was a Japanese writer, editor, labor organizer, communist agent, politician, and university professor and a founder of the Japanese Communist Party (JCP). He was the son of a wealthy Japanese merchant, and attended Keio University. While in university, Nosaka became interested in social movements, and joined a moderate labor organization after graduation, working as a research staff member, and as a writer and editor of the organization's magazine. He traveled to Britain in 1919 to study political economy, where he deepened his studies of Marxism and became a confirmed communist. Nosaka was a founding member of the Communist Party of Great Britain, but his activity within British communist circles led to him being deported from Britain in 1921.
After leaving Britain, Nosaka traveled through the Soviet Union (USSR). He returned to Japan in 1922, where he co-founded the Japanese Communist Party (JCP). Nosaka became a labor organizer, but was arrested twice by the Japanese government for his activities. After being released from prison a second time, Nosaka secretly returned to the USSR in 1931, where he became an agent of the Comintern. He traveled to the West Coast of the United States, where he worked as a spy from 1934 to 1938.
After leaving the United States, Nosaka worked in China from 1940 to 1945, supporting the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) by encouraging and recruiting captured Japanese soldiers to support and fight for the Chinese communists against the Imperial Japanese Army, and coordinating a spy network that operated throughout Japanese-occupied China. After the end of the Second World War in 1945, Nosaka returned to Japan with hundreds of other Japanese communists, where he led the JCP during the occupation by the Allies.Gillin and Etter pp. 511–512
Nosaka attempted to brand the JCP as a "lovable" populist party supporting Japan's peaceful transition to socialism, but his strategy was criticized within the party and within the Soviet Union. During the Korean War the JCP temporarily endorsed violence, and Nosaka disappeared from public life and went underground. He re-emerged to lead the JCP again in 1955, after which he attempted to disrupt the US-Japan Security Treaty by organizing public demonstrations, but he generally supported the JCP's role as a peaceful party.Taylor pp. iv, 13–14, 19 In 1958 Nosaka became Chairman of the JCP, a position he held until retirement at the age of 90, after which he was declared Honorary Chairman. Nosaka joined the faculty of Keio University, and he was widely idolized among left-wing intellectuals until shortly before his death, when the fall of the Soviet Union exposed controversial aspects of his relationship with Joseph Stalin's Communist regime.
Early life and education Sanzō Nosaka was the son of a prosperous Japanese merchant and was raised in a bourgeois environment. As a young man Nosaka was known for his fashionable taste in clothing and for the large dog that often accompanied him in public. He was quiet, serious, studious, introverted, and more comfortable in libraries than at public demonstrations. After his secondary education, Nosaka attended Keio University, which was then considered a "rich boys school". At Keio, Nosaka became interested in the international labor movement, an interest that was largely supported by one of his professors, Kiichi Horie. Nosaka decided to write his senior thesis on the moderate labor organization founded by Bunji Suzuki, "Yuaikai" ("The Friendly Society"). To research his thesis, Nosaka contacted Yuaikai'''s head office, and acquainted himself with its senior leaders: Suzuki initially mistook Nosaka for a salesman the first time they met, but eventually grew fond of Nosaka. When Nosaka graduated from Keio, in 1915, he joined Yuaikai and worked for the organization as a research staff member and as an editor of the organization's journal, Rodo Oyobi Sangyo (Labour and Industry).Scalapino p. 4
Nosaka became interested in communism after the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution.Encyclopædia Britannica As a greater volume of leftist literature entered Japan from the West, Nosaka's political orientation moved farther from the center. The first Western texts on revolutionary social theory available in Japan were mostly on anarchism, but Nosaka also enjoyed Edward Bellamy's utopian novel, Looking Backward. In 1918–1919 Nosaka read an English copy of The Communist Manifesto brought to Japan by his friend, Shinzo Koizumi. After reading The Communist Manifesto, Nosaka embraced the theories of Marxism.Scalapino pp. 4–5
Nosaka announced his intentions to go abroad to study social theory in the November 1918 issue of Rodo Oyobi Sangyo. He sailed out of Kobe harbor on July 7, 1919, and arrived in London on August 27. After his arrival, Nosaka studied political economy at London University. Like many British intellectuals at the time, Nosaka deepened his studies of Marxism, and became a confirmed communist at the university. While in London Nosaka became active in communist circles. He affiliated himself with notable trade union leaders active in London, and attended the September 8–13, 1919 Glasgow Trade Union Congress as a correspondent for Rodo Oyobi Sangyo.Scalapino p. 5 Nosaka was a founding member of the Communist Party of Great Britain in 1920,Pace and attended the Party's first session as a representative from London. Nosaka's activities within the Communist Party brought him to the attention of Scotland Yard, and Nosaka was deported from Britain in 1921. After he left Britain, Nosaka traveled through Europe to the newly formed Soviet Union. In Russia, with the help of friendly contacts in the communist hierarchy, Nosaka became influential within the Communist Party. Nosaka was suspected of being either a British or Japanese agent; but, because of his contacts among high-ranking Finnish and Russian leaders, Nosaka was never purged. Nosaka wrote A Brief Review of the Labour Movement in Japan. It was published by the International Council of Trade and Industrial Unions in 1921
After attending the Far Eastern People's Conference in the Soviet Union, Nosaka returned to Japan in 1922, and helped found the Japanese Communist Party (JCP) that same year. Nosaka was more secretive about his relationship with the Communist Party than he had been in Britain, and kept his membership a secret from Bunji Suzuki and other moderate labour leaders. After his return, Nosaka worked as a trade unionist and editor of the JCP's official newspaper, Musansha Shimbun.
