread throughout the world, but they have not developed in a way that matches their words. Some examples are in order. Why is it that the Communist Party of Germany, one of the Comintern's major branches, was unable to offer opposition of any sort before the Hitlerian reaction? What is the reason for the weakness of the Spanish party, which for two years now has actually been in the midst of a revolution, and for the irre­sponsibility of the Comintern in having nothing to offer but repeated scoldings and criticisms? The Chinese Communist Party is strong because it is based in the mass movement of a soviet area, not because it is a branch of the Comintern. . . . We understand that the Soviet Union's extraordinary develop­ment and the international situation made it inevitable that the Comintern would tend to be used as an instrument for the pursuit of Soviet policies. But this tendency has become extreme in recent years. It certainly is not right for the development of the worldwide labor movement that the single phrase "Pro­tect the Soviet Union" should have been turned into the supreme and sole slogan for the Communist Party in every country and that the interests of the working class in all countries should also be called upon to be sacrificed for this purpose. In fact, we can see that the Communist Party of Japan is more significant as a defender of the Soviet Union or as its official public relations organization than as a party whose goal is to liberate the working class.... Over the past eleven years, we have entrusted the Comintern with all our joys and sorrows. Now, however, resolving to submit ourselves to all manner of reproach, and for the reasons expounded in this declaration, we urge that Japan's left labor movement, whether the party or unions, resolutely divest itself of all con­nections with the Comintern. It must adapt to the social changes bearing down upon us and radically reorganize itself on the basis of new standards. ...
Without conducting fundamental research into what makes Japan unique, the Comintern adapted the experience of the class struggle in Europe and especially of the Russian Revolution and transposed it to the Japanese reality. This tendency is something we have long noted, but in the new theses on the Japan problem that were announced in May of last year it has reached its apex.
Recent world facts (including Soviet Union socialism) are instructive for us. Rather than depending on formalistic internationalism, the realization of world socialism will come by following the path to the construction of socialism in one country that conforms with the special conditions of each country and to which the working class, representing the vitality of that nation, is devoted. The Comintem's political principle, which pits nation (minzoku) against class, is an abstraction particularly ill suited to Japan, where the firmness of national unity is a prime characteristic of the society. The process by which the most advanced class represents the development of a people holds especially true for Japan. Not to fear even the sacrifice of one's own country to the goal of achieving world revolution is the culmination of Comintern-style internationalism; we ourselves served this goal. However, now that we have awakened to Japan's superlative conditions, we are determined that we will not offer the Japanese revolution as a sacrifice to anyone, no matter whom. It is not that we are re­jecting internationalism among the world proletariat. However, the even higher internationalism of the future is likely to be built out of the efforts to construct single-country socialism in crucial sites across the world.
However, there is nothing so natural or necessary as that Japan's workers should think chiefly of Japan. From ancient times to the modem day, the fact that the Japanese people have progressed through the developmental stages of human society properly, completely, and without interruption from foreign en­emies, is evidence of the extraordinarily strong internal developmental capac­ities of our people. Also, it is exceedingly significant that the Japanese people have not even once had the experience of being the slaves of another; instead they experienced always a free and independent mode of life. The extraordi­narily sturdy sense of national fellowship and unity fostered by this experience is internally linked with the experience of a way of life ordered by the state. The process by which there have been several alternations of class forces over the course of history, is remarkably different from the primitive, hopeless, and cruel process of class warfare such as one sees in countries that have been controlled by people of a different nationality, economically exploited or polit­ically oppressed. It is these experiences that have accumulated over history, together with the developed culture of the present day, that will allow the work­ing class—which is the representative class of the new age—to open the road to socialism in a manner that is Japanese, creative, unique, and moreover ex­tremely orderly. . . .
The Communist Party of Japan has adopted a slogan calling for the abolition of the monarchy in accordance with the directions of the Comintern. One of the main ideas of the aforementioned theses, taking matters another step for­ward, is to make the absurd provision that the antimonarchical struggle is the prime mission of the class struggle in present conditions. The Comintern sees monarchism in Japan as identical with czarism in Russia, and it imposes the struggle that took place as is on the Japanese branch. ... As a political slogan, the party repeats "overthrow the emperor system" as if it were chanting the name of the Amida Buddha. . . . The fact that the workers' class struggle has been simplified into this single task, and it is then imagined that the job is done is either due to political incompetence, or—to put it more concretely—because nothing is being done. The campaign in which the party is involved stirs up a futile and idealist liberal excitement among the radical petite bourgeoisie while at the same time, on the other hand, it is placing itself in a situation in which it is harder and harder to get close to the lives and feelings of the workers. . . .
The social sentiments that place the imperial household at the core of na­tional unity lie deep in the hearts of the working masses. We need to get a grasp of this feeling as it really is. Furthermore, Japan's monarch differs from the czar of imperial Russia or the kaiser of imperial Germany. The fact that since the Meiji Restoration, the monarch has stood in the forefront of progress means that for neither the bourgeoisie nor the proletariat has the antimonarchical struggle been turned into a live issue.... While the working classes instinctively desire the transformation of the capitalistic structure out of their class-based living circumstances, they will have no part of a simplistic program of over­throwing the monarchy that merely replicates that of liberalism or Russian anticzarism. ...
