The was a crackdown on

socialists Socialism is a left-wing economic philosophy and movement encompassing a range of economic systems characterized by the dominance of social ownership of the means of production as opposed to private ownership. As a term, it describes the eco ...

and

communists Communism (from Latin la, communis, lit=common, universal, label=none) is a far-left sociopolitical, philosophical, and economic ideology and current within the socialist movement whose goal is the establishment of a communist society, a so ...

by the

Japanese Japanese may refer to: * Something from or related to Japan, an island country in East Asia * Japanese language, spoken mainly in Japan * Japanese people, the ethnic group that identifies with Japan through ancestry or culture ** Japanese diaspor ...

government in 1928. Among those who were arrested in the incident was the

Marxist economist Marxian economics, or the Marxian school of economics, is a heterodox school of political economic thought. Its foundations can be traced back to Karl Marx's critique of political economy. However, unlike critics of political economy, Marxian e ...

Kawakami Hajime was a Japanese Marxist economist of the Taishō and early Shōwa periods. Biography Born in Yamaguchi, he graduated from Tokyo Imperial University. After writing for ''Yomiuri Shimbun'', he attained a professorship in economics at Kyoto Imp ...

Background

Although the

Japan Communist Party The is a left-wing to far-left political party in Japan. With approximately 270,000 members belonging to 18,000 branches, it is one of the largest non-governing communist parties in the world. The party advocates the establishment of a democr ...

had been outlawed and forced underground immediately after its foundation in 1922, it continued to gather strength and membership in the volatile social and economic climate of the 1920s Taishō period. During the February 1928 general election, which was the first held in Japan since the passage of universal male

suffrage Suffrage, political franchise, or simply franchise, is the right to vote in representative democracy, public, political elections and referendums (although the term is sometimes used for any right to vote). In some languages, and occasionally i ...

, the Japan Communist Party was very visible in its support of the legal socialist and labor-oriented political parties. Alarmed by gains that those parties made in the

Diet of Japan The is the national legislature of Japan. It is composed of a lower house, called the House of Representatives (, ''Shūgiin''), and an upper house, the House of Councillors (, '' Sangiin''). Both houses are directly elected under a paralle ...

, the conservative government of

Prime Minister A prime minister, premier or chief of cabinet is the head of the cabinet and the leader of the ministers in the executive branch of government, often in a parliamentary or semi-presidential system. Under those systems, a prime minister is not ...

Giichi Tanaka Baron was a general in the Imperial Japanese Army, politician, cabinet minister, and the Prime Minister of Japan from 1927 to 1929. Early life and military career Tanaka was born as the third son of a low-ranking ''samurai'' family in the s ...

, which had retained its majority by only one seat, evoked the provisions of the 1925 Peace Preservation Law and ordered the

mass arrest A mass arrest occurs when police apprehend large numbers of suspects at once. This sometimes occurs at protests. Some mass arrests are also used in an effort to combat gang activity. This is sometimes controversial, and lawsuits sometimes result. I ...

of known communists and suspected communist sympathizers. The arrests occurred throughout Japan, and a total of 1652 people were apprehended.Bowman, ''Columbian Chronologies of Asian History and Culture''. Pg 152

Consequences

About 500 of those arrested were eventually prosecuted in a series of open trials held by the

Tokyo District Court is a district court located at 1-1-4 Kasumigaseki, Chiyoda, Tokyo, Japan Japan ( ja, 日本, or , and formally , ''Nihonkoku'') is an island country in East Asia. It is situated in the northwest Pacific Ocean, and is bordered on the ...

starting on 15 June 1932, with sentencing on 2 July 1932. The public trials were carefully staged to publicize the inner workings of the secretive

. With its connections with the

labor movement The labour movement or labor movement consists of two main wings: the trade union movement (British English) or labor union movement (American English) on the one hand, and the political labour movement on the other. * The trade union movement ...

and other left-wing political parties revealed, the government was able to order the dissolution of the '' Rōdō Nōmintō'' (Labor-Farmer Party), the '' Zen Nihon Musan Seinen Dōmei'' (All-Japan Proletarian Youth League), and the ''

Nihon Rōdō Kumiai Hyōgikai Japan ( ja, 日本, or , and formally , ''Nihonkoku'') is an island country in East Asia. It is situated in the northwest Pacific Ocean, and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, while extending from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north ...

'' (Council of Japanese Labor Unions). The defendants in the trials were all found guilty and sentenced to stiff jail terms, but those who recanted their communist ideology were then pardoned or given much reduced terms. That was the beginning of the ''

tenkō is a Japanese term referring to the coerced ideological conversions of Japanese socialists and communists who, between 1925 and 1945, were induced to renounce leftist ideologies and enthusiastically embrace the Emperor-centric, capitalist, and imp ...

'' policy designed to reintegrate former leftists to mainstream society. Perhaps more importantly, as a consequence of the trials, Prime Minister Tanaka was able to pass legislation to add the provision for the

death penalty Capital punishment, also known as the death penalty, is the state-sanctioned practice of deliberately killing a person as a punishment for an actual or supposed crime, usually following an authorized, rule-governed process to conclude that t ...

to the already-draconian Peace Preservation Laws. The writer

Kobayashi Takiji was a Japanese writer of proletarian literature. He is best known for his short novel '' Kanikōsen'', or ''Crab Cannery Ship'', published in 1929. It tells the story of the hard life of cannery workers, fishermen and seamen on board a cannery ...

later wrote ''March 15, 1928'' based on the incident.

References

* * * * Rodger Swearingen and Paul Langer (1952). Red Flag in Japan. International Communism in Action 1919-1951 {{DEFAULTSORT:March 15 Incident 1928 in Japan Anti-communism in Japan Political repression in Japan Politics of the Empire of Japan