Because of his activities within the Communist Party (which was illegal in Japan),Scalapino p. 21 Nosaka, like many communists in Japan, was arrested (twice in his case), interrogated, and tortured by the Kempeitai, but he was released after short periods both times. Nosaka was first arrested in 1923, and released within a year. After his release, Nosaka became more active within the Japanese labor movement. In March 1928, the Japanese police began a campaign to harass and destroy the JCP,Taylor p. 1 beginning with the May 15 Incident. After his second arrest in 1929, Nosaka spent two years in jail. He was released in 1931 on the grounds of illness.The Japan Times Online The short lengths of Nosaka's arrests aroused suspicion among other Japanese communists that Nosaka had given important information to the Japanese secret police, but these suspicions were never acted upon.
Comintern agent Upon his release, Nosaka secretly returned to the Soviet Union, arriving in Moscow in March 1931.Scalapino p. 42 While there, Nosaka served as a representative of the JCP, and worked as an executive member of the Comintern. While in Moscow Nosaka helped to draft the "1932 Thesis", which became the guiding document of the JCP until 1946. Most of his colleagues active in the JCP, who were not able to go abroad, were subsequently arrested by the Kempeitai by the fall of 1932.Ariyoshi, Beechert, and Beechert p. 124
One of Nosaka's friends was , a well-known Japanese communist who had been in the Soviet Union with his common-law wife, Matsu, since 1928. Yamamoto had a reputation as a great womanizer, and when rumors circulated that Yamamoto was engaged in an affair with Nosaka's wife, Ryu, Nosaka wrote a confidential letter to the NKVD (dated February 22, 1939) indicating that he believed Yamamoto and his wife were likely Japanese spies in the pay of the Kempeitai. On Stalin's orders, both Yamamoto and Matsu were arrested as spies. A firing squad executed Yamamoto, and Matsu died in a gulag. Both Yamamoto and his wife were formally rehabilitated after their deaths by Nikita Khrushchev on May 23, 1956, recognizing the lack of any evidence that the two were actually spies. In his autobiography, Nosaka later wrote that he had tried to save Yamamoto's life.
In 1934, Nosaka secretly traveled to the West Coast of the United States, where he became involved in intelligence work on behalf of the International Liaison Department of the Comintern against the government of the Empire of Japan. Nosaka's activities included disseminating information to communists still active in Japan, infiltrating and making contact with the Japanese communities active in the United States, and establishing a number of communist front organizations in Seattle, Los Angeles, and other cities on the West Coast. Nosaka worked to gain funding from the Comintern for his activities, and attempted to have other Japanese Communists secretly relocated to America. He planned to recruit American and Japanese agents to send to Yokohama to establish a cell that would operate as a communist front organization. Because the records from this period are incomplete, historians cannot be certain to what extent Nosaka's efforts in America were successful. Nosaka worked as a Comintern agent in America until 1938, when he returned to Moscow. In 1940, the Comintern ordered Nosaka to aid communist forces in China.
In May 1943, Nosaka was the representative of the JCP in the case of the dissolution of the Comintern.
Activities in China
From March 1940 to the end of 1945, during the Second Sino-Japanese War, Nosaka resided at the Chinese Red Army base in Yan'an, in Shaanxi Province, where he headed the Japanese People's Emancipation League (JPEL). The JPEL engaged in the "re-education" of numerous Japanese prisoners of war (POWs) and created propaganda on behalf of the Chinese Communists. Japanese troops captured by the Communists were then used by the Communists in various civilian and military roles, and were especially valued because their level of technical expertise was generally greater than that of most Chinese soldiers. "Re-educated" Japanese troops were instrumental in a number of Communist victories after World War II, including the 1949 Pingjin Campaign, in which most of the artillery fielded by the Communists was manned by Japanese gunners. In general, the method of "re-education" devised and employed by Nosaka was highly effective.Gillin and Etter p. 511
Initially, the Red Army was a purely guerrilla force without the facilities to imprison POWs. The policy of the Eighth Route Army, the main communist force active during World War II, was to interrogate prisoners and then release them. After reports surfaced that the Japanese were punishing Japanese prisoners after they returned, the Red Army's policy gradually changed to one of retraining POWs, and the communists began to implement this policy after Nosaka arrived in Yan'an.Inoue By the time of its war with China, the Japanese army was educating its officers and common soldiers to die rather than surrender. Injured soldiers were easily captured, and made up the bulk of Japanese POWs. Captured Japanese believed that they would be killed, but were instead fed and clothed, and began to develop a rapport with their captors.