Along with the antimonarchy struggle, another major problem that the Comintern has imposed on the Communist Party of Japan is opposition to war, and defeatism in particular. Here too, we see an extremely pronounced petite bour­geois quality. . . . The petite bourgeois antiwar arguments that oppose war in general as well as pacifism are not attitudes that we should take up. Whether we participate in or oppose a war is a decision to be made on the basis of whether or not that war is progressive. The war against China's Nationalist clique, objectively, has a progressive significance. Under the current interna­tional situation, should there be a war with the United States it could rapidly change from being a mutual war among imperialists to a war of national lib­eration for the Japanese side. Furthermore, a world war in the Pacific could be turned into a progressive war in world historical terms that would liberate work­ing masses of undeveloped Asia from the clutches of Western capital. . . . We reject the attempt by Japan's bourgeoisie to turn Japan into Asia's permanent military police and, together with Western capital, to exploit the peoples of Asia. At the same time, we insist that it is harmful to Japan's working class to have the Comintern blindly and recklessly impose a policy of defeatism on the Com­munist Party of Japan out of consideration for Soviet interests of the moment. There is no need whatsoever to surrender to the Chinese military clique or to the United States.
    We must be loyal to the national consciousness that the masses demonstrate instinctively. It's not a matter of chauvinism stirring up the masses of the work­ing class. Rather, it is that resolving not to lose the war that is coming unavoid­ably upon them, they have determined inevitably to unite it with domestic reform. To dispense of this issue by saying that the masses' consciousness is lagging is not just an insult to the masses but also tantamount to spitting at Heaven... .
    We wish to point out that the official policy of separation of colonial peoples into nation-states that the Comintern demands of our party is not inappropriate for Japan. . . . We reject the capitalistic exploitation and oppression of the peoples of Korea and Taiwan as, above all, the greatest insult to the Japanese people themselves. We fight for completely equal rights for the Korean and Taiwanese peoples. However, the concrete expression of such equal rights will not take the form of a perfunctory separation into nation-states. It is far more realistic and in accord with world history that the working masses of each peo­ple, who have drawn closer to one another economically, culturally, and his­torically, should as a single great nation; and fusing together as a people (jinmin} and as a class, make the effort to build socialism. The joint mission of the worker masses in Japan, Korea, and Taiwan, who live together under a tightly knit and unified economic system, is to turn this state into a state of the workers themselves through their struggle with the exploiters. If the peoples of Japan, Taiwan, and Korea mechanically break up into nations in accordance with the principle of self-determination as the Comintern hopes, it would end with the establishment of a clique of reactionary small countries under the control of the old bourgeoisie just as before.
    We believe it is only a matter of time before our comrades in the government of the Chinese soviet and China's Communist Party arrive at the same opinion as ours concerning the Comintern's sectarianism, bureaucratization, and trend toward becoming the instrument of the Soviet Union only. The Comintern probably will collapse totally with the outbreak of a world war. The Communist Party in all countries includes the most active members of the proletariat; in these parties there probably are many people who do not interpret the connec­tion between revolution and war negatively in the way that the Comintern does at present and will try to resolve problems through actively taking part in war. For the past eleven years, we were trained under the banner of the Comintern, and we fought for it and its allies with all our might. Now, after having reached a point of so many irreconcilable differences, we manfully leave that camp and take a new road. . . .
    There are many things we should say about protecting the interests of the workers (the seven-hour workday, etc.) in the face of exploitation by capital and the various problems of the agricultural revolution (such as the elimination of parasitic land ownership, etc.). However, because we don't see the need to change our basic attitude with respect to these matters, we will move on. Also, there has not been the slightest change in our certainty regarding the leadership role of the vanguard of the working class and the need to unite it. ... We have faith in the possibility that an independent, unified force of the proletarian vanguard that includes those of Japan, Korea, Taiwan, and Manchuria can come into being. . . .
    Japan's working class cannot play its given role unless it wins over the petite bourgeois working masses that won't be able to exploit others, but it is only after the leadership status of the working class has been assured, then the petite bourgeois workers will be able to be that ally. . . .
    We have denounced the Comintern, the party, and the radical petite bour­geoisie. While bearing the pain manfully, we acknowledge this as a form of painful self-criticism. . . . We bear a strong joint responsibility for the deficien­cies and inconsistencies that are clearly displayed by the Comintern today. There are many things that we have said here that go beyond mere words and have not exhausted our intent. However, it is a huge effort for us to get just these few words out of prison. If we could, we would offer even more detailed opinions. However, while incomplete, we believe that even just what we have said here has allowed us to present the core of the problem. . . . We also fully understand how inappropriate it is to announce opinions such as these from prison, but we would not be doing our duty if we were to stay silent any longer. While our opinions may appear diametrically opposed to our previous views, they are nothing other than their free internal development. People may criticize us, agree with us, or flog us as traitors—let them. We hold to the certainty that our point of view represents the opinion of the self-conscious elements of Japan's proletariat as expressed through our voices. There is not the slightest change in our basic attitude of dedicating ourselves wholeheartedly to the work­ing class; it remains the same as before. And there would be no change whether we end our days here in prison or spend them with pride as the vanguard of the proletariat. We urge that anyone with a sincere interest in Japan's labor movement direct serious attention to the problems we have presented here.
June 8, 1933 Ichigaya Prison
[Sano and Nabeyama, "Kyodo hikoku doshi ni tsuguru sho," pp. 191-99;
AB, Carl Freire]
From DeBarry p.940